The Power of Listening and Being Heard

By Aaron Bethune

In 2021, I was sitting in the shrine room of a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery perched on a cliff overlooking the frozen ocean. The view out of the window of the infinite horizon was only comparable to what I had experienced out at sea. I was in a deep personal retreat with no noise, light, or mind pollution. At this particular moment, I sat in a circle with other monks; we bowed and listened silently as each member shared their thoughts. There was no talkback, no advice given, just one person sharing and everyone else listening.

As we went around the circle, it was fascinating how people opened up and how much they shared of themselves. Being heard provided all the support they needed. When it came to my time to share, I experienced firsthand the power of being heard. I didn’t need anyone’s advice; I just needed to be acknowledged. As I heard my thoughts out loud, the answers to my dilemmas were obvious. Hearing other people’s challenges was valuable, too, as it doesn’t take much to see we all suffer from similar things.

Growing up, I always appreciated that my mother, when I was in trouble for something, would listen to what I had to say; I felt heard. Being heard permitted me, in turn, to listen to what she had to say. I was happy to accept I was wrong as long as I could be heard and my point of view acknowledged

In negotiations, listening to the other person’s wants and needs and asking questions to understand what a true win will look like for everyone is the key to a successful outcome. If we are thinking about what we want to say next or assuming another person’s thoughts, we miss what the other person is really trying to tell us. But when we listen, we hear what is being said. Being heard is powerful, and people remember how they felt when you listened.

The First Nations have had talking circles for millennia. The purpose was to allow all leaders of the tribal council to be heard and for those who were speaking not to be interrupted. Usually, a sacred object is held by the speaker and then passed to the next person who wishes to speak. You may have seen this implemented with a “talking stick” at school or even at the dinner table in big, noisy households, trying to encourage just one person to speak at a time.

Our process of writing books for people starts with listening. We ask thought-provoking questions and listen deeply and non-judgmentally. And in doing so, we witness a person’s life as they have experienced it.     

So often, we are used to being interrupted and having pushback from our peers. If you have ever been at a dinner party telling a story with a friend who was with you at the time of the story, you may have gotten interrupted part way by being told, “It didn’t happen quite like that….” The feeling is validating when you tell your story as you remember it. You may not have all the details right, but only you know how that experience felt to you.

As people share their life stories with us, some are being shared out loud for the first time. Science tells us that we are not capable of remembering all the details of events, but we can remember the emotions and feelings we experienced at the time. We then carry these emotions and feelings our entire lives, often as we felt them when they were created. So, if you had an experience you didn’t like at the age of 7, chances are the emotions and feelings you carry from that experience continue to feel the same today. However, when you share these experiences out loud with somebody who listens without judgment, you can hear your own story and begin to form a new perspective. Now, the story of being 7 and all your emotions and feelings as a 7-year-old are being heard by the adult version of yourself with a lifetime of experiences and the ability to see a new perspective.

We had an author who felt they had lost a decade of their life to bad jobs and partying. Going through our process, they began to see their “lost decade” as the catalyst to their success. Working at a plastic factory for three years, when most people lasted 3 months, allowed them to push through and keep going when the going got tough. Later, losing their job to a machine forced them to find their unique, irreplaceable value. The painful decade began to feel like one of the most important decades of their life. They started to feel gratitude rather than disdain.

After our conversations, we examine the word choices people make when telling their stories and how they talk about certain experiences. Then, we provide new words to align better with how they feel now about the experiences after going through our process. Tough times become empowering experiences.

We know that our capacity for memory is finite; according to Daniel Levtin’s book The Organized Mind, if we want to free up our short-term memory and experience better memory, we need to externalize some of our memory tasks, not constantly try and hold everything in our minds.

From time spent in meditation, my own life experiences and research, along with the feedback from our Authors, it is clear that we attach ourselves to people and experiences. We cling on to them for dear life. We don’t want to let go of good times and great people, yet we also don’t let go of the bad ones. In those cases it can feel like we are holding onto a rope being pulled behind a truck on a bumpy road. We want the experience to stop, yet we don’t recognize that to make it stop, we just need to let go. It is as if we cling to all of our experiences as though the idea of letting go would make us less ourselves. Our experiences are who we are. Or at least it can feel that way. However, letting go and letting life flow makes us more present to our current experiences. Accepting impermanence is liberating; it allows us to enjoy where we are, knowing things are always changing. But letting go and being more present is easier said than done.

We have found that when we go through our process of writing a book with an Author, the externalizing of stories provides both the opportunity to see a new perspective on an old experience and to free it from your subconscious mind. It doesn’t disappear, but knowing you no longer have to cling to it is liberating. Now, those stories can reside in a book and literally be taken off the shelf to read or share with another, but you don’t have to hold on to them internally in the same way. You can let them go. This literally frees up space in your subconscious mind, a decluttering of sorts.

Suffering from intense panic attacks in my twenties, I learned that my subconscious mind was always busy at work in the background. There were times when an attack happened on what seemed like a great day. What I came to realize was that my subconscious mind would get to a boiling point and then misinterpret a situation to erroneously trigger a fight or flight response. So, releasing the build-up and creating space around my thoughts was key to overcoming the attacks. In this way, I became less reactive and more contemplative.

Story Exploration is the first step in writing a manuscript at We Write Stories.

After onboarding, we start our conversations with an overview of an Author’s life, intentionally keeping it high level. As their story emerges and the type of book we are writing becomes clear, we dive into the stories in detail. We then go deeper to learn the insights from those experiences, and we look at how they affect an Author’s decision-making today. As the Author externalizes their stories and reviews the lessons learned, they gain new perspectives. We distill these insights and uncover their greatest strengths and ways to implement these special abilities in their work and personal lives. We help bring focus to their ideas and develop ways to share their knowledge more effectively. We help them let go of past ways of thinking and develop a new language that empowers new ways of being.

From Story Exploration, we are left with a bundle of assets: The book summary and outline, colour-coded transcripts organized into chapters, raw audio, chapter summaries, and a sample written chapter. From here, we write the manuscript or, if the Author prefers, they can do the writing themselves. It is a transformative experience, and we never have to start writing with a blank page.

If you are interested in writing a book without starting from a blank page or having my team write it for you, I would love to hear from you. And I am happy to listen to your book ideas and give you feedback if you want to chat.

The first step is to tell your story and be heard.