The Willingness to Think Differently   Post written by Leo Babauta.

I can summarize the most successful people I’ve ever known with one trait: the willingness to challenge mainstream ideas.

This has been the key to everything good in my life too:

• I changed my health and drastically reduced my carbon footprint when I stopped eating like everyone else around me and became vegetarian (and eventually vegan).
• I simplified my life when I stopped believing what the majority of people believe, that buying stuff makes you happier, more secure, look better in the eyes of others, etc.
• Eva & I improved our kids’ learning environment when we went against the mainstream and started unschooling.
• We improved our health and reduced our carbon footprint when we went car-free.
• I changed my career by blogging differently than others (on simplifying rather than doing more) when I started Zen Habits.

And there are many more examples, but you get the point.

This isn’t a post to brag about all of that — it’s to share what I believe is a real key to life: the willingness to think differently than most people.

It means you have to be willing to question what most people do and tell you. It means you have to have the courage to try something different. It means you have to be brave enough to stand out from the crowd and not take the safe route.

The Safe Route

Most people take the safe route, because they’re afraid of being different and failing. If you do nothing amazing but you go with the crowd, then you don’t look stupid. But then you miss out on the amazing.

If you never stand out from the crowd, you will always be average. And that’s fine, but the people who stand out are the ones who make a mark, who innovate and discover, who learn the freedom of exploration and invention.

If you stand out when you apply for a job, you’ll be more likely to be noticed. If you don’t, and you play it safe, then they’ll likely ignore you.

If you stand out when you start a business, people will be curious and check you out. If you’re just one of many businesses doing the same thing, why should others care about you? Why should they choose you?

And yet, most people play it safe:

• Most people go to school and then college because that’s what everyone else does. They don’t know what they really want to do, so why not take the traditional route? And that’s fine, but it’s good to look into other options.
• Most people get a job and stick to it because that’s the traditional way to make a living. Others might be a solo entrepreneur or start a small business and dare to create something new and live a life they’re passionate about.
• Most people eat meat and dairy and eggs because that’s how they were brought up, and eating differently is weird and unthinkable. “I love my ribs too much!” But then you miss out on a whole world of healthy, delicious food, and the opportunity to change the planet and help reduce one of the most cruel things our society has ever done.
• Most people drive a car, because that’s what everyone else does — and changing it is too difficult. And yet, cars pollute and cost a lot and make us less healthy and make the streets less safe for our communities and take up most of our public spaces.

These are just some examples — our need to play it safe turns up in every part of our lives.

Learning to Think Differently

When you hear an idea that’s different than what you’re used to, pause. Instead of rejecting it outright, consider it — is there some merit? What are the arguments, the evidence?

Let go of the emotions that come up, the defensiveness. When I mention the cruelty in meat and eggs and dairy and leather and wool (even the “humanely” raised animal products), for example, people become defensive and angry. They cover their eyes and ears, so they can go on doing what feels comfortable. They lash out and attack. And yet, if you set aside those emotions, and look at the arguments, you might learn to think differently — and that applies to all ideas, not just veganism.

When you are told that this is the way to do things, take a second look. Is this really the best way? Are there other possibilities? If no one has thought of them, can you?

Just because an idea is different, don’t just accept it. Look at the bulk of the evidence, and learn to spot flaws in reasoning. For example, there is a school of people who believe that soy is bad for you, saturated fat (animal fat) is good for you, we should all drink raw milk, slather butter on everything (the Weston A. Price Foundation). This is different than mainstream science, but it’s wrong. The bulk of the evidence is against what they believe, and their reasoning is wrong.

Test out different ideas. Just because most people don’t do it, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. They might all be wrong, and this might be better. No better way to find out than to test it. If it’s not a good idea, drop it and move on.

Learn to be proud of your ability to test things that people traditionally believe in, and not to worry so much if you stand out. In fact, learn to see standing out as good — not just to stand out, but to forge new ground, to challenge ideas, to express your individual voice rather than blending in.

