Listening

My morning ritual is to get up around 5am, pour my morning coffee, feed my dog and cat, come into my office, light a candle, turn on my Spotify “Heart Journey” playlist, listen to a meditation, write in my journal, and write my to-do list for the day or week ahead. All in that order with several interruptions from my cat wanting to go back outside, my husband waking up and saying good morning, standing up to warm up my coffee, or the need to pee. 

The interruptions are symbolic of life’s detours, distractions, and disturbances from our goals or intentions. I often, in my impatience or desire for stillness, find myself resisting them or feeling annoyed by them. I have found this to be analogous to how I have, at times, and more times than I care to admit, treated the nudges or lessons that I needed to hear or learn in my life. Brush them away or move through them quickly so I can get back to what I was doing initially rather than stop to truly listen and pay attention to what I needed to hear or know. Or admittedly, what I have done with the people in my life when they have shared something important they were going through. Tell them what I believe they need to hear versus really listening to what they were trying to say.

This morning in particular, I went through my morning routine and my music stopped. My immediate thought was, I want to turn my music back on and why did it stop? I thought, “that’s weird that the music turned off”. But, instead of turning the music back on, I stopped to listen. And then I heard the morning song of the birds waking up outside my window. The rhythm of life outside my window that is always there to hear and engage with. 

I believe we all do this more than we probably care to admit or realize. We are so busy trying to move onto the next thing, getting my kids ready for school, getting ready for my yoga class, or jumping on a call for work or getting ready for a meeting, that we don’t truly listen to what we need to know. I often find this when I am listening to a client or an employee or manager sharing with me the circumstances of a situation at work. They can easily summarize the circumstances of a situation but similarly, they ask why the music stopped, and only want to put the music back on to get back to what they were doing. They can’t hear the birds. 

Although I can’t hear my own birds at times, I find that I can hear it for my clients, employees, colleagues, managers, or peers. Listening is a skill to hone in on and to spend the time to cultivate and master. Even though I consider myself a good listener, it has taken time to cultivate this skill. One that AI cannot master for me. Only I can do it. And you. Take the time today to listen to your inner voice. Listen to the rhythm of life around you. Listen to what others are trying to share with you. It is at that time that the music comes back on and life moves forward.