Supercoach - Michael Neill [49]
“I honor the place in you where the entire universe
resides. I honor the place in you of love, of truth, of
peace, and of light. And when you are in that place in you
and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.”
— a definition of the word Namaste
Vaudeville
Fred: Hey, George? I say, I say, is that you, George?
George: Why, hello, Fred!
Fred: I say, George, did you know that you have a banana in your ear?
George: [loudly] What was that, Fred?
Fred: I said, you have a banana in your ear, George. A great big yellow banana right there in your ear.
George: [even louder] What are you saying, Fred?
Fred: [yelling] WILL YOU PLEASE TAKE THAT BANANA OUT OF YOUR EAR, GEORGE!
George: [yelling back] I’M SORRY, FRED, BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO SPEAK A LITTLE LOUDER! I CAN’T HEAR YOU—I HAVE A BANANA IN MY EAR!
Creative Listening
Listening is a deceptive skill, mostly because it seems as if there’s no skill involved at all. But when it comes to our relationships with other people, it’s perhaps the most important skill of all. The secret we’ll be exploring in this session is this:
We create other people by how we listen to them.
Now I obviously don’t mean this literally—I’ve only actually created three little people in this lifetime, and it wasn’t by listening! But in the same way that we’ll almost always see what we’re looking for, we’ll nearly always hear what we’re listening for.
This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy within all our relationships. If I’m listening for my lover, I’m sure to hear her; if I’m listening for that harridan of a wife, I’ll hear her, too. Listen for your loving son and he’s bound to respond; listen for that irresponsible young man and sure enough, he’s there.
This works because our relationships with other people happen almost entirely in our heads. Remember that when you think about people, you aren’t actually thinking about the “real” them—you’re thinking about a representation of them in your mind, like an icon on a computer. You’re actually re-creating them in your mind; and you’re deleting, distorting, and generalizing some of their characteristics as you do so.
At some point, we decide what people are really like, and from that moment on, we maintain them in our minds as a fixed persona. We listen for the person we expect to hear and filter out anything that doesn’t fit with the character we’ve created for that individual.
“So you’re saying that I’m creating my husband as a miserable, moody, self-righteous pain in the ass?” one woman asked me.
“Absolutely,” I replied, channeling my inner Dr. Phil. “How’s that working out for you?”
When it comes to enjoying great relationships, the thing to remember is this:
There are four of you in every couple, and
two of you are really in the way.
How to Connect
There’s a famous story about Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson) walking in New York City with a friend. When her friend commented on how wonderful it was that she was able to maintain her anonymity in public, Marilyn said, “That’s because I am walking as Norma Jeane. If I walked as Marilyn, everyone would notice me.”
Her friend, disbelieving, encouraged her to show her what she meant. At that moment, Norma Jeane transformed herself into Marilyn Monroe, the movie star. An energy began to radiate from her, and within minutes she was surrounded by autograph-seeking fans.
So what happened? What was the seemingly magical shift that turned an anonymous woman into a movie star in a matter of moments?
Patsy Rodenburg is a voice coach and acting teacher who, along with working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre in London, taught voice while I was in the professional-actor training program at Southern Methodist University in Texas. In her book The Second Circle, she describes this phenomenon in relation to three circles (she deliberately outlines the first and third before the second):
— The First Circle is the circle of introspection— the place where your energy barely extends beyond the bounds