Listening

 Hello again Natural Health Family. I hope you enjoyed the great weather over the weekend. Last weekend I was able to play golf and raise money for a charity. I also celebrated my grandparents 65th wedding anniversary. Something that has been coming up more for me is listening and how we interact with others and the world around us. Let’s explore the topic of listening. 

What kind of music do you like to listen to? What really gets your gears going? Is it country music, rock and roll, classic rock, heavy metal, hip hop, rap, jazz, the blues, alternative, maybe disco? Whatever it is, I bet that when you listen to it you get a certain feeling. Perhaps your body moves to the beat or rhythm of the song. When you listen, are you trying to think of anything else? Sometimes when we listen to music we really get into it and get lost in it. It is usually because we are not trying to do anything else, be anywhere else, think about something else, etc. Music is fun in that way but we can also carry that over to other aspects of life. 

 When do you think you listen better, to something that you don’t have any interest in or to something that you are genuinely curious about learning? We all have different tastes in different areas of life which helps bring diversity and keeps life fun. However, we can also look at listening as an art or skill that we can use to connect with others or hear things that we would otherwise miss. So just like music, when we are really enjoying it we don’t try to get anything out of the music, we don’t think about other things while listening, we are not figuring out what is the beat or instruments being played. Simply, we are letting the music flow and enjoying listening to it. When we listen like this with others we start to connect more and enjoy the conversation more. Enjoying it more we pick up things that we wouldn’t otherwise in the past. 

Sometimes we can all get caught up in the business of life which may lead us to forget to connect more with others. When we are able to let the world aside and really just listen to what is going on around us including the people who we interact with, the more we allow ourselves to notice much of the good that the world has to offer. I encourage you to listen more today or even this week and see how your world changes.

Thanks for reading.

Dr. Chip