Welcome to Joy Lab!: Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I am Aimee Prasek. Here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you uncover joy. To do that, we focus on building the elements of joy. Those are the positive emotions and inner states that become the building blocks for a joyful life. The element for this episode is awe, and we are working through the Fifth aspect of deep listening that Henry noted in his book, the "Chemistry of Calm." So this aspect is "allowing" and we're combining these aspects of deep listening with our elements of curiosity and awe, because they just feed into each other really well.
To explain this aspect of allowing, as it relates to deep listening, I'm gonna read a little excerpt from Henry's book. Here it is:
"None of us can be pressured into speaking our truth. We must be allowed to do so. There is really no action required on your part as the listener, other than to offer a genuine invitation, create a sense of safety, and offer the space and time for the other person. Then trust that the person will speak whatever he or she most needs to hear."
I think what's interesting about this aspect of listening, is that it seems like we don't really need to do anything. There's this last sentence though, "then trust," "then trust that the person" that, that's I'm, I'm hearing a buzzer there, but um, so this can be really hard too, right? It's not quite so simple at the same time, simple. Yeah,
Henry: Right, right. It reminds me of that old Zen joke. "Don't just do something, sit there!" which, you know, is easier said than done, isn't it?
Aimee: Yes.
Henry: Yeah. So I think the idea of allowing sounds really passive, just the word sounds passive even. And in a way I guess that it is, but it doesn't really mean that you aren't doing anything.
And I think it's definitely not easy for most of us. I think we've just been trained in this notion that, to be an effective adult in this world, you need to take the bull by the horns.
You know, make something happen. Become an active agent in your own life. So we don't think we should just sit back and let things happen to us.
And yet I think there are times when this might be the absolute best way to approach things. And I think deep listening is one of them.
I like to think of this simply as creating space for another. You might even say creating spacious awareness. And though it might look like you're not doing anything, I think it actually takes a lot of effort and, and some discipline even. To do this.
Giving someone your full attention, setting aside your own ideas of what they should do or holding back from giving your advice or even sharing your own experiences. It can really be hard to not to intervene or interject. And I know this is a paradox, but I think that offering spacious awareness, like this is a very active process.
Aimee: You brought up that Zen quote, which I love, but now it's making me think of a quote from Wedding Crashers gonna go the other, other side of the spectrum here. And it is. "You shut your mouth when you're talking to me!" And that's that's like coming up a lot for me right now. "You shut your mouth when you're talking me!"
Something that we can kind of sit with well. So there, if the other one didn't, uh, align with you, maybe that one does. So there is something about, about being there, holding space, um, and allowing. But yes, holding space, spacious awareness. I really like that intention. It makes me also think of, uh, this Chinese word “Ziran.”
I'm not saying it right, but it translates to natural or nature in English. Um, and in Taoism as well. I think the way it's discussed, it's sort of better understood by this idea of happening of itself like by itself. And I think there's a lot of wisdom there that so many philosophers have worked with thousands of years.
This idea that our path to our most exceptional selves is less about making changes and more about allowing ourselves to just be.
Also, to be in awe of ourselves. Like just the way we are. To, to stop trying to force our wriggly selves, as Alan Watts would say, into straight lines. I love that. And to stop trying to force other wriggly lines around us into straight lines. To be in awe of them too. Uh, and this isn't the advice of the sages because, you know, trying to force wriggly lines and into straight lines is annoying or exhausting or bigoted, but really it's because there are only wriggly lines, ever evolving, lines in nature.
And so it's not that it's hard to make them straight, it's actually impossible. Like our essence is wriggly.
So we, when we listen deeply with that aspect of allowing, then we embrace that we are all wriggly little lines. And then we can step into awe, I think, and we can start to allow our greatness, our wisdom, to really come to the surface.
Henry: I just love that image. It, it, it allows for what's real, our, our humanness, you might say. Our messiness to be part of the conversation. We don't have to try to be perfect. We don't have to hide our flaws. Our, our wriggly lines, as Watts said. We can be ourselves and we can, uh, do that much more easily if we know that we will be accepted for being ourselves just like we are.
Aimee: Yeah, it's the only way to deeply listen, I think. Uh, I love that a simple strategy here. Simple. Again, which can be hard. The idea is simple, uh, is to find a conversation where you might feel tempted to offer all the solutions, to tell the person what their problem is and how they're gonna fix it.
