Hey Everyone! Today I’m posting about communication and continuing my 'series' to help people to not only avoid conflicts but also to drastically improve your chances of others listening to your views and maybe being believed! I know that these days our emotions are strong around many topics, and that can sometimes make it hard to talk about things. I think many people don’t even bother to say what they are thinking because of the amount of time and hassle that they have to go through in return. Taking flack for having an opinion, especially when there is no way to know the real truth, can be a very frustrating experience! SO today I would like to share just one simple thing that we can all do to really turn things around!
I am aware that many people don’t listen to or follow guides about communication because they don’t like to be told how to speak or what to say. I totally get that, as keeping it real and saying what is on your mind is what most of us want to do, and without too many constraints and restrictions placed upon us. Who is anyone else to tell us how to talk right?! Well i agree to some degree, however i also believe that many people, especially those with strong feelings about a topic, can fall into the most common pattern. This pattern or way of communicating your point is one that is worth changing because more often than not, in fact almost all the time, it only serves to put peoples back up, create further anger and conflicts, and ultimately leads to a very long series of personal abusive statements, or diagnosis, that end up leaving everyone even more angry, polarised, and very tired!
In today’s post i will share the ONE GOLDEN RULE that i believe we can all follow, and requires only the most minimal of tweaks to the way we speak, and consequently how an entire conversation may go. I will use an example from a few comments that I have received yesterday on one of my posts where I was sharing about what i thought about the now infamous slap that Will Smith delivered to Chris Rock. This is a great example because it is one that is related to an issue of using physical violence and none of us can say they truly know all the facts! I noticed from my post that there were many different opinions on the entire charade, and one theme that came up quite often was that some people felt that the entire debarcle was totally faked, staged, and performed as either some Psy Op conspiracy or by the Oscars themselves to help drive a bit more awareness to their flagging annual award ceremony. Let me just say right from the start that i am not interested in who is right or who is wrong about this, all I am interested in is how we have communicated about it, and how we can make some very small changes to the way we speak so that our points are listened to and heard without the need for conflict.
I think its a very curious thing that so many people choose to call other people names or put them down because of their views. What I have observed is that most people who do this are really angry or upset, not so much because of the point being discussed, but more that the theme that it touches on is one that is very important and has a lot of history and is a source of great distress and anger. There’s nothing wrong with being angry of course, its a very important emotion and a clear signal that something is wrong, and we have to find a way to resolve it. Of course as I'm sure as you know, venting is a popular way to do that, and whilst it may have some benefits.. mainly just getting that crap out of out system, it rarely does anything to resolve the source of the anger, or indeed help anyone to come to a real and truthful understanding of the situation at hand!
SO let me start with an example from one of my comments. I wont share the person's name who has made these comments as it really doesn’t matter who it is, what matters is what was said.
One person began by commenting the following in response to my post sharing my opinion that, for many reasons, i did not approve of Will Smith using violence to 'protect' his wife from a joke about being bald. It began with this comment:
"This was so obviously staged🙄 They have an "open" relationship so him trying to protect her is bs. You can touch her but not tease her LMAO"
This was a fair comment based on this persons belief that someone having an open relationship meant that there was no way Will could be genuine about wanting to protecting his wife. I personally did not agree with this assumption because I know a lot of people in open relationships and it is a totally false assumption that just because you are in one that it precludes still being in love or caring for one another. Since i knew that as a fact i responded to try to delve a little deeper with:
"I don’t follow! Having an open relationship doesn’t mean he doesn’t love or or want to protect her!? There is no correlation between the two. Furthermore its obvious he was trying to protect her since he genuine laughed at the joke. If it were staged he would have looked upset right awsy.. no one is that dumb to fake something that badly."
The response to my question was:
"It's so obviously staged you must be blind not to see it. What a bad actor🤣 Having an open relationship does mean he doesn't love her, not anymore anyway😅"
Here we go, the diagnosis begins! This persons then diagnosed that I must be blind and then goes on to repeat his untrue assumption again without providing any more detail.
