Listening?
Written on 10 March 2009 by PaddyWe are all required to listen to survive and listen to thrive. We stay alive because we listen for danger. Our careers and businesses thrive because we listen to our client’s requests and needs. Listening is not a skill that we have been taught. It was assumed that we would develop this immensely important skill automatically.
If you want to move to the status of expert in the skill of listening, you will need to control your thinking process. If you are thinking about what someone is saying while they are speaking, you are not fully listening. You could be thinking about whether you agree or whether they are telling the truth or whether it will rain tomorrow. To listen fully you need to stop thinking and let the message wash over you. Do you ever find yourself labeling experiences? You may be looking at a beautiful cloud formation and suddenly your thinking tells you that you can see a horse’s head. In that moment you have stopped the awesome part of the experience by labeling it.
In the same way, if you think about what someone is saying, you have stopped listening fully.
The next time someone speaks to you, try to resist the urge to think. Just let the message, the words, the tone, the emotion wash over you. You will understand what is being said more fully and will not be tempted to interrupt the flow. You will also enjoy your experiences and conversations more if you label less and leave your eyes and ears wide open.
Regards,
Paddy
How to make the most of bad times.
Written on 25 February 2009 by PaddyIf you believe that this present financial situation is permanent, your best options are to cut back or complain. Cutting back on everything will help you deal with the tightening of the economy. Complaining will get you some sympathy.
If you believe that the present financial situation is temporary, your best option is to prepare for the upturn so you are not caught napping.
The Australian Institute of Management has just completed a survey based on the input of over five hundred Australian business leaders.
Seventy one percent said that the downturn is a good opportunity to build market share while their competitors are in retreat. Fifty nine percent indicated that retention of skilled employees needs to be a top priority.
So if you believe that our business leaders can predict the future, we have an opportunity to develop our people, improve our performance and be ready for the upturn in the economy. We can choose to be driven by fear or hope. History indicates that the downturn is temporary.
So…what can you do to develop and train your people? What can you do to help your clients? How can you help them to focus on an inevitable improvement in the financial situation? What can you do to get them thinking optimistically again?
Fear makes cowards of us all. Hope and optimism makes us brave. Decide not to participate in this temporary downturn.
Give yourself the present this Christmas
Written on 10 December 2008 by PaddyWhat is a wonderful gift that your friends would appreciate and would also help you to enjoy yourself and get rid of the financial crisis blues?
This miraculous gift is… the present.
Give yourself the present this Christmas.
If you live in the past or the future, try visiting the present. The financial crisis evaporates because nothing is happening to threaten your financial security… at this moment. Also if you have a problem with managing fear in interpersonal situations or speaking in public, then focusing on the present will stop you from creating more fear by projecting into the future, which is not happening.
Imagine that you are in a lift and it stops between floors. You could project into the future and imagine all sorts of dreadful consequences. Or you could visit the past and recall even more dreadful situations that have come from a stalled lift in the past. If you stay in the present, you are simply in a stalled lift. You can either stay with the present internally and keep track of your breathing or go external and focus on what is happening outside.
Read the instructions for a stalled lift or just count the tiles on the floor. Just stay in the present. You will only get anxious if you think about a negative future consequence.
There are lots of wonderful emotions available in the present. There are no emotions in the past or the future. You can only feel in the present. You can only think in the present. Even if something goes wrong for you, you simply accept the present situation and plan a way out without catastrophising.
So a gift for yourself this Christmas is to consciously stay in the present as much a possible.
Listen to others, enjoy your food, feel how you are feeling, see what you are seeing and don’t wander off into other worlds from the past or future. If you do wander, come back quickly.
Try taking off your watch so you can stay in the present without a constant reminder of what time it is. A gift for others is to give them your full attention without any thoughts about what they are saying. They will take your full and undivided attention as a compliment, a Christmas present. Your friends and family will notice the difference. If they don’t, you have lost the present.
I wish you a wonderful Christmas and my present to you is the present. Enjoy it. It’s all you’ve got.
Christmas Greetings
Christmas present, future, past, present, give yourself
Are you silent… still?
Written on 29 October 2008 by PaddyIt is very difficult to listen to another when your own thinking is non stop. If you could be silent, then still, you would be able to make room for someone else’s ideas.
You would be able to listen with an open mind and would probably hear more than if you were judging the information or preparing a defence. If you leave gaps in your thinking, you make room for new information or ideas to enter. If you think without a break, your attention span will be similar to that of a goldfish and you will listen with an agenda in mind. You may ignore everything that is not related to your agenda.
The next time someone speaks to you, try listening with an open, still mind and be very slow to respond. You will be amazed at how much more you hear and understand. It is like having wax removed from your ear canal.
listening skills, silence, open mind, hearing, responding
Time Management is impossible
Written on 26 September 2008 by PaddyIn fact, time is an illusion. We can’t manage time. We can manage ourselves. We can only manage ourselves in the present. Any other time doesn’t exist.
If we spend time thinking about the future, we are missing an opportunity to do something now. If now is spent thinking about the future, we are wasting the ‘now’.
A sense of purpose comes when we do what we are doing as well as we can. Our purpose is to do what we are doing at this present moment.
Imagine you feel very well and enjoying your life. This will come from a ‘now’ focus. Also imagine that you are diagnosed with a serious illness. At the moment of diagnosis, you shift to thinking about a awful future. You suddenly don’t feel so well.
Try living in the present. You might enjoy yourself more.
time management, illusion, future thinking
