Chapter 26 art of attention

So far, we have examined the many aspects that are misunderstood as love. Next, we will further understand the nature of love.We know that to achieve true love, it takes real effort.Insisting on achieving self-improvement is the basic premise of love, just as we must persist in taking one more step (or one more mile) in order to gradually fight against the inherent inertia and the repulsion caused by fear.Expanding our boundaries means getting rid of inertia and facing our fears, which means that love can make us courageous.So love is also a special form of courage.Love is an expression of courage in an ongoing effort to develop the intellectual maturity of self and others.Of course, it is also a habitual state of us to make efforts and generate courage for other things (or goals) other than love.So not all effort or courage is love.But true love must require hard work and courage, otherwise it cannot be true love, there is no doubt about it.

The most important form of love is attention.When we love someone, we will definitely pay attention to the other person, and then help the other person grow.We must put our prejudices aside, adjust our state of mind, and meet the needs of the other party.Our concern for each other is an act of self-will and abandonment of inertia. The famous psychologist Rollo May said: "If we use modern psychoanalysis tools to analyze everyone's willingness to love, we will find that the essence of the willingness to love is actually a kind of attention. The effort required to complete the will , is the effort of attention. We have to keep our minds clear and our minds sound, which is the basic element of embodying attention.”

One of the most common and important ways to show concern is to "listen."We spend most of our time listening to others, but most of us don't know how to listen.An enterprise psychologist told me: The time spent in educating students in schools to learn various subjects may be inversely proportional to the opportunities for students to use the knowledge they have learned when they grow up.For example, a good business executive spends about one hour a day reading, two hours talking, and eight hours listening.But in schools, most of the time is spent teaching children to read, very little time is spent teaching them to talk, and almost no effort is made to teach children how to listen.I certainly don't think schools should organize the curriculum according to how much and how often students use knowledge as adults, but I do believe that teaching children how to listen is a wise move.Even if the results achieved are limited, at least children should understand that listening is not an easy task, so they should be taken seriously and should not be perfunctory.Listening is a concrete expression of caring for others.Most people don't know how to listen, because they don't realize the importance of listening, or they don't want to make efforts for it.

Not long ago, I had the pleasure of listening to a lecture given by a well-known person on the relationship between religion and psychology.I am very interested in this topic, and I have been dabbling and thinking about it for a long time.It didn't take long for the speaker to open his mouth and I realized he was no ordinary guy, he was an industry expert with real insights.In his speech, he provided a lot of specific and vivid examples, obviously trying to clearly convey many abstract concepts to the audience, and I listened very carefully.He gave a speech for about an hour and a half. The temperature in the auditorium was very low, but I was sweating profusely.Due to being too serious and focused, I actually felt my neck was stiff and my head was aching.The content of his speech is rich and profound. I guess I can absorb less than half of it, but I have benefited a lot.After the speech, the audience all went to the tea party, and I walked around among the cultural figures at the tea party venue, listening to their feelings and opinions.I find that most people are disappointed by the speeches, they come for the name, but feel that they get nothing.

They don't understand much of the speech and don't think the speaker is the top-notch speaker they hoped for.One lady even said, "What the hell did he say? He didn't say anything of value!" People around her nodded in agreement with her words. I can't agree with them. I understand most of the speech. The main reasons are: First, he is an outstanding scholar. I believe that the knowledge he has is valuable, so I listened carefully from beginning to end.Secondly, I am very interested in the topic of his speech, hoping to improve my understanding by listening to the speech.I listen carefully to the speech, which is the giving of love and the action of love.I am willing to think about every word of the speech, recognize his efforts for the speech, and I am willing to work hard for the maturity of the mind.On my part at least, his hard work has paid off.