SO i responded in the best way i could. I could tell right away that i was dealing with someone who was angry, upset, and yet didn’t have the exact knowledge or reasoning to justify his opinions. Since i am very familiar with this i said
"Nope my vision is great, but thanks for the attempted diagnosis.. i just use logic and observation and feeling to make logical conclusions from the facts presented.. rather than paranoia alone.. anyways u are entirely entitled to your opinion but i don’t believe things that make no sense or require great collusions between many people for no real reason"
I think it's a fair point, that where there is a conspiracy that involves colluding with many people, and potentially wrecking some very important and powerful peoples careers there really does need to be a reason for it. Then i proceeded to share with him some of my reasoning as to why i felt this to be true.. Perhaps some evidence would help!
"Why not see what an expert thinks? i can appreciate that our system is utterly corrupted.. but that doesn’t mean to say this is.."
I then shared a 30 minute video of a real expert examining every detail of the event using body language of everyone involved and came to his professional conclusion.
Notice in this response that I said "i can appreciate that our system is utterly corrupted.. but that doesn’t mean to say this is..". This is an important sentence because i could feel at this point that this person was probably more upset about the state of the world in general, as well as a totally corrupted system that i would agree is very broken and in need of change. Sometimes showing empathy and acknowledging someone’s anger, and putting it in its place can really help to pacify and show that we do understand the core of what they are upset about. Demonstrating that do understand someone’s anger is so important as most people who are angry feel that no one listens to them or understands, and are very frustrated that no one else seems to see it!
In this case this person was not at all receptive to this comment and it only served to inflame him further. His response was one that showed me that I was probably not going to get anywhere with them in terms of logic or empathy.. he said
"I don't give a shit about "experts". If it's made in the USA it's all bs. If you haven't yet realized this then you are beyond help. And where do you see paranoïa lol🤣 I don't care one way or another🤷♀️ I lived in the south of France for 26 years where there are swinger clubs every 30 km. I've met many with these relationships. They do it all together and are very sado-masochistic. But I don't care. Each does what pleases him or her. As long as it doesn't hurt a child or really affect my life that's all that matters to me. Each his own opinion and frankly, it's not very important🙏"
Ok that is the entire conversation. I decided not to respond because since he did not care about the opinion of experts that i felt he was not open to really discussing this logically and was totally closed to knowing the truth and instead was more concerned with being right.. He was playing the infamous Im Right You Are Wrong Game! .. as so many of us do! I could also tell he probably has a good heart and in general is probably a relatively nice guy who is just very upset at this particular theme.
SO, lets look at HOW this person could have changed just a few words in his response so that he stood a much better chance of having his opinions heard. IN this case he hasn’t really provided much if any logical reasons to support his views since its not really possible to do so.. if he is right and this was entirely staged there is no proof of it as it would be a conspiracy.. therefore all he as to share is his feelings and inner hunch that he is right and we should 'wake up' or 'open our eyes'.
Since this person is clearly VERY emotional and angry about it he also believes he is 100% right and knows the truth. Before i share an alternative way that he could have responded to me, as i say with just a few changes in the words he used, i would like to bring in this point as it is something that really gets in the way of anyone being heard or understood and believed. The point that i would like to make here is that if you are someone who feels VERY upset and angry about something, and we are 100% sure what we are saying is true, we have to be very careful. Its really important that we realise that just because we feel VERY strongly about something does not mean that we are right, and usually we in fact we are wrong when we feel like this.
The truth is NO ONE knows 100% anything at all in this world, that is part of life. Therefore all of us have to learn to always keep a tiny crack of humility open for the remote chance that we could be wrong, no matter what the topic is. TO illustrate this point i can say that i do not even know for certain that my name is 100% "Alex"! I am almost certain, i would say 99.99% sure but you never know, there are many possible (if highly unlikely) reasons as to why my name may not even be Alex! SO having that humility is so important because it allows us to keep an open mind, and discuss things without the terrible frustration and attachment that many of us have about an issue. We should ALWAYS be open to changing our minds about something because arrogance has a way of coming back to bite us on the ass!