And instead, don't. To shut your mouth when you're talking to them. Again, pull my wisdom from Wedding Crashers. Oh, it's terrible. Um, but really the idea is to sort of just listen and try to channel that goodness that we talked about last episode and then, you know, this genuine invitation for them to, to hold the mic, create that space.
Like imagine it's kaoroke night, you didn't sign up, so it's not your turn to sing. Take a seat. Maybe if you feel the need to respond, you could use a phrase that invites a space, like, "I know you're a good person. What's your wisdom telling you?"
Henry: Yeah, I'm thinking back to earlier in my career, uh, there were several years where I was leading retreats for health professionals and deep listening was really one of our cornerstone practices. So we spent a ton of time, surprising amount of time, on how to ask genuine questions.
And you'd be surprised how hard that is for a lot of folks. You know, we think we know how to ask questions, right? But when you really look at it, a lot of our questions are intended to lead the conversation in a certain direction. So you know, when you go to your doctor, they might spend most of the time asking you questions, but it is in order to come up with an accurate diagnosis, where does it hurt? That's the right question to ask when you're trying to figure out what's wrong. But if your goal is to create a space for deep listening, that sort of question, that sort of conversation is not gonna get you there.
Now, here's an example, and this is something that happens in one way or another, a surprising amount of the time, that that you, a person might say to a friend out of genuine concern, something like this: " don't you think it would be helpful to talk to a therapist or some other professional about this?"
Aimee: "Don't you think?" I love that.
Henry: Yeah. " Now that might sound like a real question, but it's not, it's a leading question because you think that they should talk to a therapist or other professional about it. So it's kind of a way of giving advice without directly giving advice.
So what is a real question in the context of deep listening? That was a leading question by the way. it is one that can open up a deeper conversation. So I think one thing to look for, whether it's an open or closed ended question, is whether it can be answered really, really quickly with a single word, like a yes or no, for example. That is not a way to open up more conversations.
So good example, ask your teenager, did, did you have a good day at school? And they just say yes or no. Or they just grunt or whatever. But one word and the conversation is over. Open-ended questions, a question that invites a deeper conversation, they're just more nuanced and they invite a fuller answer, like a deeper response. So you might say, well, tell me more. You know, what was it like to be with your friends today? Now, this is actually a pretty bad example because they're still gonna say just fine, right? Teens are masters at closing down conversations, but you kinda get the idea. it's just always a good follow up to say, tell me more about whatever. it, it signifies that you're genuinely interested.
So, I, I do have a side light here. A piece of, parenting advice. One of the best things I did, and I've heard this from other parents too, is that when your kids are in that preteen and early teen age, and they don't really like to talk to you and more than one or two word sentences, if you drive them. Places that they really want to go, you have some, some leverage you can require that they actually respond to you. I, I just set some ground rules. I said, okay, during this ride we're gonna have an actual conversation. You can't respond with just yes or no or one word kind of things. And I don't know, maybe my boys were unusual, but they always complied with that.
Aimee: I think a little effective bribing is a underrated tool in parenting. That's great. I love that.
Absolutely.
Henry: Yeah. I, I was, I kind of missed it, to be honest, when they got their license and they could drive there.
Aimee: That's good advice.
Henry: So, yeah. I think the most important part of a real question though is, is this: a real question, is one that you are actually curious about. You really wonder. And that's what we're gonna go into in our next episode. Genuine wonder. Without any judgment of those wriggly lines, gives people a nearly irresistible invitation to open up.
Aimee: What are we really curious about? I love that. And if you've been following along for the last few episodes, right, it's built on these aspects of deep listening we've already talked about. Uh, so I'll recap them quickly here.
They're the aspects of presence, attention, seeing, the innocence in others, seeing their goodness, and then what we just talked about right now here in this episode, allowing. And I love that these aspects of allowing and those others like build that curiosity and then it can help us form those questions that we're sincerely curious about. And then this mindful wondering kind of arises.
So next episode, as you just noted, Henry, we'll talk about wonder. And then after that, the final aspect of silence. So to close our time today, I wanna share just a little quote from author and artist, Vironika Wilde. She said, " It will take as long as it takes. Your work is to take the time and make the space. Everything else is beyond your influence."
Thanks for joining us!: Thank you for listening to the Joy Lab podcast. If you enjoy today's show, visit JoyLab.coach to learn more about the full Joy Lab program. Be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
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