Episode 60: A Masterclass in Level One Listening – Listening to Yourself with Dr Romie Mushtaq

Oscar Trimboli:

Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words.

Oscar Trimboli:

Hi, I’m Oscar Trimboli, and this is the Deep Listening Podcast Series, designed to move you from an unconscious listener to a deep and productive listener. Did you know you spend 55% of your day listening? Yet only 2% of us have had any listening training whatsoever. Frustration, misunderstanding, wasted time and opportunity, along with creating poor relationships are just some of the costs of not listening.

Oscar Trimboli:

Each episode of the series is designed to provide you with practical, actionable and impactful tips to move you through the five levels of listening. So I invite you to visit oscartrimboli.com/Facebook to learn about the five levels of listening, and how others are making an impact beyond words.

Oscar Trimboli:

In this episode of Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words, we take a MasterClass through Level One: Listening To Yourself, from Dr. Romie Mushtaq. Dr. Romie is a traditionally trained neurologist, in addition to having board certifications in integrative medicine. She brings together Western medicine with Eastern wisdom, to help individuals and audiences learn how to move from stress to achieving peak performance. She talks us through how to harness the power of mindful leadership.

Oscar Trimboli:

What I enjoyed the most about speaking with Dr. Romie, is everything she discusses is based on neuroscience, evidence, positive psychology, and mindfulness. In this MasterClass of Level One: Listening To Yourself, she talks about the role of distraction, and how breathing can bring you to the present moment, and the amplifying impact that has on your listening. Dr. Romie has a delightful TED Talk, called The Powerful Secret of Your Breath. The role of your ego, in one of my favourite quotes during our discussion, she says, “Your ego is not your amigo.”

Oscar Trimboli:

We spend a fair bit of time talking about the impact of when your ego shows up, and it’s consequences for listening. Equally, we talk about the impact of when your ego isn’t present, and what’s the impact on listening when your ego is not present. That’s got two distinctly different dimensions to it, so please listen out. Dr. Romie does a great job of drawing a map from your ears all the way through the different parts of your brain, to help you understand what’s the journey like as you move from hearing to listening.

Oscar Trimboli:

Once we’re inside the brain, we go and explore the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, and she does a great job of explaining how these interact with what she calls your executive function. That’s where a lot of listening takes place. She talks about the role of fight and flight, and these reactions. And the positive and negative consequences, as it relates to listening. She makes a great case for leaders leaving their ego at the door, because sometimes where your questions are coming from impacts the way you listen.

Oscar Trimboli:

She does a great job of talking about the organisations she consults to, about the importance of commencing a meeting with three minutes of deep breathing. Breathing deeply will help to improve many functions, one of them being listening. It’s no surprise also, that Google has integrated this into a practise they’ve done for the last three years, when they commence large and small team meetings. The importance of everybody coming together collectively, and noticing their breathing.

Oscar Trimboli:

Three minutes of breathing is great, but what do you do if you don’t have three minutes? Well, that’s okay, Dr. Romie will talk us through that as well. Listen carefully, how she explains how breathing can not only influence you, but influence the person next to you. And then finally, it truly is a MasterClass in presence-based mindfulness. During the interview, a lightning bolt strikes off the coast of Florida, not too far from where Dr. Romie’s conducting the interview. It was a beautiful example, because she showed me at the end of the interview that these lightning bolts were huge.

Oscar Trimboli:

But throughout that, she managed her presence by talking about some of the techniques she used. Not only in team meetings, but real time while the lightning bolts were hitting outside the Florida coast. But, let’s listen to Dr. Romie.

Dr Romie:

When I am in a state of deep listening to individual clients, or audience members after they are sharing their story, my analytical scientific mind is often running with an assessment, or a diagnosis or a plan. I have to pause and really stop that analysis.

Oscar Trimboli:

I’m curious, for you to explore the cost of not listening for you.

Dr Romie:

Well, that is a beautiful and probably about a four-prong question that my brain just analysed that you asked, Oscar. I’ll start by telling your listeners a little bit about myself.

Dr Romie:

I’ve transitioned in the United States from a traditional role of a physician and a neurologist, and where I had to loosen and assess very quickly, because a life threatening illness was often on the other end of my decision making skills. To one where I speak for a living and consult, and bring mindfulness into corporate America.

