Is Anybody Listening?

Thinky thoughts today about communication (and about how greed has poisoned our world and could prove to be the most deadly of the seven deadly sins – but let’s leave greed to another thinky thought, shall we). 

First about communication. This thing that is called exchanging information.

It’s brought home to me daily, by virtue of what I do, that communication is at the centre of much of our dis

tress as a human race. The way we speak and write. The things we say. The things we mean. The things we don’t mean. The things we do mean but pretend we didn’t say. The things we want to mean but don’t want to come outright and say or take ownership of. All of the above in one big cesspool of miscommunication. 

Or we could just call it a missed chance at communication. 

It was brought home to me today again because of some copy I’ve been editing. Several pages of very important information from one of our scientific programs here at MSI. Scientists have this fabulous way of writing that makes everything as clear as mud. Because nothing in science can be definitively stated, everything must be qualified. So in the end you end up not really saying what it is you really want to say but trying to say it anyway and trying to sound sort of definitive about that even though you really can’t be definitive at all.

You got that? 
Yeh, me neither.

It does drive home for me though how incredibly important it is – this communication thing – and how very often we take the process for granted. Too often we think that the important part of communication is that we have said what we’ve wanted to say – even if that saying is illegible to someone else or no-one’s listening. Whereas the important part of it – the most important part actually – is that the recipient of that communication has understood us.

There’s a few things that I say to my peeps over here at MSI about communication, and have said throughout my career as a Paid Communicator cum PR person, that it occurs to me apply deeply to our personal lives. 

The first of these is that – when instigating this process of communication - you should probably make sure that the person or people you are talking to want to listen or have any vested interest in listening to you at all. All too often we make the mistake I think of assuming that because we’re talking, someone owes it to us to listen. Nothing could be further from the truth. And even if you have somehow managed to shanghai someone into ‘listening’ to you, there’s no real guarantee that they are actually ‘listening’ to you at all. In fact, according to the International Listening Association (www.listen.org), most of us are distracted, preoccupied or forgetful about 75% of the time that we pretend we are listening and immediately after we listen to someone, we only recall about 50% of what they said. 

(Have you ever continued to talk at someone even after you’ve become peripherally aware that they’re no longer really listening but are just being polite? I have.)

The second thing that I often tell my peeps over here is that if you are going to communicate something, and you’ve scored the bonus of having someone who wants to listen and they are doing a half-way reasonable job at it, then you ought probably to try to say this thing of yours in a way that makes sense to them or approximates as closely as possible what you actually ‘mean’. By which I mean that just because you said it and they heard it, doesn’t mean they heard what you said.

(Have you ever talked to someone using your own ‘metaphor-rich-language’ only to watch people’s eyes glaze over as they struggle to understand the intricacies of what you mean? I have.)

It strikes me that both of these things are super-applicable to our lives. It starts by acknowledging that we all have an individual language that we all speak… that we all use words in a way that makes perfect sense to us and carries with it a lot of inherent and implied meaning that we forget to double-check the other person has understood. 

I constantly forget to check that what I’m saying has been understood by the person I’m saying it to. I also make the mistake in reverse of assuming that someone meant what I think they meant without checking. It’s gotten me into trouble in love and life.
How many times have you had a conversation and ‘agreed’ on something with a loved one, co-worker or friend only to find that actually you both had a very different memory of what that agreement was – sometimes a diametrically opposite understanding.

How is that possible? And yet it happens so often. What might you currently even be thinking you understand about what someone has recently said to you that is completely wrong? Ever been insulted, only to find out that the person in question hadn’t intended to be insulting? Where does the insult lie then – does it lie with the person, who didn’t mean it, or with you who carries around embedded meaning in your psyche that makes that thing insulting? Or somewhere in between? And when we feel insulted, what is it that hurts us? (Ouch, my poor head.) 

It’s on a continuum of course and depending on what example just sprung into your head, you may think you know the answer to that question one way or another. 

But let’s expand this out to broader conversations – national conversations. Jesus – are we even having one? Suddenly, the disaster that is our politics comes into clearer focus. What are we yelling at each other? And when I yell, is the other side even listening? If they’re listening, what are they hearing? And so, why do we yell? The speed with which we all take offence and fumigate and posture makes even less sense when seen through this prism. I mean, what are we trying to achieve? Who’s winning here? Can we all just stop yelling now? 

And even more questions zooming around in my head today about this: What have I assumed I’ve understood about what I’ve heard or read today? What am I actually reacting to? Is it what someone has written or said or is it what I think they’ve written or said and the implications of that given my values and the meaning I construct in the world? 

Most importantly - have I made any important decisions about someone or something based on what I think I’ve understood? Have I checked this understanding? If not, why not? Crikey – I bet I ought to check that understanding before I get pissed off at that person or people.

It’s a bottomless pit this communication and language thing I tell you. Once you jump into it, you’ll not quickly jump out. 

I mean do you even know what you’ve just been reading? Maybe I don’t even mean what you think I mean at all. 

Just a thought. 
;)

No More Mr Nice Guy

Thinky thoughts today about boundaries and the ‘nice guys finish last’ trope that have come together in a sort of ‘schmooshing’ of ideas. It got me thinking about responsibility – how difficult it is to take it, how our perspectives colour our view of the world and the people around us, and how in our society we’re not taught to see ourselves as the authors of our own reality. Bear with me here. 

