Have you ever noticed that when things aren't going our away or something is troublesome, we are more motivated to act? We tend to up the frequency and intensity of our communication for example.
Recently I experienced this as part of a mix up with my bank. I won't bore you with all the details but up to a certain point, they weren't worried about getting my money--and their communication was sparse. My communication with them was also limited. I mailed them a check once a month. Now, at a certain point, they got worried about getting my money and they kicked it into high gear. Before I even got the letter from them notifying me of any problem, I started getting phone calls. I will admit, I was slow to return them--because I didn't feel any urgency. I suspected they were trying to get me to open a credit card or to refinance. I got a letter about the issue and then I started calling them--every day. Now I was alarmed. Then they sent me several big packages overnight of 50+ page documents reminding me of my legal commitment to pay and all the terrible things that would happen if I didn't, as well as telling me who to call if I needed assistance with a payment plan. We resolved the issue and almost 3 weeks later, they are still calling to get my money, the communication that everything is fine, not having traveled nearly as fast internally at this large bank as the news that there might be a problem did.
That experience is just one of many I can cite. A project didn't go well at work today and I found myself and several of the other people involved sending email after email--working to sort out details and suggest improvements and try to set ourselves up for things to work better tomorrow. Maybe you can think of some examples from your own experience--the times you were upset about something--or some compilation of somethings--and suddenly talking to, emailing or texting a friend, a co-worker, a sibling, a significant other to talk about what was going on felt pressing. You kept at them until they agreed to talk--or maybe you didn't even give them a chance to avoid it and the next time you saw them after you figured it all out in your head, you launched right into the "conversation" you wanted to have. Maybe you texted them message after message or sent a long email detailing the problem and how it made you feel. Let me guess: you didn't get the results you wanted.
We do this to ourselves as well. We skip right over the good in what we have done or in our lives and focus right on the one thing we wish were different. I was talking with a colleague recently and she was showing me the things she has been working on in her curriculum. She glossed over what she liked about it and all the work she had clearly put into it and drew us right to the one question that was still troubling her, the thing that she hadn't been able to figure out to her satisfaction.
Communicating from this place of what's wrong moves everything to high alert, and it pre-establishes a crisis. "I feel a sense of urgency--and now we have a problem--and things are bad." When I start a conversation from this place--with myself or another person--it tends to go downhill. My sense of "we have a problem" translates to the other person who responds either defensively or by expanding the problem. When I do this to myself, I am so narrowly focused that my view becomes limited. One of my yoga teachers often says, "What you focus on is what you get." Focusing on what's not working then seems like a limited tool. It makes what I don't like clear but it provides no clue as to what's better because it ignores what's working.
Here's what I am wondering: in a relationship I have where the communication is crisis oriented and points to what's wrong, what would shift if I started having conversations that pointed to what's right too? I am not sure I will try this with my bank, but I've been experimenting with this with my co-workers, my family members and even myself. It might not change that sometimes I notice or want to talk about something that is a problem, but it means that the landscape of those conversations, when they happen, is different. My lens is broader, the history of conversation or thoughts more round, the talk about "the problem" balanced out by all the positives. It can be so easy to let the positive slide by unmentioned. We let what's good lack urgency--I know I do. If we do that, while also letting anything that troubles us become urgent, we get exactly what we created.
No comments:
Post a Comment