Listen, first, to your own life. 

I know I think and write a lot about listening. 

Listening is among our most powerful capabilities as humans. 

I do try to really listen to others and —pivotal— to myself, to what my own life is saying or trying to tell me.

How will I ever be able to hear others if I’ve given up listening to the person closest to me, the person within me?

Without attempting to be too obscure, if we stop listening to our own lives, really listening, we will distort what others are trying to tell us because our own unheard lives (ignored lives) will not stop trying to break in and be heard. We will “hear” others while aching to be heard, like listening to a radio station with limited and distorted reception.

Let me illustrate with a benign (somewhat) illustration. 

A friend returns from a holiday and wants to tell you about it. When the conversation is over you realize you’ve done all the talking about your holidays and your life and what you’ve been doing and you hardly heard anything your friend tried to say. 

Your unheard life took over! 

Taking over conversations, competing with others for the “best” story, talking over others, reveals an unheard life!

Someone asks you how you are but ends up telling you how he or she is and he or she has heard nothing about you!

You just met a person who’s given up listening to his or her own life.