Dr Romie:

That transition of interacting with patients and clients one-on-one to large groups, I would say that I would love to talk to you about the cost of not listening in the corporate setting. It’s what I have seen now, as I serve as Chief Wellness Officer for a company named Evolution Hospitality of almost 6,000 employees, here in the United States. The cost of not listening is multiple folds.

Dr Romie:

One, there is a breakdown in the trust of the relationship that is being built between you and another colleague at work. When someone does not feel heard, they don’t feel seen. So even if you recognise their problem and are going to help them fix it, if an individual doesn’t feel seen or heard, it’s already eroded at the trust of the relationship of a colleague, or a boss to an employee.

Dr Romie:

I think the second cost of not listening, is the obvious breakdown in communication amongst team members. I see this often in the C-suite, where you have a gathering of brilliant minds who are all there for the greater good, which is to have success as a team in a company. Even if everyone is there for their highest purpose, we often are not trained, as success driven professionals, in the art of listening. We’re only trained in the art of thinking and speaking.

Dr Romie:

I feel the cost of not listening at a leadership level, is that any goal that has been set forth for the leadership team or the company, you are now hindering its progress without listening to feedback, or listening to colleagues in a meeting. And genuinely not only listening, but processing the information you’re hearing. So, I think that is it.

Dr Romie:

When we do not listen as a community, and people are only spoken to or spoken at, we diminish someone’s sense of self-worth or belonging to that company. It only feeds into a toxic workplace, and having toxic workplace only further creates, and propagates this difficulty for mental health and mental wellbeing in the workplace.

Oscar Trimboli:

Thinking about being around the table with that executive teams that you talked about, what do you think barriers are to those people listening fully, listening deeply, listening effectively?

Dr Romie:

I think a few typical challenges arise, when you’re sitting with a highly motivated and success driven executive team. Everybody comes to a meeting prepared and over-prepared for the agenda that’s on hand, but was anybody in the room assigned to just listen, and be present with the ideas? I think in most corporate settings, top performers are taught that in order to be present, you need to be seen and heard in a meeting.

Dr Romie:

So we all come ahead of time formulated with talking points, or an agenda item that you hope to protect against somebody else’s viewpoint. If there isn’t even at least one person that is in the room, that is just assigned to listen to what’s happening in the meeting, then nobody in the meeting really feel seen or heard. And it can start to erode at the energy of a team, and feeling that we’re all here and gathered for a greater good or a greater purpose. So I think the first thing, is that nobody in the room was actually assigned to be present and listen.

Dr Romie:

The second thing is, when a meeting is considered effective, everybody has been assigned to come with a task or a point in the presentation. If we’re not invited to a meeting just to listen and hear ideas, then we often are not reminded that we’re there to also listen and gather information.

Dr Romie:

The third thing is, is in most corporate settings, if one is sitting in a meeting silent and taking notes and listening, they may be considered that they were disengaged or had nothing important to contribute. That is everybody’s worst fear. When you enter a meeting from a place of fear, that, “I need to say something brilliant, so that my boss or the other leaders can see that I belong here.” A function of fear and ego has taken over. Those are probably the three reasons why we fail to sit and listen at a meeting, and that balance is destroyed.

Oscar Trimboli:

What’s the role of breathing, and drinking water?

Dr Romie:

What deep breathing or mindfulness teaches us, is it does get us out of a fight or flight response. That tends to then, decrease the inhibition to cognitive areas that help us in executive functioning and processing, which is required for listening. As far as the drinking water, you’re absolutely right. There is about a 20% decline in cognition, when people are dehydrated. They think need more coffee, and what they really need is more water and minerals to help the cognitive skills of the brain. One of them, is around all the cognitive processes around listening.

Oscar Trimboli:

Dr. Romie. If there’s three things that our audience can learn from a neuroscientist about listening, what would be those three things?

Dr Romie:

I think the first thing I always talk about, as someone in the corporate setting that talks about mindful leadership, is number one, put your own ego in check and leave it at the door. We all arrive wanting to prove ourselves, and make sure that we’re worthy, and that we’re heard and that our boss gives us a pat on the back. That is simple human need for appreciation.

