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Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

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#125: Subjective life experiences, and the value of listening

Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery
(Read the first three in this series here: 1 , 2 and 3)

We may think that the person next to us, going through the same tumble in life at the same time as us, is having the exact same experience of ache as us. The reality is that our experiences can be similar but never exactly the same.

Our experience of ache or joy is unique, even when our day-to-day lives overlap significantly with another and we share deep emotional closeness. This holds true even when loss or reward come knocking at the exact same time for us. That’s because the moment-to-moment experience of a life lived is internal, silent, personal and subjective.

An 80-year old has lived 42 million minutes. We are shaped into unique entities over the course of these millions of moments through the constant interplay of what happens inside us (the me), what happens between us and others (the we) and what happens around us (the environment and context).

We meet the same life experience as different entities, with different histories and different patterns of sensemaking. Sure we can understand each other and empathize but the emotions and thoughts that rattle inside us, and shape-shift at a moment’s notice, carve and re-carve us differently. This is why problem-solving on behalf of another is rarely helpful but full-bodied listening is.

I used to think that listening was a passive act and I needed to come up with a helpful solution to “make their time worth it”. I thought problem-solving showed I cared. I didn’t realize that my solves might not fit them. I now see how good listening is a keystone behavior that exercises so many human virtues in a seemingly simple act.

Good listening, ultimately, is a tool for clear seeing. The listener provides attention with a beginners mind so the speaker can fully articulate. The listener brings non-judgmental curiosity that invites information and trust. The listener asks clarifying questions to gain as complete a picture as possible. The listener doesn’t add their own unnecessary color to the mix, since the goal is to uncover what’s going on inside the speaker. The listener serves as a reflection tool for the speaker so they may see more clearly inside themselves.

When we take turns doing this in the same interaction, it becomes a dialogue. An ideal dialogue is where each participant is in the service of clear seeing so that all perspectives can be understood. The conversation becomes a collective sensemaking tool.

A good conversation teaches us humility, patience, curiosity, and respect. It leaves us changed and is one of the highest uses of shared attention.

I know this is a gold-standard that we can’t always reach, and it feels even more removed from attentionally-deficient and emotionally-supercharged modern lives. But why would we strive for a standard if we don’t understand its full value?

The world each of us carries inside is singular and yet we crave to be known in that singularity, especially during our deepest aches and our highest joys. Offering the gift of listening to one another is the only way we can fulfill this craving to be known and matter. Good conversations leave both the speaker and the listener changed for the better. They are one of the most active things we can do with our attention, and a precursor to human connection.

Final note: We can only achieve something if we practice it consistently. Full-bodied listening is quite like deep abdominal strength. Just how a strong core feeds the integrity of every other physical movement, strong listening skills create integrity in every other psychological movement. And both strengths are developed through attention and repetition.

“Everyone’s music is made of their own life experiences.” ― Ilaiyaraaja: Indian musician, composer, and conductor

#112: What do you see?

I was speaking with my mom on video a few days ago, and she kept looking away from me. We live on different continents and sometimes our calls conflict with a TV show she likes to watch. She looks forward to it and I like that this show brings her joy. I also like that she feels comfortable expressing her eagerness to watch this show. It signals to me that my mom is secure in our relationship and, while she misses me, she feels connected enough that she can hang up and go about her day with ease.

So knowing this, I see my mom looking away repeatedly during a particularly connective conversation. I felt our loving bond and I wanted her eyes to return my gaze…but she kept looking away. We’ve done our almost-daily calls for years and this time it was my turn to comfortably express my need, so I asked her.

Me: “Ma, where are you looking?”

Mom: “Oh, there is something on the iPad screen. I’m trying to clean it…so I can see clearly.”

How many times do we think that someone we want to connect with is, metaphorically speaking, “watching TV” while all they are actually doing is “cleaning their screen”? We may perceive disconnection and get stuck in hurt but we rarely know what’s happening on the other side. If something is bothering us so much, could we just reach out and express our need instead? With sincerity, curiosity and without accusation.

Trying to see what they are seeing might just open the door to moments of real connection we seek.