(Sherry Lowry has been a long-time subscriber and supporter of Leo Babauta’s writings and ability to commit to his goals.)

How To Use Headlines To Get To “One Thought” by Sean D’Souza

Haven’t you stood in the wrong supermarket queue before?

Every other queue seems to move ahead, but no, you had to pick the wrong queue. And there you are stuck as ever, cursing your luck.

Because even though you’re in no hurry to get anywhere, you still don’t like to be stuck in the slow queue. And of course, when you’re writing, you can get stuck forever if you don’t get to the one thought right away.

So what’s the one thought?

The one thought is often a single word or a phrase that binds the entire article together. So if you had a word like ‘reject’, what ideas come to your mind when you hear the word ‘reject?’ You could think of the Ugly duckling and how it was rejected. Or you could think how you were left out of school games. Or a dozen other examples.

But what brings those dozens of examples to life?

It’s the one thought that does it. Once you have nailed down your one thought, you know exactly what you’re writing about, no matter if you’re writing an article, doing a presentation or lecturing your kid. But even if we do understand that it’s important to boil everything down to one thought, we often seem to struggle to get to that one thought. So how do you speed up getting to that one thought?

Let’s pick three ways:

1. Find the adjective or verb in your headline
2. Look for the specifics in the headline
3. Break up your headline into tiny parts

1) Find the adjective

If you happen to be one of those who writes the headline before they write the article, you’re in luck—but only if your headline has an adjective or verb (um, all headlines have at least one of that). So let’s take a few headlines:

a – Are You Using This Emergency Email Tactic In Your Marketing?
b – How Ego-Killers Drive Clients Away
c – Do Long or Short Headlines Work Better?

In the first headline, we have ‘emergency’. Now can’t you think of at least two dozen examples or case studies of emergencies? If you don’t want to tell a personal story, go to the Economist. Or go to a magazine like Rolling Stone. And there you’ll find an emergency. Re-phrase the case study or story and you’re good to go.

In the second headline, we didn’t have an adjective. We had a verb kinda combination of ‘drive away’. Now you drive mosquitoes away, nasty salesmen away and someone in history drove the Beatles away as well. Again there’s no limit to the examples.

But in the third headline, we have two adjectives. So which one do we choose?

It doesn’t matter. You just pick one and drive home the point with that one adjective. So if you’re talking about an analogy which involves long, you talk about how you were bored at a long speech, or how long the journey seemed when you were driving, or some other long story. Later you can bring in the short aspect of it, and contrast nicely.

But that’s just one way. The other way is to look for the specifics in your headline.

2) Look for the specifics in the headline

Specifics are simply adjectives that drive home a fact with more impact. So let’s look at some examples:

a – How to Make Sure You Get Paid On Time
b – How to Write an Article in 33 Minutes or Less
c – The 70% Principle: Why You Never Get Projects Off The Ground

The first headline was ‘on time’. The second was ’33 minutes or less’. The third was ‘Just 70%’. Now you can easily think of instances of being on time, or things that were on time. For instance the entire train system in Japan is ruthlessly on time, down to the last minute. Or if we look at ’33 minutes or less’, we can think of many thing that we can do or have been done in 33 minutes or less. e.g. eating a meal, going for a walk. And the same applies to 70%. So if you find the specifics in the headline, you’ll find an analogy or story that fits just right. And you’re on your way.

But if you’re still stuck, there’s a third way.

3) Break up your headline into tiny parts

So let’s say you’re writing about how you need to beef up the security on your website.

So let’s break that up:

– how you need to
– beef up
– security
– on your website
– how you need to (no story or analogy there. And no one thought).
– beef up (yes, there’s one thought here: beefing up).
– security (yes, there’s one though here too: security).
– on your website (no thought or story there).

So now we have two thoughts we can work on

1. Beefing up.
2. Security.

Either one can be the first fifty words.

But let’s get some analogies and stories.

