What Is It Costing You Not To Listen | Christine Miles

We explore why listening is the missing human skill, how to organize stories as the listener, and how simple tools can ease quiet depletion and conflict. Christine Miles shares The Listening Path and shows how “tell me more” turns noise into meaning at home, at work, and within.

• listening as an under-taught human skill
• hearing versus understanding
• the listener’s job to organize the story
• using the Compass and tell me more
• asking how did that make you feel
• quiet depletion and internal signals
• systems thinking for culture and teams
• scalable listening education in schools
• practical tools for parents and leaders
• go first to see, hear, and understand

Join the Delay the Binge Early Access list at delaythebinge.com. Go grab Christine’s book, What Is It Costing You Not to Listen? Connect with Christine at thelisteningpath.com.

Transcript

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Framing Quiet Depletion

SPEAKER_02 0:12

If you've ever walked into a room smiling while your insides are screaming, I am so tired. This episode is for you. We talk a lot about habits on this show. Overeating, overworking, over pleasing, all the ways you try to hold it together. You're listening to the Plus One Theory Podcast. I'm your host, Pam Dwyer, best-selling author, speaker, and creator of Delay the Binge, where we talk about pausing with purpose, breaking the cycle of brokenness, and finishing stronger than you started. One small shift at a time.

Meet Christine Miles And Her Mission

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Today I'm talking with Christine Miles, founder of Equip, creator of The Listening Path, and keynote speaker, and author of What Is It Costing You Not to Listen? Christine has built her life and business around one core belief. Listening is the human skill we never taught. We desperately need. In our families, our workplaces, and in the way we relate to ourselves. So, Christine, I'm so grateful you're here. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I was just uh yeah, I have built my life and career around that. I wish I had a lot more lanes to swim in.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

As you were talking. You can just like duplicate yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Well, it's more like I, you know, this is definitely the area I want to be swimming in. But it's also that I wasn't very good at math or science. So, you know, do what you're good at.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

I think you're incredible. Your book is amazing. Anyone listening, please get that book. It really helped me a lot. And I think it would help pretty much anyone in any avenue, you know, any any place that they're at in their lives.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Well, listening matters, I believe. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

You're so welcome. Um I want to start uh with your core belief about listening,

Why Listening Is A Missing Skill

SPEAKER_02 2:11

by the way. What what do you mean when uh you say we're always listening to a story?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Well, I have a yeah, my my core belief about listening, I I do think it's the most underdeveloped skill that most underdeveloped important skill that we're never taught. And the reason that I believe that to be true is because only 2% of people worldwide have any formal listening training. And ironically, I have a master's in psychology, I have a certificate from what was at the time a world-renowned facility in structural family therapy, and I too had no formal listening training. This comes back from my early life where I learned to listen differently. So, and that's the other thing that's important, I think, is to really define what I mean by listening, which is going beyond performing like we're listening or just hearing the words, but really being able to find the meaning or shine a light on the story below the surface. So that's that's what I mean by by listening. And um, yeah, and the follow-up to that is that's why I always think you're listening to a story, because we think we're just listening to words. But really, whether it's one sentence, one paragraph, one word, it's you're just dropped in the middle of the story. We all are each day, and we just don't realize it, whether that's in business or at home.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Well, I just said that the other day in uh in an interview that I was doing. They wanted me to start with my backstory, and I said, I I think I remembered hearing you say, you know, a good storyteller needs to start at the beginning. Yeah. Not in the middle or at the end.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah. Well, that's just not how we're we're as much as we're taught how to speak and how little we're taught to listen, the problem is the same. Even though we're taught to speak, we're really not very good at telling stories, uh, whether that's the story of the problem in our business or the story of why, you know, what happened today. We're not taught how to organize what we're saying in a way that it's easy for people to follow or listen. So I believe the paradigm shift should be that it's the listener's job to organize the speaker,

Organizing The Speaker As Listener

SPEAKER_01 4:18

not the other way around. We're relying too heavily on the speaker to do a good job at that at this point. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

