Human Connection

One of the key things we’re reflecting on right now is connection.

If you look around that world, you can see it’s so easy to create a situation where people are disconnected. It really just takes people who are feeling jealous, shamed, low vibe, who want to blame each other for what’s happening in the world. Put a couple of those humans together (which we can all be at different times), and you get disconnection.

One the thing that really exacerbates it is this feeling that you can only think in two different planes. For example, if you can only think that there’s a wrong or there’s a right, or something’s black or it’s white, or it’s good or it’s bad. If you’re only able to think on those two dimensional levels, one extreme or the other extreme, then it really limits your capability of connecting with people. When you’re talking about a contentious topic with someone, you feel like you have to decide, are you on side A or are you on side B? The issue with feeling like you have to decide and thinking in that really separated  fashion is that by definition, it disconnects you from people around you.

So what is it then that creates human connection? 

Now this is a pretty big topic, and there are lots of different things that we could talk about, so today we’re focusing on three things I believe are the most effective in terms of creating connection, bringing us together, and helping us to understand that there’s more in the middle than there is on the right or the left.

The first is listening. 

Our capacity to listen can and does change the world. People feel very, very different if they have been listened to deeply by you. You will know this already yourself if you have anyone else in your life who’s an incredible listener. You can sit with them and after talking or offloading on to them, you feel so much lighter and so much better. That’s when you know you’ve had a really deep, connected listening experience with someone and that’s why I put the skill of listening right up the top there in terms of connection.

The next one is love. 

Did you know that when you’re having a conversation with someone, what you’re truly thinking about that person shows on your forehead? If you’re thinking, “Geez, I wish that person who would shut up they’ve said the same thing 10 times”, guess what? The other person intuitively and energetically can read that on your face.

They know exactly how you feel about them. They know exactly what you are thinking about them. You may think you’re tricky and you’re hiding it, but that’s not the case! This is why love is important. Even if you think someone is dull and boring, even if you entirely disagree with their political worldview, even if you think they are the most loony person to walk the streets, you still give them love every time, because it is that gift of love that will allow you to feel connected to that person, and it’s connection that we want, that we need, that we have to have in order to keep evolving.

The third one is about suspending disbelief. 

Very often it’s only through our capacity to suspend disbelief that we can feel love for somebody. It’s an interesting thing about humans, a lot of us have such an intense need to be right about something. Very often our intense need to be right about anything, “insert here” random fact, or theory that we’re espousing, or view of the state of the world. So easily our need to be right becomes the central tenant, rather than our desire to connect to the other human, and when we put our need to be right above our desire to connect, we’re being very, very silly! We’re actually being very unevolved when we choose to do that, and yet so many of us do it (and I’m absolutely guilty of doing it as well).

The next time you find yourself in a scenario, in a situation, in a conversation where someone is saying something so out of this world, so wacky, so wild that your left brain logical intellectual way of processing the world could not possibly entertain the fact that there might be any credence in it, what I invite you to do is just to really politely pop your disbelief to the side.

Just for a little while, just while you’re listening to that person.

If you want to continue your disbelief later on, go for it! But if you have the capability to suspend your disbelief, to put that to one side, and to really genuinely love and listen, you might just find that you have some kind of transformational moment. 

One of the things that I know for sure is that as humans, our own limitations, our own ways of viewing the world and our own desire to be right stops us from evolving in the way that we could otherwise evolve. It stops us on a regular basis. It stops us on a daily basis, because every day, every moment we come up against this barrier, which is our own self limiting beliefs.

So part of the art of being a more evolved human is understanding that you have those self limiting beliefs, and recognising – in a conversation or some kind of debate you might be having with someone – recognising when you’re coming up against your own. When you can recognise that, that allows you to really consciously go, “Okay, I’m going to put my feeling of disbelief to the side right now and I’m still going to be present with this person.I’m still going to engage and I’m still going to connect.” because connection trumps disconnection every day of the week.

If there’s someone in your world, someone in your life that you can experiment on, don’t tell them you’re experimenting on them but just pay a bit more attention to them. Listen a little bit more carefully, disagree a little less, and see what happens as a result, in that conversation. We’d love to get some insights from you about what actually does happen!

If you would love to find out more about developing more of these skills like listening and love and suspending your disbelief, we’re running a very interesting webinar on the 22nd of July. The webinar is a total freebie so it doesn’t cost anything on your behalf, and we are talking about the importance of healing at an individual level and how that transforms organisational culture. 

In other words, how healing processes can reduce your bullying or harassment claims, how they can reduce your psychological injury claims.

It’s only through that process of healing that allows you that open door to be able to do that in an organisation.

If you’re interested in this topic, then we would love to have you there! It’s a collaboration between the team from Being More Human and also the team from Human Wellbeing Services, and you can sign up using the link below!

Click here to sign up for the FREE webinar: How to create a Thriving Culture in your organisation.