All your life, you've heard:

"Bite your tongue."
"Turn your cheek."
"Stop talking before you put your foot in your mouth."
"Will you please listen to me?"
"Why is it, I feel you don't care?"

Two pieces of folk wisdom changed my life:

"Think twice before you speak" and
"Listen without judgment."

Contradictory, aren't they? I mean, if you're listening without judgment, how can you think twice before you speak?

But they do complement each other. How?

Listen to my story.

When I was six years old, we lived in the country. My sisters, brothers and I took the yellow caboose to school. Because I always got into fights, I had to sit in the front of the bus.

One day, the driver's wife happened to be riding the bus. I told her she had stinky, smelly, "smoky" breath.

Wrong thing to say.

Mind you, I was 6 years old.

Next day, I was taken to the principal's office. I remember it as if it was yesterday ... Mr. Avery Deluka. I can still picture him picking me up by my EARS. He slammed me on the front side of his desk.

Man, was I scared.

I looked up at him through his dark rimmed glasses. He stared me square in the eyes. He was three inches from my nose, snarling and snorting before he even spoke a word.

Then the words came. He wasn't whispering.

I began to pee all over his desk. (I think that is all I did). It didn't help matters. He noticed.

"Don't you ever, ever, EVER speak to anyone again without first thinking twice."

Now I could smell HIS smoky breath. But timing is everything, right?

I doubt if I could have spoken a word anyway.

So lesson #1 was branded on my brain.

My next lesson was two-fold.

In my second year of practice, my all-time favorite Mentor, Dr. Omer Reed, completed the lesson Mr. Deluka started.

Omer told me the #1 skill in building relationships is empathy. WHY? Because all human beings crave empathy:

"Please understand how I feel."

"Give people what they want and you will get what you want." - Zig Ziglar

Let that sink in.

People want understanding long before they want you, your products, your services or your business.

So Dr. Reed added a little twist to Mr. Deluka's "Think Twice Before You Speak!". He called it listening with "Deferred Judgment", or Listening without judging/thinking.

As a dentist, I was in the "people business." I knew I needed to master this skill.

You should have seen my home & office. I taped and plastered "DEFERRED JUDGMENT" on briefcases, books, walls, mirrors, desktops, toilets, & dashboards.

Here's the problem you and I both have.

The true meaning of a spoken message is often hidden. And you can't think, listen and hear at the same time.

But when you listen just with your senses, without judging, without thinking, the TRUE meaning of the spoken message comes through.

You get it.

And that's critical, because message sent must be message received if one is to feel understood.

Empathy, like listening, is a skill worth learning.

Ooohhhh, what a valuable skill!

When your prospect knows you "understand what they want" and moreover, "understand how they feel", they immediately start building trust, belief, respect and love in you.

They join your business. They buy your products. They buy the words you speak. They just plain want to be around you.

They come back to YOU again and again and again.

Isn't THAT result worth learning the skills of "listening and empathy"?