Episode 014 -How do I get my partner to listen to me?

Hey it’s Harms here and you’re listening to another episode of the Seekardo podcast I’ve got Ro with me the question we are going to be answering is how do I get my partner to listen to me?

They’re not listening to me how do I get through to them?How do I get them to actually listen to what I’m saying?

That’s the title okay but we want to expand beyond that because not only does this apply to your partner, this applies to colleagues, clients, your boss, children, your friends or family. But before we dive into that question I’m going to leave you with a quick message from Ro.

Awesome so if you remember the question is how do I get my partner to listen to me?

Hi Ro, just wanted to say hello before I start diving to this podcast.

Hi Harms, thanks for picking this subject. I actually just dropped a message on Facebook I don’t know if you saw it live because I was so pumped about this, so let’s dive in. I think it’s a biggie.

So where this really came to mind we’ve discussed this topic in length just one-on-one, but I attended the private meet up where a handful of people came to see you speak on the subject of communication.

Now one of the things that happened there was an elderly lady not sure of her age, maybe 70s that was my gut feeling. She raised her hand and said, “look Dr Ro for years my siblings will not listen to me. I trying to tell them this is how you should do things. This is what you need to be aware of”, and in particular from memory, I think it was her sister. Her sister would not listen to her.

You asked her the question how long this has been going on for and she said as long as I can remember. You said well is it 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? And it happened to be 30 years plus. Now you coached this woman there and then and she was massively grateful for it, and also the audience learned a lot from it and it came down to the fact that she just wasn’t utilising a whole bunch of communication tools to speak to her siblings on their level.

That’s where this sparked the idea of how to get my partner to listen to me. How do I get my siblings to listen to me. So, do you remember that experience?

Yeah that is good memory actually, this was quite a small group and that gave me an opportunity to have a more private session and because it was a closed small group, she opened up very quickly didn’t she?

Yeah.

But what was fascinating was that the minute she started to ask the question and I communicated with her as I was reflecting back and just reading where she was going with it and just saying openly what I was seeing, do you remember how many nods of heads there were around the room. There were so many people acknowledging almost identical situations in their own personal lives and I think it’s a huge subject just feeling like you’re not being listened to.

Yeah and the idea of this podcast Ro is if you’re listening to this at home and you have that feeling as well, doesn’t matter who it’s with we want to equip you with some of the things you’re going to learn in this episode, so you don’t have to go the 30 years without speaking to your siblings without having that open communication.

I sat there as a 28, 29-year-old thinking, oh my god and I even resonated with her because I felt like I’ve not been able to communicate with my parents at times, maybe my wife at times, maybe my boss in my past career. Just thinking, oh my god if I had approached this in the way that Ro is saying I could’ve communicated with my boss. I look back at my time and I had a really difficult time communicating with my ex-boss because of all sorts of reasons, but mainly down to communication.

So that being said Ro do you have some examples of typical examples where people don’t listen or maybe appear to not listen, what are some ways that play out?

If you think about how many times have you heard or had a conversation with somebody, “but you don’t understand they’re not going to listen to me. I’ve tried that before but they just don’t hear what I’m saying, I’ve been over that again and again nothing’s changed. I’ve tried that they’re not going to listen to me.” And it’s almost like a hopeless pissed off frustrated feeling and it transcends all different age groups, all different eras. Whether you’re a millennial listening to this year, generation X, generation whatever it is now.

What’s the latest generation by the way remind me.

I don’t even know what they’re referred to now. It’s like micro generations within a generation now so I have to read up on that.

Kids shout, “mummy doesn’t listen to me,” and then you’ve got grand ads saying,“my son doesn’t listen to me.” It goes across every single generation but if you want to pin it down to scenarios which is a good question actually.

I’ll throw it out there because people listening to this will I’m sure undoubtedly relate to this. For example, a mother trying to talk to her daughter. And here’s the interesting thing parents as our children grow up there is a period where they just seem to listen to absolutely everything we say. Maybe that’s because we are the dominant person there and they haven’t evolved their own personalities and their own consciousness, their own belief systems, own set of values and model of the world. So that point there when they’re two, three, four that sort of period they are just starting to shape consciousness.

I’ve now got a five-year-old and she’s got a much clearer picture of the world even though she is only five she thinks she is like 25 and she doesn’t listen to me the same way she did even a year or two ago. You take that to an 11-year-old we’ve got and it’s the same thing there.

Parents feel the same way and then you get to a teenager and it’s like my kids don’t listen to me, but equally if you take the mirror out, the kids are feeling the same thing. We can come to this in a little but there are so many different reasons this can happen. But it’s a classic scenario. Parents not feeling the kids are listening to them or vice versa.

Equally it’s husband and wife, if you think about children and how they model us if children are growing up watching two parents arguing or husband coming back talking to his wife and she’s not engaged, listening to him or vice versa. She comes back and says, “hunny I need to talk to you about something” and he is like yeah and he is on his phone, in his briefcase he has his computer out. Kids are sat there what do they see?

Children are a blank canvas and if you grow up and watch a couple that never engage,never listen to each other, never talk or are present with each other. The only model of the world you know when it comes to communication is that. And how do you get attention? Daddy shouts at mummy, mummy shouts at daddy, maybe I need to do the same thing to get attention. Think about fundamentally how we develop our belief systems. We do it from that basic level and the observational process that kids have they see parents doing it, it will reflect in everything they do.

You go to work and you’re a frustrated husband or wife you get to work trying to get a pay rise, your boss isn’t listening to you, you start to develop these beliefs that maybe I’m meaningless, maybe there’s something wrong with me, maybe I’m not a good communicator. Your peers don’t listen to you, if you’re a property investor you say something to your builder doesn’t seem to hear you and it transcends across every situation.

If you find yourself and this is probably a good lead into this podcast because if you find yourself fairly consistently saying to yourself they’re not listening to me or I said this but and wrote them a message but they didn’t listen to me. If you’re saying that it’s not so much about them it’s likely to be about you and that’s something we can tackle if you want. It’s probably worth opening up a little bit as we go through this.

Yeah and I think we can dive into that because it opens up a few different areas of discussion and you’ve touched on some fantastic points there Ro which I tell you what, if my mum and dad are listening to this, they’re going to say Harms has stopped listening to me for the last 25 years.

We’ve got a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to our podcast and if it is a case you’re pitching for finance, finance for your property business, you are pitching to a client and you’ve left that phone call and believe me, I have been here multiple times and you’ve left that phone call and you think I don’t think they heard me. I don’t think they got it, or if you don’t get a client, you’ve pitched to them they say sorry no, the feeling is weren’t they listening to me? This is an absolute no-brainer. Why would they not do this?

This is a very point Harms and I think what you’re alluding to and let’s try and put that science behind this there are different gradients of not being listened to. There’s the extreme gradient of somebody completely blanking you out right down to the subtle gradients of, as you say, you’re in front of a customer you’re presenting your product, but the certain elements of what you’re saying they don’t hear, or they don’t get. Meaning that you may have certain parts of your psyche that mute your voice, mute your message when you get to that point.