I am keen to listen to his speech because I want to gain something.At the same time, the speaker can feel the unique attention, understanding and love from the audience, which is also a kind of reward for him.Love, as we often see, the receiver must know how to give, and the giver must also know how to receive. It is actually a "two-way street", a typical reciprocal behavior. The listening mode mentioned above is actually the "listening mode of the recipient". Now let's look at the "listening mode of the giver". The most common one is to listen to children.Depending on the age of the child, the choice of listening methods should also be different.A six-year-old child in the first grade of elementary school may talk endlessly and endlessly. How should parents deal with this situation?One of the simplest ways is: directly let the child shut up.In some families, parents even make a rule that children are never allowed to talk endlessly.Naturally, such a family will never allow "children's words without restraint".The second way is that no matter what the child says, the adults ignore it. In this case, the child can only talk to himself or talk to the air.There is no interaction or communication between them and adults.The third way is to pretend to listen, but in fact you are still busy with your own work, thinking about your own thoughts, and occasionally saying "um, ah" or "great" to deal with the child.The fourth way is to listen selectively. When the child says something that seems important, the parents will prick up their ears, concentrate, and try to get the most information with the least effort.Of course, most parents are not necessarily trained and may not have good selection skills, so a lot of important information is often missed.The last way, of course, is to listen carefully to every word of the child and try to understand their meaning as much as possible.

Among the above five listening methods, it can be said that parents spend more time and energy on one than the other.You may think that the last method I recommend is because it can reflect more love and attention from parents to their children, but you are wrong.First, six-year-olds are very talkative, and listening to their every word leaves no time for other things.Second, trying to listen and analyze everything your child says can be exhausting for parents.The last point is that most of what a six-year-old child says is monotonous and boring. Listening to it all day will only make you feel bored and bored.It is best to combine the above five methods and selectively weigh and use them.Sometimes it is necessary to simply shut up a child, especially if they are babbling.Their constant chatter only distracts the parents from other things.Children may also deliberately interrupt when you are talking to others, to show their hostility, or to get your attention.In most cases, six-year-olds have no clear intentions, and often just talk for the sake of talking, and don't necessarily need your listening. It should be noted that they can feel the fun even if they talk to themselves.Sometimes, though, children long to be close to their parents and need their parents to listen to them.In this case, what the child needs is not verbal communication, but a sense of intimacy with the parents, so just pretending to listen is enough.In fact, children can also realize that parents are sometimes listening selectively, but this "listening principle" will also satisfy them.Children as young as six years old already accept this listening discipline, and only a few of their vast utterances require parental attention and response.One of the most critical tasks for parents is to make an appropriate choice between listening and not listening, find the best balance, and meet the needs of their children as much as possible.

This "balance point" is difficult to grasp.Although the time to listen to their children is limited, many parents are unwilling to devote energy to listening during this limited time.They may think that pretending to listen, or at best selectively listening, is already real listening.It's just self-deception to hide its laziness.True listening, no matter how briefly, requires considerable effort.First, it requires the listener's undivided attention.You can't "listen" to what someone has to say while you're busy with other things.Parents should put other things aside and really devote listening time to their children, and it must be their children's time.An unwillingness to put other things aside, including your bad mood or other thoughts, means that you are unwilling to really listen.Second, paying attention to a six-year-old's speech requires even more effort than listening to a speech.The speech of a six-year-old is often irregular, sometimes bubbling like a spring of water, and sometimes there are many pauses and repetitions in the middle, which makes it difficult for you to concentrate.In addition, it is difficult for adults to be interested in what children say for a long time; but excellent orators can make the audience concentrate and listen carefully to their speeches.In other words, listening to a six-year-old is often quite boring and difficult to concentrate for long periods of time, but if you can do it, it is a real act of love.In fact, without love, it is difficult for parents to generate the motivation to listen.

