Timeless Communication

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”

— Tony Robbins

Last week we looked at some of the ways ways to become more comfortable with uncertainty and vulnerability.  I suggested that one helpful exercise toward this end is practicing your communication skills, which can involve you in feelings of vulnerability more quickly that most things I know—not just for the sake of just feeling vulnerable, but in order to demonstrate that it’s possible to feel vulnerability and to live through it just fine.  You may even come out of the experience with valuable knowledge that will help you in the future, plus greater confidence that feeling uncertain doesn’t mean anything very bad is happening.  This week we’ll look at some basic ground rules for engaging in communication in a constructive way so that your practice can be more rewarding.

Do you ever feel like no matter what you say, you're not being understood?  When this happens, it may be that the framework, the assumptions, the methods you're using are getting in the way of what you're trying to get across.  Think about how differently you react when someone approaches you calmly and respectfully versus when someone ambushes, pressures or screams at you.  It may be that there's valuable content that the person is attempting to relay in the second scenario, but you are unlikely to hear it because of the unpleasantness inherent in their attack.  Numerous skills may be lacking in such a case, and while we'll only cover a small number today, here are some thoughts on methods that will affect your communication styles for the better with consideration and practice.

• One of the most helpful guiding principles for skillful communication is the ability to acknowledge and represent that your feelings are no one else's fault.  This may seem like a radical idea, because it often seems that our feelings are a direct result of how others behave, i.e., if he would just listen, or if she would just stop nagging me, I wouldn’t have to be so angry…etc.  But this line of thinking puts you in the position of the victim, and predicates your happiness on the choices of others.  This suggests that you are powerless to change the situations in your life for the better, which is rarely the case. 
  • You have choices in your thoughts, which do much to give rise to your feelings; you also have choices in your actions.  You have the option to do the internal work necessary to understand and handle your own emotions on a daily basis, then take any appropriate actions so that they don't spiral out of control.  It takes two to tango, and (unless you've been kidnapped) you always have a part in the creation of interactions with another person, if only by choosing to be there and interact at all.  In your communications, it is often important to share how you feel, but this is best done without blame.  You might say, "When you slam the door when you come in and out of the room, I jump every time, which isn't pleasant for me. I end up feeling irritated, and then I end up resenting you."  You are explaining the situation from your point of view in a somewhat mechanical, logical way that is less likely to put the listener on the defensive. It represents how one thing leads to another in your personal experience.  This makes it more likely that the listener will actually see the problem you describe as understandable and, hopefully, be willing to participate in finding a solution.  (Timing is key here.  Ideally, you will find a time to attempt a communication like this when you’re calm and can remain solution oriented.)
  • This may be pretty difficult to do depending on the situation. When we haven't practiced this skill, we have a tendency to get lost in thinking things like, "You're stupid. You're selfish. If you cared about anyone but yourself, you would pay attention to what you're doing and think!"  Yet it's possible for someone else to have a viewpoint sufficiently different from yours that it has very sound logic, based on their unique experience and goals, that you would not have been able to figure out without their explanation.  If you allow yourself to presume that the other's viewpoint is valid and seek to understand it, you may be surprised how much there is to learn, and how much cooperation then becomes possible.
• It's essential to allow others the space to have their own reactions.  This is often one of the hardest skills to learn for numerous reasons.  We have a tendency to react to others’ emotions, whether out of a desire to help the other to feel better, or out of fear of certain outcomes, which can include fear of aggression or abandonment.  These fears can be based on ingrained past experiences, including in childhood, such that primal survival instincts kick in.  This may seem automatic, inevitable, and activate your physical fight/flight/freeze response even if you're just discussing who is going to walk the dog.  You may not even know consciously why you're getting so stressed out, and it's not easy to work with an issue you can't even see.  Psychological work like traditional talk therapy is designed to help you understand why you behave in certain ways so that you can spot these seemingly automatic reactions and practice responding differently when you choose to.  It may take some doing to recognize that flash point when old patterns start to smolder, but it can be done.  Somatic modalities like EFT can also work to release stress regarding both old situations and recent ones from the body, which helps you to stay calmer when facing something that triggers a disproportionate reaction.
  • Allowing someone else to express difficult emotions without immediately trying to “fix” them or defend yourself from direct or implied (or imagined!) blame absolutely takes practice.  Depending on your upbringing, your values, and the roles you tend to play in social groups, it can feel downright painful.  Yet everyone else’s emotions are created from a complicated mix of elements just as yours are, and no matter what someone else claims, they are not your fault, nor yours to fix.  Obviously if you love someone, you don’t want them to be in unnecessary pain, and you certainly may be able to help them to feel better in some ways, including by taking responsibility for your motives and actions.  But they have a right to feel their emotions and work through them.  If you try to be too involved in that process or take too much responsibility for how they feel, you are depriving them of important experiences.  Meditation and other calming practices help you to solidify states of mind that you can learn to recapture when you’re in challenging situations, which is part of why such practices are so valuable.  When you have a well-practiced state of calm that you can call upon when you’re being tempted to get drawn into emotions that are not your own, you have a lot more power to communicate in helpful ways.

These are just a couple of skills you can practice to improve your ability to communicate effectively and respectfully with others in your life, and they are definitely among the most challenging.  I didn't start with the easy ones, but with the ones that may take the longest to master!  I hope you'll dive into some area of these and see if you can make some progress.  When you can be more skilled with your communication and remain calmer while doing it, it's incredibly empowering.

R-e-s-p-e-c-t

“It’s easy to not feel misplaced if this tidal wave of appreciation is coming your way.”

