Transcript

Good Conversation · Wanzology

Good Conversation What's happening? Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Wandsology. I'm your host, The Wands. Kind of on top of the world, little hyper. Hyper, hyper, hyper because I just got done listening to some Earth, Wind & Fire, "In the Stone," and that is a highly motivating tune to The Wands. That's me. How are you? Are you good? I hope that you are striving, achieving, but most of all, breathing, 'cause without breathing, well, you probably wouldn't be listening to this anyway. Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. So this week, I want to share something that I actually didn't realize until about five minutes before I sat down in this chair to do this episode. Today has been a, um, not an extraordinarily good day, but better than usual. Why? I asked myself. Why? Why, why, why? Well, it's because I spent part of the day with a friend, and we had a great conversation. We talked about fear and love and sex and politics and our upbringing. Lots of different things. All of it was comfortable. It wasn't forced. It wasn't like we were investigating or comparing with each other. It was very interesting, and it was very relaxing. So much so that a couple hours after we parted, I got a text message that said, "Thank you for the conversation. It was really comfortable." And I smiled because that's kind of the goal of having good conversation. Do you have someone that you have good conversation skills with? Someone that you can bare your soul, and even if you're judged, y-you take it in stride? You can share the deepest, darkest secret and not feel like you're some kind of defective human? Do you have that person that when you're afraid, you have no problem sharing with this person that you're afraid, and that person, knowing that you're afraid, doesn't do the very thing that you fear, doesn't take that fear that you shared and beat you over the head into the ground with it? Do you have a person like that? How do you find a person like that I have a person like that. In fact, I have a couple. I have a male and a female, and our relationships are based on honesty. Not the kind of honesty where it's like, "Oh, you gave me too much change," or, "You charged me for something that I didn't order." Not that kind of honesty. This is the kind of honesty where you basically tear open the skin on your chest so that somebody can see inside of you, warts and all. Having a person that you can be that kind of honest with is hard to find. Very hard to find. Do you have a person like that? Like I said, I have a male and a female person like that, and the female person I've known for probably 15, 16 years, and we were gonna date. In fact, we actually started out dating, but after a little while, I figured out that this wasn't my ideal person. But the conversation that we had and the level of communication and honesty that we had, I really had not experienced before. She was coming out of a really, really bad marriage. I had come out of a very, very mentally abusive relationship and was trying to figure out who I was without that person. We shared a lot about what we had been through, and it was amazing how many similarities there were with her ex-husband and my ex-significant other, and how they were manipulative in their own way, and how we always felt worse after trying to work things out, like we had given up a whole part of ourselves and really didn't get much in return, and the one thing we really didn't get in return was consistency. That was the basis of our relationship, and now that person's moved away and has been gone for a while, but we still, we still get in conversations, and when we do, it's like we just saw each other yesterday. Do you have a person or persons in your life like that? No matter how much time you spend away from each other, it's just like you talked to them yesterday. Are you that kind of person to someone else? There is no substitute for good conversation. And when I say good conversation, I don't mean two people, three people trying to prove how much one or the other knows about this or that. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is communication, where everyone is understood and respected, where fear and embarrassment don't ever appear. You can tell your deepest, darkest secrets to this person, and it's not like they're gonna use it against you. But they will offer their perspective, and they do it in such a way that it's not putting you on the defensive. You don't feel like you're in court on the stand being cross-examined, having to recall every single word that you said and how you said it eight months ago. Do you have someone in your world like that? How do you find them? I don't know how you find them, but I would highly recommend you do. Relationships are very, very interesting things. Friendships are the most interesting thing because some friendships are very surface level, and it's someone that you don't mind hanging out with, but you're not gonna tell them your PIN number for your debit card. You know what I mean? Or that you were so scared at a job interview you didn't go in, too wrought with anxiety to actually go through with it. Maybe one of your kids got kicked out of school and you didn't want anybody to know Maybe it's time that you left the relationship that you're in, and you don't really know how to start the conversation without it being adversarial. It's not gonna kill you to be honest with someone if you front load what you're gonna do. Front load? What is a front load, you ask? Front load is saying right up front, "I need to get something out, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way. I don't really know how to express myself, and I may make mistakes and say things wrong, but I hope that you'll ask questions so we can get to the point where you understand me and I feel understood." And then you just let them have it from the beginning. "You know, when we did this and then we got here, and then you turned, and then you just kind of walked away and left