I’ve got a cat sleeping on my lap, a dog snoozing on the floor between my legs, and another cat napping in the other room. I guess it’s officially nap time for the pets. Which means I’m going to get something done–hopefully uninterrupted!?
It’s interesting that as a human race we seem to think we must must justify, or we unintentionally justify, why we do what we do. Do you have conversations with others that end up with individuals saying, “Well I would but I need to….”? Or, “I can’t because…”? Or, “I would love to but…”? All too often we feel we need to explain to others (and maybe ourselves out loud) why we did or didn’t do something. What a way to live our life, eh?
I’ve found that when others come into our lives they CAN always teach us something. I may even go as far as to say, Papa God brought them into our life for a reason, as trying as some people truly are in teaching us something and us receiving the education/message. Always, I digress. When people come into our life we all ought to walk away from the exchange gaining some sort of knowledge. Maybe it’s a character building opportunity. Or, maybe it’s learning how to do something you didn’t know how to do. Yet maybe, it’s an opportunity to learn how to communicate better. People come into our lives for so many reasons I don’t want to limit the WHY of why they do.
As people come into our lives and we get to know one another, professional or personal, we as humans tend to relate to each other through “story”, through our own personal experiences that’ve happened to us in life. As we get to know one another and hear the other’s story we only just begin to relate with one another. It is during this time, as we listen to the other speaking, our brain can fire off into any and every direction, hearing or not hearing all of what the individual is telling us. Have you ever heard the saying, “Everyone walks away from the conversation hearing what they heard while the other walked away hearing something entirely different, yet they heard the same story?” As people communicate, our brains work to comprehend right in the moment and then store information for later on at night when we sleep. Interesting, eh? Pretty neat, too, that we don’t actually have to MAKE ourselves to this function of storing information!
As we communicate, we can easily not hear people for what they are entirely saying. We can all too often allow our brain to fire and lead us into focusing on a particular something that was said and then miss a big part of what was said in the conversation. Or, we can hear something and we relate to it, so we are just waiting for the person speaking to pause so we can share our own experience–and we are not entirely focused or focused at all on what the person is saying at this point while waiting to speak. Looking at it this way can be a kind of an “ouch” moment, right? It’s natural for us to do this, want to connect with the speaker on a related experience or subject matter, but yet at the same time it may not be an “ouch” moment. Why? Because all too often we learn to do these exact examples given so far from watching others communicate, watching it on TV, or doing it ourselves and it being seemingly “normal” communication. What ever happened to stopping and putting our phone down and focusing on what a person is talking about? What ever happened to listening to a person speak and not feel we have to say anything to relate, but instead offer a listening ear and moral support. All too often in life we jump right into conversations and exchanges allowing our brain to fire and us to speak exactly what our brain fired off. Which leads me to the next point.
Why do we feel we need to justify what we say or what we do? Why do we feel the need to explain ourselves when, honestly, we don’t have to most often time. This can be a hard teaching for people to learn. I, myself, can catch myself doing this. And when I realize I’m doing this, I just shake my head inwardly at myself all the while thinking, You did it again, STOP doing that! Communication isn’t easy! No wonder communication is one of the hardest things about not only personal relationships, but professional relationships too. It’s far too easy for words to be misinterpreted, for us to walk away from a conversation hearing something different than what the person was actually meaning, and for this person speaking to not being heard fully.
Communication may not be easy, but it IS vital for us to be able to functionally communicate with others. We are humans beings who are meant to be in relationship with one another, and communicating is how we relate most often. Just because communication isn’t easy shouldn’t mean we throw in the towel, bite someone’s head off in words, or get angry when asked a question because someone didn’t understand something. I personally think we can ALL do a better job of communicating. It takes each and every one of us to make communication better. This means we really all should try to enhance our communications with one another, don’t you think?
As always, thank you for taking the time to interact and communicate here on the blog. We love hearing from our readers, and are thankful you choose to communicate with us! May your day be bright, filled with sunshine and smiles, and awesome communications!
Your Life, Your Choice 