I know people for example that go out in front of audiences and they can deliver content really well. When I’m training a professional speaker, they’re really good at the technical but when it comes to promoting the product or service, for some reason the way that comes across and is received and processed by the other person is almost like they’re hearing a blur, a lack of clarity and the other person doesn’t hear the message.

At the end of it people go I don’t get it, I’ve got great product. But what they don’t realise is the gradient in that area they were grey, they weren’t clear. The other person didn’t hear that part they heard everything else just didn’t hear the numbers, didn’t hear the sale.

So what you’re saying is absolutely spot-on. This could apply to anyone in any situation at different gradients. I wasn’t heard in that particular part of my conversation.

Makes sense Ro and I just want to throw another one in there, which is that we’ve looked at you and yourself, but also we have to see what’s muddying the waters out there, where there’s a lot of surface information being thrown at people.

We’re almost programming ourselves, if we think about headlines you see on Facebook, Instagram, etcetera or you’re looking at blog content and the headlines are very much orientated around click bait. Now if you’re seeing 10 articles a day there’s no way people have time to read 10 articles a day, so what they’re really doing is digesting the headline part of things.

You just used the word click bait just explain that to the listeners who don’t know what that means.

So what click bait means is a headline which is written in the way purely to get your clicks, that’s it. They want you to just click because out of curiosity they trigger your curiosity in whatever way, there are different ways to do that to get you to click onto their site, their news article, their product or whatever it is. Now when you put this and align this with the informational world where we are reading journalism, articles, whatever that is and whatever you research in your speciality, the click bait is just a summary of the article.

Now this is where people take things out of context. This is people just looking at surface information and almost make up their mind based on two or three sentence headline and a summary and they say “right, yes I’ve got my opinion on this I don’t need to listen to anything else, I’ve got it.” Now when you come up against somebody like that. It’s like “yeah I know that because I’ve read this article on it.”

Well actually they didn’t dive deep into the article they just looked at surface information. This is also what we are coming up against. Parent coming up against a kid where the parents thinking oh my god they seem like they know it all. Well actually the children in their mind maybe think they do know it all because they’ve seen 50 different headlines which has been some sort of surface level education for the day and they’re getting that every single day.

I’m going to dive into social media a bit later on, but that’s also a scenario that’s occurring in the background Ro.

This is an important point you’re raising because later on one of things I like to suggest is a couple of ways to grab people’s attention, but if you’re trying to get into a space with another person’s head where they’ve had a lot of these as your calling them click bait these headlines, you’ve got to find something that moves all that out the way and goes, wait a minute I’ve got something else you need to listen to. And they go wow, what is that?

So, if there’s too much noise it’s a way of separating the noise from your message. There is a couple of things we can do but we will come back to that before we finish.

Yes, so one of the other things I wanted to talk about Ro is we’ve covered some examples but one of the biggest scenarios that I come across and you’ve probably cross with all the students and the people who come to teachings.

Whether it is Communicating with Impact, whether it’s wealth education is they are all expanding their learning. They’re all trying to self-develop and they’re excited for it. But what they go and do is they’re in this bubble of excitement and they are ready to expand their life, but then they start to go to tell other people,“look I’m starting a real estate company, a property business, I’m starting to sell things online, I’m starting a blog.”

For example, if you’ve heard the introduction I’m going to Dr Ro’s Communicating with Impact program and the response they’re going to get is you don’t need to do that, why do you need to learn about communication? You’re very confident as a person and all that stuff that comes.

Now I see this play out even in their 30s, I’ve met people in their 30s who have to seek permission as a grown adult from their parents to do certain things. Because when they explain it to them the parents are like no that’s no good.

So what is actually happening here Ro is people are not listening toI guess the dreams and aspirations of people. But what I wanted to do is highlight this problem and what can we do to support these people because even Seekardo community they’re going through a level of self-expansion, personal growth, they are out there to grow their life and other people are trying to shut that down around them.

What can we do to support them? Give them tools?

There are so many different approaches to this we probably need to address this looking at beliefs actually, this also ties into one area which are beliefs. But before we tackle that the key thing here is the one person you have to listen to first is yourself. So I think what’s happening is because there’s so many whatever you call them attention grabbers, whatever word you used a minute a go.

People are advertising using click bait.

So because there is so much click bait, so much headlines, so much distraction, so much you can do this. What people are doing is they can’t centre themselves, so when they go to do something they’re second-guessing.The first level of communication, the first fundamental level of communication that has to happen is the one with yourself that inner voice.

When we talk about I’m not being heard at any one time you are either making statements or you’re asking questions. Even as you’re listening to me right now, you might say, “well, is that true?” There is a question. “Is that correct what he is saying there?” That is another question. “Actually, he’s right”, there is a statement. “he is right actually I’m either speaking to myself and asking a question or I’m saying something out loud which is a statement.”

That’s it.

So you can simplify communication into two parts questions and statements, questions are the things that we use to focus in on something to get a resolution, to resolve a problem, to get clarity. A statement is basically a statement based on a belief that is fundamental to the core of who you are, and there are different levels of beliefs.

Imagine that conversation going backwards and forwards on an internal level, should I do this? Shouldn’t I do this?Do I need to check with somebody? There is a question. “Yeah my mum told me that I should always check.” Okay that’s a statement based on a belief, “my mum saidI should always check with somebody.”

That internal conversation gets to a point where you go right question, “who should I check with?”Statement,“I’ll go check with my brother, my mum, my dad, my uncle.” Now it becomes an external conversation. So now we go out and we talk to somebody else. All this time we haven’t actually had a chance to listen to our inner voice.

The question should be what does my gut tell me?
What do I feel in my heart?
Do I trust this person?
Do I trust this course?
Is it taking me in the right direction?
Is it giving me an opportunity to grow and expand in an area I wanted to?

Even though other people around me aren’t, though my mum has never done that, my dad has never done that, my uncle’s never done that. Even those people around me that financially are in the same place as me or who don’t want to get to another level. Can I move all of those people’s beliefs aside, if I pursued this, would it better my life? Yes, in which case does it actually serve me to go and talk to them, ask them questions.

That’s the kind of conversation that has to be taking place, but most people don’t have the courage, the strength and the conviction to do that. What they do is to make it simpler they go outside and they ask other people’s opinions. “Mum and dad say don’t do it, uncle says don’t do it, the mass of the population who are not emotionally developed in that place don’t do it.”

In other words the people around them if they went to a seminar with us, came to CWI event, or our relationship events where you’ve got 100, 200, 300 people all who are emotionally developed and you said to those people, I’m thinking about doing this program that helps me communicate or to become healthier, you’ll probably find 85% to 90% of people say what a fantastic idea. Because their beliefs are completely aligned with your beliefs which are emotionally developed beliefs, as opposed unemotionally developed or emotionally undeveloped beliefs.

I’m going to pause there for a minute because I’m speaking quickly but am I making sense? As I’m really going off on a big one here?

Yes Ro that makes sense and I think it’s such a critical topic because I asked the question, where basically what I’m saying is, if somebody wants to do something different that is out of the norm, or different to the belief system of the person you’re telling something to they’re not going to hear you. They’re not going to hear the great things about that thing you are about to embark on. That could be, for example, it can be as simple as I’m taking a career change, and I’m actually going to reduce my salary during that career change.