But why should you bother about it?Why not put all your energy into listening to the monotonous, dull, babble of a six-year-old?First, being willing to do so proves that you can show your child enough respect.The respect you give to your child is equivalent to the respect you give to a first-class orator, and the child will feel your love and then feel that he is valuable.Only by fully respecting children can they understand self-esteem and self-love.Second, the more respect children feel, the more expressions of value they have.Third, the more you listen to your child, the more you realize that among the countless pauses, repetitions, stuttering, and even chatter that seems to have a certain accent, the child does say something valuable.Anyone who really listens to children will admit that the greatest wisdom often comes from a child's mouth.You will realize that your child is most likely to be a unique and wonderful human being.When you realize that your child is special, you will be more willing to listen to them and learn more about them.Fourth, the more you know about your children, the more you are willing to teach them.If you know so little about your children, then you teach them things that they don't intend to learn, or that they already know, even deeper than your understanding.Finally, when children feel your respect, they will feel that you regard them as excellent people.This way, they will be more willing to listen to you and give you the same respect.If you get to know your child well and teach it right, your child will be eager to learn more from you.The more they learn, the more likely they are to be great people.Both parents and children can feel the power of growth and progress from the reciprocity of love.Value creates value, and love gives birth to love. In the tacit cooperation of love, parents and children are like dancing a pas de deux ballet, spinning together on the stage, and the movements are smooth and agile.

The above is aimed at six-year-olds.In fact, as the age of children changes, the balance between listening and not listening will also change, but the general principle remains the same, that is, no matter how old they are, children need the attention and listening of their parents.Although the communication between parents and young children is more Much of it is through non-verbal forms, but still requires full attention.You can't play a "clapping game" with your child while thinking about something else.Half-heartedly play games, and you risk raising half-hearted kids.When children reach adolescence, the overall time they need their parents to listen to is obviously less than when they were six years old-their speech is more purposeful and not as casual as in early childhood.But once they do talk, they need more parental attention than they did when they were young.