I I and I've really tried to put a lot of what I've learned from your book into play with my 11-year-old twin grandsons. Oh, how's that going? The tell me moral line is incredible. And I know we're gonna talk about that a little bit later, but I can't wait to discuss that because it really works.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

And there you said, let me just say this again because this is music to my ears. You said 10-year-old, no, 11-year-old twin. 11-year-old twin boys, but significant is the boys because people don't think boys want to talk. Uh, they do if you give them the right cues. And also, there's there's a book called How to Talk to Boys, and you have to distract them more than you have to distract girls. So, but I'm glad it's working. That's really lovely.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Yeah, so I wanted to thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Um, well, let's before we go there, let's tell the listeners a little bit about all that you've done with listening, like equip and the listening path, and then a little bit about your

Parenting And The Power Of Cues

SPEAKER_02 5:21

book too. I I guess I want to just I want you to brag a little bit because it's a it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Well, that's not in my nature, but I'll try. So uh not that I I'm not very proud of the work that I've done. I just that's just not uh that's not something that comes easily in terms of uh the bragging part, but I'll try to own it. How about we do that? So uh yeah, so my my company is called equipped and and that's EQ, UI P T. So a little bit of a play on words because the work that my company focuses on is really equip equipping people with the human skills. Because we're taught in school these IQ abilities, but we're, you know, how to get smarter from an intellectual and a knowledge perspective. You can't really improve your IQ, but from your knowledge perspective, but we're not taught as

Building EQ With Equip

SPEAKER_01 6:08

much about our EQ. And so business leaders, employees, they get stuck when they're w in the workplace because they haven't nurtured or developed these skills. And so that's the work that my company's always done, and I've done most of my career, has been on the soft skills side. And I believe that listening sits at the is the foundation of the house of all those skills. That when you learn to understand, and when I say listening, I mean to understand yourself and others, then that's a key differentiator to success and the foundation of emotional intelligence. So what I've done in in recent years since writing the book and and creating a whole formalized system that I've been working on for almost a decade of really how to teach this skill in a way that's repeatable, measurable, and scalable. Because I think listening has been made way too complicated. Uh it's hard. People say it's hard, um, even though they think they're good at it, by and large, and we needed to modernize it for the ever-changing world because we're not communicating in the same ways and we don't have the kind of time.

Modernizing Listening For Work

SPEAKER_01 7:18

So we need to be more efficient as well as more proficient at this skill. Oh my goodness. It it is.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

And I think you're right. It it seems to be uh more apparent to me, and especially since I your book brought my attention to all of it. Wow, people do not listen, they're in too much of a hurry.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Well, we have a lot of demands on us, a lot of things have changed. Like technology, you know, I think we're atrophying in our in our skills because we're not with each other as much. COVID changed some things. That's part of why I I wrote the book in 21, 2000, the end of COVID. Um, uh launched it in 2021 because I felt like the world was finally going to be ready to to listen about listening. I've been, I often joke I've been selling air for a very long time because people know it's important, but they they don't really put time or attention to it, and that's because they nobody's ever put time and attention to it. We're just told to listen, not taught how. But um, but now that we've had this, I knew this universal experience of the lockdown and the psychological impact and more remote work was all gonna be an impact on how organizations um were showing up and and leading and and driving results. So I it got more it was ready for the world to listen. So um, but I I also think there's a lot of factors in in why it's so so hard for us to listen well. The world's just spinning faster for a lot of us, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

It really is. And my company, um, we go, we work with a lot of small businesses in helping them uh educate them about marketing and the importance of it and why they should invest in it. But I found that over and over, just like you said, we go in and there would be communication issues, there would be drama. Yeah. That stuff that was in our in the way, it was like