— Christoph Waltz

Last week we looked at the importance of gaining significant skills in some area of your choice as a way to bolster self-worth.  The second part of Maslowe’s posited esteem needs is, in his own words, “the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance, or appreciation.”  He found that, even if we feel great about our accomplishments, abilities, and our value from within, it’s important that the reactions of others align with our assessment.  If they don’t, if we haven’t clearly earned the respect and commendation of others for having produced something valuable, we will likely feel unsatisfied until the respect of others does show up. 

Humans exist within an evolutionary dynamic in which we tend to be always reaching for new ideas, better solutions, and more progress—not just biologically, but with our hearts, minds, and spirits as well.   This all makes sense, as thriving in a constantly changing world like ours requires the ability to adapt just as constantly.  We wouldn’t have survived for long as a species without this drive to adapt and grow.  Since we’re social beings, it also makes sense that to be considered valuable within a group, it helps for an individual to be good at contributing to the progress of the group, rather than just his own.  In the harsh climates of centuries past, it was extremely difficult to survive alone; if one was not important to a societal group, one’s very survival could be on the line.  Perhaps the reason we long for the adulation of others for our contributions is that, without it, we still feel vulnerable and afraid of being banished as the weakest link.  In the modern world, even though most of don’t live in tribal cultures anymore, it can still be horrifying to contemplate being deemed unimportant or unworthy by family, colleagues, friends or other communities. 

Even if we’re not as afraid as all that, it can also be frustrating to have given our all to something only to find that others don’t value it as we do, or as we thought they would.  Such miscalculations may tempt us to doubt the very abilities and results that we were proud of, and to doubt our worth.  I’m sure you’ve been through something like this, and it does not feel good!  Being out of synch with others can make you feel alone even if you're not.  It’s hard to hold onto your sense of self-worth if you continually receive the message from others that your contributions are not valued, and you're profoundly different from others. 

On the other hand, the perks of adulation, of succeeding in earning the respect of others and enjoying a good reputation, have always been worth having.  In the distant past, if you had the best reputation for valuable skills and abilities, you might have become a tribal leader with access to all the best resources.  You might have lived in the best location, had your choice of a mate, and had a disproportionate say in the decisions affecting the group.  Today, it’s not so different.  You might achieve your share of all of the above (house, spouse, platform from which to influence others), plus a lot more autonomy in directing your future separate from any group.  The prevalent cultures today favoring individualism, the universal nature of money in today’s world, and the relative ease of travel mean more personal freedom for those who now succeed in gaining respect and reputation.  You might even earn some degree of fame (the extreme version of recognition), which can open even more doors for you.  These are the very things for which people have vied across centuries.  Wars are still waged for these things by those who see no way to gain them except through force.  We humans cannot seem to help wanting the privileges that come with the respect of others across time and cultures.

In fact, in a study done by the Harvard Business Review and Tony Schwartz that surveyed nearly 20,000 people, referenced here, workers who responded that they were treated with respect by higher-ups “reported 56% better health and well-being” than those who didn’t!  So not only do we crave the respect of others, but when we don’t think we’re getting it, our very health is likely to suffer, in many cases significantly.  Plenty of other research corroborates this story.  If that’s not an argument for thinking deeply about how you can earn a more satisfactory level of appreciation from others, I don’t know what is—going without it is bad for you!

How, then, can we address a perceived lack of respect and appreciation from others?  Some ideas:

• While it’s a lot of fun to spend our time doing and creating things we enjoy ourselves, if you want appreciation from others, you’ll need to think about how your contributions benefit or please others.  Be willing to try on the way others think, even if it’s foreign to you.  You might find that doing so is a lot more fun than missing out on some of the perks discussed above.
• Once you’ve thought that through, you’ll need to work on adapting in order to provide experiences or results that others will respect and enjoy.  I am not saying that in working in this area you need to leave behind the pursuits that please you, not at all, but you may need to be receptive to the idea of branching out.
• If those from whom you most want respect are significantly different from you in values and preferences, there may come a time when you need to admit to yourself that what it would take to earn respect from them is unacceptable to you.  While this kind of impasse can be quite disappointing, there is also power in accepting that you need to find your respect and appreciation elsewhere, and let go of any fruitless power struggles; those can waste a lot of your energy, and people only really change of their own accord.  If you’re trying to make them change, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
• From a perspective shared by most of the world’s major religions, compassion for others expressed by helping someone in need for no personal gain at all is its own reward.  Yet, because this is a widely held perspective, and because receiving appropriate help and love from someone who expects no return often feels good to the receiver, this too can lead to the respect of others and a favorable reputation.  This is a different route toward these than mastery of a particular skill set.  If you lack confidence in your own ability to shine in other ways, or you are someone who is more inspired by the idea of gaining respect for having and sharing personal qualities such as kindness and generosity, then you can bolster this area of your life by focusing on giving more while still maintaining your own health and balance.

Earning the respect of others is a collaborative process.  It requires listening and responding to feedback.  You have to be willing to find ways to surprise, delight, and benefit others, and to enjoy the process of co-creation.  The good news is that in many ways we are hard-wired to cooperate for mutual benefit, and when we do receive the approbation of others, it tends to be a pretty darned enjoyable experience.  It won’t do to ignore your own opinion of yourself; that must be maintained through meaningful accomplishments and the expression of personal qualities that you yourself can decide are valuable.  But the innate desire we have to be considered worthy by others is important to our happiness and health.  If this area of your life feels a bit empty, you may make big gains in your overall satisfaction by spending some time in consideration of how to improve it followed by some tailored action.  I wish you great success in your efforts to value yourself and to be appreciated for your work and your fine qualities.