Free Mini-Love-Lesson #282
Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson gives a way to remember a little listening-well formula using a meaning for each letter of the word LOVE.
Listening With Your Heart
It has been said that listening is the first duty of love. To listen to another person, with love, is an action-filled event. It is a mistake to think of it as a passive or non-moving thing. No, listening with love means constantly communicating you are with the person who is talking and letting them know your emotional feelings about what they have just said. You do this through expressional (nonverbal) communication -- good eye contact, nodding your head, making small arm and hand gestures, smiling, frowning, sad looks, looks of curiosity, interest and care, wide-eyed, leaning forward and sometimes touching.
Small sounds of care, surprise, interest and the like, and once in a while giving a single, affirmative word like "yes" are all involved. Showing expressions on your face and with your hands and tones of voice that demonstrate you are emotionally in-tune with the emotions of the person you are listening to and that you are feeling care for that person is crucial.
Observing Through Another’s Eyes
Really try to see what they see and understand what they understand in the way they understand it. Suspending your own ideas, evaluations and judgment; just see what they see as much as you possibly can -- that is part of loving them. You can add yourself later. Be able to reflect back to them anything they say at any given point. That also helps you not to do rehearsal thinking about what you are going to say next instead of really hearing them.
Valuing The Positives
As you listen, look for what is positive about this person and what might be positive in anything they are saying. Don't ignore the negative but rather focus more on the positives. From time to time as you listen, you may include some brief comment on a positive. Later you can say more. If you say things about anything negative, make it shorter than what you say about the positives. Be sure to put more energy into your tone of voice when you are talking about the positives than the energy you put in saying something about a negative.
Enact Love with Empathy and Energy
Empathy is the skill of having similar or corresponding feelings to the emotions someone else is experiencing. It establishes heartfelt connection and communicates you are, at a heart level, more deeply and truly WITH another. To enact your empathy is to show it as well as state it. If you cry for the pain of someone you love as they cry, if you laugh for the happiness of someone you love who is laughing and if you frown or look puzzled when someone you love is struggling with a puzzle of their life, you are enacting your empathy. If your voice tones contain the sound of care when you say you care, then your voice tones empathetically communicate probably more than your words.
Vigorously, tenderly, serenely, lovingly and with every other corresponding emotion they experience, be actively with those you love. Then maybe add some hugs or any other action that conveys your feelings are similarly connected with their feelings.
Remember, feeling love is only part of the love experience. Doing love is the rest. So, the next time you are with someone you love, you might want to remember the word LOVE and do what each of the letters stands for, according to this word guide. Then, sequentially do them and see what happens.
One more thing
If you talk-over the ideas in this mini-love-lesson with another, it will help to implant them in your own head and maybe in their's which is a good thing, we think. If you do that, please mention our site as the source of a whole lot of ways love can be done and done better. Thank you.
As always – Go and Grow with Love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly
♥ Love success question: Are you a student of good listening skills?
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