Needs, wants and everything in between

I don't think that the following statement should be surprising to anyone but:

EVERYONE WANTS TO FEEL LISTENED TO

The reason, I think, is that everyone wants to feel like they have equal shot, equal footing to have their needs met. It isn't possible to have your needs met when the other people involved in a conversation are not interested in listening to what you have to say. Beyond that it is increasingly difficult to have your needs met if you are not able to articulate what you actually need.

Sounds easy right - you just have to be able to say what it is that you need... You just have to put it out there and allow it to be heard and then your needs might potentially be met, so what makes it so amazingly fucking hard to ACTUALLY do?

Social interaction, moral codes and judgements

My theory is this - over time we are taught as kids by our parents, and elders about things that we can't say or can't do. Kids are negatively reinforced by their elders about how they use their words and are told that the choices that they make can hurt people. As kids we are taught to take care with other peoples feelings and often the ways in which we are taught to do this are statements like:

"...don't say that..."

"...you can't say that to people, you'll hurt their feelings..."

etc.

But we are rarely positively reinforced for using words and other statements to state what we feel and need while also not hurting the people we are interacting with. Think of it like sharing that toy that there was only one of when you were little. Someone else was using it at the time you wanted to also play with it. Now you have choices, you can walk over and take it, you can ask to play with it, etc. However when young we often don't consider beyond ourselves and we don't often have a role model for interacting. We learn as we go about what gets us in trouble and what doesn't including some of the sneaky "I get my way without getting in trouble" actions that can be taken.

Speculate for a minute though - what IF what we modeled for our kids and others was as truthful as kids tend to be, telling things like they see it with few filters but the words were chosen to be clear and concise and non threatening.

Marshal Rosenberg lays out a discussion and conversation model called nonviolent communication. Where he describes the ideas of stating clearly what you observe about a situation, describing how it makes you feel and as a result what needs you have around it. Seems straight forward but is actually amazingly difficult to do. Think about the last argument you had with someone, do you think that you would have been able to be level headed enough to not escalate the conversation with angry commentary but rather stop and say what you observe and what you feel? Ya, I didn't think so - I know I certainly don't - but I am trying.

Imagine if you will

Now - lets go back to the kids. I mentioned them earlier because I wanted to speculate what our adult interactions would be if we were able to example for our children when they were young a method like nonviolent communication. Kids are unfiltered and wonderfully blunt, they say what they see and their interpretation on it. Kids are not afraid to tell us how they feel, but somewhere along the way as we grow up the interactions we have and the things we are told by our elders drum out of us the ability to just say how we feel, and what we need. I love to speculate how much better a place the world would be if we could all get our needs met. I for sure am looking to get my needs met, and using nonviolent communication where I can to help me articulate them.

Courage

Courage

This is a word that has been showing up around me now for a number of months.  This word would sometimes show itself to me deliberately, maybe as part of a conversation I was having, and sometimes would show itself to me in casual ways by showing up around me in my reading or in posts from friends. I had not been giving the word a great deal of thought though until this past day or two - which is ignoring my own rules about coincidences that go on around me.

So why am I bothering to write about it now? Life seems to be pointing me this way - so doing it seems appropriate now.

Courage is defined like this:

Courage, n.

1. The ability to do something that frightens one.
2. Strength in the face of pain or grief.

But I think courage goes quite a bit deeper than this definition. I think courage involves a great deal more than just overcoming something that scares or frightens. I think courage may involve a life time of things built up that may require being torn down before it can surface in a singular moment of overcoming what has been placed before you.

I would say that courage is not something that exists alone - it comes with fear, it comes with baggage and experience of ones past that can magnify the effect of a situation far beyond the regular "I don't want to get on that roller coaster." sort of fear.

Courage is something that seems to get harder as you get older due to carrying emotional and physical scars from everything that came before. Courage seems to grow to be hard because we all grow up and our social interactions start to take on apparent enormous meaning.

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those that mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Suess

The people in your life that matter will be taking the time to understand who you are - they are the ones you don't have to careful around. Unfortunately we seem wired to also care about people who will not take the time to get to know who we are - we worry about bruising egos and causing trouble with the words we say. I am not saying that we shouldn't be observant enough to know when 'not' to speak, rather I am saying we are far more careful than I think makes sense.

From the movie "Finding Nemo":
Marlin: Now it's my turn. I'm thinking of something dark and mysterious. It's a fish we don't know. If we ask it directions, it could ingest us and spit out our bones.
Dory: What is it with men and asking for directions?
Marlin: I don't want to play the gender card right now. You want to play a card, let's play the "let's not die" card. 

Dory spends time attempting to help Marlin to loosen up and to try things he has not or would not normally try. Throughout the movie Dory is challenging Marlin to see things in a different way - to see the things that are being missed rather than the things he is purposely doing. This constant pressure from Dory is forcing Marlin to ask 'WHY NOT' in relation to trying things - or allow others to try things. Dory is asking Marlin to bend his own internal rules, built up over time and as a result of Marlins having lost his wife. We can all get caught up with following the rules, when the rules are mostly self imposed and are not always in our best interest.

My point - doing anything courageous involves occasionally (ok, more than occasionally) overcoming a great deal of built up opinion, and baggage accumulated across our entire lives. The first moment of being courageous is hard, like going on a roller coaster for the first time, but each occasion there after gets easier and easier because we can see the positive benefits of having that courage in the first place. We have to be able to let go - and be ok trying the same thing more than once. We have to be willing to experiment with our lives, sometimes risk things more than we may like, but it is the only way to succeed in getting past things that may have hurt us in the past. Its painful to keep trying, and it can hurt - but you can not let it discourage you from doing so because the worst thing you could possibly do is give up.