Now that’s enough to trigger most people’s belief system and say, “what you’re going to take a pay cut and change this career which you spent five, 10 years and now you want to change it? Are you crazy?”As opposed to their belief system that they have.That’s another example, and it doesn’t have to just be applied to the training environment.

I think, Ro you know, something to highlight the belief system as well, which is I was actually watching fantastic scientist and a speaker Neil DeGrasse Tyson the other day and what he wanted to bring awareness is, with this fantastic quote which is around belief systems. And it’s important that we, as in you, the person listening to your inner voice just understand this fundamental quote, which is things you think are true but they are not even true when you are shown the truth.

It’s a bit wacky and on the surface, but what we are saying here is you cannot sway some people’s belief systems, either when you show them a real truth. This is the truth. “Yeah, but I don’t believe that.” But this is the truth. “But I don’t believe that.” That’s the circle that you potentially, a vicious cycle sometimes that you’re going to potentially be in and it’s all around belief systems.

Yeah, in the Turning Point book I wrote back in 2011 there is a whole chapter on beliefs and I breakdown the different levels of beliefs. The lightest belief being one that you might have just assumed because somebody shared it with you and you go, okay maybe I believe that, you believe it from a young age. Right through to something you’ve experienced so many times that it’s an absolute conviction to the point where you have an absolute conviction about something as you said there, it might be very difficult for anyone to dissuade you that is actually bullshit. The thing that you believe.

There is another great phrase, nothing has meaning a part from the meaning that you give it. So the minute you give something a meaning and you attach a belief to that, it’s very hard for somebody to change that.

So what we’re dealing with here is a frustration in you the listener. If you’re not being listened to, but it might be a belief that you’re not being listened to. It may be that you’re just talking to somebody who is listening at a completely different filter,their head is so much processing their own internal dialogue, that conversation that’s happening in their head between questions and answers questions and answers when you throw something at them, they’ve got no space to process it.

What happens is your message goes into their conversation, their ecosystem inside their head doesn’t really fit in with their beliefs, doesn’t fit in with the conversations happening at the moment and the only conversation that’s ever important to anybody is the conversation they’re having with their own selves, not with anybody else.

Same way if you look at a photograph of 100 people and you happen to be in that photograph, the first person you look at is you, before you look at anybody else. But the same thing is happening in the conversation. If your conversation drops into somebody else’s head, ecosystem and they’re having three or four conversations with themselves. It might be that yours is not important, so of course they’re not going to listen to you. They might be acknowledging of you, but they can’t resonate at a deep frequency with you.

They’re not really listening that’s where you get frustrated. We are still on the subject on belief systems Ro how are they formed? Because if we understand how they are formed that also helps the person communicating with the other person to just appreciate that this person has got a belief system and they come from different places.

I think this is a subject that we could do a whole podcast on because belief systems go deep but without going that deep, one thing to be aware of is that you might be thinking well, how does this tie into I’m not being heard?

Just remember you’re making a statement there, that’s a belief that you have. What if you are being heard, but not being heard at the right volume, the right intensity or the meaning of what you’re asking or saying has not been interpreted correctly by the other person. Because they’ve got a slightly different set of beliefs around this particular subject.

In the same way you might go watch a movie and come out feeling really inspired someone else might come out and feel depressed, because they’ve seen a story and their beliefs are, that’s terrible how can that happen to that person?

Whereas you go,oh my gosh what happened to that person is terrible, but it’s inspiring how they came through that and they overcame the challenges. Two sets of different beliefs, so we have to understand the mechanism of beliefs and when it comes to communication let me give you some examples.

One might be you grew up and you as I said already you heard your mum and dad arguing a lot and it might be that mum just didn’t feel that dad was listening to her, so she would get more and more vocal and you witnessed daily, monthly, yearly over decades maybe by the time you get to 20 years of age. Your mum always having to shout almost scream to get your dad’s attention.

Now what happens to you as a young Harminder or me as a young Dr Ro, if I witnessed that for a good first 10, 20 years of my life, my model of the world is to be heard I guess I need to shout loud. So what do I do? I go out and I shout, I’m quite in people’s faces, I’m not necessarily aggressive, but my belief is that I need to be quite loud if I want to get my point across.

But of course for somebody else that doesn’t believe that they might take that as offensive. If I started to raise my voice at you and almost speak at you Harms, you might come from a different belief system or culture where that’s rude so you get pissed off. So, oddly enough, you don’t listen to me.

Yeah shut down and don’t listen.

So now what happens is I’ve started talking to you and you don’t want to hear it, you don’t want to hear my words and you dissociate or you ignore me. I get more pissed off and I’m thinking what the hell is going on? So I shout louder and then I start doing that with lots of people and then I start complaining nobody is listening to me. That’s because you’ve come in with a set of beliefs that were formed from a couple that just didn’t have that connection or they didn’t have other tools to communicate. That’s one example.

You may have had this at school Harms, I certainly remember this when I was at school I was physically a small guy. I developed a lot later in terms of my physical ability than I think a lot of other people around me, coming from an Asian background.

Same for me.

You see a lot of young Asian kids they’re small, thin and if I do go somewhere like Holland they’re massive. I meet somebody 20 years of age and they’re like three times my size.

Every culture, every person is different physically and I remember I had a couple of friends who were very loud, slightly aggressive, so maybe they’d got parents that were shouting at each other now I think about it. I used to find that when I was around them I didn’t get heard very much.

In my case I didn’t go quieter but I saw other people go quite. I see this even today adults that have gone quiet and they say, “I can’t get my voice out.” And when I take them back through time it turns out that they had a friend they hung out with, people they hung out with at school and those people were loud. They were so loud that this person became quieter and actually through their quietness they got attention in a different way and that was their way of being listened to.

Whereas for me I don’t mind sharing this with you I just found myself becoming more articulate. I found I read more and I found if I communicated in a slightly more skilful way, that’s how I got attention and I think that’s maybe something that has evolved at such a young age without me realising, it was only more recently I reflected on it.

So how you react to, or the meaning you give to a situation you can see yourself down one route to become quieter because somebody is very loud next to you or you become more skilful in the way communicate, which then gets people’s attention in a different way. Am I making sense? I’m trying to show you what happened to me, what I believe happened to me.

That makes absolute sense.

How does that play out? Because you’ve got two couples and I imagine it’s based on the past relationship or is that down the right line?

Yeah you are spot on. And in fact you’ve seen this because you have been with me and I’ve seen you try and help people out as well at an event. There’s you a 30-year-old lad, for one of a better word sitting with a couple who are 50 and they’re having a conflict, and because of all the skills you’ve learned your steering them and I’ve seen that.

But I think we see it across all generations. If I’m John and I’ve been in a relationship with my partner she never seems to listen to me. She’s switched off, when we first met she listened to me but after a while she stopped listening and it felt like she wasn’t connecting with me. She was off doing her own thing. She was pursuing a career.

