Listening Without Fixing - June 29

In the second part of our series on listening, Liz explores the quiet power of simply being present—without offering advice or solutions. When someone shares a challenge, our instinct is often to help by fixing or guiding. But in today’s 5 Minutes In Nature, you’ll discover how well-meaning advice can sometimes get in the way. Often, the most powerful thing we can do is to simply listen—fully, patiently, and without interruption.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott. It's another glorious sunny evening and it's wonderful to get out. It's clouded over a little bit which means that it's not quite as hot as it has been during the day and I'm just strolling up this little lane which is just like a infused with the colour green. Everything is so green and tall and beautiful. Heading up onto Dartmoor the moors just above my house and if you remember we've been exploring listening. I looked yesterday at the power of listening and I want to continue today and spend a bit more time exploring the curse of giving advice and solutions. What happens when you give advice and solutions? Well what tends to happen when we attempt to give advice and solutions is that it stops the other person in their tracks. They stop listening to themselves. You see most times when people come to have a conversation and I coach people so a lot of times when people come to me they've just got problems or things they just want to resolve. Most of the time people are actually looking for their own answers. They want to work things out for themselves. For them it's so important to see the right way forward for themselves. They're not looking for somebody else's advice and in fact when you give advice often what happens is they become more confused. It doesn't help them even if the advice that you give is the action they ultimately take. If it's not the right time for them to hear that advice it will just whiz right over their heads and I fell into the trap of giving advice just the other day just yesterday with my husband. Now bear in mind I'm a professional listener as is he so I am pretty good at listening usually but there are times when I just get a bit lazy and yesterday was one of those times and my husband who helps organize events for the chorus that he sings in he sings in a barbershop chorus and one of the frustrations he finds is that when he asks people if they're available to sing at particular on particular dates you know probably a third of them don't even respond to his email that he sent out asking for availability and he was telling me this and I just lazily and it is because I was being lazy went into advice mode so I started to tell him that it was always difficult and there was always people like that and and I suggested that if he actually wanted to get a response from people he probably would need to contact them individually. Now he wasn't coming to me for advice he didn't say Liz tell me what you think he was coming because he was feeling unsettled in his mind and he just wanted to settle and what I did as I was listening in this rather inadequate kind of way giving him ideas solutions and a commentary on what I thought is that I could see pretty instantaneously he closed down he closed down and stopped talking and I went out on a walk as I often do and I reflected on the conversation I'd had with him and I just thought oh my goodness that was a dreadful bit of listening and I went back and apologized and sat down again and said look tell me tell me about it again and this time I just listened I knew that he just wanted to speak it out loud it was like letting off a bit of a pressure valve inside him he wasn't looking for solutions he knew that there weren't any immediate solutions he just wanted to talk it through and in talking it through he settled that's all he wanted and it's really worth remembering that most people they just want to settle they want their minds to settle that's all that he wanted that's all that most people want because they will find their own way forward in fact often the solution is something that is ready for them to hear if only their mind gets less noisy so listening is a real gift and giving advice or solutions is not helpful the majority of time though when people come to you even when they ask you for your advice what they're really asking is can you just listen to me I can't hear my own wisdom at the moment and if you listen to them and their minds settle and the noise in their settle they can then listen to their own wisdom and there's nothing more powerful than that so today's request or invitation is that just think twice before giving advice and solutions

Reviews

Thankyou Liz 🙏🏼
Yes true. Once I realised that I don’t need to have a solution for everyone, I felt relieved like a weight had come off my shoulders.
Oh Barbershop singing is wonderful .
4 part harmony makes a fabulous sound.
In a past life I sung in the women’s Barbershop.
🎼🎶🎵🩵🎵🎶🎼

Beautiful advice on listening. I do have a question if you don’t mind. Would you advise summarising someone's words while listening? Thank you Liz.