Yanny or Laurel: A Lesson in Mindful Communication

Episode 72 of the Secular Buddhism Podcast

Hello. You are listening to the Secular Buddhism Podcast, and this is episode number 72. I'm your host, Noah Rasheta, and today I'm talking about mindful communication. Before I jump into the topic of this podcast, I want to remind you of the Dalai Lama's advice: do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. Use it to be a better whatever you already are. This has always been a key message that I try to reinforce throughout the podcast and in my general approach to teaching Buddhist concepts.

The Lightking Workshop

I want to introduce you to the topic for today: mindful communication. About a year ago, I did a corporate mindfulness workshop. It was a two-day workshop for a company in Miami called Lightking. They install LED lighting, billboards, and digital signage for companies. You know when you're driving and you see a digital sign that's lit up? That's what these guys do. I went down there and spent a couple of days doing corporate mindfulness training with all of the employees at that company. It's an awesome company. If you're ever looking for any kind of digital signs or digital billboards, check them out—Lightking Outdoor, I believe is the name. They're in Miami. Really good group of people.

Anyway, after that workshop, we've maintained a relationship, and it's developed into a monthly 30 to 45-minute mindfulness follow-up with all of the employees there. I had that call with them this morning, and the topic I've been preparing for this month's call is mindful communication—specifically tips and tools to be more mindful with how we communicate in the workplace: with coworkers, with bosses, with customers, but also with loved ones and family.

The Yanny or Laurel Phenomenon

I've had this topic on my mind for a while now. Then yesterday, I discovered this internet phenomenon that's been going around: the Yanny or Laurel sound. Those of you who don't know, you're missing out. Some of you may recall from a while back there was that image of a dress. Some people could see it was pink and white, and others saw it as black and gray, or whatever those two combinations were. You had some people who saw one version and other people who saw the other.

This has been around for a while, and I always thought that was interesting. This Yanny or Laurel thing is the audio equivalent of that, and to me it's even more fascinating because it's a direct experience. Whether I'm listening on my phone, on headphones, or through speakers in the house, it doesn't matter. If you have a group of people listen to it, some people will hear the audio clip saying the name "Yanny." Other people will hear it saying "Laurel." I'm one of those who hears Laurel. There are some people who can hear both. There are some people who can't hear either of those names—they hear something completely different, like Larry or some other variation.

What I find fascinating is there doesn't seem to be a formula that helps you know which one you are. At first, I thought it might be age, but I've tried this around kids, and some kids hear one and some hear the other. It doesn't seem to be influenced by age. It doesn't seem to be influenced by gender. It just seems like some people hear one name and some people hear the other.

Let me play the clip for you so you can hear what I'm talking about.

(Audio clip plays: "Yanny. Yanny. Yanny.")

Okay, so that was the clip. Now, some of you probably heard "Yanny" or some variation of that. Others of you heard Laurel.

(Audio clip plays again: "Yanny. Yanny. Yanny. Yanny.")

It's very likely that whichever one you heard—or you may have heard both, or you may have heard something completely different—but whatever you heard, you're probably thinking to yourself how on earth can somebody else hear something different? If you heard Laurel, you're probably thinking, "How on earth can somebody else hear Yanny?" For me, I don't even hear anything that remotely resembles a Y sound. I don't hear that at all.

But I tried this this morning in my office with my coworkers. All five of them very clearly heard Yanny. Not a single one of them heard Laurel. In fact, they all thought I was joking or pretending to hear Laurel because they were incredulous. They're like, "No way that audio clip is saying the word Laurel."

I just find that fascinating. When I played this audio clip this morning on that conference call with the guys at Lightking during our mindful communication follow-up call for the month, every single one of them heard Laurel. Nobody heard Yanny. In fact, it was hard for me to convey the teaching that I wanted to tie to the audio clip because nobody heard the other version. They could only hear what I hear, which is Laurel.

Six Tools for Mindful Communication

I find all of this fascinating, and I'll tie it in more to the discussion, but I want to specifically talk about mindful communication. The whole point of practicing Buddhism, of practicing mindfulness as a way of life, is that ultimately we're trying to live more mindfully. Now, what does that mean? For me, that means seeing things and hearing things through that lens of impermanence and interdependence. That's what mindfulness means to me.

I'd love to discuss six different ways that I think we can practice being more mindful in how we communicate.

Tool One: Listen Deeply

The first one is listening deeply. This is not just about what someone is saying when they're communicating to you, but trying to have at least a glimpse of understanding where that's coming from. Why are they saying what they're saying? Where is that coming from? What are they hoping to accomplish with the communication that's taking place?