If that was my situation and that relationship broke up for that reason, when I go into my next relationship I’m going to be a little more cautious and I might not communicate as much because I’ve already developed a set of beliefs that hey, what if my last three relationships were the same.

My assumption is that my next relationship will be the same, so I get a partner that really wants to talk and she is like, “hunny you never talk to me.” And I’m thinking, yeah, I don’t expose myself because the last time I tried to do that my last two partners cut me down. I didn’t feel heard, what if I make myself vulnerable?”

A lot of couples come to the table and their past beliefs about being open, about being vulnerable, about being truthful about they feel. Maybe the sex has died down and they want to reconnect that way, maybe the intimacy died down, maybe there’s not the same sense of passion. Or one’s got a set of aspirations and the other one doesn’t seem to be listening to it, but then there’s this fear of saying something because they don’t want to cause an upset so they carry on.

And then the other partner is almost like two, three, four, 10 years into it, saying “they just don’t talk to me. I don’t want to do, I’m saying talk to me, talk to me and they just won’t.” And then what they probably say is“actually if you don’t want to talk to me then we’ve got nothing to talk about.” Those are the couples that ultimately end up sitting in silence in the same room, just watching television night in night out and it’s the fear then to engage in that open communication.

Also that’s a very good point actually, because what happens then is, we seek a thrill or excitement going back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

One of them is the need for variety and to have change, if you don’t get the stimulation in the conversation and anyone listening to this you might relate to this, what will happen is you’ll go seek that somewhere else. In some cases it becomes an affair, you want to be with your partner but you haven’t made that connection with them. Somebody else shows you a lot of attention, they start listening to you, maybe it’s in a work environment, social environment.

Before you know it you’re having these conversations that you just don’t feel you can have with your partner. And then you must interpret that to mean this is a more meaningful relationship. But actually when you first met your partner, you may have had those conversations to start with.

Yeah, and it was just fundamentally the other person was just listening that piece of the jigsaw for that particular scenario.

But here is where it gets really scary, dark and challenging and that is that interpretation around that is, “okay my relationship is dead. This is a great relationship. He or she is listening to me.”

The next thing you know it leads to a sexual encounter, lots of variety next thing you know there’s an affair going on as an example.If it’s not an affair with another person it could be sport, watching movies, going on the Internet that could be your other source of outlet because now I’m communicating with somebody on Facebook who is listening to me. Could be another bloke, woman, whatever.

I think the point that we are both trying to make here is there is a lot of danger associated with allowing poor communication not being listened to, to continue on and actually, I would say a high percentage of the time it does lead to relationship breakups or just this blur. Where there’s no passion and the whole thing just becomes just a grey existence. And people don’t want that. And this is when we see the pain and the pain usually then leads to a breakup.

I think you may have uncovered the mystery of why so many people are just commenting on random things online Ro, I think you unlocked that mystery.

Yeah, it stimulates conversation.

There are so many people commenting on all sorts of things, looking for a response, provoking a response online and it could potentially be one of the nuggets to do as part that. Ro just to close out this question, which was what do the people do who are aspiring, they’re dreaming, they’re doing something different. What’s one piece of advice we can give them, before we move on to the next part?

I think at this stage because I want to give a little bit more of a detailed answer to that, because there’s more depth to it. I think at this point here we’ve talked about it already is, go back to that inner voice go back to the intuition that’s inside you. And even if you feeling resistance from the outside, don’t dampen that voice down that’s the most powerful voice. Listen inwardly first and then listen outwardly, communicate inwardly first and then communicate outwardly.

I just want to reflect it back on you.

You sat with me Harms four, five years ago you’re at an event, at the time it was a property event and there’s an opportunity to invest 20 £25,000 to do what is equivalent to like a university degree in property investing in a concentrated time period.

You’ve got money saved up for a wedding and you must have been having a conversation in your head at that point and I’m sure had you gone out to talk to other people around you, they probably would not listen to you and said don’t do this.

Maybe this is good chance for me to reflect it back on to you as a young millennial and say, how did you deal with that situation? Because no doubt you’d have got people not listening to you and said, don’t do it, even though you’re trying to explain it to somebody else.

Yeah, I think at the time I was in that mode where you know I had personally experienced 10 years in the working place and it wasn’t all that it was made out to be before I entered the working place. I almost had a bit of rebelliousness in me where I said look things I’ve been told in the past yes, they worked but they didn’t work as well as promised.

So I now have to look at myself and think for myself and make a decision. So for me it was an independent decision, I’m a grown adult now I shouldn’t at that stage, it’s nice to get opinions but I shouldn’t base my decision on what mum and dad said. What my brother said, what my friends say, what somebody online says who may be a stranger or within a Facebook group I’m a part of.

These are the things I had to be conscious of, so I guess I’m giving you a real-life example of somebody who just listened to their inner voice, which at the time said yes, and then go and act upon that inner voice. Don’t just say yes I want to do this spur of the moment, and then don’t go act on it. The important part of acting is I’ve committed to do whatever this is and for me it was building a property portfolio. Then I’m going to go and do it.

And over time people will watch from the outside and say okay that seemed like a good decision, well done, and then they just get over it. That time seems so distant; it becomes a distant memory. I guess it’s just listening to your inner voice at that time in the moment. I guess Ro if your inner voice is, looking at the flip side, what if your invoice is wrong? What if your inner voice is wrong at the time?

Then just learn from that. The next decision doesn’t dismiss your inner voice. But what was wrong about your judgement at the time.

That’s a good point. The inner voice that we are talking about has to be one that is not muddied by anything, so the minute you feel the inner voice is being steered by pain or steered by an external influence, then it’s not really an inner voice. It’s an inner voice listening to an out voice.

But if something happens that you say afterwards maybe I should have checked or made a slightly different decision that then comes down to, as you say, the evolution of the soul. It’s how we learn from each experience and grow from it and fine tune that inner voice.

Each of us have it, the challenge is there is a lot of fear to listen to it. People then lean on external people to get that support and go back to the outside world asking for their opinion, “they’re not listening to me”, that’s because they’ve got their own opinion. Whereas if we just allow us to go through several experiences when we tune into the inner voice, the more you do it it’s like driving a car, walking and riding a bike, anything like that. After a while you intuitively just know what’s right, but you’ve got to give yourself the space to do that. That’s really the whole first part of the process.

I love that and we’ve answered that question now, so if you are coming up against resistance just seek an answer from your inner voice at the start. Be confident in that.

Now coming back to the topic of somebody is not listening to me. What do I do?

I think before we start getting to the solutions another good question to answer is what are some general reasons why we think in society possibly, we think there is a cause of lack of being able to listen?

Just off the top of my head I’m thinking social media is one, but I’m going to dive into that in amoment as I’ve got a few passionate notes on that which I want people to be aware of.

I’m conscious of time so I won’t spend a lot of time on this but I would say for anyone listening to be aware of things like a lack of connection or less connection with the person you’re talking to,or people around.

As I’ve said already you could have drifted apart. You might have a habit of filtering what you’re saying, or how you’re saying it. Think back to the example with the child that witnessed the parents and then developed a model of being very loud, equally somebody that went the other way and became very quiet in the way they connect with other people.