Communication Breakdowns At Work

SPEAKER_02 9:13

a wall. We couldn't go through with what we wanted to do for them. And man, I wish I had read your book back then.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Well, it's interesting that that's often what uh that you know, most things come down to a communication problem. And here's what I saw doing the work, and I'm not the person that should ever come in to solve your you know, your big strategic vision or problems, not that I don't have opinions, but that's not my expertise. It's really how to maximize on the human level how to the to get the best out of people teams together, working together. But what I what I saw is that I was solving the same problem over and over again. And that problem wasn't what people were saying, it was what wasn't being heard or understood. So I was making a decent living at going and like just basically bridging relationships and helping people have difficult conversations to unwind misunderstandings. Whether that was in the boardroom, by the way, or in a in a meeting room between team members or on a leadership team, and I thought, I first of all, I couldn't scale me. There was only so much of me. I'm I'm good at helping people unwind that stuff. I like doing it, but I thought this is ridiculous. We're just don't have a common language to understand and listen to understand in a way that people can replicate it. And we don't have a system for that. And and as a background in systems therapy, as a systems therapist, I started my career at 22 as a home-based family structural systems therapist. Fix the system, don't fix the identified patient or the person with the problem, and you'll have a longer-term fix. I thought we need a longer-term fix to this, all this communication

Systems Thinking Over Quick Fixes

SPEAKER_01 10:55

problem that we have.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Oh my goodness, yes. Yes, yes, yes. And now I know that this started your interest in listening, or your how about this? Your skill in listening started very young for you in a relationship with your mom. Can you take us back there just a pinch so we can get the beginning of your story?

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Sure, sure. Yeah, I would say my mother really she shaped it more than taught it. Um both my parents were both very good listeners. And looking back, I see I, you know, because I've basically created a system and a language around what they did a lot of the time, because we had very, we had a lot of um discussions around emotions and things like that. But but my early, earliest memory and my the kind of look, I could lay on the couch and you know go to therapy, so everybody I I come from crazy. Like it was a crazy, I have a crazy background in terms of my family story. My parents had an arranged marriage. If anybody, nobody would look at me and say, Your parents had an arranged marriage. I look like I'm from an upper middle class, white, you know, Hershey, Pennsylvania, and no religion. My father was an atheist, my didn't supported

Origin Story And Early Training

SPEAKER_01 12:06

us if we wanted to be religious, but didn't go to church. So people were like, What do you mean they had an arranged marriage? And it's a longer, more complicated story, but my mother was, you know, very emotionally troubled because she had lost her mother from a very early age. So my grandfather arranged a marriage with my dad, and he somehow said yes, and they got married. There we go. But but I came into the world, I know you can't make it up, right? Um you're just like your head spinning. I you know. Um and I don't I don't talk about that a lot, but it's important that you know we all come from some story. But but my mother lost her mother from from childbirth. My mother's grand my mother's mother, my grandmother, was told not to have children because she had suffered from rheumatic fever as a young child, and this was back in the gosh, in the late 1800s. And um is that right? Yeah, 19, yeah, early 1800s. And early 1900s, you know, because my mother was burn born in 36, I guess. So maybe in the late, you know, early 1900s. And so they didn't have the treatments. Her heart was weak. By the age of 28, she wanted to have a child. They said, don't do it. Your heart's too weak. It you will not survive childbirth. And she ignored that advice for lots of reasons. Um, and part of it was that drive to have a child, and part of it was her own psychological issues. And in comes my mom, has the baby, and then she doesn't survive childbirth. So my mom was set up to believe that she was the cause of her mother's death, and she never really that other, you know, other early losses set her up for a lot of trouble, and you know, that was all below the surface. She was warm and funny and exuberant and loving, and below it was uh this hole that never got filled. So when I came into the world as the only girl, she's like, wow, this is gonna solve, I'm gonna take her pain away. I'm gonna understand what most people don't see, and that was my burden as a child. I was, you know, parentified as a child to do that, and it gave me the greatest gift that I could have, which is to really learn to shine a light on what other people didn't see. And it I started overachieving by the age of so early as high school I could remember, standing, starting to stand out because of that ability.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

You are the epitome of what we talk about a lot on this podcast, which is the plus one theory. And that is all about taking the pain and turning it into purpose or using your struggles as stepping stones. And you did just that. I mean, but at what point did you realize instead of just it's survival, basically, is what you used listening as. But when did you realize it was a skill, you know, instead of just um surviving?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Well, I don't I don't even know that it was a survival skill because my mother wasn't tumultuous or or like or maybe tumultuous isn't the right word, but she wasn't scary or out of control, or you know, it was more that it was an expectation to that I tune into her in this way. I mean, it was a stated expectation.

