Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I don't know if you can hear the wind whistling through the trees.
It is so blowy.
It's still an easterly wind up here on Dartmoor.
We've had it over the last few days and I am now behind a patch of gorse bushes.
These are thorn bushes up on the Dartmoor moorland and I'm just trying to shelter myself from the blast of the wind and I can see the trees swaying and the gorse bush also swaying in this blustery cold easterly wind.
Despite blue skies and sunshine I've wrapped up warm and enjoying just watching the lambs in front of me with their mums playing in the sunshine on this very beautiful spring afternoon here in Devon and I've actually been out this morning with a friend.
We went on a walk and I want to talk to you today about the importance of well-being listening.
Listening for well-being.
Listening for who somebody truly is and there is a course here on Insight Timer called An Introduction to Well-Being Listening so have a look if you want to explore that.
But well-being listening in essence is about seeing through stories.
It's about listening into well-being,
Listening into clarity,
Peace of mind,
Truth within yourself and from that solid place listening to the peace,
Clarity,
Love,
Wisdom in the person that's speaking.
And the coaching that I'm involved with is based around this philosophy.
It's based around the inside-out understanding or the three principles.
That for me is where the real power lies.
And my friend has been through quite an upsetting experience at work and she's been off work for a little while and I knew that when she came to see me I'd get an update from her about how things were going and she's calling a meeting and she she's going to express her concerns with managers at her workplace.
I realized that for me it would be easy to get lost in the story of the rights and wrongs of what happened to her and if you remember just the other day I got lost in the story that a client brought to me and I kind of found myself lost in the weeds as I put it.
And as soon as I get lost in the weeds,
As soon as I kind of join my client trying to fix thinking with thinking,
I know I'm going to lose.
It just doesn't work like that.
And so it was really good that I've had this experience recently with a client because I'd really kind of got a bit frustrated with myself with hindsight thinking,
Oh why did I do that?
But it helped because I realized so clearly that that is not the way to listen and help people.
Listening and helping people means me standing in my rock solid grounded space and listening to the other person from that space and listening out to the rock solidness in them.
That's where the power lies in listening.
And so I resolved that with my friend I wouldn't get lost in the story.
I would respect her,
I would listen but I wouldn't get lost in her story and I knew that I could offer her a rock solid grounded place of me listening to her and her feeling that within herself.
And so I took her for a walk.
We went for a bluebell walk and we were talking about various things and then at one point she explained the story of where she was at with a problem that she's got at work.
And then we just happened across a gate with two horses grazing in a field and we leant across this gate for probably 10-15 minutes talking,
Watching the horses and our conversation strayed to when we were younger and we used to ride horses and the conversation switched away from her problems at work and it landed in a place of memories and we laughed a bit and carried on talking and then carried on walking.
But one of the things I expressed to her as we were walking and talking,
I just said to her look the best I can do for you is to listen from a grounded place in me,
From my well-being,
From who I truly am and listen out for who you truly are and that's what I'm going to be doing as your friend.
That's what I can offer you as a friend and I'm always up for doing that.
So I just want to reiterate the importance of listening,
Listening to someone at a soul-to-soul level,
Listening beyond the stories,
Not getting lost in the stories and not trying to fix the stories with more thinking.
For me it was a good reminder with my friend to be the best possible support and to know the best possible support I could be for her was to be grounded in my peace of mind and clarity.
I hope that makes sense to you and would love to know your reflections on what I've said and of course don't forget I'll be back again tomorrow with another five minutes in nature so do join me again then.