Dr Romie:

But when we take a pause and say, “I’m going to leave my ego at the door,” then we are less likely to continue to talk, or push our own agenda or thoughts on someone. When we can pause and leave our own ego at the door, it creates this attitude of mindful leadership of, how can I be of service to others? When we’re in that place of being of service to others, we are more likely to open our hearts to listening.

Dr Romie:

Number two, most of us, when we’re going into a one-on-one meeting to listen, or into a group setting, I don’t know about you, but I certainly can say I have a busy brain. There are multiple browser windows open on the computer, and there are multiple browser windows open in our brains. We may be thinking about the meal that we just had, another conversation, a full to-do list, and an email inbox that you haven’t even reached. And now you have to go sit in a meeting.

Dr Romie:

My quick tip there, is something that we practise at Evolution Hospitality, and it’s known as the power of pause. We start every meeting in a group with a three minute controlled breath break. We also ask people that before they get on a conference call to do the same. And what does that mindful minute of controlled breathing help us to do?

Dr Romie:

We actually come to a place of calm consciousness. Taking that three minutes of controlled breathing, has been scientifically shown to start to shift the stress response in the brain. Where the centres of the brain known as the amygdala and hippocampus, that are processing all the incoming information, and memory and your mood, calm down.

Dr Romie:

So now that we actually have control of our emotions, and we have control over our thought processes. And it’s that three minutes of pause, that brings everybody in the room to an even playing field. So number two, is to take a personal pause, or a team pause for three minutes in controlled breathing.

Dr Romie:

And my third tip for people, especially in a group setting when you want to listen, is before you speak or you look at your notes and raise your hand, breathe deeply and ask yourself, “Am I adding value to the conversation with what I’m about to say?”If you can come up with a valid answer, then proceed. But most of the time, we speak out of turn, and we blurt our own agenda out just to be seen or heard. That’s because ego came in the room.

Dr Romie:

So constantly doing an ego check is ask, “Is what I’m about to say going to add value to the conversation?” And really ask yourself if that’s true. I think those are three simple things that psychology and mindfulness have taught us, that can help us to listen more effectively in a meeting.

Oscar Trimboli:

What’s involved around those three minutes of pause?

Dr Romie:

Yeah, it’s really exciting, it’s a controlled breath rate break based in pranayama or mindfulness, that we call the pause. I worked with leadership and we created a script and now we’ve trained 57 Evo mindful guides. And that controlled breath break is as simple as asking everyone first and foremost, to put their digital devices down, and to silence phones, and to put pen and paper down. And we ask people to close their eyes, or find a focal point on the ground to look at.

Dr Romie:

Then one person leads controlled breathing for three minutes, a deep inhale through the nose, pausing to hold the breath and a deep excalation. Most people feel that all the side chatter and conversations that were going on in the room, or the focus that we may have been giving our digital devices, now all of those distractions have been removed. And we are in the present centred awareness, and in a state of calm consciousness. Where we’re more likely to be effective and practise listening.

Oscar Trimboli:

I can hear people screaming in the audience saying, I don’t have three minutes. What tips have you got for me?

Dr Romie:

Well, I want to always empower everybody that your presence alone can always create change. And while some of the most successful companies that are people driven cultures and focus on the wellbeing of their employees, it starts with leadership. I am a firm believer that as the great Gandhi said, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.”

Dr Romie:

And so alluding to your great point, Oscar, we can start by taking a personal pause before we walk into the room. All of a sudden colleagues are going to notice, “Wow, you always arrive to this meeting really focused and on point, or present and not distracted. I feel like you’re always there and listening to me.”

Dr Romie:

And that’s a great opportunity to share. “Yeah, I do a three minute pause, and with this controlled breathing exercise I learned on the Deep Listening Podcast,” and talk about that, and just share it one by one. It may initially feel uncomfortable to you, and so that’s the discomfort and fear that’s coming up of, “Oh my gosh, I could never share this in the workplace. Taking mindfulness into the workplace. That’s a little nutty.” But you would be surprised how many people are really open to the experience.

Dr Romie:

Because what’s the end goal? Everybody wants a successful meeting that went on time, where everybody feels seen and heard and there were minimal distractions in the meeting. And if we can give people a way, that’s been proven neuropsychologically to help our individual brains and the collective minds of the group, it’s as simple as taking a three minute pause.

