Welcome to the JoyLab Podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self.
Your host, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Amy Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and
scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark.
When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full JoyLab
program over at joylab.coach.
Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to JoyLab.
And I'm Amy Prasek here at JoyLab.
We infuse science whistle to help you uncover joy.
To do that, we focus on building the elements of joy.
Those are the positive emotions and interstates that become the building blocks for a joyful
life.
The element for this episode is awe, and we are working through the fifth aspect of
deep listening that Henry noted in his book, the chemistry of calm.
So this aspect is allowing, and we're combining these aspects of deep listening with our
elements of curiosity and awe because they just feed into each other really well.
To explain this aspect of allowing, as it relates to deep listening, I'm going to read a
little excerpt from Henry's book.
Here it is.
None of us can be pressured into speaking our truth.
We must be allowed to do so.
There is really no action required on your part as the listener other than to offer a genuine
invitation, create a sense of safety, and offer the space and time for the other person.
Then trust that the person will speak whatever he or she most needs to hear.
I think what's interesting about this aspect of listening is that it seems like we don't
really need to do anything.
There's this last sentence though, then trust that the person that I'm hearing a buzzer
there.
So this can be really hard, too, right?
It's not quite so simple at the same time, it's simple.
Right.
It reminds me of that old Zen joke.
Don't just do something, sit there, which is easier said than done, isn't it?
Yes.
So I think the idea of allowing sounds really passive, just the word sounds passive even.
And in a way, I guess that it is, but it doesn't really mean that you aren't doing anything.
And I think it's definitely not easy for most of us.
I think we've just been trained in this notion that to be an effective adult in this world,
we need to take the bull by the horns, make something happen, become an active agent
in your own life.
So we don't think we should just sit back and let things happen to us.
And yet, I think there are times when this might be the absolute best way to approach things.
And I think deep listening is one of them.
I like to think of this simply as creating space for another.
You might even say creating spacious awareness.
And though it might look like you're not doing anything, I think it actually takes a lot
of effort and some discipline even to do this, giving someone your full attention, setting
aside your own ideas of what they should do or holding back from giving your advice
or even sharing your own experiences.
It couldn't really be hard to not intervene or interject.
And I know this is a paradox, but I think that offering spacious awareness like this
is a very active process.
You brought up that Zen quote, which I love, but now it's making me think of a quote from
wedding crash.
You're going to go the other side of the spectrum here and it's here it is.
You shut your mouth when you're talking to me and that's, that's like coming up a lot
for me right now.
You shut your mouth when you're talking to me, something that we can kind of sit with
as well.
So there, if the other one didn't align with you, maybe that one does.
So there is something about, about being there, holding space and allowing.
But yes, holding spacious, spacious awareness, I really like that intention.
It makes me also think of this Chinese word, so young, I'm not saying it right, but it
translates to natural or nature in English and endowism as well.
I think the way it's discussed, it's sort of better understood by this idea of happening
of itself, like by itself.
And I think there's a lot of wisdom there that so many philosophers have worked with for
thousands of years.
This idea that our path to our most exceptional selves is less about making changes and more
about allowing ourselves to just be.
Also to be in awe of ourselves, like just the way we are, to stop trying to force our
wriggly selves, as Alan Watts would say, into straight lines.
I love that.
And to stop trying to force other wriggly lines around us into straight lines, to be in
awe of them too.
And this isn't the advice of the sages because trying to force wriggly lines into straight
lines as annoying or exhausting or bigoted, but really it's because there are only wriggly
lines ever evolving lines in nature.
And so it's not that it's hard to make them straight.
It's actually impossible, like our essence is wriggly.
So when we listen deeply with that aspect of allowing, then we embrace that we are all
wriggly little lines.
And then we can step into awe, I think, and we can start to allow our greatness, our wisdom
to really come to the surface.
I just love that image.
It allows for what's real, our humanness, you might say, our messiness, to be part of
the conversation.
We don't have to try to be perfect.
We don't have to hide our flaws, our wriggly lines, as Watts said.
We can be ourselves.
And we can do that much more easily if we know that we will be accepted for being ourselves
just like we are.
Yeah, it's the only way to deeply listen, I think.
I love that simple strategy here, simple again, which can be hard.
The idea is simple.
