 Welcome back. Right. So in the last video, we learned about making an appointment and making sure it's the right time to talk because if you want to have a conversation and you want the other person to be present, you want to make sure that they're fully available. And making an appointment as opposed to catching them off guard is going to prep them, get them ready to be able to hear something that might be difficult without reacting. But the appointment itself, although it sets the stage, we find that there's something more needed because some people, it's hard just to be there, sit quietly and just really be in the other person's space. You must need something tangible to do to really get you into the other person's world and to kind of separate their words from your feelings. Especially if you're feeling anxious when they're sharing with you and it's almost like you want to commiserate or you want to give advice or you want to tell them not to worry. Instead of doing all those things, you need something else to do. So this is what Shlomo's going to teach us now what to do when you're listening. Right. And that's what we call mirroring. And what that means is just like a mirror, you reflect back exactly what is being said. So if your spouse or someone else says to you, you know, I'm really upset with you because you didn't call me last night and you were running late. And you know, the first thought that goes in your mind as well, you know, I have or I wasn't late or I was only a minute late or I have a good reason for being late. Okay. Throw all that out the door. Right now you're being present. As we said, you're listening to the other person. So how do you stop yourself from that knee jerk reaction? So part of it is one thing that you can tangentially do is to mirror back. What I heard you say is that you're really upset because they didn't call you. And it does a few things. First of all, it helps you not react. And it's really important because if we react in our emotional wellbeing is determined by other people's feelings, then we have no sense of self. We're just going to be basically manipulated by anything around us. So we want to be able to hear another person to make space for their feelings without it impacting us. So meaning in a negative, I'm saying not to be insensitive to it, but without making us upset or reactive or defensive. So mirroring it back helps you calm yourself down. It also helps the other person feel heard because sometimes all we need to do is feel heard as Rivko was saying before, that if she felt someone really listens to her, then it helps her feel much better. So just hearing being heard is validating because, well, you're acknowledging that I have a right to have these feelings, even if she said nothing. You didn't say you have a right to have these feelings. You said, you're here, you're upset with me. It just acknowledges the reality, provides a witness for your emotional state. And that's really important. So the mirroring is quite helpful. It also helps make sure that you did not interpret. We said before that it's really important not to interpret what the other person's saying and go out their own story. So one way to do that is to reflect it back because you'll run it by and the person who's sharing might say, that's not what I said. Yeah. So we're not going to want to say that, but so you'll say, we would say, you know, what I heard you say is that such and such. Did I get you? And the answer would be, well, you got some of it or you got a lot of it. And the part I would like you to get, or if they didn't get any of it, what I would like you to get is this. So, you know, I remember when I first started off and I had somebody who they were doing the mirroring and the woman was like, I think she said, that's not what I said, but the point was that like he was trying to listen, but he didn't hear what you were saying at all. Well, he made this whole spin and it just, it's very simple, but it's powerful. So this is why it's so important to be able to mirror back. And it just, we're trying to get the other person and it can be hard in the beginning, but to do that helps ensure that you didn't misinterpret it because the other person is going to give you that feedback. And then you ask, is there more meaning I'd like to hear more, tell me more, what's going on? A lot of times we don't feel safe opening up and sharing. So is there more as an invitation for the other person to continue sharing? So that's also important. So again, mirroring back, even though it seems like this is a really stilted way of talking, this is, you know, what I have to repeat back, but this is what's going to get you to the place where ultimately you want to be in the place where you have what we call like an internal mirror. And meaning that you automatically want to respond from that perspective that I'm not going to even respond from my reaction because I'm just, when I listen to you, I can just be in your space. But in order to train our brain to be able to do that, to stop the reactivity, we need to do something tangible. As we repetitively do that over time, we become less reactive people because our instinct is just to hear the other person. So the mirroring helps facilitate that. So it's not necessarily that it's, you know, a communication technique. It's, yeah, it's a means towards an end. It's necessary to be able to train us to be a more dialogical person, which means to be able to make space for another person. And that becomes our MO that we naturally are present for someone else. But in order to do that, it's like, you know, you have to have the training wheels on when you're learning how to ride a bike before you can actually ride on your own. So, yeah, so for people that are reactive people, I will raise my hand. And it's kind of a lifelong process. Mirroring is so helpful. I remember when we first started, I was resistant because I felt like, oh, gee, this is boring. It's not a spontaneous way of sharing. But it's so much more emotionally safe to mirror someone or to be mirrored than to just go down the path of the alternative, which could be fighting. It could be blowing things up. So to become a person where you almost mirror, like Shlomo said, internally, somebody shares something with you, why don't you do this? You're kind of thinking in your head, and you're wondering why I haven't yet done this. It's almost like a force field around you where you don't have to take in the barrage that you're getting from somebody else. It's almost like a way to protect yourself. It's like a mirror, I always say, I want to tell my couples, a mirror, it reflects, you're reflecting back what's being said. And it deflects it, deflects it off of you. And that's what we're saying, that it protects you from having to take in all the toxicity at the same time, enables you to be present and have compassion for the other person. Right, and to really learn how to be a much more emotionally intelligent individual by getting curious about what the person's saying or just even reflecting it back with no spend, just being present for that person is huge. Because you can't be there for someone else when you're stewing in your own emotional test ball or whatever. Yeah, so mirroring is really the number one, one of the foremost tools that we teach people when in doubt. If you don't remember anything else from our communication video series, when in doubt, just mirror, launch into a mirroring the person that's sharing with you. And if the other person, and if you feel like, oh, they think you're, oh, you're trying to do some psychology or something, some technique on me. You can try to improvise a little bit. Again, the challenge of improvising is that when I teach couples, I really want them to stick to it as strictly as possible when I work with them so they can get in the habit. Because what happens is when we kind of fudge it a little bit, that's when the interpretation comes in. But you can try to say it like you don't have to say when you're doing this at home or like in the office with someone, especially who's not kind of bought into this or doesn't even know what you're doing. You don't have to say what I heard you say is that you have to, you can say like, no, it sounds like you're really upset with me because I didn't call you. You want to tell me more about that? Right, that's what you're saying. Just like a little bit like improvise a little bit, make it a little bit more. Make it your own, make it more natural. Yeah, make it more natural. But at the same time, without the interpretation. So that's why it's easier. The more rigid you do it, the easier it is. The more verbate, closer verbatim, the less room for interpretation. But if you're working, if you're doing this off the cuff or with someone who's not kind of doing this with you together, then for sure, try to improvise in a way that gets the point across and gets the same benefits. Great, thank you so much, Lamo. Stay tuned for our next video.