The Practice Of Listening For Resilience - November 17

05:04

05:04

The Practice Of Listening For Resilience - November 17

Rated

5

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

25

What does it mean to listen for resilience in others? This episode of 5 Minutes in Nature was inspired by a listener who asked whether Liz notices and reflects resilience back to people when they speak. In this short reflection, she shares two real-life examples that demonstrate how we can listen with an ear for wellbeing in others. Ultimately, she explains that listening for resilience begins with authenticity — tuning into one’s own steadiness and wellbeing first, so that it becomes possible to genuinely recognise and honour it in someone else.

Listening Resilience Wellbeing Authenticity Mental Health Storytelling Well Being Listening Resilience Recognition Wisdom Listening Mental Health Support Story Listening

Meet your Teacher

Ivybridge PL21, UK

Meet your Teacher

Ivybridge PL21, UK

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott. Well you can probably hear that I'm not outside and I've also got a cold which is why my voice is a little bit low and croaky but I hope you just bear with me because today I've got a really good five minutes in nature to share with you and I think you'll find it helpful. It was actually prompted by a comment on one of the tracks I ran in my 30 days living from love not fear series. In the track I explained how I was listening to a friend who was really wrapped up in a story and was suffering in the telling of the story which she'd obviously told time and time again and I from a place of love listened to her and the question that arose in the comment was do you point out resilience to people when you listen to them and the truth is that the answer is both yes and no but I thought I would explain a bit here so that if you're listening to someone and they're lost in a story you might better understand how to listen for resilience. The first thing to say is that listening, I call it well-being listening and there's a course on well-being listening if you want to listen to it. Well-being listening is when you as the listener listen into your well-being and you're listening for the well-being in the other person. Another way of putting it is you're listening to your resilience, Listening to your wisdom and you're listening to the wisdom and resilience in the other person. What I tend to do when I listen is I know what not to put my attention on so if someone is lost in a story and they're telling me about something that's upsetting for them whilst I honour them telling the story I know that there is nothing but pain if they keep looping back into their story again so whilst I might listen to the story what I'm actually listening out for is the resilience that they've shown in their story and they might not have seen it themselves so with my friend for example if I remember correctly she was talking about leaving a job and she made some decisions about her career all of which she did with wisdom to look after her mental health so in that instance as I listened in to my wisdom it occurred to me just to point out to her that well done for not prolonging a job that wasn't working and taking action for me that was pointing out her resilience. I remember somebody once came to my house he was somebody that I had worked with several years ago he came to my house because he'd left work with a breakdown and he came to the house just to say hello he was shaking and when the dog barked a hello he was obviously nervous he was he found it very hard to talk and as I was listening again with a well-being listening listening for resilience I realised a few things in the stories he was telling me firstly he had left his job because it was too much and I honoured that and said respectfully well done you know that was something he had listened into and taken action on and the other thing he he spoke about was how much he enjoyed walking on the moorland of Dartmoor and he'd sort of taken to doing that to help settle his mind and again I pointed out but I reflected back how wise he was to find something that really nourished him and to to go and do that very thing to look after himself so what I hope you see from these two examples is that listening for resilience is not about doing anything inauthentically I listen into myself to my wisdom and then I see what my wisdom is showing me about what's being said I know what not to put my attention on I don't whip up stories I don't get people to repeat traumatic things I know where to put attention and equally I know to point out resilience when they haven't seen it in themselves so that's how I perceive resilience and listening for well-being and listening for resilience and it's just a very simple example to explain what it's like when you listen for resilience in another person it really opens up something for them it helps them step out of those loops of thought and step into their resilience and wisdom that's what well-being listening can do