All About Women | Women

The Fifth Agreement: Be Skeptical, But Learn To Listen.

“People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a résumé than to craft a spirit. But a résumé is cold comfort on a winter night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely …” ~ Anna Quindlen

Conversation Week 2008 is a celebration of the power of conversation to change the world. Hosts will convene face-to-face, small-group conversations with friends, neighbors, and strangers. The goal is to empower people worldwide to convene a meaningful, respectful discussion in their community. For more information on Conversation Week 2008, check out the Conversation Café.

Social networking, such as blogging is one way that keeps conversation flowing in the virtual world. When you get together with friends in real time, what do you talk about? Are you having awesome conscious shifting dialogues, or meaningless chit chat? Are your conversations infused with lots of mind-stretching questions? From the Conversation Café, here are a few of the Top 50 questions that you can use to shoot into your conversations this week:

~What can we do to reduce or eliminate violence in the world?
~How can intangibles like values and beliefs tangibly contribute to solving the problems of our times?
~What have your found works to open another's mind to what you have to say, especially if they think they already know?
~How do we shift from "Me" to "We" on both the local and global levels?
~How can we take responsibility for making a better future without making others wrong?
~What kind of leadership does the world need now?
~How do we create a culture that is inclusive of all people and beliefs?
~What does compassionate living look like to you?
~What do you hold so dear that you would give your life to it?
~How can you, as Gandhi said, be the change that you want to see in the world?
~What helps you have energy and hope in these times?
~What do you most want for our world? What would it take to bring that about?
~When you look back at the end of your life, what legacy would you most love to have left the world?

Just a note: To have a great conversation, you need two critical components: the speaker and the listener. We have had plenty of practice with the speaking part, however the listening part tends to escape us. To listen does not simply mean to just sit quietly until the other person stops talking so that we can have our rebuttal.

To get in touch with your passions and your purpose, you must take the time to go within and listen. We have a very difficult time "unbusying" ourselves to just sit and be with ourselves. We must be doing, taking care of someone or something, schlepping, going, coming. How are we ever going to really know what we need and want unless we take the time to truly find out? This passage from Susan Hanshaw's Sanctuary for Change blog says it all:

"Give yourself quiet time to listen to your inner voice. Whenever you find yourself alone, reject the tendency to busy yourself. When you’re driving alone in your car, turn off the music and pay attention to what is going on inside of you. When you’re in a waiting room, don’t distract yourself with a magazine or newspaper. Just close your eyes and turn within. Don’t get hung up worrying about what other people are going to think. Get to know your inner voice. What does it dream about? What ideas might it have about you that you may be too afraid to share with anyone else? Give this voice and its instincts credibility and strive to follow it."

I do a LOT during the day. But one thing I can say is that my busyness creates productivity, passion, and purpose. I also take the time to just be. I cannot do all the things I do and not have time for going within. Clients and friends say that I make them tired by all the things I do. But I also share my being time, my quiet time, the time I take to just listen to what is going on inside of me.

Sometimes it is not comfortable to listen to my inner child -- sometimes she screams and has tantrums. But she is always fully heard. And when she wants to just play, I let her. I have gotten over feeling guilty about taking play time. It does not serve me. It does serve me to create some self care space within my busyness.

Take time to go within and listen,
Coach Carolyn

In our daily lives, we are more hurried and busier than ever. Since the age of technology, life was to be more simpler and with more ease. Instead the opposite is the fact. Because of this hurried existence, we fail to take time to just sit and be. But I have found more and more people, women especially, not knowing what they are passionate about, not knowing what their purpose is, thus giving them no inner peace.

I have patterned my life in such a rhythm that without a certain amount of self-care, I cannot function properly. One of the self-care tools I utilize constantly is listening. Listening to the Divine, listening to others, and listening to self. Without this tool, I could not do what I do. To coach and counsel, one has to be in tuned with the whisperings of the Spirit and self -- in order to listen to others.

Listening is not a passive act you do while waiting for your turn to speak. Listening is a skill and an art; sadly a lost art. Deep and active listening involves not just the ears, but the entire body, including the heart. When you have truly listened to someone, you can feel it. You are drained but energized at the same time.

But harder than listening to someone else, is being still and listening to what out own inner voice has to say. To take the time and sit in stillness is absolute torture to some people. But start with just ten minutes. Use commute time, or waiting in a line time. These are opportunities for listening. Don't just stand and complain, create an A-Z gratitude list while you are waiting. Ask yourself a question about something that you are dealing with in your life. Call to mind an old friend that you haven't seen or heard from in a while. Send them a silent blessing.

Listening is also a wonderful time to minister to those far-away loved ones. Send silent blessings and warm thoughts -- then follow up with a hand written thinking of you note card. You'd be amazed what comes up inside when you take the time to just be still.

Sitting still has helped me create my workshops, writings, lectures, and classes. My inner child knows what she wants to play and she lets me know it too. Get in touch with your inner child. Let him or her out for an hour a day and listen to what wonders he or she wants to share with you.

In peace and stillness,
Coach Carolyn