How to Listen for ‘Aha Moments’

Learning to Listen

In my humanness I observe the tendency to want to bring answers when you come for clarity and inspiration. But, gently, with practice over time, I am honing the skill of listening.

Listening becomes a mirror to help you explore the hopes drifting in and out of view in the varied moments of your life. I use listening to facilitate the discovery of the solutions lying latent within you. Often these powerful truths are crafted and found in your strong emotions and tough experiences.

Listening Creates a Safe Space

Listening at its best creates a safe space, where your thoughts, feelings and experiences are to be spoken, savoured, sifted and sorted to help you grow and become more fully alive.

Bessel Van Der Kolk in his book, ‘The Body Keeps The Score’, states, “Feeling listened to and understood changes our physiology; being able to articulate a complex feeling, and having our feelings recognised, lights up our limbic brain and creates an ‘aha’ moment.”

Listening is intentional presence

I rather enjoy being present in those ‘aha moments’ with you.

It sounds so impractical, yet the gift of presence is one of the most basic and beautiful intentional interactions between humans. It’s predicated on the acceptance and acknowledgement of the unique personhood of the other.

I reflect over time that I’ve used words as both a weapon and a shield. I am more drawn to lay down the instinctive responses of attack, withdraw, control or resolve. Instead I now accept the invitation that comes in each encounter to pause, wonder, hold a question and reflect back to help bring clarity.

Listening empowers you to discover your next steps

“What can not be spoken to the other cannot be told to the self.” John Bowlby

The source of deep aware wisdom and focused energy towards change then comes authentically and powerfully from within you. No longer as something received but as discovered in a moment of genuine acceptance and mutual trust.  The ‘aha moment’ revealed.

Let’s learn together, to listen and trust the process. Yes, I enjoy the ‘aha moments’ too.

Easy Rider, Easy

A friend recently asked me what type of motorbike my husband owns. “A black one,” I replied with the blunt voice of the ‘reluctant pillion.’ I am one of those, ‘hold on firmly with eyes shut tight’, passengers, particularly when we sweep low around the many bends and turns on the country roads we explore. Neither am I inspired by the numb fingers and toes on frosty morning rides, or the fleeting pungent odour of roadkill in my nostrils.  

My husband loves to ride his motorbike. I hear it in his voice when he is out riding and stops to call me to let me know he’s OK. I hear the exuberance; the sheer delight and pleasure riding gives him.  

I notice how conveniently and quickly I can jump in my car, switch on the ignition and be way down the street by the time he has put on all his gear- a ritual of respectful devotion to all that is required to ride, safely and well. He has a routine that works, as I have learned after the frustration of attempting to switch up the order, only to find you cannot put a helmet on while sunnies are still on your face. Gloves always go on last, just in case something on the helmet or gear needs a final tug or tweak. The ritual makes sense.

And so, from time to time, we ride. And yes, honestly, it is a bit scary, but exhilarating all the same!

I do it because he asks me. Not often, as he knows how it is for me. But he asks with hope in his eyes, and I become the ‘reluctant pillion’ praying for a safe, smooth ride with a seriously good coffee and lunch somewhere along the journey to ease my tension.

He has passed that love onto his sons and again my mother’s protective heart kicks in and I wonder. I wonder.

I wonder why, for some of us, riding a motorbike seems such a daunting and frightening experience to be avoided, while for others it is a sheer delight. I can see the love of the risk, the thrill of finding a new ‘great route’ to master, the pushing to the edge to find what bike and rider can accomplish together. I get it. In this area of physical safety, I am not a girl who likes to go to the edge and push to see how fast or far I can go. My husband and sons on the other hand, thrive, come alive and celebrate life every time they ride.

I love that about them and while my heart and mind have to process all the ‘what if’s’ every time they ride, I do appreciate and accept it is something they want, need, must do.

But go to the edge I must, if I am to grow. I wonder what my edge of risk is? What areas of life I am exhilarated, inspired and enlivened by? I know that if I am to grow as a person, learn what I can achieve, I need to go there. Otherwise, life remains safe, predicable, unchangeable, full of possibility and potential, but not fully realised.

Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use! Charles M. Schultz

My husband and sons inspire and encourage me to go through all the gears of life and invite me to motorbike ride, mountain bike ride (dodging trees and rocks down a steep hill, and yes I hit the dirt), surf, (such a great feeling to stand up on a board), go to a screamer band rock concert, (got stuck in a mosh pit) and learn to laugh, love and live to the fullest even with a niggle of fear tucked away but not holding me back.

What is your edge? What is the place of risk for you? How do you push through fear and do it anyway?  That edge will be different for everyone of us. We all have them, edges that is. Places that trigger fear, anxiety, uncertainty and confusion. The beauty of shared life is that I don’t have to go there alone. My family, my friends and mentors help me see the edge, feel the fear and do it when I’m ready. Maybe one of our first risks is to trust others with our edges, our places where we want to go to but can’t go alone.

So my question is: Where is your edge and who is standing there with you to help?

Isa 54:2 NIV

“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. God asks us to stretch out our tent pegs, do not hold back. Life is risk.

Photos taken by Glen Yeomans Blog: Zed14.com (Iron Butt Rider Legend)

Growing through awkward moments

Do you encounter ‘foot in mouth’ moments, where you sometimes over-compensate, over-think, over-react? You are not alone. Neither do these moments define or determine who you are. While these moments can often spiral you out of kilter with your values, faith, worth, meaning and purpose, God can and does use awkward moments to help us learn more of who He is and who we can be. This retreat will gently take you through these experiences with God. You are not alone and nothing is too hard for Him.

Please click here to download a PDF copy of the retreat for you to use and share.

Questions for Change

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

Learning to Hold the Questions

Some time ago I had the privilege of attending an Educators Conference

facilitated by a well-known Australian psychologist, Andrew Fuller.

He had a profoundly spiritual effect when he posed the following questions to the audience:

  • When did you stop singing?
  • When did you stop dancing?
  • When did you stop listening to and telling stories?
  • When did you become disenchanted with the sacred place of silence?

The auditorium was silent for many minutes, considering the questions that he posed to modern 21st Century humanity. There was a hushed reverence as the powerful truths contained in the simple questions filtered through our minds.

We had to acknowledge the reality that we had changed. Unwittingly, subtly and insidiously, external forces and internal needs had conspired to change us without our permission or awareness and we had unknowingly lost something very precious in that process.

A step toward courage:

Notice how the questions challenge you to acknowledge that change has already occurred.

What are you going to do with your capacity to change?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Letting Go

This is a self-paced reflective retreat. It involves five simple reflections and can be done in a day or over time.

Please click here to download a pdf copy of the retreat for you to use and share.

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