A Different Way to Listen

​Why would listening be a gift? There could be so many answers to this question!

I decided to focus on listening as a Gift of Time for this month because we often live in such a loud world that I thought I would share with you my insights on living a more 'quiet' lifestyle.

You may think that being quiet is the opposite of listening but the reality is, it is just a different way to listen.

​Several years ago, before I had kids, I decided to make my life more quiet. I'm not sure what prompted this idea but the results were something like this. Instead of turning on a TV show to watch while I made dinner, I would do the task silently instead. Rather than listening to music while I cleaned or drove in the car, I sometimes opted to turn it off and clean or drive in silence. What would be the point of doing this? It wasn't because I wanted to hear the sound of rush hour traffic on my commute home or because I disliked music, but I realized I needed to better organize my mind and my thoughts. I could sit and think about my day, recognize my emotions, and deal with what was going on inside of myself if things seemed off balance. I was listening to what was going on inside of me rather than the noise around me.

A lot of people that I know can't handle the silence. They don't want to sit alone with their thoughts or emotions because dealing with them is painful so drowning them out with noise is easier. I learned that when I faced whatever thoughts or emotions I was dealing with in the long run I was happier. When I could quietly sort things through I felt the balance that I had been missing in previous years of my life.

This didn't mean that I never listened to anything while doing tasks ever again. It created a habit. When I started to feel off balance I would know that I needed to have some quiet time so I could sort things out. A pause. Time to meditate. We all do this in different ways but this is what worked for me at the time. I would pause and choose to listen to myself.

Now I'm also a lot more intentional about what I listen to when I do decide to add some noise. I love a good podcast and will be more deliberate about what I listen to because I don't listen to them that often. I also started making more phone calls to talk with family and friends, a great way to productively use the silence to listen to others. It seemed to enhance all of my senses as I lived a more quiet life.

​As I've been thinking about this topic of listening it's also made me ask the question, who's voices am I listening to? What are the voices that I allow to come into my life, and what are they saying? Am I putting good noise in or not? What am I choosing to listen to and how does it affect me?

This could even mean, which voices in myself am I listening to? Am I listening to the voices of self-doubt or am I choosing to ignore those and focus on my best qualities and reach my potential?

I will be the first to tell you that too often I listen to the voices of self-doubt long before I listen to anything positive that might cross my mind. That being said, it has been easier for me to find positive, self-assuring voices as I have focused on listening in quiet moments.

In a world that seems to be constantly screaming something at us, how often do you give yourself the time and space to listen to the quiet? To listen to something positive? To trust your inner voice when it might be telling you something great about yourself instead of the negative?

It is a gift to have quiet moments and silence.

It is a 'Gift to Listen'.