Example 1: Beefing up

– Eating a ton of carbs before the marathon.
– Getting ready for the storm.
– Saving money for a rainy day.
– Why Posh Spice almost starves herself.

Example 2: Security

– The day I failed to lock my motorcycle and it got stolen.
– When my father’s bags were robbed from the car.
– Why our doors in New Zealand are open most of the time.

So you see what’s happening?

1. We first isolated the words in the sentence.
2. We then figured out which ones we could work with.
3. We came up with analogies or stories based on one thought.
4. We realized we found stories that were pro-security and pro-beefing up, or anti-beefing up and anti-security.

And so we have three ways to use headlines to get us to the one thought. But we can still run into trouble pretty easily by being too obvious

So what’s too obvious?

If your headline has the term juggle in it, you’ll think of juggler. That’s terribly obvious and doesn’t create a ton of excitement. But you can create a bit of excitement by going the opposite way and talking about when juggling went wrong.

The easiest way to stay away from the obvious, is to go the opposite way. If the one word you have is ‘kind’, then move you story or analogy to ‘rude’ or ‘cruel’. Of course, this is only one way of avoiding the obvious.

The other way is to take a little help from search engines

You can take your one word and look up Google images, and see the results you get. You may get a great idea right away, or you may get inspiration for another idea. As for me, I like going to the thesaurus as well, as it brings up related words. That helps me to think of the same word in a different way. And all of these systems: using the opposite, using Google images and a thesaurus, all work towards helping you stay away from the obvious.

So let’s summarise:

1. Find the adjective or verb in your headline
2. Look for the specifics in the headline
3. Split up your headline into bits

The headline can be the key to your one thought. And it can greatly speed up your process. It’s almost like being stuck in the wrong queue at the supermarket, and then magically a new counter opens up.

Goodbye ‘stuckedness’. Hello headlines!

About the author

Sean D’Souza is a writer, marketing guru and expert on sales psychology. To read more articles by Sean, and get a very useful free report on”W“Why “Why Headlines Fail”, go to PsychoTactics.com

(Sherry Lowry is a member of Sean’s 5000BC Community)

Change

Contributed with permission: @Robert W. Gunn & The AccompliGroup.com

Most people assume that change has to be difficult. But it can be as simple as having a different thought, and then choosing to act on it.

The sages say that nothing endures but change. That is certainly true in the natural world: seasons change; continents move, and galaxies form, collide and die. I once saw a time-lapse movie of Cape Cod’s shoreline over the past 500 years and was astonished at how rapidly the coast grew, shrank and shifted as the tides moved the sand. It proved to me the folly of ever building your dream house on any beach!

People change, too. Are you the same person today that you were 20 years, two months, or even two minutes ago? Reflecting on my youth gives me vivid flashbacks of certain events, but I can scarcely recall what it felt like to be “me.” Who is that child shown in school photos and home movies or captured by treasured term papers? Those days seem as remote and distant as my imaginings of the future did when I was young. Am I merely making some of these memories up, or did they really happen to me?

We continually adapt, learn, adjust, transform, and modify the tenor of our lives day-to-day, moment-to-moment. That we do this is so obvious that it scarcely needs comment. Pause for a moment and think of the “change” that you have made since waking up this morning. I’ll bet you changed your mind at least a half dozen times, perhaps more. I know that I changed my mind about just having fruit forbreakfast and ate the muffin that the flight attendant offered.

In point of fact, we change as our thoughts change. Have you ever had a new thought

and acted on it? Then perhaps you changed. We resist change only when we are stuck in repetitive thought patterns. Hanging onto the past would be one way to characterize it.

For example, I used to worry a lot. Worry was so pervasive in my life that I worried about not worrying enough! I dissected the past and despaired of the future. Then one day I had a “new” thought. I literally noticed that I worried. And at that moment I began to change, for I saw how omnipresent the sense of “chewing my cud” was and realized how much it was distracting me from being fully present and engaged in life. And I became enraptured by the joy of living moment to moment.