Oscar Trimboli:

For those people rushed in the mythological back to back meeting, they’re probably asking right now, “Can I get away with 30 seconds? One minute? Does it have to be three?”

Dr Romie:

When we look at a heightened stress response, because Oscar, you just nailed that on the head. So many of us are running from one meeting to another and we’re more likely to get into a busy brain. And when we have a busy brain, that stress response just kicks off in our brain and now that fight or flight response is going and we’re less focused and we feel more hurried. And absolutely, any time you stop to breathe for presence centred awareness, up to 60 seconds, you’re starting to see the effects.

Dr Romie:

But clinical science, and neuroscience and the functional imaging actually shows that the stress response starts to calm down after about three minutes of deep breathing. And you would be surprised how easy it is to find three minutes between meetings. That’s about 15 of those deep breaths that I was describing. So if you count and take 10 to 15 of those deep breaths, three minutes have already gone by. And even as you’re sitting in the next meeting, if you’re doing it, you’re subconsciously cuing the person next to you to do the deep breathing as well.

Oscar Trimboli:

Have you ever noticed a time in the meeting that reached a point of high tension, that the pause for the group or the individual was effective? Not just at the beginning, but may be at a point of high tension during the meeting.

Dr Romie:

This is the challenge, is when a meeting is getting escalated, you always hope that there was one person that was there leading the meeting to listen, to ask everybody to take a pause and shift. The problem becomes if you’re in the middle of a meeting and we kind of say, “Well, emotions are getting high. Let’s all stop and take a breath.” It could maybe make people feel even worse. Because the person that was last speaking is going to feel cut off.

Dr Romie:

What we found at Evolution Hospitality, and with the other corporate teams that I’ve helped implement a mindful minute or a a team pause at the beginning of a meeting, is when we start a meeting in a place of calm consciousness, we are less likely to have a heated meeting because emotions were already in control. People were present in the actual meeting, and that’s what we have found that’s more effective.

Dr Romie:

So probably a better solution if a meeting is starting to get derailed because one or more persons are have heightened emotions, is just remember that you as the role of the listener is there to listen. I typically say, let the person run out of steam. So whoever is passionate, or angry or anxious and really wants to get their point across, if we let them speak without interrupting them until they themselves signal they are done, emotions in the entire room are more likely to calm down.

Dr Romie:

But if somebody’s really emotional and you say, “Okay, Romie, stop. You’re getting emotional, take a breath.” It’s only going to heighten my fight or flight response, and make me a little bit more emotional in the meeting. And so most people will run out of steam, neuroscience shows, and needing to take a pause or a breath or realising that they’ve lost control within about 90 seconds. And even less than that.

Oscar Trimboli:

My sense is that you saying, listening comes from the executive function or the prefrontal cortex. Is that typically where listening’s coming from. And where listening is hijacked is when we’re triggered into the amygdala.

Dr Romie:

Listening and the neuroanatomical functions that go along with that, it’s a very complex pathway that has to start with the concept of a sound wave, reaching your inner ear and going to the brainstem. Then it is processed through the temporal lobes and into the posterior part of the brain into the auditory cortex. To process the words, and their meanings and what you’re hearing and analysis happens in the prefrontal cortex.

Dr Romie:

So this is a process, that’s all simultaneously going on at once. Anytime we’re in a heightened fight or flight response and we become emotionally hijacked, all of those pathways are now diminished or not functioning at their best or optimised itself. So somebody may be saying, “Hi Oscar, could you give me three minutes of your time?” That’s a very simple request, but you physically didn’t hear it. You may have missed the three minutes, or whatever that is.

Dr Romie:

There’s many different pathways that can be involved. It’s the actual understanding of the words or the languaging, let alone the emotional context that it’s around. Then third, your output or how you need to respond. All three of those components can be affected when our own stress response or we’re emotionally hijacked is off. That’s why I say to take that three minute pause. At minimum, it starts to calm us down. And when we remove other auditory sensory stimuli that are in the room to the best of our ability, then we are able to recenter and optimise all those processes.

Dr Romie:

Folks that are listening, when you’re going in the meeting, ego is always saying, “Oh my gosh, I don’t want to mess up. I don’t want to look like a fool in front of my boss. I have to speak in the meeting, and I hate public speaking and I don’t want to look stupid.” These are all functions of the I, the ego.

