There was a man born in Chicago in 1902 who only five years later could read. He would go on to create one of the most revolutionary approaches to therapy which you can use in your day-to-day life. I'm going to briefly show you what it is, a few ways I did it, and the amazing effects it had on my people skills and communication.
what you're doing, Mr. O'Brien. The early 1900s was blessed with the birth of an extremely intelligent man. His name was Carl Rogerss.
Now, this guy's education started fairly early, and that's because, I sh** you not, he could read before he even started kindergarten. His interests changed just a little bit throughout the years, but he eventually found what he really wanted to do, and that was psychology. So, he studied and became a psychologist.
In his early years of psychology, he helped out. children and developed a non-judgmental and empathetic approach to therapy, which was probably because all kids wanted at the time was to be heard. Now, in his journey of psychology, Carl found something that is now common knowledge, but it had way more power than people originally thought.
He developed something called person-centered therapy, and a major part of that was active listening. It's probably something you've heard before, but it's definitely not what most people think it is. Carl found that even when he just listened to his patients in a certain way. it had amazing effects. But before I show you how I did it, I'm going to show you what happened when I tried it.
I thought to myself one day, everyone wants to talk about themselves all the time. So, what might most people feel like when they listen to? I mean, so few people nowadays are actually heard. So, most of what they say just goes into the void. The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and to be understood.
The best way to understand people is to listen to them. When I implemented active listening into my social life, it made others feel really understood and their feelings validated and there's no feeling like being heard this made the people around me happier and more confident and also really actually listening to someone made them come to conclusions that they wouldn't have by themselves therefore it made their mental health even better but the conversations themselves also got better when i properly listened to someone in the way that made them feel honest and more authentic they said the most random and real i've ever seen and it made for some really fun fun and interesting conversations. That's cool and all, but how do we actually know active listening works? To do that, we have to take a look at Rogers's methods. When Rogers's practiced his methods, clients achieved personal insight and helped themselves heal.
They felt certain parts of themselves were more accepted and they trusted the listener more. They felt happier too. This is what I want for you, so stick around. His methods became revolutionary and now active listening is used almost everywhere, not just in psychology, like schools, businesses, communities, and obviously, therapy.
And the best part is, unlike chaos theory or quantum physics, this is rather easy to get into and to start learning. Okay, well, how did I actually do this? Well, active listening is different from ordinary listening you might know of.
It's not the same as just not talking when you're being spoken to. The first step to getting better at listening to people was to actually be there, to be present. But I also had to learn several tools and skills.
It was a fairly important distinction to make that these are tools, not steps. Not tips, they're tools. They're skills that I could learn and apply when I needed to understand someone better. It's also important to remember that whenever someone says something, there's the content itself and there's emotion behind it. A part of active listening involves responding and understanding either of these, or even both.
First, I had to make sure that I wasn't losing my marbles. Allow me to elaborate here. I started paraphrasing and summarizing what the other person just said in a very short and natural way. So you really find it quite hard to believe that they would if they knew you. That's right.
You know that's exactly it. What I would do was I would repeat back what I think I heard in a fairly natural and casual manner in a way that the other person the speaker would agree with. This made it pretty much impossible for any misunderstanding to take place.
It's just kind of loosely making sure that we're both on the same page. Even Rogerss found that he was wrong sometimes. Shit happens. But there was something just as important that I was missing. I needed to gain understanding as they were speaking.
I needed to encourage them to keep going. I mean, why would someone keep talking to me if they thought I wasn't even listening? Doing this was as simple as not staring at the other person as they were talking with no emotion whatsoever.
I mean, it is called active listening for a reason. All I had to do was something called minimal encourages. which is pretty much just non-verbally communicating to make sure that you're engaged. This was a really good way to encourage the other person to continue speaking.
Here's a cheeky example. Positive, they'll truly accept me. Something tells me they will, I know they will, but I'm not positive.
Personally, I don't do it as much as what you just saw. It also really helps when I take my time to respond instead of just responding as soon as I possibly can. But words don't always say exactly what we're feeling, so what about that? How can I show empathy?
While I'm listening, how can I work on understanding the feelings of others? That's when I found about... Found about...
What? That's when I found out about something called emotion labeling. And that's where, after talking with someone for a little bit, you practice labeling...
their emotions in an empathetic manner. You might get it wrong, and that's okay, but it'll have a similar effect anyways. And when I tried this, I gradually got better.
out well then it keeps giving me confidence by gosh i'm right but it's so damn hard to really choose something on their own which makes me feel very immature i don't like this i mean i wish i were all i said was stuff like it sounds like you're having a rough time and i guess you're glad that's over as well as that sounds exciting or you seem happy this helps build an emotional connection with the other person it helps them understand themselves better and they feel better because they heard This was a bit awkward to do at first, but as long as I did it naturally and casually, it worked very well. This last one was probably the most mind-blowing thing I've ever done to myself. It was the simplest way to get better at listening to people, but it was also the hardest.
You can make more friends in two months. by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you you've probably heard this quote before but why am i showing it to you well it's mostly because it's spitting facts listening to someone is not the same as wanting to understand them genuinely i realize the value in actually wanting to listen to people and understand them. After practicing active listening, it got a bit easier and I got a bit better at it. Because when I took the time to really understand someone, I realized just how interesting people can be.
If we have a number of such experiences, however, they will shape an attitude which will allow us to be truly genuine in our interests in the speaker. This put me on the path of real charisma. Now, if you like this stuff like me, you should probably check out some of my older videos and maybe even stick around for the ones to come.
If I don't dial something, I... should be uploading sometime next week.