At the beginning of this month, I listened to Brene Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us, the two episodes with Harriet Lerner about how to apologize and why apologizing matters. Naturally, they also spoke about having (hard) conversations with other people, how we’re often not really listening to that other person and the mischief of defensiveness.
This episode really got me thinking about (hard) conversations I’ve had in my life and the way I approached the other person and also the way other people approached me.
And it got me wondering, how come we all feel the need to be heard and seen, but often we don’t do our best to truly see or hear other people?
Harriet said the following: ‘we all want to protect our favorite outside image of ourselves’.
And I think this is what is actually at the center of it. Nobody wants to be seen as a ‘bad’ person, we all want to be liked.
Because, when we approach listening in order to understand, we might come to the conclusion that we’ve had it wrong all along. We might have to re-examen how we’ve been doing things or how we’ve seen things. With truly listening to someone else’s lived experience, you run the risk of needing to change your own beliefs and we might have to admit this and apologize for it. It might mean that we have to go against everything we thought was true or rebel against how we’ve been raised. Which is a whole lot harder than staying in our comfort zone.
So I think it all starts with listening. Listening to understand. Then the next step will be the ability to change your mind and/or apologize.
Think about a moment in your life when you truly felt heard and seen. How did you feel in that moment? Won’t you want that for someone else as well?
*In light of the Black lives matter movement, I want to encourage you to start listening (if you haven’t already) to Black people’s lived experiences. To truly hear their experiences in order to learn and do better.
I am participating in a reading circle, working my way through Me And White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad and I highly recommend purchasing her book and working your way through it.
