Personal Growth Challenge Week 18 Listening For The Meaning

I have been a little lazy writing my Personal Weekly Growth Challenge Blogs. Well not lazy I have written some but didn’t really feel like I had ideas that were ready to share yet. I have been writing a book and I am working both things and sometimes one project can take more precedence than the other. This is getting posted late after a long day, so I hope I make sense. Have an amazing day and let me know what you think about the blog

There is a saying that it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. This saying got me thinking about the act of listening and I wanted to focus on three ways of listening for this blog-listening to others, listening to our environment, and listening to ourselves.

Listening to others (helps others to believe in themselves)
Sometimes in my life I forget about the greatest gift we have been given: the opportunity to listen. In my life coaching practice I have to remind myself constantly that it is not about me having the answer but listening to the person so they can talk it out and come to the answer on their own merit. The ironic thing is I am constantly telling myself in my mind “stay quiet, stay quiet, don’t interrupt let them speak, you don’t have to give an answer every time” and that is hard for me because I am a born talker. By doing this, I give the person the time that they need to begin to start solving the problem on their own without me telling them the answer.

It is my belief that God created us with all the answers. Sometimes we just need someone to listen to us, to believe enough in us to give us a chance by not giving us the answer, but to have faith in ourselves to let us work it out on our own.  Maybe you have had someone in your life like that, a coach, a parent, a teacher, a friend.  It feels good to have someone believe in you; are you believing enough in those around you by not giving them the answer but helping them to cultivate their own self?

Listening to our environment (helps us to know our surroundings)
Listening is an amazing thing when search for meaning rather than being lost in the noise.  It is so easy to get lost in the trivial things of our days.  To get lost in the thoughts of what we don’t want in our lives from when we get up to when we go to bed.  We are bombarded with sounds and it can be an overload of information.

Like on the ride to work a car horn can be viewed as a person being a jerk when in fact it was just the act of letting you know you tried to merge too soon, or maybe the sound of a boss criticizing you for a mistake on your report could actually be a friendly gesture of letting you know that you made a mistake and they wanted you to have the answer, or maybe the sound of thunder is cause for you to be upset that a storm is coming but reminding you that your windows are open in your house.  Perception is the greatest possession you can have… the choice is yours towards something and see possibility or to be lazy and look towards the negativity of the situation.

It is so easy to lose focus and perception on all the coming and goings of our life and forget what sound is to us- information. A sound is a just a message, a way of letting us know about something happening in our life. When we can learn to hear the signs for what they are and not some bothersome sound that is just another annoyance but a blessing on our day, we can focus more intently on learning what our environment is telling us. There is never nothing going on and wouldn’t it be nice to remember that the environment we are in is not a hindrance but an eternal lesson.  It is my belief that no matter what your DNA is, your environment will actually dictate who you are and who you become.  So how are you taking advantage of your current environment are you learning from it, or you feeling hindered by it and missing all the information you are being given each day?

Listening to ourselves (will dictate how we will feel which will in turn dictate who we become)
Just as listening to our environment is important, listening to yourself is crucial.  How many times have you injured yourself not listening to what your body is telling you? Such as your back hurting, but still you decide not to do anything about it such as stretching and strengthening yourself. How many times have you heard that internal voice that said this isn’t a good idea? Continuing to go back to McDonald’s each morning for that egg McMuffin even though you know it isn’t what you really want.

We know what we want, but I think we get mixed up on what we want RIGHT NOW and what we truly want.  There are two selves within you at each moment. The self of what you REALLY WANT out of life such as being healthy, being happy, and taking the higher stance to making the right and best choices.  Then there is the self of instant gratification of what we think we want, what we think makes us happy right now, what we think will fulfill us. It can be hard to dictate between those two voice/selves because we can never get them to be together at the same time.  One voice is telling us what we want right now, while later on the other sensible voice is telling us what would satisfy our inner self, and then that first voice the internal critic comes back in to tell us we messed up again.  Thus the vicious cycle continues of punishing ourselves internally which keeps us from not achieving our best self.

To listen to ourselves is being able to differentiate between both selves and to be continually asking ourselves “WHAT DO I REALLY want… do I want that piece of cake now even though it won’t make me feel better, do I really want to have this cigarette even though I don’t like being a slave to smoking these things every day and I don’t feel very healthy, or even do I want to be lazy and procrastinate on my report because I don’t know what to write about and I work better under pressure?  Now maybe there are things of those that give you pleasure and I am not saying to take out things that you enjoy, but it is about listening to yourself, to that true internal voice inside that says “I want to live my life the way that helps me to put my best life forward.” When you truly listen to yourself, no matter how hard we try to kid yourself, you know what you really want.

So the next time you are at a crossroads of what you want right now and something seems to be making you feel guilty… don’t focus on the guilt but listen to yourself.  Listen to that true inner voice of unlimited strength of who you really are and ask yourself “what do I really want?” When you actively listen to what you truly want, I guarantee you will feel better because you are gaining ultimate freedom by living in integrity of who you really are and who you truly want to be.

If you like what I am doing with this site and the message I am sharing then please make sure to share my site and blogs with as many people as you can. It is my vision to be empowering people from within by reaching as many people as I possibly can with a different message of hope than the message the world is sending out of limitation and negativity. Let’s build a better world and send out a message of positivity and love to help others see their true unlimited potential. How do you plan on helping someone else put their best life forward this year? Be the example and share yourself.

© 2012 Chris O’Hearn all rights reserved