Once I stopped worrying so much, I began to recognize other thought “habits.”

Pretty soon those, too, began dropping out of my life. For example, I prided myself on being busy, unfortunately to the point where my life was moving so fast that it felt incredibly stressful and out of control. I typically spent the first three or four days of vacations in a deep vegetative state as my body recovered from the pace at which my mind was driving it.

So, I changed by acting on the thoughts that felt good and ignoring the ones that felt bad. As I did so, I began taking much better care of myself physically and approaching my work in the simplest and most straightforward way. It shocked me how much my effectiveness improved, my output increased, and my delight in working deepened.

Inside, it just felt good and did not seem that hard. It was simply a matter of noticing new thoughts and then acting on those that seemed obvious. In other words, doing what felt right gave me a positive, rather than a negative, outlook on life. I was also learning about myself, others, and the world around me. Being alive seemed more beautiful and so profoundly simple. People took on an aura of innocence. It was hard not to feel warmth towards even those folks who were being “difficult” (and I live in New York). In other words, I changed. Ironically, these changes may have been more apparent to others than to me, for I know that some colleagues and family members commented on them. Their comments actually surprised me. Initially, I found it interesting that they had noticed. Later it was something of a revelation that they were so matter of fact about my conduct when it had been completely invisible to me.

That is the way change often happens. The new behavior looks completely obvious to others but remains hidden to the actors. Inside, you may feel different, but in one important sense nothing has changed. This is the truth that lies behind life itself.

Looking back on this period, I would say that I was learning how to create a life using my own, original thoughts. This is the birthright of each of us – to use our capacity to create our own lives from original thought. We have been given the power not only to know that we think, but also to choose which thoughts to pay attention to and which to reject.

Every human seeks to control his or her life using this power. Children do it instinctively. Adults often need to relearn what they knew as youngsters, just as I did. What we cannot control are the thoughts themselves. The mind produces them from a source of power that we can scarcely glimpse, even though we can feel it in the depths of our souls. It is what we term the Immortal, the Universal, or the Spiritual source of life.

This is an energy that pervades all life. Physicists may be looking right at it as they probe the depths of the universe. They call it Dark Energy (the force that may be causing the universe to expand forever) and Dark Matter (the “stuff” that existed before visible matter took form, something they think exists because there is not enough visible matter to account for certain physical phenomena).

In other words, change is nothing more than life’s energy being expressed as natural phenomena (who first said, “Nature is dynamic, not static”?) in the physical world. For humans, change happens at every moment as we continually create life from our thoughts, as they flow one after another.

It is when we interfere with this process or fail to see it that we become stuck. For example, if our ego dominates our thinking (“Its always been important for me to look good”), our greedy thoughts take over (“What’s in it for me?”), or our fear and imagination run rampant in our minds (“You think this is bad! Well let me tell you how bad things could really get!”), then it’s hard to climb out of the mental ruts and see the world as it is, offering unlimited possibilities.

Unleashing this potential takes no more effort than mentally looking in a different direction, waiting to see what thoughts occur to you, and then acting on the thoughts that produce the most positive feelings.

When I started doing this, my life became much more graceful. I trusted that things would work out, I went in new directions without second-guessing myself, I saw my leadership role as one of tending to people’s feelings knowing that if their mood was positive, they would figure out what to do, and I took on new roles, looking to learn by finding out what I didn’t know rather than sticking with what I already knew.

Now why is this important for business people? Well, somehow most of us assume that change is very difficult, something that needs to be managed. Recently, I read the text of a speech that had been given by the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company. He was exhorting his organization to become more modern, for his people to take risks, to solve problems without waiting to be told what do to and to give a damn about the customers. These are all laudable goals.

His point was that this new culture needs to be earned. He did not see it as a human birthright! He also assumed that change has to be imposed on the organization, even though he acknowledged that no one can force others to change against their will. So, he exhorted the organization to gear up for a protracted effort to reinvent itself and to cast overboard those who did not “get it,” whatever “it” is.