Also, people are very busy these days and if you look around you, even when people sit down for dinner they don’t sit down and be present, be grateful, connect with the food. Connect with the person next to them, be aware of the moment. The phone is there and I know that because I’ve beenin that situation myself especially when a group of us go out and you quickly check your phone before you settle in.

If you think about it if you are checking your phone to maybe connect with three or four people on Facebook and maybe a couple of WhatsApp’s, that would be no different to walking in the restaurant with three of your mates for dinner, but then bringing another eight people with you.

Before you sit down for dinner, you say before I eat my dinner Johnny I want to check this and they are all stood around the dinner table with you. And not until you have spoken to those eight people and they leave the restaurant can you turn around and have a meal, because what you’re actually doing is it you’re creating busyness. Messages, texts, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, we are just busy, busy, busy and of course when we are busy there’s no space to process somebody else.

That’s pretty cool Ro, because what you described there is personal side to what is really heavily discussed in the workplace, which is task switching. Constantly switching from email to project, to task, to meeting, to interruption. That level of task switching gets nothing done, gives you no satisfaction at the end of the day.

So you just take that example of lots of study and research goes to workplace, but very little emphasis is done in the personal life, which is just as important to have that non-busy period where you are just focused on dinner with friends at the table, using that example here.

And in a meeting as you say, if you go to a meeting and there is like five people at the meeting, but you’re in the middle of a conversation even if it’s on your phone with somebody outside that room, that’s like you walking between two rooms. If you’re doing five conversations on five different WhatsApp groups it would be like sitting in the office but having five other meetings going around you and you stand up halfway through a conversation go to the other room talk to them and come back. It’s physically draining, emotionally draining, it’s distracting for everybody involved.

It creates stress that’s another thing people get so stressed these days that the stress, well okay essentially what the stress is in terms of if you process it, it’s a conversation happening internally. It stresses like your conversation going outwardly, anything happens outside then comes to an internal conversation and off we go back to the start of the podcast chat between yourself questions, answer, questions, answer. “Oh shit what about this?” Somebody is trying to talk to you and you go “sorry I didn’t hear what you’re saying. I was just talking to myself.”

Boom that is the biggest challenge I think for a lot of people.

It’s time, stress, management of different projects going on at the same time, and you’ve got these two extremes of wanting to talk, there’s opportunity one side and the other side you’re feeling stressed. And this is going on constantly.

I think couples can relate to that Ro. Either partner depending on what’s happening in their life at the time, you know if you take the mum in this hypothetical situation. The mum is saying to the husband who has just come home, “the new-born baby has done this today. The baby is doing this, omg it’s stressful.” The husband didn’t hear any of it. He just did not listen to a single word because he is still thinking about that meeting that was maybe challenging or quite stressful at the end of the day, or something that happened in the traffic it took half an hour extra to get home.

He is stressed, he comes home.

And he might be holding it inside whereas she just wants to get it out.

Yes, exactly. And that can happen in reverse any scenario like that, I think couples do experience that and if you want to keep it simple it doesn’t have to be work.

Any situation Harms.

I could be thinking about football and Geena is talking to me and I’m thinking, I can’t listen to you right now I need to get this stuff done, so I can watch the football later, as an example.

Another example would be about relationships I go into the house my fiancé is there and she’s trying to work out some stuff for the renovation on the house, “what about this door handle here?” And I’m thinking, okay, I’ve got to pay the builder because he’s just dropped me a message.

So two conversations and what I think is important is important to me. It doesn’t matter each person’s conversation is important to them. And of course if it is not being heard then we don’t feel like the other person values us. And here’s the thing. We also have a lot to say these days, so it’s not you go back to my period and everything was slower, more relaxed. Now there is so much to say there’s so much information to process and to share and there’s no space in between that information.

What happens is it comes at us constantly to the point where it’s like listening to white noise. There is no space in between, there is no variation. It’s just a constant flow backwards and forwards of information processing. There’s no break. We can’t absorb it and if we can’t absorb it like a sponge how can we listen?

If you think about a sponge it’s completely empty it’s got time to process. If you pour water onto it that’s like a conversation the water represents the conversation, it can absorb it but if you put that sponge in a big bucket of water which is all the stuff that we’re doing at any one time and then you take the sponge out, lay it on the ground and you say that sponge represents the human being who’s got a lot of stuff going on at the moment. And you come along and pour your conversation, your water onto that sponge there’s nowhere for it to go and it can’t absorb.

It can’t absorb because the purpose of the sponge is supposed to be able to listen and build that water and then if get a label and put overwhelmed on it, stressed, confused, at capacity or whatever label you want. That sponge or human being is completely just full, they cannot take anymore.

You’ve heard me say I’m at maximum bandwidth. I’m doing that because you’re a millennial, I’m at bandwidth and he goes I get that.

I understand that, I don’t understand sponge. Bandwidth yes, I get it.

I think we’ve got to laugh a little bit at this as well because we’ve got to be mindful that we are angry, frustrated, pissed off towards another person. But what if that person is the sponge who wants to they, they’ve got to squeeze something else out. But everything feels important to them.

Why do they get frustrated Ro?

Just cutting straight to that question then is, you know if we label that sponge. They are frustrated everybody else outside is frustrated, but let’s focus on the person who has not been heard.

Two simple things and I think this is a great question because actually it comes all the way back to Maslow and those early studies of human psychology, which is essentially everybody has a need for connection with other people.

If you want to put that in brackets, I want to be loved, be connected to the people around me. Even with me and you, I want to be connected to you, and equally I want to feel important or significant or whatever word you want to attach to that which is, I want to be heard.

Of course if you are in a conversation with me and you’re saying stuff to me and my sponge is full Harms and I’m your wife or a good friend of yours and I’ve got no capacity, then you can’t connect with me. Which means unconsciously you don’t feel like you have a great sense of connection or love with me but equally I’m not listening to you because I’ve got no capacity to absorb any more into my sponge. I’ve got no more bandwidth, so it just deflects off me. And your read on that is fuck it, he is not listening to me, doesn’t connect with me and after two or three or four times, your unconscious says, don’t worry about it. He is not going to listen and that is it.

Then the conversation dulls down and maybe three months later when my sponge is a bit emptier and I’ve got the time to breathe. I go let me have a chat with Harminder, you’ve gone a bit quiet I haven’t spoken to you in a while, is everything alright? You don’t seem to reach out anymore. But just for a minute I’ve got a bit of sponge width there.

I love that.

Are we talking about what 25, 35-year olds that sort of and up to 40 maybe?

Even earlier now I think people in their 20s, I think people in their late teens now my generation are feeling this frustration. But it’s almost like a silent, it is happening in the background. People are aware of it but they don’t want to address it and the frustration as almost injected steroids through the means of social media. Let me explain what I mean.

Because you mentioned the word significance and that fits in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Whether you like it or not, we are wired in a way that we want significance and if you get a dose of it, it’s great.