Children need to be listened to and that never goes out of style.A 30-year-old professional suffered from depression due to excessive lack of self-confidence. He clearly remembered that his parents, who were also professionals, almost never listened to him, and occasionally listened reluctantly, and often complained about his mother-in-law and long-winded words. An incident at the age of 22 caused him the most pain and sadness.At that time, he wrote a graduation thesis on an important topic that was widely concerned at the time.He got excellent grades in his dissertation, and his parents, who had high expectations of him, were also proud of his excellent performance.Unfortunately, although he kept a photocopy of the thesis at home, and it was the most obvious place in the living room, his parents turned a blind eye for a whole year. He repeatedly hinted at his parents: they had time to read it, but they never read it once. "If I offered to ask them to read my paper, they wouldn't say no," he said toward the end of the session. "As long as I had the courage to say, 'Will you read my paper? You know what I write, comment on what I think.' They will definitely say yes. But in doing so, it is undoubtedly begging them to listen to me. I am 22 years old, and I am asking them to pay attention to me, which makes me unable Accept it. What does it mean to me to beg to get what I want?" True listening means paying attention to the other person, which is the embodiment of love.At this time, the listener can temporarily put aside personal thoughts and desires, and understand the speaker's feelings as much as possible.Both the speaker and the listener can feel the power of love, and thus both can achieve self-improvement.When the listener pays attention to the other party's words, the speaker will have a tacit understanding, be more frank, and be more willing to open up his heart instead of hiding something.This can enhance the understanding and trust between the two parties, and they will be connected with each other and dance the "ballet of love" together.It's an exhausting process, and it has to start with love.Based on the willingness to grow together and self-improvement, the purpose of listening can be achieved.However, we often lack the ability to listen.Listening to others for long periods of time, whether in business or social life, can be uncomfortable.We just listen selectively, and we already have priorities in our minds. Therefore, while listening, we always think about how to achieve our goals as soon as possible and how to end the conversation as soon as possible.We also often change the subject and flexibly adjust the subject of the conversation to our own satisfaction. Listening attentively is an act of love, and marriage is the best place to express it.Unfortunately, many spouses don't know how to listen.One of the most important tasks of a psychiatrist in treating couples with marital disorders is to teach them how to listen.Both husband and wife need to pay more energy to restrain their bad habits.That is why it is not surprising that treatments often fail.When patients hear their doctor request that they schedule a special time for a heart-to-heart conversation, they often find it incomprehensible.They feel that this is too serious and lacks romance.In fact, unless time is specifically scheduled for listening, and the occasion and location are chosen appropriately, it will be difficult for therapy to proceed smoothly.As you can imagine, if one spouse is driving the car, preparing meals, or feeling tired after get off work, it can be difficult for the couple to have a deep conversation. Their listening to each other was either perfunctory or hastily ended.If they accept the arrangement of a psychiatrist and complete one or two decent listening sessions, they will understand and pay more attention to each other. One spouse may even say excitedly to the other: "We have been married for 29 years, but it seems that until today, I have not been married. Really understand you." At this time, we can believe that their marriage is turning for the better. Generally speaking, when we listen, we should concentrate as much as possible.When a psychiatrist treats a patient, he must first learn to listen attentively.Take myself as an example. During treatment, I often lose my mind and ignore what the patient said. At this time, I will apologize and say: "I'm sorry, I was a little distracted just now, and I didn't concentrate on listening to you. Can you explain the sentence just now?" Repeat the words again?" Patients rarely complain because they know that I can realize that I have missed something, which proves that I have been listening attentively.By admitting I was distracted, I assured them that most of the time, I was listening to their every word.Allowing patients to experience being heard is an effective therapy in itself.In my experience, in the first few months of psychotherapy about a quarter of patients, adults or children, improve significantly, even before actual treatment.This is mainly because for many years, patients have not experienced the feeling of being listened to.It is not an exaggeration to say that some patients are even being listened to wholeheartedly for the first time in their lives. Listening is one of the most important forms of expressing concern, but other forms of concern are equally important, especially for children.For example, playing games with children will have a good educational effect.For younger children, parents can play clapping or "peek-a-boo" -- a game similar to hide-and-seek.For six-year-old children, parents can play magic, fish and hide-and-seek with them. For twelve-year-olds, parents can play badminton with them, and so on.Reading to your child and helping them with homework are all forms of showing concern.You can also carry out other family entertainment activities, such as watching movies, going out for a picnic, driving for a drive, going on a trip, watching a ball game, and so on.Some forms of attention are purely for the sake of the child, such as sitting on the beach and focusing on babysitting a four-year-old, or driving the child somewhere specifically.All kinds of attention, including attentive listening, have one thing in common: enough time must be spent with the child.For children, parental attention means companionship, and the more attention, the higher the quality of attention.The longer parents spend with their children and the more attention they give, the more they can understand the real situation of their children: how children deal with setbacks and failures; how they deal with homework; how they read and study; What they like and don't like; when they are brave and when they are afraid... these are indispensable information.Frequent activities with children, parents can teach children more life skills and help them develop the quality of self-esteem and self-love.Observing and teaching at any time during the activity is conducive to the healthy growth of children's body and mind.Experienced psychologists will also communicate with children patients by playing games, observe and diagnose at the same time, so that the treatment can achieve better results. Focusing on a four-year-old on the beach, listening to a six-year-old tell a disjointed, drawn-out story, teaching a teenager how to drive a car, and listening to a partner recount a day at the office, or her story in the laundry room. Encountering, empathizing with their problems and feelings, all of these require constant patience and the need to keep other distractions out of the way.These can all be dull and tedious, make you feel uncomfortable, and even take a lot of energy, but one thing is for sure—they mean true love.A lazy person cannot do a good job.If we're not so lazy, we'll get better at it and get used to it.Since love is a special kind of "job", the essence of "non-love" is "laziness".The topic of laziness is also important, and I will devote it to later chapters in this book in order to develop a clearer understanding.