What this CEO fails to see is that his very thoughts about achieving these changes will make them all the more difficult to accomplish. By saying it will be hard, he creates anxiety. By telling the organization that not everyone will make it, he creates fear. And by expressing outcomes in fuzzy jargon, he causes confusion.

My wish is that you can see for yourself what I am pointing to: that change happens as simply as having a new thought and then choosing to act on it. That by dropping habitual thought you open the door to the unlimited potential of Universal Thought. That by trusting this spiritual truth you will live the life of your dreams: growing, evolving and, yes, changing, as you comprehend what it means to experience the truth of life with a higher consciousness and a heightened gratitude. I wish you the best.

For more information email [email protected]

FROM STRATEGIC FINANCE – SEPTEMBER 2001 | WWW.ACCOMPLIGROUP.COM

How Skills Really Do Trump Passion

Passion simply is not something you can track down, harpoon, and haul home. This may be quite alarming to those who have bought into the myth that Passion is something that either finds you, or you “find” it, then act on accordingly.

Cal Newport gets my vote when he suggests the reverse in his very useful book: “So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.”

In sync with this, while I’ve personally experienced a good bit of Passion within my interests and my career, it’s never come lightly. Passion it turns out is not something that “finds you” but more-so something in keeping with Newport’s idea – passion, a lot like respect, tends to be almost always something you EARN. 

This also falls right in alignment with Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours being what recreates an outlier. Malcomb partially defines an Outlier as someone who can consistently perform beyond the edge. He’s parlayed his research into the 10,000 hour rule – meaning that volume of focus and dedicated practice to truly master a skill.

So, if Passion is rare, why is that? Contrary to the quip to “Find Your Passion” almost all compelling careers prove out to have complex origins. Their one consistency is the founders of those tend to reject the idea that it will be simple. There is actually an answer around why embedded in social science research. While there are many reasons discovered for high workplace gratification, the notion of matching your job to a pre-existing passion is not among those waiting to be discovered.

What has been found instead: near to the heart of many IS found a passion for a pastime or hobby which raised a new realization. That is, passions that can successfully transfer or convert directly into careers or the earning within work lives, also have to be r.e.l.e.v.a.n.t. to that genre, not just existing.

Here are a few conclusions the science around Passion are turning up:
* career passions are rare (2002 research: Robt J. Vallerand)

* passion takes time to cultivate (Yale professor: Amy Wrzesniewski: distinctions between a job, a career, and a calling. Publication in Journal of Research in Personality)

* passion is a side effect of mastery (TED Talk: “On the Surprising Science of Motivation” by Daniel Pink (book: Drive)

Newport includes in his argument, and I agree, that the Follow Your Passion Hypothesis can be dangerous when swallowed whole. The danger resides in convincing the wrong people there is a “magic” or right job out there for them – simply because they exist and want such. It make their goal to find it vs skill up, qualify, and be identified or sourced for it, or even better, clearly recognize it when it does show up because they ALREADY earned it.

That falls more in the “when” and “maybe” territory. That’s really different than shopping on the belief or hope that very soon can become futile and discouraging.

I’m reminded of the wisdom of Robert Fritz, a musician, composer, and supreme strategist on the underlying psychology of consistent, sustaining success of high creatives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fritz

Fritz encourages creatives to find joy and gratification in every step along the path of creation. The grand crescendo of the “performance” or the completion of a work of art in any genre, business included, is then the dessert, not the primary or only payoff. You win all along – not only at the finale. Best of all, there is no dread of pushing the huge rock of the next creative endeavor startup back up the same mountain yet once again. Just that one, subtle shift in self-management is an almost guaranteed prevention of burn-out or failure to finish the one work of the lifetime.

Locally, the biggest advocate of the concept of cultivating your own passion in Austin is Gudjon Bergmann. Following a courageous transplant of his young family from Iceland out of necessity when their currency crashed, he has quickly become our resident genius in writing A book vs THE book, or YOUR book — in order to actually get published.

