Dear Reader,
If you don’t like to read my long texts, I would like you to suspend your tendency to stop reading. Why don’t you stick with it for once? And, why not read my words out loud so that you can listen to the sound of your voice as well? It is easy. It doesn’t cost you anything. As you do that you find that listening to yourself while reading these words out loud teaches you about listening to yourself while you speak. You may have never thought that speaking could be so effortless and so enjoyable, but it can be if you let it.
I am well aware that there are a million things which attract your attention, but I want to challenge you to listen to yourself instead of to others. When you read this text, you are not listening to me, but to yourself. As you put more energy into what it is like to listen to yourself you find that you almost never do this. This text is giving you the opportunity to do something which no other text would let you do. These words bring your attention to yourself. Because you listen to the sound of your speaking voice, you become aware of how you are feeling in this moment. These words don’t tell you what to feel, but they make it possible for you to pause a moment and take note of what you feel. You feel something different every moment, but when you speak with others, it is seldom possible to address these moment-to-moment fluctuations.
These words support you in feeling whatever you feel at this moment, no matter what it is. It is completely up to you to let yourself know what you feel. Many people have problems expressing what they feel as they don’t really know what they feel because it keeps changing from moment to moment. The confusion is not about what they feel, but it is their way of talking which doesn’t allow for the expression of the changes which happen from moment to moment. Once you get used to expressing whatever you feel, you will be no longer so confused. It is possible to do this. You are doing it right know whether you know it or not.
My long texts have an accumulative effect which can only be obtained if you read the whole piece. I don’t want you to race through these words and I write in such a way that this is not possible. Why are you so much in a hurry? Why can’t you slow down a bit and have some relief from your racing thoughts? If you want to continue being rushed, anxious, stressed and agitated, you probably don’t want to continue reading this description of your behavior as it is annoying and confronting. However, if you listen how your voice is expressing the sound of your hurry, fear, tension and anger, you would appreciate these words much more.
The longer time you spend listening to your voice, the more the importance of it begins to make sense to you. It is often said we should get better at listening to each other, but even if we do our best in trying to be better listeners, we still don’t succeed. Few us know that our ability to listen to others is only as good as our ability to listen to ourselves. In other words, we can’t and we don’t really listen to each other as long as we haven’t been stimulated to listen to ourselves; self-listening includes other-listening, but most other-listening excludes self-listening.
Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) stimulates us to listen to ourselves while we speak. When we engage in ongoing SVB we realize that listening to each other is never a problem. Other-listening is only a problem when we engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). As we are unfamiliar with the SVB/NVB distinction, we don’t realize that many, seemingly complicated, problems with listening to others are related to the fact that NVB speaker don’t listen to themselves, but force others to listen to them. My texts are long as they stimulate you to explore and accept the truth about the great difference between SVB and NVB. I do not claim to be able to convince you with my writings about the existence of these universal response classes; you will have to convince yourself.
If you don’t like to read my long texts, I would like you to suspend your tendency to stop reading. Why don’t you stick with it for once? And, why not read my words out loud so that you can listen to the sound of your voice as well? It is easy. It doesn’t cost you anything. As you do that you find that listening to yourself while reading these words out loud teaches you about listening to yourself while you speak. You may have never thought that speaking could be so effortless and so enjoyable, but it can be if you let it.
I am well aware that there are a million things which attract your attention, but I want to challenge you to listen to yourself instead of to others. When you read this text, you are not listening to me, but to yourself. As you put more energy into what it is like to listen to yourself you find that you almost never do this. This text is giving you the opportunity to do something which no other text would let you do. These words bring your attention to yourself. Because you listen to the sound of your speaking voice, you become aware of how you are feeling in this moment. These words don’t tell you what to feel, but they make it possible for you to pause a moment and take note of what you feel. You feel something different every moment, but when you speak with others, it is seldom possible to address these moment-to-moment fluctuations.
These words support you in feeling whatever you feel at this moment, no matter what it is. It is completely up to you to let yourself know what you feel. Many people have problems expressing what they feel as they don’t really know what they feel because it keeps changing from moment to moment. The confusion is not about what they feel, but it is their way of talking which doesn’t allow for the expression of the changes which happen from moment to moment. Once you get used to expressing whatever you feel, you will be no longer so confused. It is possible to do this. You are doing it right know whether you know it or not.
My long texts have an accumulative effect which can only be obtained if you read the whole piece. I don’t want you to race through these words and I write in such a way that this is not possible. Why are you so much in a hurry? Why can’t you slow down a bit and have some relief from your racing thoughts? If you want to continue being rushed, anxious, stressed and agitated, you probably don’t want to continue reading this description of your behavior as it is annoying and confronting. However, if you listen how your voice is expressing the sound of your hurry, fear, tension and anger, you would appreciate these words much more.
The longer time you spend listening to your voice, the more the importance of it begins to make sense to you. It is often said we should get better at listening to each other, but even if we do our best in trying to be better listeners, we still don’t succeed. Few us know that our ability to listen to others is only as good as our ability to listen to ourselves. In other words, we can’t and we don’t really listen to each other as long as we haven’t been stimulated to listen to ourselves; self-listening includes other-listening, but most other-listening excludes self-listening.
Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) stimulates us to listen to ourselves while we speak. When we engage in ongoing SVB we realize that listening to each other is never a problem. Other-listening is only a problem when we engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). As we are unfamiliar with the SVB/NVB distinction, we don’t realize that many, seemingly complicated, problems with listening to others are related to the fact that NVB speaker don’t listen to themselves, but force others to listen to them. My texts are long as they stimulate you to explore and accept the truth about the great difference between SVB and NVB. I do not claim to be able to convince you with my writings about the existence of these universal response classes; you will have to convince yourself.
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