“Words are the most powerful thing in the universe… Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind.”— Charles Capps, American preacher

P.S. I hope my writing pauses aren’t coming across as a loss of zest. I participated in this mind-opening incubator over the last two months (link to our cohort page). My writing will be a life-long pursuit and a loving search for truth, and sometimes I’ll need to pause for sustainability. This was just one of those moments.

#110: Communication is an act of trust

Communication training is now a cottage industry. We’re no longer limited to places like Toastmasters that promote public speaking through practice. We now have many nuanced options; we can learn how to become an impressive Tedx speaker or get voice training from the guy who coached Bradley Cooper for his singing role. I’m sure we can all benefit from these skills. After all, most of us speak to communicate for a majority of our lives.

I’ve communicated across contexts and cultures and I imagine like everyone reading this, I have been successful at times and failed miserably at others. I’ve been called both charismatic and a wallflower. I’ve wanted to step onstage and also hide. I’ve been complimented on my strong voice and I’ve also noticed a tendency to suppress/muffle it when I feel unsafe. I’ve felt a hoarseness and physical constriction of a sore throat just by not speaking up in my normal volume and timbre. The kicker is that all this happened within the same year without me changing anything about myself. I had different experiences in different spaces populated by different sub-cultures and norms. 

My personal experiences point to a missing piece in all this talk about communicating well. My ability to communicate fully without holding back in content or tone was impacted by my emotional state and the receptiveness of others. Here are the combinations of inputs I experienced and the resulting outcomes:

  • I was in my element in front of a receptive audience: things went swimmingly.
  • I had my internal reserves and faced a difficult audience: I spoke well enough and powered through. This powering through felt like a one-sided attempt at communicating and didn’t feel good inside. After many iterations of this, I started feeling a burnout and lack of psychological safety.
  • I was navigating a difficult life event (I’ll call it event 1) and was faced with uncaring and combative listeners: I found it much harder to get the words out and just wanted to be invisible so I could recover.
  • I was navigating an even more difficult life event  (event 1 above + event 2 shortly after) and found a kind space and an audience primed for listening: I found my voice and confidence again.

I’ve given myself fully to a space, a team and a message with courage even when I felt an internal trembling. I noted that the trembling would disappear as soon as I found my voice. And it was often in response to the faces that looked back with an openness and a commitment to listen and engage. I’ve held back when I felt unsafe. No one was coming after my life but I couldn’t help but turn inwards.

So, yeah, I’m sure all these communication tools will help me speak better, hold an audience’s attention, command a physical space, and deliver a powerful message to change minds and hearts. But what I fundamentally crave is spaces of trust where I don’t always have to be perfect and self-assured to share the messages I need to share.

Not everyone has the time or money to get these communication trainings but we all have the ability to deepen our listening. Because naturally powerful speaking, that we all are capable of, is because of other people’s ability to listen and not the other way around.

So I’d like to offer this framing to capture the underlying dynamic we miss― communicating well is an outcome of trust. Trust that you will listen and create a safe space for me to find my voice rather than squashing me at the first wobble.

“Giving does not only precede receiving; it is the reason for it. It is in giving that we receive.”― Israelmore Ayivor, Ghanian youth leader, author and speaker

A couple of practices that have taught me how to listen better. Listening better will be a lifelong practice but I’m learning. 

  • Non Violent Communication (NVC): Developed by clinical psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, NVC is a communication approach based on principles of nonviolence. It is a method designed to increase empathy and improve quality of life. It is not a technique to end disagreements.
  • Theory U: Developed by Otto Scharmer and his colleagues at MIT, Theory U is an awareness-based method for changing systems. It’s designed to break through unproductive patterns of behavior that prevent from empathizing with other perspectives, which often lock us into ineffective decision making. One of the tools they offer is a listening assessment.
  • My meditation practice: Even though I am learning and applying these new tools as best as I can, the dots connected when I sat in silence.

#109: The two core building blocks for everything we create

There are only two building blocks for all that we do and create in life: what we get from nature (sun, earth, water, plants and animals) and, what we get from humans (attention, ingenuity, effort…).

That’s it! Only two core building blocks1 and this is not an exaggeration. Look around. 