Dr Romie:

But what if we said this to the collective we, “How could I be of service to our team, ourself, to this podcast?” All of a sudden we stop with this output and this fear, and we end up pausing and listening more often. So I think those were the two really key points that I wanted to bring up, that my years of work of bringing mindfulness into the workplace to foster more mindful leaders who listen, has taught me.

Oscar Trimboli:

I think you make a really potent point about the ego. I think when we’re in that state, a lot of us are so far deep into it, that we don’t even notice. Are there one, or two or three questions you might pose to yourself, to start to notice if you’re speaking from your ego? Rather than where, when your ego’s involved, you actually don’t think it’s your ego speaking.

Dr Romie:

There’s the popular saying, your ego is not your amigo, right? And and you’re right. But when we’re so deep in lost in that egotistical place, it’s really coming from a place rooted of fear. The first thing I think I always ask is “How am I feeling in this moment?” And anytime we’re being honest with ourselves, because I have those moments all the time myself, Oscar. And I’m sure you do too, where we’re feeling a little anxious, or a little confused, or a little angry, or depressed or resentful. That’s ego showing up. And by the way, that’s normal for all of us, because our fear response in the brain is there to protect us. So that we don’t do something stupid, like scream out and obscenity in the middle of a meeting that could get you fired, right?

Dr Romie:

So fear will always show up. It’s just unfortunately fear. Our ego can hijack. And so, number one, do a pulse check and ask, “Where is my emotional state right now?” And if it’s anything other than calm or a positive emotion, then put your ego in check. And second is, be aware of extreme happiness. That may be an ego too.

Dr Romie:

And here’s an example Oscar is, “I’m so happy, because yesterday was my birthday and my spouse gave me a luxury car.” Or, “I’m so happy, I just got a promotion and got an email, and I want to share it with everybody in the room.” That’s still ego, because we’re talking about I. So the second question to ask yourself is, “Am I being of service to the other people in the room right now?” And that is literally obliterating your ego.

Dr Romie:

And what do I mean by, being of service to the people? I walk into a meeting, and if I’m going to be of service to the other people in the meeting, it means listening to everybody there speaking. If there was an agenda item that I am responsible for discussing, I’m present. I come prepared. That’s being of service to the other people in the meeting. But without doing so in a way that I want everybody to know how great I am, how smart I am. It’s just when we speak from a calm consciousness, we can tell it’s for the greater good.

Dr Romie:

And then the third thing I ask is, when we’re not sure if it’s our ego… because here’s the reverse Oscar. A lot of people who may lack self-confidence or have fear go into this place of, “I don’t want to speak. I maybe sound stupid. I’m not worthy. I’m not smart enough, I’m not rich enough, I’m not pretty enough to be in the room.” All of those limiting beliefs, that’s kind of a disfunction of ego and self-worth.

Dr Romie:

It’s also doing something and that present centred awareness, that when we let go of that ego, where that fear that’s stifling us and just trust in this greater universal energy. That there is a greater force that is out there, that meant for you to be present talking to that person today. Or in that meeting, or in that job.

Dr Romie:

And so it’s this balance, and nobody is always perfectly in balance, Oscar. I don’t know about you. I study this for a living, and I find myself having to do this check every time I go into a meeting or start a new conversation. I ask, what is my emotional state right now? Two, am I being of service to the greater good? Then three, it’s really making sure that I’m not allowing the demons that break my confidence, to enter the conversation right now.

Oscar Trimboli:

Earlier on you talked about the fact that we have multiple browsers open on our computers, but we also have multiple browsers open in our mind. If you were to provide some practical tips, I always talk about the fact that a deep listener just notices they’re distracted quicker than somebody who isn’t. When you’re distracted and not noticing, or you’re distracted and are noticing, what’s some practical things to get you back centred into the dialogue.

Dr Romie:

I think it’s a native human condition, to have multiple browser windows open in our brain. We’re in a hyperstimulated state all the time, because of all of the digital devices that are around us. And now our brains have been programmed that when somebody texts or emails you, you must respond right away, even if we don’t have a correct response. There may be TV or music going on in the background, or other side con conversations when we’re at home, or not.

