Thoughts on a screen

Someone showed up one day because important meetings weren’t going well.

And these important meetings kinda needed to go well, because business kinda depended on it.

So we slowed down and we really examined the experience.

What’s happening? And then what? Oh yeah, and what d’you put that down to?

🤔

Turns out there was not-much-time being spent listening to what others were saying in these important meetings…

…which, by a process of basic 3 Principles deduction, revealed that there was a lot-of-time being spent listening to the mind, analysing what was being said in these meetings; getting in the way.

Big difference.

And—as they were finding—that sh*t’s exhausting.

Like, totally unsustainable.

Flashback

I have no idea why (these sorts of things just happen when you’re sitting in presence with someone) but in a moment of quiet, I was suddenly transported back to standing up on stage, many years ago, getting all tongue-tied because of all the things I wanted to say, but had run out of time to say.

In those situations—and if you’ve met me, or heard me speak, you’ll know this was every. damned. time. 😆—it always felt like I was letting my audience down, somehow.

Why?

Because back then, I was a rehearser. I was so intimate with the content of my talk, and I’d done so much planning, and I knew exactly what I wanted to share with people, I felt like I was short-changing them, when it didn’t go to plan.

(It never went to plan.)

📦🗣️ “That could have been so much better!”

… moaned the Giles Ego Construct.

But then it changed.

I honestly can’t remember how, or who pointed this simple, obvious little fact out to me, but it was a total game changer:

A real mic-drop moment.

So obvious. And yet, at the same time, so hidden.

Oh my word YES, I was subconsciously labouring under the impression that they could read my mind!! How bonkers is that?!

😲

Now, because it had ‘just popped into my head’ and I’ve learned to trust these seemingly random memories that life reanimates for me, I related this tale to my client and heard myself saying something I’d never said before, or even considered before in my life,

“It’s almost as if I imagined all of my thoughts were being projected onto the screen, behind me!”

…and, unbeknownst to the Giles Ego Construct 📦 that’s what they needed to hear.

It gave them their own mic-drop moment.

🫳🏻🎤

Your thoughts are private

Because it’s the same with conversations we have.

Other people have NO IDEA what’s going on in our heads (for instance, letting a good idea come and then go), where sometimes the mind gives us the impression that there’s a big screen behind us, broadcasting a transcript of everything we’re thinking… and it cripples us!

Your thoughts aren’t visible. Neither are theirs. As one of my mentors puts it:

“What other people think is between them, and them.”

The only way you’re going to get a feel for what’s going on in any human-human interaction, is to listen.

Not to what your mind’s saying, but to the entirely of the other person’s being: their words, their demeanour, the energy they’re in.

And then the ‘hardest’ thing for us humans (in quote marks, because the irony is, it requires much less effort):

• No judgement.
• No analysis.
• No second guessing.
• No persuading.
• No mind-changing.

Just. LISTEN.

And when it’s your turn to speak—similar to what happened for me, in the coaching conversation—you’ll know what to say.

Give it a go and watch all your relationships blossom!

💟

Giles