Your Ears: The Best Gift of All -- In Three StepsWritten by Stephanie West Allen
"Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand." Sue Patton ThoeleYOUR DE-TALK CENTER Here is an excellent and effective way to improve your listening. Find your Listening Center, a place and a way your body can help you listen. Do just three things to put yourself in your Listening Center. SHUSH, JJ Remember Judgment Jabber (JJ), that internal voice that judges you? It can be a mighty powerful impediment to listening. It's voice inside that tells you are doing something incorrectly, or you can't do something, or you are not doing well enough, or someone does not like you, or you are ignorant, or your hair is wrong. Recognize that voice? Some of us are not aware that Judgment Jabber is talking to us and competing for our attention when we are trying to listen. Or that it is making us so nervous that we cannot listen well. By becoming aware of voice, we very often lessen its negative effects. We can even talk to it. Give it a name and ask it to be quiet for a while. "Jezebel, I am busy listening right now. Shhh." You will be surprised at how recognition can calm it. That's first step in finding your Listening Center. "The greatest motivational act one person can do for another is to listen." Roy E. Moody DIS-ARMOR YOURSELF We all have places in our body where we hold our tension -- our personal body armor. Mine is usually in my jaw. This tension can be a great interference with listening. However, if we are conscious of it, we can catch this tension when it begins to take hold, stop it and relax it. Check for your body armor when you are listening. Relaxing it is second step in going to your Listening Center. "Trees are earth's endless effort to speak to listening heaven." Rabindranath Tagore THE LISTEN POSITION We have a certain posture, maybe more than one, which we associate with listening. Right now assume a posture that indicates that you are hearing just about most boring person you have ever heard. That's your opposite-of-listening posture.
| | The Subconscious Link To Our Computer DesktopWritten by Sibyl McLendon
If you are a Windows user then you probably have some kind of a desktop theme or wallpaper on your desktop. They are fun, and you can download some very cool ones from Internet. I personally have a beautiful Celtic one that I downloaded, and I love it. Recently, however, it came to my attention that our desktop themes and/or wallpaper can have a very subtle yet strong effect on us! My husband went to Penn State University when he graduated from high school. He went in early 70’s, at height of hippie, sex-drugs-rock and roll era, when Vietnam War was in full swing and protesting it was what college students did. He was very much into whole genre, and he got quite heavily into drug and alcohol scene. He looked back on this time as fun and exciting, but also beginnings of a long-term problem with substance abuse. Recently he wanted to change his desktop, so he picked a fun Penn State theme. It had fight song and Nittany Lion, Penn State’s mascot. After about a month of having this desktop theme on his computer he began having disturbing dreams. He dreamed repeatedly that he was back at Penn State. He had no money, had to sleep on park benches and he was constantly in search of drugs and a liquor store! He was quite confused by these dreams, and found them to be distressing.
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