Welcome to the June edition of Tips and Topics.
In SAVVY, I reflected on how we raised our three children and pondered on “What would I emphasize to them now, in retrospect, about what they should teach their children?” Tips on how to focus on being a whole person in control of your own joy and develop a successful relationship.
In SKILLS, if one embraces the concept that I am the architect and creator of my own happiness and joy, there are SKILLS that advance that perspective. How to use “I statements” to identify your feelings and needs and productively resolve conflicts.
In SOUL, Naval Ravikant, an Indian-born American entrepreneur and investor, suggests the Currency of Life is what you choose to pay attention to and what you do about it. Social media is seductive in wooing your attention and so much time can be spent there. Yet I have found so much creative, stunning and amusing content to enjoy. How do you spend the Currency of Life?
At the end of May, I met up with my three children in Boston, Massachusetts. We had converged there for a brief, but spectacular nostalgic trip in the city of their birth. That trip included:
A return to the family home in Newtonville, Massachusetts
Catching up with long-time friends not seen in decades
Reminiscing about childhood memories from birth onwards
Always present in childhood memories are stories about how their mother and I raised them. Like most parents, we did our best with tools and skills (or lack of them) to prepare them for the life they would increasingly be in charge of themselves. I reflected on how we raised our three children. As I pondered on, “What would I emphasize to them now, in retrospect, about what they should teach their children?” this month’s Tips and Topics evolved.
Tip 1
The goal of any conflict resolution or examination of triggers in interpersonal relationships is to identify what you need to work on, not what’s wrong with the other person.
We taught our children about the importance of conflict resolution with techniques and models like:
Nonviolent communication to identify feelings and needs
Active listening and ways to ensure both sides are heard and understood
How to give feedback to another in tough conversations.
What we didn’t emphasize enough, or even at all, was the perspective that it is not the job of the other person you are in conflict with to address and fix your feelings and needs. That is your job because:
Tip 2
A successful relationship starts with each person coming as a whole person, taking responsibility for their own happiness.
In popular romantic movies and culture, we hear phrases like:
“You complete me” – as if we are not whole people until we find our soulmate to make us a fully empowered person.
“My better half” – while this is often said in affection and admiration for one's significant other, it can reinforce that you need the other person to balance your deficits and become a whole person.
“What would I do and be without you?” – the interdependence that evolves the longer people are together can be a mix of healthy and unhealthy interdependence. Either way, it works against a quiet sense of efficacy and effectiveness in taking charge of your own joy.
When two or more people come together as whole persons first, the synergy, creative sharing and soulful heart connections can only blossom. When people come together as wounded people looking to others to make them feel better, joy and vigor are stifled.
Tip 3
Listen and sink into your own feelings and needs before responding.
It is easy in any conflict resolution process:
To listen impatiently just long enough to identify another’s feelings and needs, only to start defending or asserting your feelings and needs.
To evaluate and critique another’s feelings and needs rather than to listen actively. Listening to prepare your case and refute their perspective is not listening to truly empathize and understand their position.
Such behaviors speak to the shakiness of one's own confidence, sense of agency and power and quiet strength that you are loveable, acceptable and worthwhile.
The antidote to defensive or attacking responses is to listen to understand the other person while at the same time, sinking into your own feelings and needs. Only respond when you are quietly confident that you know what you want to be joyful. Then use skills to advocate for what you want while crafting win-win outcomes.
Coming to a conflict resolution conversation feeling unsure about who you are and what you want, is a recipe for more contentious and ineffective communication.
If one embraces the concept that I am the architect and creator of my own happiness and joy, there are SKILLS that advance that perspective.
Tip 1
“I statements” are best used to keep the focus on what you need to change or work on to establish and maintain your serenity.
Most everyone has heard about “I statements” versus “You statements.” For example, “I get triggered and anxious when there is loud arguing and shouting” versus “Would you please lower your voice, quit yelling and calm down a bit!”
Check out whether your “I statements” are:
Focused on identifying to yourself and others who you are, what you want and how you want to be, e.g., “I see more how my anxiety about missing the plane puts pressure on you for rushed timing that doesn’t match your pace. Let’s figure out how I can address my need to arrive earlier at the airport than you might want, while honoring your need to take a more relaxed pace.”
