Listen – A 16 year old boys’ perspective in 2018

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Listen to them, give them a chance

They may have a point you’d never thought of

An angle you never would have looked from

A new way of phrasing the same material

Or most importantly

An opinion you don’t agree with

 

Listen to learn what they think, not to find the weak point

Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it is wrong

Think of a reply after you take in what they said

A conversation is not made up of opportunities to fire

Stop looking for them and wait

Wait until you understand

 

Listen like an open door not a filter

Take it all in

Selectively listening is just as bad as not listening at all

Middleground is the best ground

Respond with intent to teach, suggest or understand

Not to prove one wrong and one right

 

Listen to what you don’t know

No one knows it all, although some know more than others

Everyone can learn from the simple act of conversing

Division is the one common enemy of conversation

We see it everywhere

Pressured to pick one side or the other

 

Listen

Talk with each other not at each other

There are more than two sides to everything

Opinion is a spectrum not a division line

Respect and be respected

Compromise

Listen

 

by Will Ross

Words To Think About; Perhaps Inspire!

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It’s wonderful if others believe in you, but it’s only necessary that you believe in yourself.

There is only one YOU, be the U in Unique- the most successful people in the world got that way by being completely themselves…think about it 😉

What’s Your Perspective?

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As I drove home, through a quaint older neighborhood with fully mature trees hovering their branches overhead, the fallen leaves all seemed to scurry across the road in front of me.  They were jumping, skipping, and a few even doing a little flip of excitement now and then.  Some left, some right, some straight ahead, but mostly in a big group all appearing to be heading the same general direction.  It looked like the front of an elementary school at the end of a long day when all the children come running out of the building, yelling with enthusiasm just because they can.  It made me smile, and it made me think…

Just days earlier I had expressed my sadness about seeing all the beautiful leaves beginning to fall from the same trees.  But what if those leaves have been waiting for this moment since spring?  Maybe they’ve been blowing in the wind restricted by the trees hold on them.  Are they now free?  Free to run on the ground, to play with the leaves from the trees across the street, to explore the neighborhood they have been staring at from above all summer?  I don’t know, but how fun to watch them play and imagine their joy, as if they knew something I didn’t.

All these years I’ve assumed that it was sad when it was their time to fall and “die”.  I’d never even entertained this other perspective.  I wonder why? Was it just what I had been told? I grew up somehow just ‘knowing’ that it was sad when things died; but these leaves didn’t look the least bit sad.  They looked as if they were just beginning a new chapter of their lives; it was just going to take on a different form. This wasn’t an “ending” as I had perceived it, this was a new beginning. It wasn’t death after all, it was just change.

I will never look at leaves in a tree or on the ground the same way again. Whether they are just budding, bright green, turning colors, about to be set free or nourishing the earth, I’ll be reminded, this is the cycle of life and each moment is meant to be enjoyed for what it is, not what we think it should be, or what someone told us it was.

Maybe all of life is merely what we perceive it to be at any given moment along the journey… which would imply that, if we are not happy about a  situation, we can at least try to look at it from a different perspective. Isn’t it at least worth a try? What if it’s just your beliefs or thoughts about the situation vs. the situation itself?

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” –unknown

 Enjoy the beautiful leaves!

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