Turning Pain Into Purpose

SPEAKER_01 15:21

I was I was an in tune child because of that. I I was, you know, the parentified part, I was tune into what people aren't seeing. And I watched her with other people. Even when my mom would express her pain, what I saw was people trying to talk her out of it. Because again, they couldn't reconcile. My mother was beautiful and all these things, and they couldn't reconcile, well, your life's so great now, why are you stuck back here? And they wanted to talk her out of it. And while there was some merit to that, they were also missing the point. They were rushing to what's what they wanted her to believe rather than the pain and understanding what they they couldn't reconcile. So, so you know, I think that skill and what I saw people missed, I was just good at reading the subtext and seeing and beyond the surface of things. Even in my neighbors, I spent a lot of time with my best friend and with a lot of adults, and I had this ability that I I was at a, you know, I was just reading the room and listening at a different level. And my parents, again, were also minded and and and exemplified this. Both my my mother was a fantastic sh listener. So that skill just got developed in such a way that by the time I got on the sports field, because I wasn't the fastest or the strongest, I started to read the game. I was very coachable, all the things you need to, I could take advice, and I was turning that into something that to another level that I really shouldn't have been able to achieve if I hadn't developed this kind of superpower through my experiences at a very young age.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

And it served you well too in your other um areas of expertise, like um counseling or psychology, right? And um and then with the organizations and businesses, uh, you know, is that did you know already that listening was like a superpower for you?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Well, I I knew that when because I started my career as a home-based therapist at 22, like I got hired through a pilot program of the Pennsylvania Hospital that I ended up doing work with for almost six years in some facet pretty intensively. So I was trained via one-way mirrors, and it was high level, you know, I was second generation therapist to Salvador Minucin

From Empath To Teachable Method

SPEAKER_01 17:39

had trained me, like at this very young age. And I was showing up with people that were 10 to 30 years older than me, and I was doing something that the the clinicians were telling me like I had this kind of ability to very quickly connect with people, to build credibility, and I I was standing out at this early age, not because I knew anything, I didn't know anything, but I had no experience. But I went in and I listened to understand the families, and that earned me so much power and credibility with them to try to make a difference. So if, you know, once I was able to combine experience and knowledge with that ability, then I became especially good at that part of my career. But that's how it started to get labeled as, you know, but nobody described it as listening. They just it just because it's just expected that as a therapist you do it well. It's just expected.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Well, did you get labeled like an empath?

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Um I think some people think that, you know, and look, this is I'm so glad you brought that up. That there, you know, what there's lots of definitions of that. Am I highly empathic? Well, I was told to be empathic from to my mother from a very early age, so yes, but we all I also developed a lot of emotional language early on, which also makes you more empathetic when you can actually name and identify feelings and aren't afraid to talk about them. But um, but I what I realized probably about eight years ago, and why I built this system the way I did, is that I would go up into rooms and I would in in front of you know corporations and I would

Structure Beats Talent

SPEAKER_01 19:19

sh I would teach them this skill. And what I realized is I wasn't showing them the magic trick. They thought I was kind of magical in what I was doing. And it was like one guy finally said to me, uh a head of a company said, You did everything today that you taught us to do. But I don't know that most people saw that. And I'm like, they probably didn't, because they just thought, oh, they feel great having been around me, but I just used all the tools that I was teaching. I just didn't have quite as much language around it. And I thought I got to make this so concrete that anybody can do it. Because it's not a magic trick and it's not about being an empath, it's about having the the Right tools to understand and to guide a conversation so that you can listen. Yeah. Structure.