This is essentially listening beyond what's being said. I think it's helpful when we think about interdependence. Remember, we talk about interdependence as the understanding that all natural phenomena have causes and conditions. That's to say this is because that is. So whatever this is, there's a that. You try to understand what that is. If you get to that, that also has a that, right? It goes on and on. It's like this incredibly complex web of causes and conditions.

When I'm listening, I'm trying to understand that. What's behind what's being said? Rather than formulating an answer while someone's talking to me, I may be trying to think, "I wonder where this is coming from. What are they trying to accomplish with this communication?" So I'm trying to listen in layers.

What is the thing behind what's being said? What's behind that? Often you may find that if somebody's talking to you using a harsh tone and you can detect there's a lot of anger in what's being said, you could ask, "Where is that anger coming from?" Then if you can pinpoint that, if you dig a few layers back, you may realize, "Okay, I'm receiving communication here, and I'm understanding the complexity of these layers, and that changes the way that I relate to the communication, to what's being said."

That's the general idea of listening deeply—trying to hear what's behind what's being said. Often you can listen deeply not just with your ears but by looking at cues, right? Facial expressions, hand gestures—you can listen beyond what's being said by observing with your eyes, by several different methods, not just hearing. That's the first one: listening deeply.

Tool Two: Be Present in the Moment

The second one is being in the moment, being present to what's being communicated. Now, in our society today, it's very common for us to be distracted with our phones specifically. I'm sure all of you have experienced this at one point—either you're trying to communicate with someone and they're just not there, or they're on their phone or reading an email while you're talking to them, or things of that nature.

The gift of presence is probably one of the greatest things that we can give to someone: our undivided attention. Being present means focusing on here and now and paying really close attention to what's being said. Whatever you were doing, you can get back to it. You can take a 30 or 45-second break from your phone while somebody is talking to you and just listen to them.

I see this happen a lot with relationships, especially with the people we get close to. We're used to hearing from them, and sometimes—I know I do this—my wife will be talking to me and I'm just like, "Uh-huh," nodding my head, and really I'm not paying attention. Often I'm actually even looking at my phone, scrolling through social media or something while she's telling me something.

It's really hard to pay attention to what someone's really saying if you're not paying attention. As obvious as that sounds, if you start to look around, you'll notice how common this is. Just watch how people interact with each other. Watch how people interact when they're talking to someone and see if you can notice how often you do this to other people. That's the second step: try to be present. Put the phone down. Try to put the thoughts aside for a minute and just listen to what's being said. Be present.

Tool Three: Make an Effort to Understand

The first one is listening deeply. The second one is being in the moment. The third one I think is an important one: making an effort to understand.

At the end of the day, communication is about trying to understand and trying to convey something. If you're communicating with someone, there's one goal: you're trying to get either a message across or an idea. Whatever it is, you're trying to get that from your head to their head, and there has to be understanding for that to work.

I think our tendency is to think of communication as a one-way street. I communicate to you, and it's my responsibility as an effective communicator to get my message to you. But that's not entirely true. Communication is a two-way street. I have a responsibility as the listener to try to understand what you're saying to me. If I'm communicating with you or if you're communicating with me, it's not that your job is to talk to me and I just listen. It's also my job to decipher what you're saying. Communication happens two ways.

I don't think that happens enough in our society, especially in marriages and relationships where communication is a struggle. I think often that's why—because one person is trying to be the effective communicator while the other one doesn't do anything to be an effective receiver of the communication.

I like to think of this as: what responsibility do I have as a listener when someone's talking to me, when someone is communicating with me? That to me is a form of mindful communication on my part as the listener.

I'm sure we've all experienced this where somebody will tell you something, and you think you understood, only to find out later that you're not doing exactly what they said and they're like, "I told you." You're like, "Yeah, I thought I understood." I notice this a lot in my communication with my wife. The first four years of our marriage, we were not good communicators at all. We thought we were, but she would say something and I thought I knew what that meant, and same thing back. I would say things and think she knows what I mean, and she really didn't.

A big part of this for me was my lack of understanding of the role that I have to play as the listener. I have a responsibility to understand what's being said to me. One tool for this step would be to try to reiterate what's being said to you. If someone's communicating with you, you can say, "Okay, what I believe you're trying to say is..." and then regurgitate that information back.

You may be surprised at how often you'll relay something back and they'll be like, "No, that's not what I meant." I find this quite often, like I said, in my own marriage—especially if it's a sensitive thing, if there's a slight argument, or we're trying to clarify something. She'll express something to me and I'm thinking, "I totally got this," and then I'll reiterate that back. I'll say, "Okay, so what I understand is why you're upset is that I'm blah, blah, blah or doing this or that." And she's like, "No, that's not what it is." And I'm like, "Okay." Well, that changes everything.

I think this is something that's required on both parts: the one communicating and the one receiving the communication need to feel a sense of responsibility to understand each other. That's understanding.

