For the past two weeks we’ve been discussing The Habit of Hearing as an adjunct to listening.
We have talked about the need to become better at hearing what is being said rather than focusing on becoming good listeners because listening is easy while hearing takes practice, focus and concentration.
There is another dimension The Habit of Hearing that profoundly affects each and every one of us. It is the need to not just listen to, but truly hear and pay attention to the never ending dialogue that takes place in that tiny space between our own ears.
While few will publicly admit to this, we all spend a lot of time talking to ourselves. We generally do this in the form of our thoughts and our feelings and for most of us these two provide a running commentary of our waking moments.
We are constantly in the throes of telling ourselves a story and it is the stories we tell ourselves that guide the quality and direction of our lives. For many of us the stories contain words, thoughts and feelings of criticism, denigration, ridicule and insult.
In discussing The Habit of Hearing our focus has been on truly paying attention to what is being said to us from outside of our own bodies and we need to apply equal attention – and really truly hear – to what we are saying to ourselves about ourselves.
The Habit of Hearing when focused internally provides us with the unique opportunity to put a stop to the damaging stories and replace them with uplifting ones.
It is said we become the stories we tell ourselves because we both listen to, and hear, the stories without challenge and The Habit of Hearing provides us with a unique opportunity to change the stories for it is only by first hearing them – truly hearing them and being aware of the damage they are causing us – that we can, and will, begin telling ourselves new stories and acting on what we are hearing.
It is one thing to believe in our own goodness, our own worth worthiness and how deserving we are of all we wish for ourselves, and it is absolutely another to hear those words repeatedly in our own heads.
Until we choose to change our stories and then actively hear those very stories, we will not enjoy the enormous benefits that The Habit of Hearing makes available to us all.
This requires work and a commitment to stick with the work until it produces the results we want.
An old saying reminds us that anything worth doing is worth doing well and before we can determine that acquiring The Habit of Hearing for own internal benefit is worthwhile we must first convince ourselves that we are worth the effort required.
Our internal dialogue never leaves us and The Habit of Hearing is the best tool in our arsenal to warn us of the need to focus on that dialogue and direct it to the life we have always wanted.
If the voice in your head is not agreeing with what you are reading in this blog then listen to that voice, hear that voice, and tell that voice that there is great value to you in doing what we just discussed.
And hear yourself saying that.
And then say it again and again and again.
And keep saying it until you can really hear it.
Let’s make a habit of meeting like this.