As an example, I’ll list out the building blocks for planning my week using my linen-bound notebook:

  • Me
    • My body, time, attention; which are impacted by my emotional, mental and physical state
  • My planner
    • Designs that humans came up with, using knowledge passed down from others plus their own creative riffs +
    • Computers to design and exchange information; also built from a combo of human and natural resources +
    • Paper and cloth from plants +
    • Manufactured in factories that were built by humans using their creativity using resources mined from earth +
  • My mechanical pencil
    • Made of plastic, rubber, metal, graphite and clay. Each of these parts is an amalgam of materials extracted from earth.
  • Bought online
    • Used the internet, ecommerce and shipping infrastructures humans built using the same two building blocks repeatedly

I’m keeping it high level because we can double-click endlessly with just this one example and find these two core building blocks everywhere. Seen with this lens, every physical artifact of human life starts appearing like a fractal2, built from the recurring partnership between natural and human resources.

And what’s a core feature of these resources? Some of these building blocks are non-renewable (like minerals and time) and others renewable (like trees and human attention). However, being able to renew something doesn’t mean being able to renew it automatically or immediately. It means that replenishment is possible over time and under certain conditions. If we keep chopping that tree repeatedly or keep binge-watching Netflix day after day, neither tree nor attention will replenish.

So, given our absolute dependency on these two building blocks for literally everything we do and create in life, it’s surprising that we don’t hold them more sacred.

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”― Wayne Dyer, author and speaker

  1. Nature is really the core building block because humans are also a part of nature. Even so, it made sense to call us out separately because we have an outsized influence on the planet.
  2. Fractals are infinitely complex never-ending patterns that appear similar at various scales. Snowflakes, tree branches, and coastlines are examples.

#108: The emotional dust of creation

We don’t create things all at once, fully formed. Whether it’s an organization, a community, a tiny human or ourselves, creation takes time and the build is always unexpected. That’s a big reason why we subconsciously hold back from creating anything new: it feels risky to invest emotion and effort and not even have the guarantee that this thing we want will actually happen, or happen the way we want it to.

If we make a plan before starting (which is always a good idea), it’ll orient us in the right direction and help take suitable steps, but it likely won’t reflect the nuanced terrain we’ll actually walk. That’s because neither the terrain nor our creation remains static. Both respond to our actions and the events in our larger environment. Similarly, we ourselves respond and change; what we thought last week or last month will shift a bit when we engage in the work. Finally, we never build anything alone. Ever. There are others right next to us co-creating and going through the same push and pull of change and creation. So we’re changing, our creation is changing, our co-creators are changing and the environment is changing. This happens simultaneously and repeatedly. This dynamic is called emergence, and it asks for emotional flexibility. 

The work of creating something new is less like driving a self-driving Tesla on a traffic-free highway, and more like walking a dusty backroad full of brambles alongside others. It’s never a cool and collected experience of just sitting back and arriving. We all get scratched, stumble, bump into each other and kick up dust as we walk.

To make matters harder, we regularly pass through invisible gates that change the scenery and the terrain. What we did before needs to be adjusted in unexpected ways. If we were too absorbed in the work of creating, we may not even realize that we passed a gate. That’s when the emotional dust peaks―we all scramble to make sense of the new terrain, run furiously into the brambles and each other, kick up more dust, and make it harder to see things clearly. 

Knowing this, what if:

  • In addition to drawing maps, we prepare for that dusty and brambly trail with unseen gates.
  • Instead of a heroic solo journey, we note others who walk besides us.
  • Our commitment isn’t to one specific outcome but to staying on the dusty path. We develop resilience, integrity, and might I add―joy, so none of us opt-out in favor of the cushy Tesla path.
  • We invest time in creating trust: holding a hand, mending a wound, or offering a sip of water on this twisty path.
  • Most importantly, we create the capacity to be ok with emotional dust as we blind each other with it.

“The mighty oak was once an acorn that stood its ground.”― English Proverb, Author Unknown 

It may not happen.
If it happens, it wont happen the way you imagined.
If it happens, it’ll be its own thing: emergent and separate from you, uncontrollable by anyone.
Bringing it to life will dent you and others in unseen places.

So, why do it?
Because you came with these fertile seeds.
And if you hold back, first the seeds will wither…then you.
― A little ditty, by Suparna