That’s part of our wiring we don’t want to fight away from that when somebody pats you on the back, when somebody praises you, when somebody says, awesome you did a great job. Or somebody has a conversation with you you’ve got to say what you wanted to and they heard you. That’s where significance comes from as you mentioned.

Now there is so much being said in the world of social media constantly every microsecond something is now appearing online. Whether it’s a news article blog, a Facebook post a YouTube video, Instagram story and now with live video features we use live a lot. Literally something is being fed to you in the moment as the moment is happening every single second.

That’s the landscape that’s actually happening out there in social media. So how is this causing an issue? How is it linked to significance? Well there’s a bit of a blackbox scenario going on here, which the public are not aware of. There’s a black box and there are some things happening in that and that blackbox is owned by the social media companies and the platforms.

So let me give you an example, in the early days, the way social media platforms got our attention and got our user base, i.e. got us to subscribe to their platforms was very simple. If we posted something they would make sure everybody saw that post. Let me give you an example Ro, in the early days I don’t know if you remember but Facebook, the common thing on Facebook let me show people what I’m eating. That was the early adoption. Let me show everyone what I’m having for dinner, let me show people where I am going out today and all your friends would see it.

So, all your friends would comment and they would like the post and they would say, that is amazing I’ve got to try that place. Now you feel great because you’ve got a response from what you put out. Now something has changed inside that blackbox. What’s changed is you will be lucky if even 20% of your friends, people you want to interact with online actually see that post. What I mean by post is something you’re sharing online.

What does that mean now?

Let’s link it back to the significance I was talking about, what that means is social media is selecting what gets heard online. Now as we know, there’s billions of users on these platforms and there’s millions of people every single day trying to get heard.

When you put a post on social media that is no different to speaking to somebody, it’s exactly the same thing. You’re trying to get heard.

Now here’s the vicious cycle because your post is not getting put out to people it’s basically getting put out to maybe 20% of your following, if you’ve got 100 people following you you’re lucky if 20 people see it.

There’s a percentage of those people who are just going to say okay cool, and there’s a percentage who actually interact with it. Now here’s where the vicious cycle is if you’ve only got 10 people liking your post compared to the past or compared to the real-life scenario when nobody listens to you, you don’t get your likes, you don’t get follows, you don’t get your comments.

Simply put to tie it altogether the significance there Ro is just not met.

If you’re listening at home and you’re thinking why am I getting frustrated?

What’s this weird feeling I have with social media at the moment?

It’s because nobody’s liking your stuff, nobody is commenting and you’re feeling your internal mechanism of significance is just not being met. So what happens?You continue to post, you continue to share, you continue to seek response online and you’re basically saying somebody hear me somebody respond. Why is nobody hearing me?Is it what I’m saying is not that important?

What happens Ro is exactly what you said at the start of this episode is the significance gets diminished. So what do people do?

They get louder, they get more controversial, they get more extreme in their pinions all for the purpose of getting heard and all for the purpose of without realising, allowing this blackbox, which is the social media algorithm to get their message out.

The problem with that is it’s a bottomless pit because you’re constantly, constantly seeking significance and you’re not getting it. That is social media causing chaos with the idea of not being heard online and that’s, I got to take a deep breath, that’s my download.

Your rant.

My rant and explanation on how this works.

It’s such a powerful subject we ought to bring it up actually as a separate podcast that would be around your basic human needs and what makes us feel more fulfilled as human beings, and what are the short fixes to that i.e. how do we get that instantly as you’re talking about here versus how to get a more meaningful sense of acknowledgement from those around us without seeking it.

Because I think social media has become a place where people seek it as you’ve talked about there.

Without realising,Ro it’s happening without people realising. It’s not like somebody opens up their phone every morning and says okay, today I want to get my hit of significance let me post something, let me comment something controversial on somebody’s post to trigger a response.

It all just happens automatically,that desire for significance is all happening without somebody realising what’s happening.

Yeah, I think rather than delve into the depth of that because it’s such a powerful subject, let me try and steer this towards a solution whilst people are listening, because there’s two things happening here. One is you’re using social media to be heard. The other one is you’re just talking to people on a daily basis or people in your own close proximity, the ecosystem we talk about and they’re not listening to you as well.

So, I think, why don’t we just move on and tackle some ways to actually address that in view of the time we’ve got left in the podcast, but also because I think you’ve touched on such a powerful subject why don’t we actually agree to bring that up as a separate podcast dealing with how you get yourself if you like, build your own strength, your own qualities, your own sense of identity in such a way that you don’t have to feel the need to do things a certain way through social media and be in pursuit of that recognition when there are other ways to get it. I think that would be a great subject.

I think it’s so needed for my generation at this time because I feel like we’re going down this path.Let’s take a step to the right as we say, and let’s look at something technical. Ro you are when it comes to it, you teach people how to master communication, let’s get more technical with this and orientate just like you said around the solution.

It’s noisy out there, you know, what’s the way to get people to hear us?People are out there pitching for finance, trying to create a social media video for their business, raise money for a charity, in charge of a change project within an organisation. Maybe leading a weekly staff meeting, conference calls and it’s important that people listen to you not to be heard but actually listen to what you’re saying.

I think you’ve helped the frame there think of this as talking to your mum, talking to your dad, however old you are talking to your partner, trying to get through to somebody. Whether it’s in the workspace, business partner, boss you’re feeling like you’re not being heard. Might be sales could be with customers, so this is the kind of place this can work. Can you use it in social media? Yes. Could you use if you’re doing videos to your audience online? 100%.

You could use this.

I’ll go through the sequence here, but I’ve got to be mindful that this is part of a really deep process, 38 components are within the actual main Communicating with Impact system and it’ s broken into three areas as we talked about on a previous podcast I believe.There’s you, which is you, the person communicating. There is them the people that you’re communicating with and there’s the environment within which you are communicating.

For example you talked about social media there’s one environment but another one could be sat in a café talking to a loved one and you’re trying to talk to them. Or it could be with your kids at home on the couch that’s another environment. So those three areas you, them and environment even within each of those have multiple components.

What I want to do is extract a couple of things out of that system to enable people to actually start to use it. Those of you that get an opportunity come and join us on for example the Seekardo’s community and you’ll see this happening a lot because many people have come through the communications event, you’ll see people using this tool. But also in the vault there we have a series called communicating with impact and I think there will be some great tools you could use straight away and Harminder can explain how to get there towards the end of this podcast.

Okay the first thing is break the pattern, simple as that. You have to break the pattern, you have to change your state and their state, meaning if you’re in a negative state you’re feeling like you’re not getting the message across. You’re feeling they’re not listening to you, they’re maybe not listening to you, or it might be that you’re just saying it the wrong way change your pattern.

Break the pattern that means do something different instead of always having the same conversation or the same argument, for example, a couple coming back from work always just in the kitchen while you’re making yourself a cup of tea, preparing the food, you get into that conversational space where you always seem to have that block.

Don’t do it there, actually break that pattern and say before you cook dinner, can we sit down. Clear the table maybe put some music on in the background, but do something, don’t follow the same pattern. It’s like walking to work a different way driving to work a different way, it feels unusual you’re not used to it because you’re not used to it your unconscious becomes more acutely tuned into changes.