Most timely, Gudjon is a living example of publishing again and again and relishing the next round building out of his own endeavors in his mind’s eye even before he complete his (always) currently in process book. If you want a blueprint for publishing (and most any type of step-for-step project success) in usually under 90 days, his new website is a good start: http://www.communicatorblueprints.com

While I’m a realist around Passion, I’m not a complete skeptic. There really are those of us who somehow truly DO know most often from childhood, or at least early adolescence, what it is that is ours to do this round of life. You recognize them. They tend to carry around little note-taking means to record their (often really brilliant) ideas. Another local resident-in-pursuing-Passion (and realistically cultivating the skills to fully support his) is our very own Gary Hoover.

If you’ve not yet met him, you definitely, definitely know some of his own passion-endeavors: the creation of Hoover’s Online which grew out of his discovery of Forbe Magazines by age 12 in his mid-Western library, which his parents helped support promptly with gifting him with a birthday subscription almost on the spot; Gary still has that first issue, and every one since – all ready many times cover-to-cover.

In followup to selling Hoover’s Online, because he has always, always been a collector and lover of books, he founded a chain of 25 Bookstops – the very first bookstore to have the idea of including coffee shops and pleasant seating for readers. Not only did he build bookstores – on every possible occasion he stayed true to his respect for historic buildings and tried hard to build each he could in that. Or…at least in an historic area in the towns of his choice – all based on the well-researched business odds of finding committed, life-long readers and where they resided.

Once he sold his Bookstop stores to Barnes and Noble, he then took an unfortunate spill right into the lap of another passion of his own: travel. Alas! His timing turned out deadly as he founded a company around that simultaneously with the airline industry almost tanking and commissions on travel sales literally vanishing. Gary’s a noble trooper though so he took his licks. Being a wise man, though, while he had the money, he fortunately thoughtfully indulged another passion and used a piece of it to ensure he’d always have a roof if not a home. He did this by underwriting the funding for a dorm at his beloved alma mater, which I’m pretty sure he actually DOES sleep in at every opportunity when visiting Illinois.

I relate this story to make another Passion point: passion pursuit is making full usage of everything – every learning along the way, not just the fun stuff. Grist for the mill – and interestingly, when you speak with the truly successful, almost without fail they will tell you they learned the most from one of their biggest failures, not the reverse. It’s never what happened, it’s what then grew out of in through their response(s) to that.

There is hope for all of us! That said, here are Newport’s three rules for what we can look to if we don’t happen to have inborn Passion to come to our rescue. He discovered these “rules” through chronicling how (most) people really end up loving what they do:

1. Don’t follow your passion.
2. Be so very good they cannot ignore you. (skill, skill, more skill)
3. Turn down a promotion. (yes…this is a really surprising one – it emphasizes the importance of control)

Oh…yes, there is a bonus one:

4. Think small, act big. (the importance of a unifying mission for your working life – a clear one…and sticking to yours; in confidence tho, not fake bravado)

As to Newport’s (sort of secret) Rule #4: we’ve heard this repeatedly and in many ways. There really does HAVE to be something greater, more encompassing, for a mission to set the tone, the pace, and help generate the remarkable production of the energy and innovativeness of a life & lcareer gratifying purpose to your beingness.

These types of missions require a ready supply of little bets – a topic for another day. But not to leave you hanging, great missions are transformed into great successes primarily as a result of small and achievable projects. They serve for you to explore, realistically and literally, the concrete possibilities surrounding your compelling idea.

Two Ears and Only One Mouth: Are You Listening?

by Sherry Lowry/The Lowry Group

It has been said that there is a reason why humans have been given two ears and only one mouth. Listening is a crucial activity yet one we devote so little effort to improving. It is essential for building healthy relationships and successful partnerships. Here are some important facts and techniques that can help improve your listening and interpersonal skills.

