The one thing you should do to get a deep connection with people.
This is what I’ve learned after several months of analyzing human’s interactions
If we take a step back and look at our interactions with others, how often do we hear sentences like?
· “It feels like that I’ve known you forever”
· “This is the first time i tell someone about this”
· “You are the only person that I can talk to about this”
As we know these are the sentences that people say when they feel open up, connected and in security with someone, and looking back at our lives, our best relationships happened with people with whom we shared these words.
As far as i can remember, I wasn’t hearing these words at all, and the lack of these compliments made me notice how important they are, especially in all aspects of life.
Socializing was not an easy task for me. In fact, it drained all my energy and left me emotionally dead. I struggled a lot to build meaningful relationships, but regardless of how hard I tried, it always felt so difficult to connect with others.
That failure was killing me and drowning me into a massive pain. My life felt empty and pointless. I had no one to talk to and no shoulder to cry on. I was starving for the feeling of being surrounded with people with whom I could share my thoughts and spend some time.
It was at that moment when i could not handle it anymore, when I decided to stand up for it, seeking for solutions.
From that point I took serious actions and dived into a process of learning. I had spent the last year studying about human interactions fetching the components of deep connection. I was reading actually anything related to this topic. I even made a step further and stared analyzing every aspect of my relationships with others, understanding what really can make the click.
This article is therefore made after several months of learning and practicing. It will eventually deliver for you the steps you need to follow in order to build up strong connections with others. But First!
Why should you connect with other more than ever?
As I have described above how being alone felt, it’s actually nothing compared to what people around world are facing. In fact, loneliness is causing more harm than we could ever expect and I think it’s important to cast the lights on that.
While we seem more connected than ever, today, we are in fact more separated than we have ever been in centuries.
According to a 2018 national survey by Cigna, loneliness levels have reached an all-time high, with nearly half of 20,000 U.S. adults reporting they sometimes or always feel alone.
Such numbers are alarming because of the health and mental health risks associated with loneliness. According to a meta-analysis co-authored by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, lack of social connection heightens health risks as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or having alcohol use disorder. She has also found that loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity (Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 10, №2, 2015).
“There is robust evidence that social isolation and loneliness significantly increase risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds that of many leading health indicators,” Holt-Lunstad says.
As we can notice this is a serious affair, I want you now to take a deep breath, I am going to guide you through the deep connection process.
The deep connection formula.
We can all agree that our main purpose is not surviving, as much as thriving. From Maslow’s perspective, an American psychologist who was known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in the middle of the 19th,
Physiological and safety needs are in the bottom, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization are however are on the top.
That means we basically want to feel validated, accepted and understood by others. The thing you should master the most to get deep connection with people and reach their highly hierarchical needs is the art of listening!
“Being listened to and heard is one of the greatest desires of the human heart. And those who learn to listen are the most loved and respected.”
— Richard Carlson
Throughout my analyzing process I have found that strong connections can be divided in two parts:
Part 1: Listening
We have spent years learning how to read and write but what about listening? What training or education have we had that enables us to listen so we can really, deeply understand another human being from his own frame of reference? Shouldn’t it be worth it then to highlight the path to master the art of listening? Shouldn’t it be worth it to repeat the quote again?
“Being listened to and heard is one of the greatest desires of the human heart”.
—Richard Carlson
How to be a good listener?
Listening is not just receiving the other part’s sound waves, listening is not a passive mode, it’s an active one and it has its own rules.
First Rule: Emphatic listening
It’s important to approach listening with the right mindset, I am not here to teach you techniques to control, manipulate or intimidate people, and if you are thinking that way, please consider taking a shift and think of listening as emphatic listening. When I say emphatic listening I mean listening with the intent to understand, or more… to deeply understand, it’s not about us but about the other person and what is he feeling.
“The essence of emphatic listening is not that you agree with someone; it’s that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.” — Stephan R.Covey
Emphatic listening is powerful because it shows that you are deeply immerged in the story of the person in front of you and that you are focusing on the deep communication of his human soul(because when we’re telling a story we are delivering emotions not just words ). That’s the best way to make a deposit into the Emotional bank account. You can’t really expect someone to open up to you if they feel that you are not honest with them, or maybe trying to be manipulative or self-serving.
