Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind

by Nancy Kline

to take time to think is to gain time to live.

The principle seems sound everywhere: to take the time to listen thoroughly is to increase the total time available to you. Interrupting takes twice as long.

Is there anything standing in the way of your doing your job well?

What is one thing you have always wanted to tell me to improve your work life here?

What am I not noticing in this practice, and if you were in my position what...

You could occasionally spend fifteen minutes thinking about the successes you have had recently and taking just a second to feel proud of yourself.

When correcting misinformation, do it with a tone and facial expression that says, ‘You are intelligent.’ If, for example, the student is studying for a vocabulary test and you say, ‘What is the definition of volatile?’ and the student says, ‘Of one’s own free will,’ say with a gentle tone and a nod, ‘Changeable.’ Don’t even say, ‘No that is not right. The correct definition is “changeable”.’

‘What is going well for you?’ or ‘What did you do yesterday that you feel good about today?’ will raise the Thinking Environment to start the day. Remember to give everyone a turn to speak.

A course I recommend for this is one created by Lee Glickstein. The course is called Speaking Circles. The book he has written about it is Be Heard Now.

they are learning how to give real attention to each other without judgement or embarrassment, how to find what is genuinely good in something and say it, how to treat others the way they would like to be treated, how not to interrupt and how to ensure that everyone gets a turn.

‘If you knew that you are a fine scholar and writer and an intelligent human being even when your professor is attacking you, how would you feel as you start the next chapter of your dissertation?’

Inez McCormack of Northern Ireland. I was moved by one thing in particular that she said: ‘If you base your analysis of organizations on the premise that what matters is the relationship between yourself and one other person, you assert a challenge to the very nature of organizations and this changes the world.’ Do we dare?

any act of love deepens when it is embraced by the act of thinking for yourself.

you let your own heart and mind mingle with integrity and then welcome into yourself the heart and mind of someone else.

To love you have to give attention to another person. At the same time you have to hold on to yourself, never losing yourself in them.

If your heart is full of passion but your thoughts are scattered, love is thin. Love grows when your mind is perched right on the edge of this very second.

Love is the two of you being yourselves, revealing yourselves to each other, nimbly, never losing the integrity of your own thinking or your profound interest in each other.

Love begins with the act of respect for who you are and is driven by an insatiable desire to know the core of the other person.

Love craves reality. In this state of giving each other attention and staying autonomous, love gestates when you say what you really think, bone-deep.

When someone wants to know what you really think, love can begin. When someone wants to know all of what you think, all of what you feel, when they are respectful of it, fascinated by it, not needing to control it, love grows.

Love thrives in your words but also in the quiet between you where words cannot camouflage the truth of who you are.

Bringing Love to Life

You can begin by stopping interruption. If from this moment you never again interrupted each other, you would already have begun a deeper level of attention, connection and respect between you.

Stop particularly the arrogant act of finishing each other’s sentences. Instead, enjoy each other’s search for your own just-right word or phrase.

agree that each evening you will ask about each other’s day and listen all the way through without giving advice or making comments. You will pay attention, eyes on the ...

Just sit down together, be still, give each other relaxed, full attention and approximately equal turns, and listen. You will find that very little can replace it or equal it.

Listen without interruption or distraction for five minutes, then ten. Love is this simple to nurture.

And, starting today if you can, tell each other precisely what you admire, respect, even adore in each other. Do this every day without fail – and always after an argument; during it if humanly possible. Restrict your criticisms to one fifth of all your interactions.

Propose changes more often than you complain.

They then take five minutes each to appreciate each other with no whisper of criticism. Topics which are good catalysts for appreciation include: why I am glad I married you; why I am proud of you when we are in public; what you do as a lover that I love; ways I think you are a good parent; what I miss most about you when you are away.

Touch each other so awarely that you cannot ‘wander away’.

Don’t compete, with each other or with each other’s past. Enjoy each other in the present.

Love and thinking need each other.

‘The best thing you can do for your children is to listen to them.’

Not infantilizing our children also means asking what dreams reside in their soul. It means paying attention to them without urgency, listening to them with fascination, showing them that they will not be interrupted, that they will not be humiliated even when they go out on a limb with a wacky idea.

Not infantilizing our children would mean finding out what they are assuming when they are unable to think clearly and then removing their assumption with an Incisive Question.

‘Sweetie, if you knew that you are not stupid, that in fact you are very intelligent, no matter what Hamish says, what would you do about him today?’

Worry is almost always the product of an assumption, a parasite in our mind. If you ask yourself, ‘What am I assuming right now that is causing me to worry?’ you will know immediately and you can remove the assumption by asking an Incisive Question. Almost always the worry will recede.

‘What are you assuming,’ I asked her, ‘that makes you worry so intensely between nine and midnight?’ ‘That he is dead in an alley somewhere.’

‘That’s possible,’ I said, ‘Spencer might be lying dead in an alley. But what might you be assuming that makes that worry you so intensely?’

‘I am assuming that I have no purpose in life without my son, that if he dies I might as well not exist.’

‘What is your positive opposite of “have no purpose and might as well not exist?”’ She said, ‘I guess it is that my life has its own core.’ (Isn’t it satisfying to get their words?) ‘If you knew,’ I asked slowly and softly, ‘that your life has its own core, how would you feel between nine and midnight each weekend?’

our dreams don’t die. They sleep, waiting for the right conditions to come along and entice them awake.

‘What do you want to think about, Eric?’ he asked.

‘is there anything more that comes to mind about this, that you want to say?’

‘What might you be assuming that could be stopping you from finding like-minded people to discuss this with?’

‘Of course you alone can do something, Eric. All big things begin with one person deciding they can do something.’

The assumption ‘I alone cannot do anything’ was not true. It was a limiting bedrock assumption about how life works.

‘Eric, if you knew that you alone can do something, how would you go about finding like-minded people to discuss this with?’ Eric frowned. ‘You’ll have to ask me that one more time,’ he said. ‘I didn’t quite follow you.’

‘Let me ask you again,’ Kyle said. ‘If you knew that you alone can do something, how would you go about finding like-minded people to discuss this with?’