Defensive and accusatory, e.g., “I don’t like feeling I’ve done something wrong and I believe I am a thoughtful and empathic person. I need more warning or signals that you are frustrated with me rather than a sudden, angry outburst.”
Hard but necessary self evaluations, e.g., “I can see from how ‘I did it again’ was hurtful to you and what I have to work on to prevent or minimize hurting you again.”
Tip 2
In processing any conflict or trigger, look for what you can learn and change to grow rather than focus on what the other person did that you think was wrong.
In any conflict, it usually always ‘takes two to tango.’
Remember, though, that you are responsible for your own happiness, and that you have control only over yourself.
So it is more productive to focus on your foibles, blind spots and triggers and work on those.
You may even be correct that the other person acted from their own foibles, blind spots and triggers. But you have no control on how aware they are of those blind spots, nor how diligently they want to own and resolve those triggers.
When you work on changing and taking care of your part in any conflict, that creates changes in the interpersonal system. You may see them own their part in the conflict much more quickly than if you confront, nag or ‘psycho talk’ them into action.
Tip 3
When faced with criticism, conflict and confrontation, listen with an open heart and practice self-soothing.
In any conflict, it is hard to really listen to understand and empathize rather than to defend and ‘punch back.’
If you are both too triggered to be able to listen with an open heart, then it is best to agree for each person to self-soothe and to come back together later when everyone is calmer and more serene.
If you are in a good place to listen and not defend yourself, than hear out the other person. Stay quiet to listen, empathize, self soothe. Then identify your part in the conflict, what you want as a resolution and what you want to change for yourself.
Avoid pointing out to the other person what you think they did “wrong” and what they should change, unless they specifically and open-heartedly request feedback on what you think was their contribution to the conflict.
If there is any further conversation, it would only be for you to make “I statements” on what you have learned from this trigger or conflict and what you are going to take responsibility to change.
Retracing and rehashing events or conversations that caused the conflict or trigger and relitigating each behavior as the basis for the conflict leads only to further contention and frustration with no solution in sight.
My son forwarded a brief YouTube video on “What Is The Real Currency Of Life?” from an interview with Naval Ravikant, an Indian-born American entrepreneur and investor.
What Ravikant said was:
The real currency of life is what you choose to pay attention to and what you do about it.
It isn't money. Money isn’t the real currency of life even though it lets you trade certain things for time. But it can't buy you much time. “Ask Warren Buffet how much time money can buy you,” he said.
Nor is the currency of life, time. Time doesn't mean that much as you can waste it and you aren't present for it, you aren't paying attention.
You can put your attention on the news and social media and fritter it away on anything you want.
But, Ravikant said, “Be careful, because your attention is the only thing you have,” and how you spend the real Currency of Life is important.
That brief excerpt got me thinking. What do I put my attention on?
I know from the Law of Attraction that you draw to yourself more of what you focus on and pay attention to.
We know from social media that the algorithms are carefully crafted to feed you more of what you pay attention to.
In retirement, with few tight schedules or constant demands for my time, I can put my attention to whatever I want. Social media can be so compelling with creative people feeding me clips of funny, talented, smart, daredevil, artistic, outrageous… 60 second glimpses into worlds and activities I would never dream of.
I can suddenly look up and I’ve just spent 90 minutes of my attention. It doesn’t seem right, especially in the context of the Currency of Life. And yet:
I’ve gained so much useful and uplifting new knowledge from those 60-second clips from people I had never heard of, like Naval Ravikant.
I’ve marveled at the creativity of comedians, street artists, musicians, child prodigies and so many others playing music in airports or doing chalk drawings on sidewalks or entertaining audiences at comedy clubs.
I’ve been wowed by the beauty of the marine life seen from an underwater restaurant or hotel room; or the stunning vista of a temple high on a mountainous range; or a bone chilling, rope hiking trail hundreds of feet above the ground.
I don’t have an answer to the dilemma about how much attention to pay to social media, let alone the larger question on how to use the currency of life.
How do you spend the currency of life? What do you choose to pay attention to?
Thank you for joining us this month. See you in July.
David