It becomes much more aware of changes in breathing patterns in the other person, their facial patterns, facial gestures, everything about a change in environment. A break of pattern means the communication will be different. You can’t say the same thing the same way if you’re sat down versus standing up, versus if you’re in a room full of light versus in a room full of dark. Whether you’re outside in a quiet environment or in a noisy environment. Break the pattern that’s the first thing.

Does that make sense?

That make sense and if think about a club scene you know when you’re at the club they create the environment as such that the lights are dark and the music is loud because when you’ve been in the club and they switch the lights on at the end of the night, it all seems a bit weird. It seems a bit strange. I think that’s just a nice contrast example of the environment has to be right. And they want you to leave so what do they do? They change the state, they switch the lights on, they switch the music off everybody out.
And you’re like it’s a bit weird in here now, it’s a bit sticky let me get out of here.

Yeah and if you are in a middle of a conversation with somebody the cold light of day, or the cold light of bright lights comes in and you have to communicate in a different way. Even tiny face gestures change so changing the pattern, breaking the pattern that’s the first thing. Don’t have the same type of conversation that you’ve been blocked on in the same way and the same place. If it has been on the phone get face-to-face. If it’s been in a certain geographic location change that as well.

Second thing is, and it goes back to what you said earlier on, which is about the hook all these different hooks going into social media. You’ve got to ask a powerful question or a meaningful question. Start the conversation by asking a question instead of making a statement. The thing about making a statement if people aren’t listening to you the minute you do that, it’s your belief being transferred across to them. “Honey, I think that our relationships not working, honey I think we need to spend more time together, honey I think we need go on holiday together, honey I think we are overspending.”

That’s a statement and when you make a statement it’s based on your belief and if you have got somebody that’s not listening to you in the moment, then, of course, what’s going to happen is they’re not going to hear you because you started with a statement about what you believe.

It’s the whole you should, you should, you should do this.

Yeah.

That’s someone talking at you.

And straight away it’s a defence.

The block goes up, whereas if you ask a question that’s powerful or meaningful, then they’re going to have to listen to you.

Don’t load the question either because if you load the question, you can make a question so heavily loaded it almost sounds like a statement. “Honey what do you think, do you believe that we are spending way more money than we need to?” That’s the same as you saying, honey, I believe we are spending more money. You could ask a question that says, “I’m just wondering I was looking at the finances what do you think about our overall spending patterns at the moment? How do you feel about that?”

So you are you keeping it broad you’re asking for a general view and it’s asking for their opinion and they might start with an answer which is, yeah I think we are okay and you say, “have you had a chance to look at it?”

Then you can drill a bit deeper so you open up with a question and give them a chance to hook, or it could be a question related to them and you say, “I noticed you’ve been looking a bit tired recently are you feeling okay?”Or, “I noticed just recently you haven’t been talking, you haven’t been so upbeat is everything okay?”

Something like that so it’s more focused towards them. You break the pattern and ask a question.

Before you go into the next one Ro what I love about the question part are the students that attend the CWI, Communicating with Impact, you take them through this question process and we won’t dive into it here. But what I love is they leave after that thinking no wonder that one section alone, people are thinking, no wonder I cannot get anybody to listen to me because I just wasn’t following this sequence of questions that you layout to them and ask them to use.

The realisation in people is like “oh my god for years I’ve been talking at somebody and I haven’t asked them this right sequence of questions to open up the communication”, and they practice it and then afterwards they’re like wow. They’re sitting there with strangers or their friend as part of the exercise they’re like, I hadn’t realised any of this and sometimes a person who is receiving the question, says I’ve not shared this with anybody for years, because nobody has really asked me the right set of questions. I love that exercise I think we should definitely make sure that’s included in the next event.

Yeah and it’s a little bit like a recipe isn’t it?You’ve got the ingredients and if you put the ingredients in the right order you bake a fantastic cake, but if you get the ingredients or the questions in the wrong order you don’t get that wonderful cake. So it’s not just even the questions it’s the sequence of the questions as well which is what you’re saying, so that’s fantastic.

And of course the next part behind that is being present.

Ask the question, but then don’t be spewing out what you actually want to say because this is where they’ve been switching off in the past.break the pattern, you ask a question and then you allow that person to talk and explain their situation first, as opposed to thinking right, I want to say what I believe. whatever they say if you’re thinking about what you want to say then whatever they say next is meaningless both to you and them and that’s the problem.

If you’re in that headspace where you’re always wanting to get your message out and you want to be right it’s not going to work.

Ask the question, make it a meaningful question and then just be present.

How do you do that? Just centre yourself be opposite them and one of the exercises we do at CWI is so powerful I’ve seen people burst into tears.You witnessed it as well because they’re having a moment of presence with another human being, which they’ve never had before and that’s a really powerful experience.

Just allow yourself to be with them. Be quiet, be silent, breathe calmly and just allow the space to unfold in front of you. You don’t have to have noise, you don’t have to have your phone on, you don’t have to have music in the background, necessarily, but you do need to allow them to have a space to communicate back to you. Because you’ve asked a meaningful question which means they’re going to give you a meaningful answer.

So give their answer meaning by being present with them.

If you contrast that to your first example, I think from this answer is, if you take the opposite of that and say okay, babe I think we should look at the finances, and what do you feel is happening with the finances, and they’re just about to answer and you say, I think this is what’s happening with the finances. I think you’re overspending. It’s a classic scenario, you ask the question just to allow yourself to speak and we’ve all done it. I occasionally do it and then Geena is looking at me like, did you ask this question just so you can have a conversation with yourself? Is that what’s happening right now?She catches me out.

But your facial gestures as well, be careful when you’re saying something your eyebrow goes really?You don’t have to say anything that’s another conversation, it’s your physiology. So being present and be neutral. Then decide which is the correct style of communication. Now this is a whole subject.

We could be here for an hour.

This is on the CWI training that we do, you’ve seen this it’s fantastic. We get people into groups of three or four people there are four different communication styles, there’s a commander, messenger, empathiser and there’s the vulnerable. And you’ve got to know what style to use in what situation and what I love about this exercise on the CWI event is the fact that people literally transform. And the feedback from the audience is the difference they felt when they switched between the different styles and it’s very, very powerful.

So if you’ve been communicating in the wrong style in the past, you may need to break that pattern as well.

Let me link this Ro to the start. It’s almost been an hour now but I you remember right at the start of this episode I told you a scenario where there’s an elderly woman who just could not speak to her siblings.

They would not understand and listen to her and one of the things Ro took her through as part of that coaching process is explain to me how you’re speaking to them. And then he taught her very quickly and in a very short compressed time to use a different style.

I remember seeing everybody around her and even herself soften thinking why has nobody told me that? Why has nobody told me I just was communicating in the wrong style for so many years? I thought that was a beautiful moment.

I seem to remember literally standing up and talking in front of her and moving my physiology to the point where I was sat on the floor looking up to her, and the change in her physiology was phenomenal.

That’s something we don’t have time to talk about here, but of course at this stage just be mindful of the type of approach you’re using and the style, and then start to refine that. Again if you spend more time with us you will be able to learn the specifics of each of these different four areas.