Tool Four: Practice Non-Judgment

The fourth one is non-judgment. For me, this means removing moral judgment from communication. In other words, it's not about right or wrong—like, "Was it right of you to criticize me, or was it wrong of me to respond to you the way that I did because of the tone that you used?"

Get right or wrong out of the picture. Think of it as skillful versus unskillful. Am I being skillful with how I communicate? Am I being unskillful with how I respond to the communication that I receive? That's it. That's the only game I'm trying to play. I'm not judging communication on a moral scale. I'm judging my ability to communicate or your ability to communicate with me on whether or not it's skillful.

That changes the dynamic. The way that I communicate with my dad, for example, is different than how I communicate with my mom or with my twin brother. They all three have different communication styles. Now obviously, I feel like I understand my twin brother's communication style the most because it's almost exactly like mine. We get along very well. We can talk about anything, and communication is never part of a breakdown there.

With my mom, it's more compatible. With my dad, it's a communication style that's more foreign to me, and it's taken me more time in my adult life to feel like I can understand and really tap into his communication style so I can receive that more skillfully. Because like I said before, the role that I feel as the receiver of communication—I feel a sense of responsibility there. Where at one point in my life I may have struggled hearing instructions or communication from my dad, it was partially his communication style, but it was also partially, perhaps even more, my listening style and my ability to take that communication and understand it.

That's changed for us, and it's changed the dynamic of being able to communicate effectively with him and to receive communication effectively from him. That is non-judgment.

Tool Five: Don't Take Things Personally

The fifth one is: don't make things personal. I think we personalize things all the time. Interdependence and impermanence help us remove ourselves from taking things personally. Understand that it's not about you—it's about what's trying to be accomplished through the communication.

Like I mentioned before with communication, there's a goal: the giving of the communication and the receiving of the communication. We personalize it by attaching a sense of identity to the conveying of the message and to the receiving of the message. That can be pretty problematic.

An example of this would be in the workplace, which was brought up this morning. If I'm receiving communication from my superior—my boss—and my boss says something like, "Do you understand what I said?" it's very possible that I would say, "Yes, I did," even if I didn't, because I have this sense of, "Well, I don't want my boss to think that I didn't get it. They'll think I'm dumb if I didn't get it or something along those lines."

What just happened in that thought process was I personalized the communication. The reception of the message was attached to this sense of my identity—who I am rests upon whether or not I understood this message. So rather than asking for more clarification, which is the logical solution when I don't understand the communication, because I personalized it, I may be saying, "Yeah, I get it" when really I didn't. That's just one example.

So that's making it about you and not about the message or not about the goal of the communication that's taking place. Remove yourself from that equation and make it about the message. Then suddenly it's easier to receive the message or even to give the message without skewing the message.

Another example of this: if I were to have to communicate something to someone—for example, let's say my renter is late to pay their rent—and I'm thinking, "I want to be careful with how I word this to them because I don't want them to think I'm mean or something along those lines," boom—there I've done it again. I've personalized the communication.

The communication that needs to take place is very clear. The communication could be, "Hey, I need the rent because I have to pay my bills," and I'm not going to take that personally. I'm not being mean. That's just what needs to be said. You don't need to take it personally because it doesn't mean anything against you, but the fact needs to be addressed. That's the goal of the communication—to address the situation at hand without making this a personal thing.

Those are two examples that I just thought of. I hope that conveys the message a little bit.

Tool Six: Cultivate Non-Attachment

Then there's the sixth one: non-attachment. This goes hand in hand with not personalizing things. Non-attachment is recognizing, "I'm not what I say. You're not what you say." I'm going to disconnect the person from the idea or from the communication because I understand that there is no permanent self behind what's being communicated.

An example of this would be understanding that you are who you are based on all these external circumstances that are constantly changing. One of which is hunger, for example. I know I use this example a lot, but I think it's so obvious. The hungry you will communicate in a different way than the satisfied you—the you that's not hungry, the satiated you, right? We've all experienced this. This is why there are little signs that say, "Don't judge me for what I said when I was hungry," or things along those lines, because it's true.

If I wake up late and I'm still really tired because I stayed up late, and I'm annoyed that the alarm woke me up, and I was stuck in traffic the whole way to work, and I didn't have breakfast—then I arrive and now communication is to take place. Well, guess what? Whether I'm giving that or receiving that communication, it's going to be different than had all those little things been different. I woke up rested, I had a wonderful breakfast. On my way to work, someone rolled down the window and said, "Hey, you dropped a $100 bill. It's yours. Here." All these little things that affect how you are at any given moment—all of those are how you are, none of them are who you are.

