Summary
Joe describes a transformative mirroring exercise he and Tara practiced for over a year during fights. One person would say something short, the other would repeat what they heard — and Joe got it wrong almost every time. Tiny nuances of blame, inference, and misinterpretation were distorting what was actually being said.
From this experience, Joe shares his two core listening practices: listen to the other person as if they are right (like a guru whose every word is a pearl of wisdom), and listen with full wonder — curiosity without needing to find the answer. When you listen this way, you realize most disagreements aren’t personal attacks but misunderstandings, and the problem becomes something you can look at together like “a patient on the table.”
Key Concepts
- Mirroring reveals how much we misunderstand each other
- Listen as if the other person is right
- Depersonalize the problem — it’s a patient on the table
Key Quotes
“I was just putting the blame in this odd place in the corner, or I was inferring that she was trying when it was something that she wasn’t trying.”
“Listen to a person like they’re right… like every word that spills out of her mouth is a pearl of wisdom.”
“It’s like looking at the problem like it’s a patient on the table — it’s not personal.”
“It’s really hard to be mad at not understanding. Really easy to be mad at ‘you’re attacking me.‘”
Transcript
it was amazing like one paragraph like 3 minutes of talking and I was not getting it right every single time and basically it’s this tool where one person says something just like a short thing to explain their side of the fight and then you just repeat what you heard and I like got it wrong every time I was like what the is happening it’s like I know I hear that thing like and I’m repeating it but she’s like no no that’s not what I meant and she would adjust no I meant this I’d be like okay and then I would say it and she’d be like yeah and then she’d do the next paragraph I’m like okay so you said this she’s like no no no no I meant this and it was like little nuances of oh like I was just putting the blame in this like odd place in the corner or I was saying that like I was inferring that she was trying when it was something that she wasn’t trying or and it was an amazing moment because I was like oh I don’t I don’t really get what she’s saying to me so like to some degree we were like fighting over semantics but it wasn’t it was a little bit more than semantics and the fact that it was her perspective I wasn’t seeing the perspective through the words so we did this mirroring over and over again for like I think it was like over a year every time we fought just to like learn what each other was saying and how much of our disagreement was just not understanding the other person where they were coming from what they meant when they said XY Y and Z compared to what you heard and it was an amazing thing and so how to listen has become a huge thing for me and the most important thing is to listen to a person like they’re right like I the way I do it in a fight is I will listen to Tara and I will think like she is everything I admire every like the best Guru of the biggest thing and she’s like everything that spills out of her mouth as a pearl of wisdom and I’ll listen to her like that like oh there’s some truth here that I don’t get that I am here to understand and it doesn’t mean I have to buy it but the idea is like I’m here to fully open fully to understand where she’s coming from and the other thing that I do when I’m listening is just be full Wonder just like in the connection course when we talk about wonder I’m just like I don’t it’s like curiosity without needing to know the answer and it’s and it’s this space of like awe oh wow what is happening I have no idea I’m so curious but I don’t need to like find the I don’t need to root around and get to the place where we solve everything I just need to be in Wonder and eventually it’ll show itself and so that’s that’s the way I do it I listen to her like she’s like this unbelievably intelligent smart amazing person which she is and then and then and then also listen to it like just with this huge amount of Wonder but it took me like like like a long time of just mirroring her to understand that how much I was not understanding of what she meant and it and it went both ways so she wasn’t understanding me and we just had different ways of looking at the world and different ways of communicating and our trauma filtered things in different ways and so it’s it’s so critical to learn how to listen and I really suggest for you just doing that mirroring for a while and until you really understand like where you might be missing stuff and that the other thing that that does which is really cool is when you realize oh they mean something different than what I’m hearing and I’m putting my layers of interpretation on it and they’re putting their layers of interpretation on it you start realizing like we might not be disagreeing like this isn’t personal like this isn’t them rejecting me this is them not understanding me right this isn’t like they think I’m bad this is they don’t get where I’m coming from they like they just they can’t comprehend it and it’s really hard to be mad at ignorance not ignorance like you’re ignorant but ignorance like not understand it’s really hard to be mad at not understanding really easy to be mad at you’re attacking me and so there’s a way in which all of a sudden when you’re listening like this when you start working on the on the issue there’s this um woman I work with who’s amazing she’s this technologist and she talks about she goes it’s like like looking at the problem like it’s a patient on the table it’s not personal like we just look at it like oh this is the problem and then all of a sudden that’s what happens you’re like oh we’re just looking at this problem like it’s a patient on the table it’s not personal it doesn’t mean anybody’s bad we can just listen to each other and like understand each other and then everything’s going to resolve itself so learning to listen critical