Is to find a conversation where you might feel tempted to offer all the solutions to
tell the person what their problem is and how they're going to fix it and instead
don't to shut your mouth when you're talking to them again to pull my wisdom from wedding
crashes.
Oh, it's terrible.
But really, the idea is to sort of just listen and try to channel that goodness that
we talked about last episode.
And then this genuine invitation for them to hold the mic, create that space.
Like imagine it's croaking night, yet didn't sign up, so it's not your turn to sing.
Just take a seat.
Maybe if you feel the need to respond, you could use a phrase that invites a space like
I know you're a good person.
What's your wisdom telling you?
Yeah, I'm thinking back to earlier in my career, there were several years where I was
leading retreats for health professionals.
And deep listening was really one of our cornerstone practices.
So we spent a ton of time, surprising amount of time, on how to ask genuine questions.
And you would be surprised how hard that is for a lot of folks.
We think we know how to ask questions, right?
But when you really look at it, a lot of our questions are intended to lead the conversation
in a certain direction.
So when you go to your doctor, they might spend most of the time asking you questions,
but it is in order to come up with an accurate diagnosis.
Where does it hurt?
That's the right question to ask when you're trying to figure out what's wrong.
But if your goal is to create a space for deep listening, that sort of question, that
sort of conversation is not going to get you there.
Now here's an example, and this is something that happens in one way or another, a surprising
amount of the time, that a person might say to a friend out of genuine concern, something
like this.
Don't you think it would be helpful to talk to a therapist or some other professional
about this?
Don't think.
I love that.
Yeah.
Now that might sound like a real question, but it's not.
It's a leading question, because you think that they should talk to a therapist or other
professional about it.
So it's kind of a way of giving advice without directly giving advice.
So what is a real question in the context of deep listening?
That was a leading question, by the way.
It is one that can open up a deeper conversation.
So I think one thing to look for, whether it's an open or closed into question, is whether
it can be answered really, really quickly with a single word, like a yes or no, for example.
That is not a way to open up more conversations.
So good example, ask your teenager, did you have a good day at school?
And they just say yes or no, or they just grunt or whatever.
But one word and the conversation is over.
Open it into questions, questions that invites a deeper conversation.
They're just more nuanced and they invite a fuller answer, like a deeper response.
So you might say, well, tell me more, you know, what was it like to be with your friends
today?
Now, this is actually a pretty bad example, because they're still going to say just
fine, right?
Teams are masters at closing down conversations, but you kind of get the idea.
It's just always a good follow up to say, tell me more about whatever.
It signifies that you're genuinely interested.
So I do have a side light here, a piece of parenting advice.
One of the best things I did, and I've heard this from other parents too, is that when
your kids are in that preteen and early teen age, and they don't really like to talk
to you, and more than one or two word sentences, if you drive them, places that they really
want to go, you have some leverage, you can require that they actually respond to you.
I just set some ground rules.
I said, okay, during this ride, we're going to have
an actual conversation.
You can't respond with just yes or no or one word kind of things, and I don't know,
maybe my boys were unusual, but they always complied with that.
I think a little effective driving is a underrated tool in parenting.
That's great.
I love that.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I was kind of missed it, to be honest, where they got their license and they could drive
there.
Yeah.
That's good advice.
Yeah.
I think the most important part of a real question though is, is this, a real question
is one that you are actually curious about.
You really wonder, and that's what we're going to go into in our next episode, genuine wonder,
without any judgment of those wriggly lines, gives people a nearly irresistible invitation
to open up.
What are we really curious about?
I love that.
If you've been following along for the last few episodes, it's built on these aspects
of deep listening.
We've already talked about, so I'll recap them quickly here.
They are the aspects of presence, attention, seeing the innocence and others, seeing their
goodness, and then what we just talked about right now here in this episode, allowing.
And I love that these aspects of allowing and those others, like, build that curiosity.
And then it can help us form those questions that are sincerely curious about.
And then this mindful wondering kind of arises.
So next episode, as you just noted, Henry, we'll talk about wonder.
And then after that, the final aspect of silence.
So to close our time today, I want to share just a little quote from
author and artist, Maranca Wilde.
She said,
It will take as long as it takes.
Your work is to take the time and make the space.
Everything else is beyond your influence.
Thank you for listening to the JoyLab Podcast.
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