We spend 80 percent of our waking time involved in four communications tasks: reading, writing, speaking or listening.

Of these four activities, listening (hopefully) accounts for approximately 50 percent of our communication time. We give little attention to this part of the communication process, simply taking it for granted that everyone knows how to listen. Listening is such a passive activity, we don’t pay attention to it. In fact, most of us find the prolonged concentration required for truly effective listening too hard to maintain.

Consider this: We only retain 25 percent of what we hear. Why?

The average person speaks at about 130 words per minute. Our thinking speed is about 500 words per minute. Consequently, we jump ahead of what is actually being said. This causes our minds to wander and we are actually thinking about other things, such as what we are going to say next.

Here are other things that interfere with effective listening– and consequently result in poor communications and poor interpersonal relationships:

• We don’t clear our minds before entering into a conversation or listening to a person’s presentation. Many people will multi-task, especially while on the phone. Even in a face-to-face exchange, some people multi-task in their heads, solving problems and making lists while the other person gets to their point (which we have decided we already know)!
• We experience emotions which distract us from listening further. It doesn’t take much of a trigger for our feelings to pop up. A look, a phrase, and we are off and running with anxiety, fear, or anger. Our ability to listen is seriously impaired when we are distracted by feelings, especially those we wouldn’t want to admit to.
• We are thinking about our reply. We are so concentrated on making a rebuttal, or on sharing a similar experience, we cease listening to the speaker, and may not even hear important information that makes our response inconsequential or inappropriate. We miss opportunities to build and strengthen relationships by jumping in and speaking too soon.
• We are thinking about the subject from our own perspective rather than trying to understand it from the speaker’s point of view. Our perception may so differ from the perception of the talker that a totally different interpretation of the information may occur. Our minds need to be open and exploring new information rather focusing on what we know.
• While everybody “knows” how to listen, not everybody practices the following effective listening techniques which can rapidly improve communications, strengthen relationships and form strong interpersonal
  skills for work and family success.

What is Active Listening?

The process called active listening involves the listener paying full attention to the speaker, and then summarizing or reflecting back what he or she has heard without evaluating or interpreting. This allows further clarification from the speaker if necessary. It also brings in this important element into the exchange:

Speaker A knows what Listener B has heard, AND knows that Listener B is taking the time to fully understand before responding.

This rarely seems to happen in our fast-paced environments where people talk over one another and interrupting is no longer the social faux pas that is was.

In active listening, it is important to learn to summarize and reflect smoothly, without appearing to mimic or repeat back in a robotic fashion. Useful phrases are:

• “As I understand it, what you are saying is ….”
• “So your point is that ….”

Non-Verbal Communications

Another part of effective listening is non-verbal communication. A listener should be making eye contact with the speaker about 60 to 80 percent of the time, at least in Western cultures. Nodding and shaking the head is usually appropriate to indicate receptiveness and understanding. Of course, it also indicates agreement or disagreement and can therefore interrupt the speaker.

An important way to establish fast rapport with a speaker is to mirror the speaker’s body language, although it would be ineffective to mimic their posture exactly.

Research has shown that only 7 percent of what we take in from a speaker is from the actual words; the rest is nonverbal. The tone of voice of the speaker accounts for 38 percent of the message received. Over 55 percent of our perception of the message comes from the speaker’s body
language.

This means how something is said is far more important than the actual words. This also means to be a really effective listener, one must “listen” to the non-verbals as well. This means being tuned in to what is being said and what is not being said.

Which brings this discussion to a really important part of listening: asking questions. It is not enough to assume you know what the person means. Non-verbals can lead you to “hear” something that is not being said. Asking questions deepens the discussion and explores more of
what the person means.

Some useful questions are:

• “Can you give an example of this?”
• “Tell me more about that…”

Rarely do people take the time to reflect on the quality of their listening skills. In fact, the only time we may become aware of them is when there has been a breakdown in communications, but by then we are in defensive mode instead of learning mode.

