Being able to listen to the self is a core skill to enable people to have clarity about what they want or need in their lives. This clarity leads to goals and plans—if we don’t know where we are going, how will we get there? Coaching is often about helping clients learn to listen to themselves. One might think that there could be little EASIER than listening to oneself—after all, you have full access to your thoughts! But skillful listening to the self is hard.
What gets in the way of listening to ourselves?
· Not taking the time. We are so busy doingthat we do not give ourselves time for reflection (“Am I busy doing things I find valuable?”) or time to fully flesh-out our thoughts (“I need to grow my business, but I don’t take time to think through how I would do that”). When you work with a coach, you set aside time.
· We believe other people or “experts” know best,so we listen to others and lose track of what we know ourselves. This can include listening to authority figures (parents, bosses), social media “influencers”, friends, partners, etc. Sometimes we are so in-tune to what other people have to say that we discount or don’t even notice our own perspective. Coaching can help you discern the difference between your own views and the views of others and help you determine what is most important.
· We’ve never honed the skills of listening to ourselves—we honestly don’t know how we feel about something and are unsure how to discover it. We may be unaware that we experience emotions in our mind and in our bodies and not even know that this information is important. Coaching can help clients get a more complete picture of what they know by helping them practice paying attention to what their bodies and emotions are telling them, in addition to their rational mind.
How are your self-listening skills? Taking time to reflect will begin to develop these skills. If you want to develop these skills further, working with a coach could be very useful for you. Please contact me.
© Peg Hunt, MS & Anne Garing, PhD