Mindful Conversation: How to Be Present in Conversations

Whether it is at home, at work or wherever else, I think we can all agree that communication is important. Miscommunication can result for a variety of reasons including differences in the use of language, contextual misunderstandings, not fully paying attention or simply not listening!

A perfect example of this is a woman and a man having dinner to celebrate their anniversary.

The woman says, “Well here we are honey, together for another whole year.”

The man, obviously not fully paying attention, responds by saying “Absolutely, I’d love another beer!”

If only they had been engaged in mindful conversation!

What is Mindful Conversation?

In a recent blog post, we discussed the concept of simple meditation also known as mindfulness meditation. Recall that simple meditation is a practice where you engage in concentrated focus to pay attention to your breath, a sound, your body, attention itself, etc. to become more aware of the present moment.

In a great book on the topic of mindfulness, Search Inside Yourself, the author quoted someone named Jon Kabat-Zinn as saying mindfulness is:

“Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” ¹

The fact of the matter is that we can bring the concept of mindfulness into our relationships with others for their benefit, including what are known as mindful conversations.

Mindful conversations are an extension of a way of listening that is different from how we typically listen called “mindful listening”.

The idea behind mindful listening is a simple one and it simply involves giving our full moment-to-moment attention to the other person without judging them. And as we recommended in our post on simple meditation, each time your attention wanders away from listening, simply bring it back gently.

Once we have mastered mindful listening, it can be applied to the effective practice of mindful conversation to improve our conversations with others.

The concept of mindful conversation was created by master mediator Gary Friedman who taught it to Zen master Norman Fischer who discusses it in his book Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up.

Mindful conversation is made up of 3 key components that we will discuss in more detail in the next section.

3 Key Components to Mindful Conversation

As author Chade-Meng Tan explains in Search Inside Yourself, there are 3 key components to engaging in mindful conversation: listening, looping and dipping.

(1)  Mindful listening

The first step is mindful listening which is simply giving the other person the gift of your full and undivided attention.

A helpful reminder that Tan suggests is to:

“Remind yourself that because this person is so valuable to you, he or she is entitled to all your attention and all the space and time needed to express himself or herself.” ¹

As I said earlier, give them your full attention and if your mind wanders, gently bring it back.

You will not ask questions, speak, judge what they are saying or ask questions – you will simply give them your attention. It is ok to acknowledge what they are saying with a nod or by saying, “I understand” or “I see”

As Zen master Norman Fischer said:

“Listening is magic: it turns a person from an object outside, opaque or dimly threatening, into an intimate experience, and therefore into a friend. In this way, listening softens and transforms the listener.” ²

(2)  Looping

The second step is called ‘looping’, as in closing the loop of communication. When we communicate with others, we are essentially transferring something from one mind to another.

So, basically you have something in your mind that you want to convey to me, you convey it to me by translating it into words addressed to me. I then take in those words and create an impression in my mind of what you were trying to convey, meaning I now understand what was in your mind.

The problem is that if I don’t hear what you are saying, I may draw incorrect conclusions or make faulty assumptions which may snowball if the conversation continues in this direction.

In order to prevent misunderstanding, Friedman suggests using a technique called looping where you check in and confirm that the loop of communication has been closed.

It is simple and works like this. When the speaker is done speaking, the listener simply repeats back as carefully and concisely what she thinks she has heard the speaker say. The idea is not to add in any judgment, comments or interpretations – just repeat it back as verbatim as possible.

The speaker listens and lets the listener know what was accurate and complete and what was misunderstood or inaccurate. They go back and forth until the speaker believes they were properly understood by the listener at which point the loop of communication is closed.

The idea is that you cannot speak until you have shown that you have fully listened and understood.

Looping is a cooperative effort where the speaker and listener work together to make sure the listener has completely understood what the speaker is trying to say.

(3)  Dipping

The last component of mindful conversation is a technique that Gary refers to as ‘dipping’ and is the practice of listening to ourselves.

The main reason we fail to listen to others is that we are distracted. Half of us is listening to them and the other half is occupied talking to ourselves.

Whereas looping has us listening to the other person and demonstrating that we have listened, dipping has us listening to or checking in with ourselves.

Dipping is simply mindfulness during listening. The idea is to notice and acknowledge our internal distractions as we are listening. Then try not to judge them and then let them go if possible. If we cannot let them go, let them be, but just be aware of how they may be affecting our listening.

Now that we understand the concept of mindful conversation, it’s time to put it into practice.

Like exercise, any type of mindfulness is useless, and you will not benefit from it unless you practice it.

Practicing Mindful Conversation

There are two types of ways you can practice mindful conversation: formal and informal.

Formal mindful conversation

In Search Inside Yourself, Tan outlines a simple artificial method to practice the 3 components of mindful conversation: listening, looping, and dipping.

It works like this:

Part I: Monologue

Person A speaks uninterrupted for 4 minutes and if they run out of something to say both parties sit in silence until the person thinks of something else to say.

Person B sits there and simply listens and acknowledges if necessary while engaging in some mindful dipping when appropriate.

Part II: Resolution

Once the 4 minutes is up, person B repeats back to person A what she believed she heard. They then engage in looping and A lets B know what they heard correctly and what was misinterpreted. This continues until A believes they were heard correctly by B and the conversation loop can be closed.

They then switch places and repeat the process.

The idea is that by doing this exercise it will give you formal practice so that you will get better at it for when you want to use it informally.

Informal mindful conversation

This is how most of us will use or practice mindful conversation and it simply involves using the three components that we discussed earlier.

While we can use mindful conversation during any conversation, Tan recommends using it during times that your conversation is at an impasse such as during a conflict.

  First, give the speaker the gift of your undivided attention by practicing mindful listening. Be mindful of your body and should any strong feeling come to you, simply acknowledge it and let it go, if possible.

  Next, once they finish speaking, show that you were paying attention by asking if you can repeat back what they said. You can say something like “I want to repeat back what you said to make sure I understood it, is that ok?”

  You will then want to repeat their corrections back to make sure you understood them correctly. Repeat this until they are satisfied that you have understood exactly what they have said.

  Lastly, it is now your turn to speak. You may wish to respectfully invite them to do some looping (repeating back what you have said) to make sure there is no miscommunication on what you are saying.

Mindful Conversation – A Great Example of Looping!

We will just assume that this was just the start of the conversation.

Let’s also assume that they read this Prime Your Pump blog post and they proceeded to engage in some looping until the man was understood by his wife so they could close the conversation loop!

Until next time, keep listening, looping and dipping and as always…PYMFP!

-Rick

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References

¹ Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace)  by Chade-Meng Tan

² Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up by Norman Fischer