So finally i can get to the crux of this post.. which is.. what do we say when we are in these situations? What can we say differently so that we don’t just initiate a tirade of verbal abuse and put downs that are just really an expression of frustration since one or both people are unable to find the logic, reasoning or facts to support their ideas.
SO let see using the first response he said:
"This was so obviously staged🙄 They have an "open" relationship so him trying to protect her is bs. You can touch her but not tease her LMAO️"
There were no put downs here, but just a subtle inference that he thought what he observed was fact when of course it isn’t fact. There’s not much to change here, except perhaps to use the words I THINK or I FEEL at the start. That just shows that this is an opinion and not a fact and may well help to keep the conversation peaceful since we are not imposing our views on others or trying to represent them as fact.
SO it could have been worded:
"I think this was so obviously staged, They have an "open" relationship so him trying to protect her is bs. You can touch her but not tease her LMAO"
Then the next response, which was very similar but contained a diagnosis or put down was added to try to beef up their argument"
"It's so obviously staged you must be blind not to see it. What a bad actor. Having an open relationship does mean he doesn't love her, not anymore anyway"
(oh the irony of calling a guy a bad actor when hes literally about to win an Oscar for being the best actor of the year! lol:))
Clearly here all that needs to be tweaked is the diagnosis that i must be blind. A much more productive response would have been:
"To me it looks so obviously staged I don’t understand how you can not see it. What a bad actor. Having an open relationship does mean he doesn't love her, not anymore anyway"
Real simple change here. The rule is, don’t diagnose people, instead tell them what their words or actions make you think or feel. In this case its just that he does not understand how i can not see it, rather than that i am blind or have something wrong with me! Its a simple and subtle difference that makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE!
Then his final response, where he gets even more angry after i present him with very solid facts to support my idea in the form of en expert reading body language:
" I don't give a shit about "experts". If it's made in the USA it's all bs. If you haven't yet realized this then you are beyond help. And where do you see paranoïa lol"
OK he doesn’t give a shit about experts. I guess that's his prerogative, although i find it strange how someone would not care about it.. but then he does qualify that by saying he basically does not trust anyone from the US, so props to him for that as he has justified his logic even if it's a bit extreme. But then he again drops the diagnosis bomb and suggests I am beyond help. So rewording so that we can be heard and avoid further escalation of verbal put downs might be
" I don't give a shit about "experts". If it's made in the USA it's all bs. It makes me feel SO frustrated and angry that you dont realized this. And where do you see paranoïa lol"
SO that is it folks! The point i am making here is so simple.. When we are speaking and trying to get our point across, avoid telling someone what they are or diagnosing them! Diagnosis is a VERY hard thing to do, as any doctor will tell you. To diagnose someone you have ask a lot of questions and make a sincere and unbiased effort to find the truth. IF you are not a doctor then you probably shouldn’t be trying to diagnose someone :) SO if your response to someone begins with YOU ARE, then you're already on the path to a violent and abusive conversation. Just change YOU ARE to, WHAT YOU HAVE SAID OR DONE MAKES ME FEEL....
Thats it it , one golden rule that IF you can manage to adhere to will save you a tonne of time and unnecessary conflicts i promise you! It may also help you to keep a few more of your friends, and maybe, just maybe, also result in more people actually listening to and believing what you have to say!
I hope that this has been useful and clear! If you are interested to learn more about this way of communicating it is called NVC or none violent communication. You can find a lot of amazing videos and more on the Internet.
Much love to you all ! <3 Lets change this world and heal with our intelligence, compassion and love.. Violence never did anything more than encourage more violence and solved NOTHING!