How to listen with the eyes

Does this sound familiar?

Someone is telling you a story. A long story.

And they’re looking you straight in the eyes as they do it.

But instead of being captivated in what they’re saying, your focus is on what you’re doing with your eyes.

Are they natural? Am I doing too much? Too little?

This is called “being in your head” and its not the ideal place to live your life.

So how do you fix this? What do you do when you’re listening?

Listen.

The good thing about being in your head is that you can jump out. In this case, the other person is giving you a (hopefully) easy thing to draw your attention to. The ideal state of eye contact is one of effortless flow, where you don’t really realize what your eyes are doing, but it feels right. The best way to achieve this is by doing everything you can to be present to the person in front of you.

Start with the body.

If trying to listen doesn’t help then you can always resort to provoking listening through the body. In many situations, to actively listen to another person with your eyes means to subtly take on the quality of emotion that the other person is giving through their eye contact. This is the empathetic response in action.

For instance, as someone is telling you something sad, their eyes change as an expression of this sadness. As someone listening it can be helpful to take on a similar expression in order to convey your interest and investment in what is being spoken about.

Remember, ideally this is something that happens without conscious control. However, often times one needs to provoke the body into action in order to feel internal truth as well.