I think there’s a point in all of this. It’s one I’ve made before, but I can’t help but come back to it. It seems so pertinent to me in all areas of life. 

Today on his Facebook page, George Takei posted a comic-strip of a couple cuddling in bed. There are some panels of them canoodling and the gal telling the guy how nice he is to her, how well he treats her, what a nice guy he is. The joke is on the final panel when she says: “I feel bad for you though… It’s gonna hurt like a sonofabitch when I decide to leave you for some manipulative bad-boy.”

Let’s leave the douche-baggery of the typical woman-hating comments that comic prompted aside for a moment. I want to focus on those comments that were mainly along these lines:

“It has happened to me about…. 3 times or so.”

“uh HUH! Yup! Exactly. This is exactly what will happen to all the overly-emotional, spineless dudes out there who think that that’s the way to a woman’s heart.”

“I had a girlfriend exactly like this. So typical.”

“Story of my life!”

“If it didn’t happen all the time, this wouldn’t even exist! Sure not all women are this way, but an overwhelming majority seem to not care about what the guy is like as much as how much swag he has.”

“I thought as myself as the nice guy b4. Felt hurt all the time. But now I’m like “F**k It!!””

“Sounds about right!”

“This happened to me. The girl even said she knew the guy is going to beat her. And he did. I was lucky to get rid of that idiot.”

“Nice guys finish last. I don’t understand why woman likes guys that treat them like shit?!!!!!”
You get the picture.

Can you see the common thread? And no it’s not the generally tendency to hate on women, although there is A LOT of that on the wider thread.

The commonality is that none of these comments, or the thousands of similar comments posted, reflect any self-awareness at all about their experiences. None of these people seem to take responsibility for themselves.

Now granted, a small comment is not enough room to make that judgement definitively. So I use them only as examples of a broader topic. That is the generally tendency we have to need to believe that it is something else other than us that is to blame for our unhappiness – and most of the time in love, we’ll blame it on the gender. As if there is a biological imperative that makes members of the sex we find attractive singularly unable to appreciate us. Which of course masks a much deeper malaise – the idea that actually, if I drill down too deep, I’ll discover that it’s not them that’s a ‘stupid, idiotic, worthless piece of shit’, but actually it’s me.

You can apply this to any issue in life – love, work, friendship, whether you’ve met your potential in life. These are all things that come down to a series of choices we make, but that we generally make unconsciously. And it’s not easy man – it’s fucking hard really – to look at yourself and take responsibility for all of that.

So I don’t say this to shame them. Unfortunately we’ve not been taught to view ourselves as the authors of our own experiences or given the tools to lovingly nurture this part of ourselves into health. We are taught to victimise ourselves twice-over by projecting our hurt or bad experiences onto someone else - anything else – as long as we don’t have to look too closely at ourselves. 

I’ve been guilty of it myself. 

In love, it goes something like this: Person X treated me badly. They didn’t treat me the way I deserved. They used me and abused me. Or they took what they needed and then they left me. I was so good to them. I loved them so much. I gave them so much. And what they gave me in return was a pile of shit. 

Then Person Y came along. He/ she was no better. They didn’t treat me the way I deserved. They used me and abused me. I loved them so much. I gave them so much. And what they gave me in return was a pile of shit.

Then Person Z came along. They didn’t treat me the way I deserved…. etc etc. Why are all men/ women losers? I hate them! I’m going to treat the next person who comes along mean in return because clearly they are biologically incapable of being loving.

Confession: at one point in my life, this was me. Okay – not the ‘treating the next person mean’ bit. I’ve never actually been capable of that. But at one point I was sure – deep in my bones – that all men were hurtful and I suspected that they were simply incapable of being giving and loving in the way that women were. True story. You may not think it to look at me now, but the people closest to me know the long battle I waged against those demons. Old grizzly demons with big teeth.

There comes a point though, after the third or fourth such experience, when you really ought to look at yourself and go – what’s the common thread here. Is it everybody else? Or could it actually be… me? 

These questions help: how are am I turning up in life and love? Am I giving people the permission to treat me badly by not standing up for myself? Do I speak up for myself? Did I speak my truth? Do I recognise good behaviour when I see it? Can I distinguish between someone who is worth my time and effort and someone who is not? What are my deal breakers? Did I stick by them? Did I follow my intuition? Did I ignore the red-flags? Can I stand by my behaviour? Did I play the victim? Did I give over all my power? 

The point of these questions then in my mind, isn’t for us to victimise ourselves thrice-over by blaming ourselves for everything. It is merely to reclaim our power – to recognise that we are the authors of our lives. That we give permission in often subtle ways for people to devalue us and treat us less well than we deserve. And we can choose to be constant victims – and blame our misfortune in life and love on biology, fate and the pure mean-spiritedness of others, or the general crappiness of the world. Or we can choose to reclaim our power, learn from our experiences, set better boundaries and expectations and open ourselves up to greater and bigger love as a result.

Someone wise said to me the other day that being in love and receiving someone else's love comes with great responsibility. And I believe this to be powerfully true. We need to be responsible to each other but also to ourselves and for ourselves.

No more victimisation. No more buying into the idea of ‘Mr Nice Guy Who Perpetually Loses At Love’. 

Better to be a genuinely Great Person, with lots of genuine love for yourself and everyone around you and with the responsibility to be accountable to yourself and for yourself. Then you’ll never lose. You’ll only ever win.

Just a thought.