unknown 20:07

Structure.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

That's what everyone keeps drilling into my head. Pam, structure, structure. Because you're going to do this over and over, you know, with delay the binge and your books and all of that, you know, your message. Yeah. And so I was missing structure. I mean, I had it just not as good as it needed to be.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Well, we're so close to it, right? We just look, you I know from talking with you, you you're on my podcast, that that you've lived a life that has helped you navigate through delaying the binge yourself, right? And so it it's I always say you don't go to the art museum and stand six inches from the Monet. You you can't see the you can't see the picture, you can only see the small brush strokes. We're just we're you know, when you're so close to it, it's hard to it's hard to lens back. So that was quite a powerful moment for me when somebody said, Oh, I said I gotta show you where I'm pulling the rabbit out of the hat so you know that the m rabbit is underneath the table and it wasn't a magic trick. I just fooled your eyes a little bit. So yeah.

The 2 Percent Training Problem

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Over here. Yeah. So, you know, that's that was a very profound moment to, and that's really helped me get more concrete about how to do this in a very tangible way. Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

And do you uh have you, I guess you've discovered that there's because I've heard you say it before, that only a tiny percentage of people have formal training in listening.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah, two percent of people worldwide. Yeah. So few essentially. And and when I say training, I mean like maybe a half an hour or half a day. Um you know, I was doing a keynote um last year, and I sometimes I ask people who has anybody had formal listening training, and you know, a few people raised their hand, and I one guy raised his hand and I said, How much? And he said, four days. And I went, wow, that's unheard of. That's unheard of, you know. Um usually, and even with social workers, PhDs, I I we did we did um listening training for a large pharma company. They did 24 hours of negotiation training for the senior account execs, zero listening in the negotiation training.

Hearing Versus Understanding

SPEAKER_01 22:20

That's so crazy, right? It is, and here's why here's why it's not crazy is because we don't really I'm I'm changing this, but we don't have a really clear language around what it means to be a good listener and a process and a a set of tools to do it differently. This is why I created the listening path. What we have is a lot of behaviors that like that help us perform better at listening. It doesn't really help us overcome the major challenges. So it's hard to teach something that you don't have. Like you couldn't teach me golf if you didn't understand the golf swing.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Well, right. And I guess that's what's broken, right, about the way most of us listen is that we think we are listening.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

We do for good reason, because we hear.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

But that's paying attention.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah. Well, hearing's hearing sounds, putting, you know, but that and but it doesn't mean we understand. Just because we hear the words doesn't mean we understand the message or the deeper meaning.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Right, right. I mean, gosh, if anyone that's out there that's married Yeah. No, it's what I call it selective hearing.

Self Awareness And The Pause

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Well, and perception and our own trauma and our own backgrounds and our own brains are the greatest enemy of our listening. So what we really need to do is make sure that we're communicating what we understand, not just assuming what we understand. I always say, like, the words I understand have nothing to do with you understanding and nothing to do with the person feeling understood. You know, that's that's the way we communicate. Understanding is I understand.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Well, and I was so excited to talk to you today because I'm talking in my book, upcoming book, and everything, I talk a lot about quiet depletion. And that's a feeling, you know, of being completely drained on the inside while you're still performing on the outside. Yeah. You know, high functioning, dependable, holding everyone else up, but you're not really listening to your own body or mindset anymore.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Do you teach that at all about how to listen to your own voice, your own body?

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Well, not in a specific way like like someone like yourself, or that you're you're looking at more of a meditative way, but I think understanding yourself, the same tools and the way you listen to someone else is the way you learn to listen to yourself. So you kind of gave an example of this when you said I was on a podcast and they asked you to tell my story, and you remembered me saying, you gotta go back to the beginning. If you know what questions to ask yourself and how to organize yourself, you can unpack a lot of things uh which helps you understand yourself better. This is the self-awareness part, which helps lead to different insights, which ultimately leads to different behaviors. So, yeah, I think listening to yourself, it's such an important part of what we need to learn how to do. And by the way, just on a when you said about we're functioning on the the outside but not on the inside, having, you know, I'm not a specialist in drug and alcohol uh therapy, but I I did do a lot of work in the field during the times that I was a counselor. And the misnomer about even that is that most people who have an alcohol problem are high functioning. Like, you know, we don't realize that most of us are functioning on the outside in some way, and the dysfunction is below the surface,

