Dear friend,
Do you want to learn how to move, convince, and enroll other people? Here is the whole secret in a single line. Hearts must be touched before minds can be convinced.
But how do you actually touch someone’s heart?
It begins with listening. Not hearing, listening. Going past the words until you genuinely get what the other person is concerned about, what they are worried about, what truly matters to them.
And how do we listen like that? By giving up the need to be right.
Giving up being right does not mean letting people roll over us, or accepting every opinion we hear. It means having a heart big enough to consider ideas that are different from our own. Most of the time we only listen to what already agrees with us. If what we hear matches what we believe, we say we like it. If it does not, we reject it. That habit makes our relationships thin.
So we have to build the capacity to listen to people who are not like us. It is in the attempt to see another’s point of view, especially when it contradicts ours, that a space for co-invention opens. Without it, our relationships become a series of small games, each of us maneuvering to get what we want and to avoid being dominated, a constant tit for tat. You can never touch a heart that way.
To touch a heart, we have to grasp what the other person truly cares about. Not to prove them right or wrong, but to understand them. That offering, the offering of real listening, becomes the ground that genuine connection is built on.
Here is something to try. If there is someone you are struggling to feel close to, ask them to tell you the very thing they believe you do not want to hear. Then listen, and do not defend. Say that you got it, and thank them. That is the beginning of something new.
Try it, and see where it takes you.
With care,Saqib