Dr Romie:

For those of us that are of a certain age Oscar, that in the ’80s and ’90s we were taught that multitasking was a superpower. We’re now having to deconstruct that, because we know it’s a myth. The mind can truly only focus on one thing at a time, whether it’s listening or whatever we need to execute. First of all, I want all of us to have compassion with ourselves, to know that it’s a battle in this hyper-stimulated world, and many of us were trained to multitask.

Dr Romie:

So number one, have compassion with yourself and to know that for most of us this is a human state. Number two, how do you recognise that you are distracted and not present? Well, most of us have a conversation going on in our brain. There’s another voice that is constantly noticing like, “Hey, while I’m on this podcast in Florida, in the United States, it’s raining outside. I wonder if Oscar can hear the rain in the background?” And, “Oh, I should take a sip of coffee,” and all the random things that are playing in my brain. We all have this internal conversation.

Dr Romie:

But this idea to pause always, and take a few deep breaths yourself, as you teach Oscar, and then ask yourself, “What do I need to focus on right now?” That I can focus on answering your question and staying in this conversation with you, even though my mind can hear the thunder. And the lightning and the rain showers going on around me, that I can be present with all things, but I choose to focus on my answer to you right now and to our conversations.

Dr Romie:

Number two is, where am I going to focus? And breathing into that place. And number three, the thing I teach often in a mindfulness space exercises, doing the body scan meditation. When we are alone in your office or at home, and you’re like, “Wow, there is a lot going, on and a lot of noise,” as you can probably hear in my microphone right now. I can’t do anything to control the very loud thunderstorms going on as we’re speaking.

Oscar Trimboli:

It makes it real.

Dr Romie:

It makes it real, but I can still stay very present with you. And this is that idea that before we started this podcast interview, I had a lot going on and I sat down and did the body scan meditation. Which is literally a longer meditation, and we can put a link to a body scan meditation in your show notes if you’d like Oscar. But it is breathing and focusing on different parts of our body. That brings our mind and our body and our awareness back into ourselves. So it’s priming ourselves to to get out of our monkey minds, or that multiple browser window mind that’s open.

Oscar Trimboli:

Wow. What a privilege it was to listen to Dr. Romie, the neuroscience of listening. The why your mind can be hijacked if you’re not paying attention. Some of the things I took away from today is, how do you make a meeting productive rather than escalating passion, anger and emotion is all in the foundational set up. If we can get everybody becoming conscious of their breathing when they jump in, a meeting will be productive throughout.

Oscar Trimboli:

If you’re like me and wanted to listen a bit more to Dr. Romie, check out her Ted talk called The Powerful Secret of Your Breath. It’s an amazingly articulate, entertaining, and educational way to notice yourself, your mind, and your body. The other point that she made was, neuroscience teaches us that it takes less than 90 seconds to deescalate a situation. And if you let people speak it out, it’ll usually help them to overcome the issue themselves as well.

Oscar Trimboli:

The difference between what you hear and what you process, and ultimately how you listen and what you listen to, is impacted by the mindset you walk in. I can’t help but remember that my ego is not my amigo. And one of the questions Dr. Romie posed to me, and to you, how am I feeling in this moment? And where is my emotional state in this moment?

Oscar Trimboli:

I think those three simple things that she reinforces about removing distractions, becoming conscious of your state and your breathing and make sure you’re drinking water, will all set you up on a wonderful foundation at level one, listening to yourself.

Oscar Trimboli:

I hope it came across how much I enjoyed this interview with Dr. Romie. She really expanded my horizons and deepen my understanding, when it comes to listening even more deeply. Thanks for listening.

Oscar Trimboli:

Hi, it’s Oscar here. If you’re still listening, you’re probably one of those members of our Deep Listening community, who’s a really connected to our quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the world. If there’s one thing I could ask as a favour, share this episode with somebody else.

Oscar Trimboli:

I did some simple math recently, and that math said, if everybody who listens to the podcast shared it with one other person, we’d achieve our goal of 100 million deep listeners in the world in only 36 months. Thanks again for listening.

Oscar Trimboli:

Oh, what I nearly forgot. If you’ve got questions for me, for Nell, or in fact anybody we’ve interviewed, why not send us an email podcasts@oscartrimboli.com, that’s podcast@oscartrimboli.com. Thanks for listening.