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.

A White-Knuckle Ride

“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”

— Walt Whitman

If you want to live a life that feels exciting and fulfilling, it's extremely important to define your goals. I hope you've taken the time to do that so that you have a basic roadmap for the path you want to tread. Once you've done that, you have many decisions to make regarding your preferred pace and methods in working toward them.  One of the most difficult things about working on long-term projects often turns out to be the discomfort of becoming someone new, someone who has and can confidently use the skills necessary to achieve your stated goals.  It can be equally difficult to communicate the changes in progress to the important people in your life, and to unveil your plans and results to people who may display mixed reactions to them for any number of reasons.

Sometimes the best course of action will be to fly under the radar as you begin to make your initial steps toward your goals. Change can be messy, and you don't necessarily need others poking at you with their opinions about what you're doing in the early stages. Your choice here should have a lot to do with your personality—how much do you like to talk over your daily experience with others?  How much support would you like from others as you work?  Would you rather not have to deal with the endless advice of others who may have your best interests at heart, but tend to be fearful or don't know much about your subject area?  

But eventually, you'll need to come out into the light of day with your projects and be willing to unveil your changes and be seen in order to fully succeed. This process can be scary when you don't yet have it all together, and don't relish the idea of being judged. Knowing that others are watching as you stumble through things you're not yet expert in can leave you feeling pretty vulnerable.  And yet, no one ever achieves new things without navigating this situation. You don't have to love it, but the more comfortable you grow with being seen to be imperfect, the more free you'll be to keep moving through all the uncertain moments in your projects—and there will be many!

You can practice gaining comfort with vulnerability by working on your projects and learning new things. (Continually stretching beyond your current abilities and knowledge also keeps you from getting stuck in any ruts and becoming bored.  It also keeps your brain working, which is great for its long-term health.)  Every time you research your next steps, attempt to move forward through trial and error, or experience an inspiration leading to new possibilities, you acknowledge what you don't know, while at the same time reaffirming that it's ok not to know everything, and you can and will get where you want to go anyway.  

Another one of the ways that you can practice being ok with uncertainty is by choosing to be more communicative with others, and this requires no special situation. All of our interactions with others offer fertile ground here, and most of us encounter numerous other people every day. It's rare that anyone can say that they never encounter discomfort in communicating with others; unfortunately, most of us were taught in some way or other that honest communication is dangerous. This may have been through experience, by noticing that our parents vastly preferred it when we were "good little children" who expressed no opinions or desires (they were busy, and raising kids is hard, so it's not hard to understand why our parents sent the message sometimes that silence is golden). Maybe you asked innocent questions of teachers and didn't understand their disapproving reactions. Maybe as a child you communicated without a filter, as kids do, and sometimes hurt friends' feelings without meaning to. Or maybe you learned to avoid communication because you got one too many bombshells dropped on you at some point, and decided that it was better for everyone to keep things to themselves and refrain from rocking the boat. Whatever may have happened to slow down your interest in owning your truth and communicating openly and confidently, when you're an adult, it's incredibly empowering to work on taking back your ability to share what needs to be said in timing that is appropriate for you.

There are many wonderful sources of information about helpful communication techniques that you can learn from, but in order to become competent in using them, you must practice. Because this practice will offer you plenty of awkward and uncomfortable moments no matter how smart you are (because every person and situation is different) it will serve to help you acclimate to that feeling of stumbling through the use of new skills, and finding that the world will not end because your performance wasn't flawless. As you find out what works well for you, you'll also be gaining confidence in your ability to learn and keep going through uncertainty and discomfort—important skills for any kind of success!

Honest communication can be more frightening than skydiving, and working at it can bring up similar amounts of fear and adrenaline depending on your skill level. If the thought of just calmly and openly stating how you feel and what you want makes you feel like you're about to keel over, then start small. You might ask clarifying questions next time you're buying something in a store or ordering food in a restaurant, explaining what you're trying to accomplish or what you prefer. You could try asking people for the time or directions just for the sake of interacting on topics with little importance. Or try asking someone you care about to do something minor that they normally do with you in a slightly different way, because it seems like fun.  When you become willing to express opinions about small things, you start becoming more aware of what you want and what you have to say.  You also get used to others  responding reasonably to minor requests, as most people will, which will build your confidence in considering tackling larger issues.

Next week's blog will continue where we've left off here, and suggest the most helpful principles I've found for communicating well with others.  This week, I hope you'll remind yourself that change is often uncomfortable, but it can become less so as you become familiar with the process.  So much can be gained when you're willing to keep going even though you don't know everything about how to climb your mountain.