The last one is just connect with them, give yourself the chance and this goes back to being present, but as you start to talk, talk with them. Don’t talk at them, connect with them, understand what they’re saying and how they’re saying it and try find a path through that conversation that allows you both to dancer a little bit. It’s not a conversation where your words are swords clashing but your words should be two people having an amazing Spanish dance for example, a salsa, it’s a little bit of push and pull. But it might be more graceful like a waltz. Think of your words as a dance and that’s how you get the connection.

If you do that I think what will happen is the conversation will become more meaningful and you’ll see a difference in their reaction to the subject.

That’s amazing, so that’s getting technical.

Like you said Ro there are 38 components. What I’d say is that if you really want to master this and you really want to say how do I get anybody to listen to me whenever I want, however I want, then it is a case of mastering these 38 components. So many students now have gone on to do this and they share case studies with us and what matters most in people’s lives Ro above money above all those things, is their household.

It’s the relationships with their kids, their family, their partners and I think if we all have the tools and techniques to just have open conversations with our partners and children, family members, especially family members maybe we haven’t spoken to for so many years and we don’t know how to open that communication up again, I think it is a phenomenal thing to be able to do. Rather than stay quiet because they won’t listen to me rather than fall into the trap.

If anyone listening to this as you’re wrapping up there Harms if they’re thinking I don’t want to fall into that trap again, I want to have some of these tools that you guys are talking about. I think on the Instagram page we’ve got the 38 components in one-minute videos from memory. Is that correct?

Yes, if you guys go to@drro.tv on Instagram or just find Dr Ro’s page on YouTube. There are 38 components all there in one-minute chunks which gives you a quick understanding of what those elements are. Alternatively if you want to look at the component wheel and say I want to look at the diagram where Ro has diagrammed all these components out, head to Drro.tv/cwi and you’ll find out information on the 38 components there are as well.

From my perspective, I think that’s as far as I want to take it today as there’s lot to absorb just go back over those steps and start to be mindful, be present and be more observant of the conversations.

Agree.

Break the pattern and start asking different questions, that’s a great way to re-trigger, re-stimulate somebody to listen to you more.

I love that, so what can we leave because we’ve dived into slightly more complex things where we’ve talked about Communicating with Impact, 38 components pulling some of those out and the most technical one there is asking meaningful questions.

Which seems simple on the surface but actually it’s a process and it’s a skill set that once you master it, it is amazing you can really connect with people like you’ve never connected with them before.

That’s the most complex tools they can use but what are some as we close out this podcast just maybe one maybe two things that we can leave the listeners to go away and start immediately, so people immediately start to listen to them and get themselves heard.

And through that it’s not just a case of getting themselves heard Ro I guess it’s also I want this person to listen to me so we can connect, so we can bond over a specific topic or subject or come to a compromise about something, whatever that is for you listening at home what can we leave the listener with?

Well, it’s within the stages I’ve just talked about but one of the best ways for somebody to listen to you is for you to listen to them first, be present with them.

Because it’s a little bit like a pressure cooker if you heat it up with water it’s going to build up pressure and it’s going to want to let it off. The minute you take the lid off or release the pressure valve and the steam blows off and there’s no more steam left inside, that’s like somebody wanting to communicate and get their message across to you.

Just learn over the next couple of weeks to be present.

Don’t be judgemental if you’re in a conversation with somebody actually just allow them to talk and talk and let that conversation run its course from their perspective. Because there will be a point where they’ve squeezed the sponge, they’ve let the steam out and they go and start to suck up again and they’ll go what do you think? That is then your opportunity to share openly your thoughts and because they’ve asked the question what do you think then it gives you a chance to talk to them.

So, be present ask the question, allow that person to talk and then hopefully it will lead to what do you think or having finished the conversation they’ve said what they said and there is a moment of silence you could say, I have an idea do you want to hear my thoughts on this? And then they’ll go yeah that would be great. They’re giving you permission to come back into that space. So be present. Don’t judge and allow the opportunity to arise where you can then share your words but choose your words carefully and make them meaningful.

That’s awesome and if okay shall I leave the listeners with something for myself?

Yes please do, I think anything that we can give at this stage to go away because it might be something that might resonate with you than me, but either way as many tools as possible in the space we’ve got.

Awesome so mine is linked back to my semi-rant on social media and just being aware of what’s getting triggered when we are using it. That inner feeling of significance. I want likes, followers, comments, why am Inot getting it?Why am I feeling so frustrated? Why am I continuously going back to the app if it’s not giving me significance?Why am I spending so much time there?

I think just firstly just be aware of this phenomenon, just understand how social media companies work. Just remember that you don’t pay for that service. So the customer may not be yourself, I don’t want to go into that here. And we know we are wired in a certain way; it just happens automatically sometimes we are not aware of it. Even I sometimes when I’m looking at Instagram I just open it and I want to see how many people have looked at my Instagram story.

I have to shake myself and say why am I looking at this story just to see how many people have looked at it. The way they’ve built these apps psychologically is extremely powerful and it just depends on what side of the fence you sit here, but the problem is, it’s not healthy when you’re doing it every single day.

I guess what I’m saying is just again like Ro said break the pattern of communication and the environment you have with that form of communication and in this case, I’m talking about speaking to people or putting out your voice onto social media.

I think, just maybe take a break from the regular check ins. So number one and I’ve done this myself on regular occasions when I think my behaviour or interaction with social media is no longer healthy or coming along the line of being unhealthy. I do this two simple steps, number one I move my app into an annoying folder on my phone.

I’ve got an iPhone; I’ll plug it into a folder and on the fourth screen within my iPhone so it’s really difficult to get to. Number two is I switch off all the notifications associated with that app, very simple. That’s what I do and often you know it sometimes takes a day, two days and then I’m suddenly not even going onto the app at all. I’m now looking around thinking maybe I need to have a conversation with Geena, what is she up to?HaveI asked her a question about this recently?

I think it naturally plays out because these apps are wired in a way that we won’t even be able to comprehend. We just don’t know what’s in that black box. That’s one for me. Bit of a practical one as well and anything else to add Ro before I sign us off.

No I think we’ve also picked up on some great subjects which we can pick up on future podcast as well and I am hoping that we’ve hit some really sweet spots for people and if any of this has been a vulnerable spot for you, or your there’s been a sense of tenderness and it’s been a subject you’ve not been up to confront in the past.

My hope is that what we’ve gone through today’s first of all made it obvious why it’s happening, but also giving you some tool son how to deal with it as well.

Most important thing is don’t take it personally. Remember they’ve got a lot conversation and think about the sponge and maybe they’re just overwhelmed themselves and you’ve got to find a different approach to help them clear some space to listen to you. That’s the most important thing.

Absolutely so, as always, everything we’ve discussed here today, the bullet points, the links and references will be on the show notes@growthtribes.com/podcast and for those interested in Communicating with Impact just head to Drro.tv/cwi.

Thank you again for listening in this has been a phenomenal topic.

Thanks Ro and this is myself and Ro signing out, will see you on the next one.