Listen with Your Heart
When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice,
you have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me
why I shouldn’t feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do
something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen.
All I asked was that you listen. Not to talk or do – just hear me.
Advice is cheap.
Ten cents will get you both Dear Abby and Bill Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do that for myself.
I’m not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.
When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself,
you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.
But, when you accept as a single fact that I do feel what I feel,
no matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to convince
you and get to the business of understanding what’s behind this irrational feeling.
And when that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice.
So, please listen and just hear me. And if you want to talk,
wait a minute for your turn; and I’ll listen to you.