When you're communicating, trying to be mindful in your communication, recognize that about you. Recognize it about the person communicating with you. If my boss is here and they're saying these things, I'm thinking, "I wonder what affected this or where this is coming from. Is this a hungry them? A grumpy them? Is this a boss who had a bad email that they started the day with?" It could be all kinds of things. Maybe not even on that short of a time scale. It could be long-term things too, but they're still how they are and not who they are.

In the corporate training group I was talking about, there's someone from New York. There's a stereotype that people from New York are rude. There may be some truth to that—that's why you have stereotypes—but again you're looking at, "Well, that's not how they are. That's not who they are. That's just part of how they are. Why? Because that's where they grew up." People who grew up in that specific part of the country may talk that way. Again, you can see that and recognize: that's not the person, that's other factors that make that person be how they are.

Bringing It All Back to Yanny or Laurel

Those are the six tools: listening deeply, being in the moment, trying to understand, recognizing that you have an active role as the listener and a sense of responsibility to try to understand what's being said to you. Non-judgment, making this about skillful and unskillful communication, not good or bad or right or wrong. Not personalizing it, which I think goes hand in hand with the last one: non-attachment. Communicating in a style where I'm not attached to my communication.

Now, another way that unfolds for me is I could communicate an idea to you. You may not like that idea. You may think that's the dumbest idea in the world, but it's just the idea. It's not me. That's the idea that you don't like. That for me is very important to understand. The idea that I may hold may not make sense to you, but it doesn't have to do with me. It's the idea. This is where it all circles back to this Yanny or Laurel thing.

I think it's so fascinating to me that on a small scale with a sound, we can start to see this firsthand. This is direct experience that people perceive things very differently. The thing itself is the same. The audio clip is the same audio clip, but you may hear Yanny and I may hear Laurel. You may not understand how on earth I'm hearing Laurel, and I don't understand how on earth you're hearing Yanny. There's nothing that I can do to explain to you that's going to get you to hear it the way that I hear it, and vice versa.

It's just that's how you hear it, and that's how I hear it. Now, extend that same understanding to bigger things: religious views, political views, opinions about education, how to raise your kids—you name it. Anywhere we go with this, we run into the same issue. What fascinates me with seeing this phenomenon unfold on Facebook isn't the fact that you heard something and I heard something else. That doesn't necessarily surprise me. What's been fascinating to me is seeing how adamant someone can be that you must be doing something to hear it wrong because they are certain that this is the right way to hear it.

To the point where people are accusing others of, "You're just pretending. You have to hear what I'm hearing. You're just pretending you don't hear that. You're pretending you hear something else." It's just fascinating to see that. How we interpret the multiple perspectives unfolding on this one sound—the sound of Yanny or the sound of Laurel.

I hope that we can take that understanding into our overall communication. If I'm communicating an idea, a belief, an opinion, or whatever it is, I can be more mindful with it. I think this understanding of the differences—like Yanny and Laurel—can be really helpful for that.

I run into this all the time where people who view the world through a certain worldview—a religious worldview, for example—are truly baffled at how I can view the world from this other lens. People who view the world through a secular lens will do the same back. It's like, "I don't understand how on earth you could believe in a God and how you could believe these crazy things." It's the same thing: "I can't believe you hear Yanny and I can't believe that you hear Laurel." It's the same thing.

There are those lucky few who can hear both, and they're like, "Okay, I get it. I see both sides." But then there are some people who can't. Now, with certain things I feel like I can see both sides. With this specific Yanny thing, I can't. I honestly cannot hear Yanny at all—anything even close to it. All I hear is a very clear, distinct Laurel. It's okay. I don't have to hear yours to believe that's what you hear. If that's what you hear, I believe you. If that's what you say that you hear, I get it. That's fine.

Imagine extending that sense of non-attachment to communication. It's like, "Well, it's just what I hear. It doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just—this is what is, and for you, that is what is."

Closing Thoughts

Yeah, that's what I wanted to convey with this podcast episode. Again, if you're a regular podcast listener, you're probably also interested in the essential concepts of Buddhism and how they relate to your life. My newest book, No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners, actually came out to the public yesterday, May 15th. You'll gain a fundamental understanding of Buddhism and how to apply the philosophy of it in your everyday life. The book is written in an easy-to-understand question-and-answer format. It has four different parts: about the Buddha, concepts, teachings, and practices. Yeah, you should give it a try if this is a topic that you're interested in.

If you've enjoyed this podcast episode, please share it with others, write a review, give it a rating on iTunes. You can join our online community at secularbuddhism.com/community. If you want to make a donation to support the work I'm doing with the podcast, you can visit secularbuddhism.com and click the donate button. That's all I have for now. I look forward to recording another podcast episode soon. Thank you for listening, and until next time.

For more about the Secular Buddhism Podcast and Noah Rasheta's work, visit SecularBuddhism.com