Understanding The One We Love

How often do we fail to understand what someone is trying to say? I mean to really "get" it when we listen. We may not really feel the same emotions that they are feeling.

We want to be more understanding and when it's someone special in our lives they deserve to be better understood. Wouldn't you agree?

I'm going to show you how to get in touch with the actual feelings of the person you are listening to. When you try my method and experience it for yourself, It will blow your mind!

A speaker’s feelings and emotions are included subconsciously and may very well be the truthful part of what is being communicated. Listening to meaning and actually "Hearing" is not done with ears alone. We need to use our eyes too. Body language is involved.

Effective communication requires understanding the true meaning of what someone is saying. When you listen to someone speak, you need to be in the same place as they are were feelings are concerned. You need to grasp their emotions. Only when you achieve this extra form of listening will you really understand the concept of what they are saying.

There is nothing more gratifying than having someone really listen and show that they want to understand the meaning of what one is saying. This will help both parties. The speaker will want to be more responsible with expressing their thoughts. The speaker will be more in tune with what they want to express as well as the importance of it. And the listener will therefore get a more accurate understanding.

With many social interactions, we often tend to know very little about one another. We miss out on the innermost feelings of each other. Often when we are having a conversation with someone, we can be sure that the words are carefully selected to filter the emotions and the feelings of the speaker. There is a way to break through all that.

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The feelings and emotions of another person can be detected and felt with startling realism with a method that I contrived, by physically positioning yourself similar to that person. I mean, by actually cloning their posture and carrying out their mannerisms. When you do this, you will find that you can actually experience their mood, their temper, and their frame of mind. You will feel all this yourself, and you will understand where they are coming from a lot better.

This works, I think, because it puts us in the same physical state where they ended up in, due to the various stimuli of their environment. So we are doing it in reverse. Rather than having the same stimuli affect us, we are putting our body in the same mold, and thus we can feel the same feelings.

It works for me. Try it yourself someday and let me know what your experience has been in the "Reader Comments" below.

Active Listening

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There is one final thought dealing with understanding another person, and that has to do with how we react while we are being the listener. Are we really listening? Or are we reacting? So that we can really know what the other person is all about, we need to know what is going on for us as well. We need to know how we react to the thoughts and feelings that are being expressed.

To explain what I mean, let me ask you…when you have a reaction while you listen to someone, are you reacting to their feelings? Or are you really reacting to your own feelings about the subject?

It’s possible that we respond to things based on our own feelings. So if we truly want to understand, we have to put a great amount of effort into understanding by viewing the world from their perspective, observing their body language, and confirming what we understood. Rephrasing what they said and saying it back to them can accomplish this.

Psychologist Carl Rogers^[1] described the process of “active listening” whereby the listener reflects back what has been heard until there is a mutual agreement between the listener and the speaker.

If you are not sure what you’re hearing, ask. If you are not getting it, say so. They should be pleased that you are trying to understand. If they really want to be understood then they should not be intimidated by your extra efforts. You will be creating the opportunity to communicate better and with the least amount of misunderstanding.

We can make a worthy attempt at getting closer to the correct and full meaning of what is being said, by keeping in mind how we are reacting to the situation, and by physically positioning ourselves similarly to the speaker, as I described above. This will help us understand them on a deeper level, by experiencing their feelings.

Copyright © 2009 Glenn Stok

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