How well do you listen? When was the last time you asked your spouse, your boss, or a trusted peer for feedback on your communication skills? For most of us, this is far too risky. Talking with your personal coach can help you practice active listening and is a safe way to improve without risk.

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Resources:

Cartwright, T. (2003). Managing Conflict with Peers. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., Switzler, A., Covery, S.R. (2002). Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Scott, S. (2004). Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time. Berkley, CA: Berkley Publishing Group.

Stone, D., Patton, B., Heen, S., Fisher, R. (2000). Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most. New York: Penguin Books.

Tannen, D. (2001) You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation. Quill edition.

Tannen, D. (1999). The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue. New York:Ballentine Books.

Ursiny, T. (2003). Coward’s Guide to Conflict: Empowering Solutions for Those Who Would Rather Run than Fight. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc.

7 Habits of Highly Prolific Writers by Henri Junttila

Are you eager to write?

People call me prolific.

Yet I don’t spend all day writing.

You don’t have to go “full-time” to be a prolific writer. And in this article you’ll see why.

It comes down to being efficient.

Knowing what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

I’ll share my habits, and the habits of other prolific writers I know.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Routine

Write daily.

Write often.

Even if you work full-time, you can make time for your writing.

I write in the mornings right now. That’s my creative time. What’s yours?

2. Outline

When you write, start with an outline.

Map out what you’re going to write and what message you want to convey.

This is more true for non-fiction writers than fiction writers. When I wrote this article, I mapped out the 7 habits first, and then I filled in the blanks.

It makes my life much easier.

And it allows me to write the first draft for this article in 10 minutes or less.

3. First Draft

Once your outline is in place, it’s time to write a horrible first draft.

New writers make the mistake of trying to edit while they write. It doesn’t work, so don’t even try.

When you write your first draft, it should be at lightning speed. You should get everything out of your head and onto paper. Let it flow uncensored.

Don’t worry about editing or rewriting. That comes later.

4. Rewrite

After I’ve written my first draft, I rewrite.

But I don’t rewrite right away. I let my article rest for 24 hours first.

I sleep on it.

And with each 24 hour cycle, my article gets better. I come back to it several times with a pair of fresh eyes.

Sometimes I’ll rewrite an article three times over 3-4 days, and each time it improves.

5. Demon Bashing

This is a biggie.

When you write, you will run into your inner demons.

You’ll run into that negative voice. It’ll tell you how:

• You’re not good enough
• You have nothing to say
• You might as well give up

Whenever it pops up, say hi and keep writing. Writing isn’t effortless for prolific writers. But they keep going anyway.

They sit down and write. Even if nothing comes out, they get things done, because they have a structure in place.

6. Confidence

When you first start out, you won’t be very confident when you write.

And that’s fine. It is as it should be.

When you write a lot, you get better, and you gain confidence.

I’ve written millions of words and thousands of articles. I started out horrible, but I’m getting better with each passing day.

There is no quick fix to finding your writing voice, or eliminating fear. It all comes down to sitting down and writing.

7. Read

Prolific writers read – a lot.

They gather inspiration from books. They observe the structure other writers use, and they steal what resonates with them.

For example, I help change makers build a thriving online business, so when I’m reading sales copy and it moves me to buy, I backtrack.

I go inside and look at what it was that moved me. Then I think about how I can use that in my writing and business.

The Wrap Up

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this article, it’s this: sit down and write.

Being a prolific writer is all about refusing to listen to your own excuses. It’s about eliminating any obstacles that prevent you from writing.

Writing never seems to be easy.

There’s always some way you could procrastinate, but if you want to get your message out there, you have to just sit down and write.

The world needs what you have to share.

So write.

About the author:
Henri Junttila is a freelance writer and the founder of Wake Up Cloud, where he helps people turn their passion into a thriving online business. If you’re interested in learning more, grab his free special report.
(Sherry Lowry is a long-time admirer, customer and subscriber of Zen Habits & Write To Done.)