Listening is such an important part of human activity. In fact, it improves communication between husbands and wives, friends, parents and children. We need to listen to several other things too. We need to listen, not so much to what other people say, but to the emotions behind the words. So I caution you now, don't listen to the words people use, listen to the emotion behind the words. Don't take the words to heart.

How many times have you said something in the heat of anger that you didn't really mean? And how difficult it was later to take those words back! In fact, you couldn't. That's the same with other people as well. They're talking through a cloud of emotions and not everybody can speak clearly.

So you've got to listen to:

1. Your pain. What you are feeling in terms of pain inside. Sometimes your body speaks to you with a stomach cramp, it could speak to you by feeling empty inside, maybe you've been hurt by someone. Instead of blocking that pain, you need to look forward and understand what you need, to fill yourself and make yourself happy.

2. You need to listen to the pain of others. When people are in pain, they sometimes express it in the form of anger. When people are angry at you it is nothing more than a cry for love, a cry for acceptance, a cry to reach out. So don't misinterpret the anger. Sometimes it's the only way that people know when trying to express their need for a hug or caring or love.

3. You need to listen to God's pain. That sounds strange doesn't it? God's pain? That brings up a number of questions. Do souls cry? Let's think about that for a minute. We think about Life from a single lifetime's perspective. In this very short and narrow lifetime, we start to make judgements on what should and shouldn't be. We make value statements about the unjust death of a child, starvation in Africa, war in the Middle East, etc. and think to ourselves that God must have a purpose. Well think about how God sees everything for a second.

Imagine that you were a soul that lived many lifetimes and you had not a one lifetime perspective, but a twenty or even a one hundred lifetime perspective.

You would see everything from a soul who had been living twenty or a hundred lifetimes. You would see the intricate linkage of how one life affects another, how one thought affects another and how, within all this complexity of lifetimes in a linear fashion, there's also the cross effect, where your being alive actually affects the lives and lessons of someone else.

Maybe, by you not being alive in this lifetime, you may affect negatively the circumstances affecting your family for instance. This nowhere made more apparent than in the movie "A Wonderful Life". A man was given the opportunity to take a look at what life would have been like if he were not present in that life.

Yes, all of life is not meant to be easy, but at the same time, it's meant to be a learning experience and never a struggle. The struggles are generated by our own notions of self-worth, fairness, guilt and fear. Learning can be fun depending on your perspective of it as well. By recognising that everything is temporary to begin with and nothing lasts forever, it makes you appreciate the 'learning' a little bit more. At least you will begin to understand that we cannot take things for granted anymore. That the best way to approach people and circumstances in our lives would be with an air of Gratitude.

About the Author

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Dr Mel Gill has been recognized by the Business Times and The Sentinel as the World's #1 Asian American Motivational Speaker. To listen to this highly sought-after International Speaker absolutely free of charge, just visit http://guruofhappiness.blogspot.com/