me standing there, I felt abandoned, and it reminded me of when I was a kid and I got left. I was not included in the other family activities. You just left me. Then when I caught up to you and tried to tell you that you had left me, you got all defensive and said, 'Well, it was your fault for not keeping up.' You didn't empathize with how I felt when you walked away Now, another person, the other person, might be defensive. "I did not. I didn't do that." But you know what? Your eyes only see out, and if you didn't see what another person saw, you might wanna consider that they saw you. Did you realize what you were doing? Did you mean to do what they said you did? Was it on purpose? Was it intentional? Did you realize that your actions may have affected them in a negative way? It's a level of accountability not everybody has, but you still gotta ask the questions. Your feelings are just as important as somebody else's. Never, ever, ever let yourself get to the point in a relationship where you feel like you don't matter and you can't say something, or you don't wanna say something because, "I just don't wanna make waves." Fricking make waves, then surf on them. Make waves. Good communication is honest, up front. It's not mean-spirited. It's not filled with gotchas and strings attached. Good communication has a lot of questions on both sides, coming from all directions, trying to get to what I call the point of understanding. I wrote a song about it a long time ago. I might have to revisit that song. Point of understanding is where two people get to that place where both feel that they expressed what they needed to express, and they were heard and understood. Sidebar, being understood is different than being agreed with. This is where a lot of people go off the rails. Just because you feel a certain way doesn't justify bad behavior. It really doesn't. That, I've learned, is a sign of immaturity. I'm not the poster child of mature conversation. I, I'll admit that right up front. I make mistakes, but what I do is I hold myself accountable 9.8 times out of 10, I don't mean to come across as hurtful. I don't mean to come across as arrogant or mad or accusatory at all. People have for years mistaken my tone for, "Oh, wow, I didn't know you would get so pissed off." Well, I wasn't pissed off. If I got pissed off, you would know. And they look at me funny like I just spoke to them in a language they don't understand. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of patience to be upfront and honest with another person. You probably know this, right? You've, you've had good conversations in your life. You didn't make it this far and not have them. Whether they were with a teacher or clergy or a cousin or even someone that you shared the house with. Usually, daughters talk better with their fathers than they do their mothers, and sons talk to their mothers better than they talk to their fathers. At least it starts out that way, and then at a certain point, all that flips Being understood is the greatest part of a conversation ever. I would, uh, minimize it and say that it's like when you're at the drive-through and you only have to speak your order once. You never had to repeat a damn thing, and the person got it the first time. That's the sign of a good conversation. You spoke, they understood, they acknowledged that they understood, and you go away happy because your order turns out exactly the way that you expressed it. Good conversation is based on trust, honesty, and courage. Without those three things, it'll never work Now mind you, it's hard to keep those three things at the forefront of your brain, especially when you don't feel comfortable, you don't feel like you're being listened to, you feel like you're defending yourself. It shouldn't feel like that. If it feels like, "Oh, I need court to adjourn for five minutes so I can go talk to the witness," if it feels like that, take a time out. That's hard enough in itself because your brain is gonna be swirling, your emotions are trying to gain control over your body because it's not going the way you'd like it to. The conversation has gone elsewhere, somewhere you didn't want it to go, 'cause you're feeling a certain way about it. Stop. Never be afraid to pause a conversation. "I respect you too much to not get this right. I don't wanna say the wrong thing, and I wanna make sure that you understand me and that I understand you." If you say that, you've just expressed yourself in a courageous way, in a patient way, in an honest way. Nobody likes to be misunderstood. The only thing worse than being misunderstood, in my opinion, is not being listened to, not being heard. Good conversation. You have to put yourself out there in a way that is not threatening, but also is not cowering. You have to have courage, you have to have honesty, and you have to have patience. You trust that not only will that other person not verbally stab you, but that you also won't accuse them of stealing the queen's jewels or killing your cat or whatever. I got so many things to say about this, but I'm gonna let it go. I'm gonna let it go now because I'm sure that if you've gotten this far into this episode, you remember what a good conversation felt like. Good conversation feels good. It doesn't only sound good, it feels good. You feel closer to another person, and they feel close to you. You gotta know how you feel, and you gotta understand how they feel. If you can understand how someone else feels, you are working on good conversation. But if all you're trying to do is accuse them or defending yourself because you feel like you're being accused, take a pause. Start over. This is so not easy Maybe, uh, make a cup of tea and then discuss it over a cup of tea. Good conversation is a very, very, very, very, very strong indication of how much you respect another person. Don't be afraid to make a mistake, but if you make a mistake, for heaven's sakes, be accountable for it and apologize. You're only human. All right. Take care of yourself. I'll talk to you later. Peace.