“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” Alexander Graham Bell

“Tell her your number is One long. One short. One long.” I looked up from my lego blocks on the kitchen floor and watched as my older sister followed mom’s directions. She was excited to call her friend with our new phone. The telephone man had just finished installing our new party-line phone. Us kids were all in a dither. Now instead of driving to the neighbours in the old farm truck, if we needed to organize where we were meeting for the next 4H event or needed to plan what to bring for the next potluck, we could just call. 

“It will ring her house?” My sister looked skeptical. 

“Yes, but you have to be careful what you say. Our phone line is connected with five other families. You don’t know who is listening in.” Mom wiped her hands on her apron and bent over to pick up the last of the pieces of garbage left by the telephone man. 

She dialled her friends number using the knob on the side of the phone. She turned it three times all the way around and waited. I watched to see what would happen.

“Hello, Mrs. Finch? Hi, yes this is Marie. Yes, Helens’ daughter. I’m good, how are you?” My sister stood there for a long time listening to a long list of woes. “Sorry you’re not feeling well. Yes, I know the phone is loud, sorry about that. Oh hi, Mrs. Lawson, I didn’t realize you were on the party line too. Yes, it is amazing what these new-fangled machines can do.”

“Now Mrs.Finch is talking to Mrs.Lawson.” Marie sighed and whispered to us as she stood there for a few minutes. “Wait don’t hang up Mrs. Finch. Well, I called your number because I wanted to talk with your daughter Lydia. Ok thanks.” My sister rolled her eyes at me, making me laugh out loud. “Hi Lydia. We got our new phone. What? Oh, hi Mr. Dole. Sorry sir, we won’t be on the phone long.” 

It took about thirty minutes for my sister to be able to talk to her friend, but for me as I listened in, this seemed like a radio show acted out, live. It was like a great comedy, because you never new who was going to join the conversation and when or if you’d be able to talk to the person you called.

Past party lines of the 1970’s, like what our family and many other people had, feels a little like the social media and busy-ness of today.

It’s great to talk to people and take a peak into their world and they into yours, but at times it can be so distracting. Our minds can become too cluttered.

So how to we learn to listen in a noisy world?

Learning to Wrestle…

Sometimes the noise all around us – especially in the online world – is a little like talking on a party line telephone. It only adds to the clutter and distractions that we hear inside our own heads.

That’s what I wrestled with especially at the start of this year. I told myself that there was no other way to get through it, except to work hard, put my ‘chin up’ and ‘fake it till you make it.’ I pushed myself to my own limit and…  dove headfirst into the start of burn out. 

Not really the smartest thing to do, I know. But in all honesty, it was like I was in a fog that wouldn’t go away.

Slowly, after a few months of pushing down my feelings, pretending that the clutter would just go away, I plunged deeper into a downward spiral. The impact of not noticing what was going on inside me began to affect me physically and emotionally.

I had many nights where I would wake up in the middle of the night panicking, filled with fear that I would never be able to get past the obstacles to become who I was created to be. I feared the future. But most of all I felt like a failure for working so hard and not being able to “make it happen” for myself in my writing and creativity.

I realized that so far I hadn’t had any big moment, or any great success in creating work that mattered to me. All I had was small moves in the right direction. But all those feelings came at me in one moment and what had been hidden came to the surface.

No wonder we don’t want to notice ourselves. It’s horribly painful sometimes, and embarrassing to discover what’s really going on.

I allowed myself to cry, admitting that I was cringing about the pace of life I’d taken on and about my disappointed expectations. Somehow that helped. My husband encouraged me to stay steady and keep going, that the big picture would become clearer as I kept moving forward.

I felt better, not because anything was fixed or solved. I was relieved because for the first time in months I gave myself permission to listen to what had been true all along, whether I’d been able to hear it or not.

Move Beyond the Clutter

When we show up and listen to ourselves, we find the hidden wisdom and clarity we need to move forward. [Tweet this]

In those moments we uncover the true and authentic version of ourselves. We receive the guidance we need to find our way home.

Listening to ourselves is rewarding, but it’s not easy. It’s difficult and inconvenient. It’s also embarrassing and frustrating. Its discouraging.

The truth is we spend almost everyday ignoring ourselves in one way or another.

Think about it. Someone asks you how you’re doing, and even though its been a bad day, typically we tell them we’re fine. We do that without really thinking. It’s really easy and somewhat expected of us to ignore ourselves… it becomes a habit.

But we need to start listening to ourselves that we may or may not want to know. To be willing to notice what’s happening inside of us and around us.

If we don’t step back and notice who we are becoming, we run the risk of losing ourselves. [Tweet this]

The truth of it is, there is no way we will ever be able to write or create work that matters – anything that might mean something to ourselves or someone else – if we don’t know ourselves first. 

So in the past couple of months I’ve decided to do more of that… listening that is. It’s been uncomfortable to hear what’s going on inside of me. Sometimes I just want to shut it off because I can’t believe my own discouraging thoughts. Yet, in between all of that clutter, the aha moments have been amazing.

I’ve discovered that as I stopped focusing on my fear, uncertainty and quit pretending like I’ve got this, that it has freed me to become who I actually am.

What would happen if we would begin to listen to ourselves? What if we admitted that we don’t have it all together and was honest with ourselves about where we actually are?

Maybe we would find the relief from our worry and fear. Perhaps we would start to find the happiness we long for.

Maybe in the messiness of life, we would finally create the space to discover what we set out for all along – not the viral posts, fame or fortune – but our own voice.

I think if you can stand the silence and learn to really listen to yourself without judgement of what you find there, you’ll discover that your instinct and intuition is more believable than you ever thought it was.  You’ll find moments of hidden wisdom and clarity like I did. 

Learning the lost art of listening will help you get past the clutter and noise so you can uncover the most unique, most authentic version of you. 

How have you learned the art of listening to yourself? Please join the conversation in the comments, I’d love to hear your story.