MENTAL DIET

HEART TO HEART

Heart to heart is listening with the heart and communicating with the heart. Heart to heart goes beyond understanding the words of another to understanding the feelings behind the words of another. Heart to heart is at the heart of effective communication.

Until there is an emotional connection behind the verbal communication there will be room for misunderstanding. Until there is an emotional connection the other person will feel unloved and misunderstood in your interpersonal relationships. Until you understand the feelings involved you will be unable to resolve the issue that revolves around your interpersonal relationships. Until you get the emotional message behind the verbal communication you will never get to understand the other person. Understanding births empathy-empathy implies walking in the other person’s shoes; standing where they stand because where they stand determine what they see; it is feeling what they feel. Empathy produces compassion and when the other person senses and feels that he or she is emotionally understood-the individual feels loved and cared for. And when decisions flow from a compassionate heart the other person would not resist.

Listening with the heart to understand the other person does not equate consent or agreement to what the other person is saying but rather acknowledging the feelings and the right to feel that way. Empathic communication or heart to heart is not an easy pie to chew but it is a complex pie to chew as you must interpret the verbal communication according to the individual’s emotional state; at times the non-verbal communication or body language speaks volume more than mere words.

Heart to heart is your ability to suspend your own agenda and your desire to fix the problem long enough to listen with the heart so that your mind can understand the other person’s frame of reference or thinking and emotional state. You seek first to understand before your desire to be understood. And to understand another is a process that culminates in the discovery of what you never did know about the other and you will realize that these discoveries will lift your interpersonal relationships to a higher level of harmony.