Managing Pain By Listening To Signals

SPEAKER_01 25:56

which is the whole point of this, right? So whether it's quiet depletion or an addiction, or men or women, we're a lot of us are just in that spot where it's form over real internal function. Yeah. We need to tap into that, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Yes, definitely. And a lot of people think they're broken or they just need, you know, better willpower to stop whatever the urge is, whether it's drinking, eating, or overworking, whatever it is. Sure. But they're just trying to numb out. I guess they don't want to hear what they're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Yeah, well, it's maybe it's just the lesser of two evils. When I so I was in a car accident when I was 28, and I had uh three years of what I call blissful chronic pain. Because once you've had acute pain, which I had spok acute spinal pain, you you'll wish for chronic pain any day. And uh and I remember you know people saying to me, I'd never have spinal surgery, I had cervical injury. And as I was in a I mean, I'm talking like an eight-nine, like not a light pain, like horrific pain on a daily basis. And I and I thought, you could cut my heart out at this point. Like it's the lesser of two evils. I don't if you get rid of the pain, I don't care what you have to do. So sometimes if we're denying, I think because we just we the we're picking the pain that feels l more tolerable to us. I didn't want to have spinal surgery. I said, and I hope in 15 or 20 years they're not doing what they did to me. Now there's a lot of progressive treatments that there's other options. But I didn't have those options back then, um, or I wasn't aware of them. So I think we're often just picking the lesser of two evils, either more subconsciously than consciously. That's the problem.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

Right, exactly. And and we teach about the pause that you can think about that. Yeah. You know, we all know it. It's just we have to remind ourselves, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Well,

The Listening Path Explained

SPEAKER_01 27:49

that, you know, if you if you look at Daniel Goldman's work on emotional intelligence, he's got a seven-step process, and one of them is pause and reflect. I mean, slowing down, I call it slowing down to speed up. When you s slow down to pause, like you're describing, or and listen to yourself and or others, you're not reacting. You're engaging your a different part of your brain, which allows you to make decisions that are that are healthier and with more awareness.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Right. And hearing the signal, right, for pain or I mean, it's not just physical pain like what you were going through. Yeah. It's it's mental. There's stuff that we all deal with in one way or another.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah. You know how I survived those years? Because it took a while to really get to the root cause of what was causing my cervical pain. I had multiple surgeries, and it took a while to figure out it became a complicated problem. I had a physical therapist who taught me how to navigate my world based on what was going on in my neck, and he I knew what to sit on, what not to sit on, how to turn my neck, how to put my hands. Like he taught me how to manage my environment and listen to all of it so that you know some people they don't know what the cause is. And but he he helped me tune into what was causing the pain rather than just realizing, I mean, I was always in pain, but I could at least mitigate it more if I did less of certain things. If I sat on something soft, I'd get mercilessly, like, you know, stabbing pain, and he helped me tune in to sit on this instead of that. It's it's a big part of the same thing you're you're doing emotionally with people is is how to tune into what's what's affecting them. It was a game changer.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

And and just educating yourself. I'm sure that's what the listening path is all about, where we can listen more deeply to others. Is that what you're teaching? Like, I would love to do work with the listening path just to learn from it. But you work with a lot of educators, correct?

