In 2020 I decided that I wanted to practice the habit of reading more. I loved reading as a teenager – then it became something that I would only do at work or on holiday. Throughout the last couple of years, I have consumed a lot of books via Audible and decided to treat myself to a Kindle for Christmas so that I could look to make reading more easy and accessible. I have set my initial goal to read at least one book a month.
This month (January 2021) I choose Nancy Kline’s Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind. In November I attended a workshop on parenting and it was a recommendation from there. Not surprisingly there is a chapter in the book relating to families and a profound line, “the best thing you can do for your children is to listen to them”, that ties these two areas together nicely.
I think the general theme is listening could well be the greatest gift you can give anyone or any situation. This possibly is not rocket science but from the book, there is so much that I have found that I do that could be detrimental to the relationships in my life that are important to me.
I am generally a fixer, a problem solver, I like to offer suggestions and derive at solutions quickly. Perhaps what this book has taught me most is that it is not my job to fix things and try to provide all of the right answers. Allowing my peers at work, friends, family members “time to think” and offering them a “thinking environment” is more valuable and could provide a much better solution that us talking about a problem for a few seconds and me then stating what I would do to approach the solution. The Synergise habit from Stephen Covey is something that also springs to mind here.
What is a Thinking Environment?
