Listen Linda

Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

Listen, Linda. This is from a wildly popular video that was uploaded to YouTube around 6 years ago. To date, it has over 21 million views, so it is kind of a big deal. I will go ahead and admit that about a million of them are from my family alone. My mother-in-law just happens to be named Linda, so we found this video especially funny.  We even got our kiddos saying it to her, just to be funny. I will go ahead and say we definitely don’t condone the behavior in the video, and we don’t allow our kids to actually argue like that with us or Linda. As funny as the video is, there really is a lesson in there. 

Two lessons that I think can be learned from this video are:

  1. We need to make sure we listen to each other to form consensus and move forward. Just like we check our hearing, sometimes we need to check our listening.

  2. We have a tendency to only listen to those who tell us what we want to hear.

Lesson number one, in the video, the adult talks about the child not listening. The child then goes off on how the parent is not listening to him. This goes back and forth. This can happen in our day to day lives as well. Instead of listening to each other, they were so focused on arguing and not listening, which is not conducive to coming up with a solution! This is something that I think we all struggle with, myself, especially! We don’t listen to each other to form a consensus, we “listen” just well enough to fuel our argument and to “win”. I know I have a tendency to tune out because I am so focused on what my rebuttal is going to be! Everyone has heard the saying from Greek philosopher Epictetus, “we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak”, but how often do we actually play this out?  Let’s listen to learn and TRULY listen. This is a huge part of building positive relationships. 

The 2nd lesson is revealed in part of their dialog. This is really what started the argument. The child wanted a cupcake. The mother didn’t give the kiddo the answer he wanted to hear, so what does he do? Well, he is a smart kid, so of course, he goes and asks his grandma, because, well, we all know, grandma always says yes. We know this is played out thousands of times, probably daily across the world. It doesn’t seem to matter how strict of a parent someone is, the moment they become a grandparent, they are the most accommodating, easily convinced, pushover, to walk the earth. I am making light of this, grandparents have earned this right! Getting back on track the root of the child’s decision was, “didn’t hear what I wanted to hear, so I am going to find someone that will tell me what I want to hear.” This seems innocent enough, we have all pulled the grandma card, but really this is something we all do in other, more important/impactful decisions. Even in this scenario, maybe having a cupcake wasn’t what was best for the child, but it was what they wanted to hear. How many times do we do this?

Have you ever been faced with a difficult decision and needed assistance thinking it through? Think about those people you turn to. Do they always tell you what you want to hear? Or do they tell you what you need to hear?  Often what you want to hear and what you need to hear are two different things. Make sure you have people in your life that you trust and that will tell you what you need to hear. These people are invaluable to your successes. Make sure to surround yourself with the RIGHT people, not just the “agreeable” people. 


Here is the video I referenced:

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