Simple Tools You Can Use Now

SPEAKER_01 29:52

So my mission is to globalize listening education around the world because we don't have a common system or language. So I know that sounds lofty, but I really believe this is possible. And and part of it is I figured out how to scale. So while we as a company we only used to serve organizations because it was all what we call service-based work, where we go out and do workshops and in-person events, which we still do and are the most powerful and impactful. I've created licensable programs for elementary classrooms, so we have that live in over 20 classrooms in three different countries and growing so that we can educate. And I what I did was I animated myself to teach the listening path so that I could be the facilitator and coach of the path and the tools, and the teachers could be the facilitators of the language in the classroom. So, so, and then we're scaling that to high schools and then to organizations in 2026. So that's my that's my goal is that listening education should be part of how we're socializing students and teaching this from a very, very early age rather than just reading, writing, math, and speaking. So, yeah. So the story of the path is really you wouldn't go hiking in the woods without tools or supplies in your backpack. That would be crazy. Some people are like, I wouldn't go hiking in the woods regardless. And I'm like, okay, but if I draw had somebody drop you in the woods and you have to stay for two days, you would go in prepared. And we are in the conversational woods all the time unprepared without knowing it. So we get lost on a lot of side trails, we get confused, we miss, we miss the opportunity to really get to see the summit, the place that we see the best view. So the path is really a story around what are the tools you need so that you can listen to understand and navigate to that understanding. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

I mean you're making such a difference for so many people in all areas. So if if someone is listening right now thinking that's me, I need to learn how to listen, or you know, uh, my workplace needs to learn to listen, or you know, we need our teachers to learn this. Yeah, what's a what's a simple practice they can try this week just to try it out to become a better listener to others and to themselves? I mean, like the what can you share with the listeners that would help them now?

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Well, I think I'll go back to the things that you said, because I think these are good anchors. So the first thing is when you're listening, you

Go First: See, Hear, Understand

SPEAKER_01 32:27

are always listening to a story, and that we tend to think that, you know, that's not the case. So if if a your kid says, How's your day, or you say your kid, how is your day, and they say good, you're a lot of parents will be frustrated because their kids don't tell them more than that. And they don't realize they they're frustrated, but they don't know how to organize them to get that story. And and it takes some practice for both the the the child and for the parents, but it's one of the things that they can do is exactly what you said is use what we call the compass. There are six powerful questions on the compass. The compass is the set of questions you need to guide the story and the storyteller. And two questions on the compass that you can do right away is tell me more, which it's amazing what people will tell you. Eleven or not, boys or not, they'll still tell you. Uh tell me more. Or, and here's another one. How did that make you feel? Because when we tap into the feelings, we really tap, and this is what I did early on in my life, which is why I started to sh to I would tap into people's feelings. That's how I was differentiating as well, because I wasn't afraid to ask. And I wasn't afraid to guess. So when we ask about feelings, we we change so much of how parts of the story that we get. I mean, we wouldn't watch a movie that didn't have any emotions in it. We would be bored out of our mind, right? Nobody's watching a movie. Right. Well, when people talk, they often talk a lot about their facts or feelings in a way that we don't understand, so

Where To Find Christine

SPEAKER_01 34:05

we need to ask about them in order to navigate to the understanding.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

I just love that so much. So everybody, you need to try those two things is tell me more and tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

And I would even say, even hold leave off that about that. Because what happens, we we end up shaping the direction of the person who tells the story. When you leave it just at tell me more, you're not guiding them to shut it down, you're guiding them to open it up. Let's they'll their brains will tell you where it needs to go. You'll actually get there faster than if you look for the that in the conversation. Just tell me more.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Such simple input. I mean, it's so simple, and yet we don't do it. You're right, just one word can change the whole dynamic of the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Yeah, or people will say, tell me more about what just happened, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's okay if you're fact-chasing. But if you really want to open up the story and not contaminate

Key Takeaways And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 35:05

it with your own ideas and thoughts and feelings, that less is more. One tell me more. Yeah. Thank you for that. Just don't do it on an airplane if you don't really want to know. That's good. It will work. You might be like, tell me less.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Yeah. I have a story about being on a plane where I ended up giving a man a manicure, buffed his nails.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

I don't know how that wow, that's deep. All right. I I'm gonna that may be a tell me more for later. Yes. Interesting. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

So before we close, I just what's one what's one thing you wish every person understood about the power of listening, not not just as communication, but as a way to reduce pain and misunderstanding in their lives?