Second Rule: do not interrupt!
Do not interrupt others while they are talking! , note that carefully! If being listened to is one the greatest desires of the human heart, being interrupted is one of its greatest frustrations. If it comes to ignoring calls while you are listening, do it. That’s very important!! . Just sit calmly, be patient and wait until he finishes, I promise you, you are not going to die and the world will not fall apart :p.
The problems you may face while listening
Many people go to feeling responsible of what the other part is dealing with and try using any way possible to make them feel happier and help them overcome their issues,
However this may be the cause of one of these three problems:
1)Make you feel frustrated, because your mind will be processing to find a solution.
2)Make you feel bad, if you can’t see any way out of it.
3)Bring up discomfort to the conversation.
In order to avoid all that, let me clarify one thing:
Most people don’t expect from others to solve their problems, and if they do, they will simply ask for your advice. Often people just want to talk and what they are really expecting is in fact listening, understanding and validation.
Part 2: Validating
That’s actually the trickiest part and that’s when the deep connections really happen.
Validating is mainly about understanding what the other person is experiencing making them sense that their feelings are totally justified, and that’s what people are really looking for when they are exposing their inner world to you.
That’s why you have to make sure, before you start talking, to take a step back and reconsider the whole context including the experience of the person that you are talking to. Do not try to project your own experiences into other people’s stories. Remember!
“I open up with you, unless you understand me and my unique situation and feelings, you won’t know how to advise or counsel me. What you say is good and fine but it doesn’t quite pertain to me.”-Stephan R.Covey
Here is an example to demonstrate validating.
Example:
Let’s say your friend is fat and starts complaining about the process of getting fit:
“I have tried many diets, tried to jog daily, went to the gym, read motivational books, but it’s in vain, I always give up before getting any results, it feels so difficult.”
What your friend is experiencing here is a certain form of frustration: He’s not looking for motivation, discipline or what type of exercise or diet he should do. What your friend really needs to know however is that it’s okay to feel that way (validating) and that it’s something normal to fail at the begging.
Let’s now consider two types of possible reactions.
Reaction 1: No validation
In this type of reactions you start answering by
“Look, I think you should be more committed, to get a result you need to make sacrifices, if you choose to let yourself get dragged by laziness you will remain like that your whole life”
While this response can be true, trust me it won’t be helpful neither for your friend nor for your relationship with him. This kind of answers can lead him to feel blamed.
By responding this way you’ll give him the impression that you are blaming him and that you are not considering all the efforts that he has been doing. Always remember that each one’s personal experience and environment are different; therefore everybody has his own brain composition that designs his own perception of life. That’s why we should never judge other people’s opinion and we should acknowledge that everyone experiences their own truth.
As Seth Godin says:
“The other person is always right.
Always right about feelings.
About the day he just experienced.
About the fears in his life.
About the narrative going on, unspoken, in his head.
About what he likes and what he dislikes.
You’ll need to travel to this place of ‘right’ before you have any chance at all of actual communication.”
–Seth Godin
This kind of answer therefore, is not going to help us create deep bounds with others, and it’s probably better if we consider the reaction below.
What you should probably say is:
“I totally understand that, it really sucks when we try as hard as we can and still don’t reach our goals, believe me I know exactly how you feel.”
That’s it, that’s all you need to say, that’s how you’ll make the other person feel understood and validated,
by then, he will go further and ask for your advice or will just keep talking and feel connected to you.
“When we are opening up to others, we are usually not in search of advice and motivating calendar motto but understanding. Which is good news, as being understanding is a lot easier than solving problems.” — Julia Horvath
Putting it all together:
In order to reach deep connection and long lasting relationships with others you have to:
· Be a good listener; practice the active mode of listening by giving your full attention to the person that you are talking to. Go to the point of declining phone calls when it’s possible.
· Being a non-judgmental person, try to see things from the other person’s perspective
· Don’t Look for solutions or try to solve other people’s problems when they didn’t ask you,
your job is to show empathy, understanding and most importantly validation
“Connection is the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued.”
— Brené Brown