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Well, I think the wish is for us. Here's what I believe. I believe we all want to be seen, heard, and understood. And so, you know, most people say to me, can you help my partner, boss, spouse, somebody, child be a better listener? And I get that wish because that's the it's what we want so badly is for us to be feel feel seen, heard, and understood. But I think the way we change the paradigm is if we go first. So there's power in being the one that does the feel the seeing, the hearing, and the understanding. And the likelihood, it doesn't always, it's a gift, it's a gift we're giving, but when we approach the world that way, then we're more likely to get it back. So, and it's the only thing we can control because we can't control if somebody else listens to us, we can but if we if we listen well to them, that is more likely to earn us the right for them to start listening to us.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

I love that so much. Now, for people who want to go deeper with you, the listening path or your book or um bring this training into their organization, where's the best place for them to find you?

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Well, they can find me at thelisteningpath.com. Uh, I also do a lot of speaking, so Christine Miles listens. They can find me. And the book can they can find on the websites or they can find it on Amazon and the major outlets. And uh yeah, please reach out. I, you know, my my phone number's in the book, so you can reach out to me directly. I mean, send me a text. It's like this world, people are like, ah, what do you mean your phone numbers? It's like that's what this is about. If people want, if they want to connect, then let's connect.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Oh, I just love that. Thank you so much for this conversation. And I want to highlight one thing that you said that I don't want our listeners to miss. And it's see if I can remember listening is not magic and it's not just being polite. It's a skill. It's a skill. And when you have the right tools, you stop guessing and you start understanding. And I want to add this for you listening right now, your body has a story, your mind has a story, and your exhaustion has a story, and you're not weak for feeling depleted. You're human, and you're learning to listen the way Christine teaches. And you can be one of the most it can be one of the most powerful ways to interrupt the urge, delay the binge, and choose anything that actually serves you. Okay. So go grab Christine's book, What is it costing you not to listen, and connect with her using the links in the show notes. This episode will also be part of the first five episodes of the new Delay the Binge podcast, which is launching in collaboration with I Am Refocus Radio, Shamir Reed, San Antonio. Congratulations. Thank you so much, Christine. I just adore you. I hope we can visit more and connect more. Like so much when I talk with you.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Thank you so much for having me. You're so welcome. And we'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Sounds good. You're human and you're learning to listen the way Christine teaches. And you can be one of the most it can be one of the most powerful ways to interrupt the urge, delay the binge, and choose anything that actually serves you. So go grab Christine's book, What Is It Costing You Not to Listen, and connect with her using the links in the show notes. This episode will also be part of the first five episodes of the new Delay the Binge podcast, which is launching in collaboration with I Am Refocus Radio, Shamir Lee, San Antonio. Congratulations. Thank you so much, Christine. I just adore you. I hope we can visit more and connect more. Like so much when I talk with you.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Thank you so much for having me. You're so welcome.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

And we'll talk soon. Sounds good. Christine, thank you for this powerful conversation. One thing I want you, the listener, to take away from today is this. Listening isn't something you should do. It's something you must learn. And when you learn to listen, you learn to stop guessing and start understanding. You heard Christine talk about stepping into the middle of someone's movie, how listening helps us gather the context, the meaning, the emotions underneath the words. And I want to bring that straight to your heart today. Your body has a movie. Your mindset has a movie. Your exhaustion has a movie. Every urge you feel to eat, to escape, to overwork, to hold everything together is not a failure. It's a signal. It's your story saying, listen to me. And this is exactly what we're doing inside Delay the Binge. We're teaching you to slow down the moment between the trigger and the behavior, to listen to what's really going on beneath the surface. And to choose something that actually serves you. So if today's episode stirred something in you, if you felt seen or curious, or even relieved, I want you to take the next step with us. Join the Delay the Binge Early Access list. It's at delaythebinge.com. You'll get first access to the collective when it launches, plus special trainings on quiet depletion, emotional cues, listening to your internal signals, and learning how to delay the binge one powerful moment at a time. And of course, go grab Christine's book, What Is It Costing You Not to Listen? It is a resource every human being should have. Thank you for listening. Thank you for showing up for yourself. And remember, you don't have to fix everything. You just have to delay it long enough to listen to your own story and remember who you are. I'm Pam Dwyer, and this has been the Plus One Theory Podcast. I'll see you next time.