Managing Your Word

I’ve blogged here before about how we are predispositioned to be “judgment machines” (not in those exact words).   We tend to judge others for their words, their actions, how they dress, what they look like, how they speak, how they carry themselves, and on and on and on.   And, while we judge others, we typically are judging ourselves, comparing who and what we are to how we perceive others to be.   What we may not be so aware of though, is how we judge others according to what they do as compared to what they say they will do.

After a while, we develop a sort of listening for others based upon our perceptions about them and based upon who we “know” them to be.   Part of this knowing is our past-based knowledge of what a person does as compared to what he says that he will do.   For instance, I know that when a certain friend tells me he will be here at 7pm, I can virtually depend upon him to arrive by 7:15pm!   If he’s going to be 30 minutes late or more, he will usually call to let me know.   I have other friends on whom I can rely that they will be punctual to the time they have given me, or they will communicate to me that they will be late as soon as they know that to be the case.

In the listening that I have created of my always-15-minutes-late friend, there is a whole world in which he occurs for me.   For meals that require precision timing, I plan them for after the time in which I know that he will arrive – not when he said he would arrive.   For events that begin at a specific time, I arrange to meet him somewhere at least 30 minutes earlier so that we’ll be on time and not miss the beginning of the show.

Knowing how we develop a listening for those around us then, we can begin to see that they also develop a listening for us.   They begin to know us either as our word, or as we are compared to our word.   For me then, managing my word becomes a matter of integrity.   It’s important to me to manage my word and be accountable to it as if everything I say is an actual promise.   If those around me relate to me as my word, then in partnership with them, I can create whatever it is that I need in my life.   And, if those around me listen to me as my word, then when I am truly in need of help, I can count on getting the exact aide that I need.

When I do not manage my word, my life doesn’t work nearly as well.   My relationship to time suddenly changes.   All of a sudden, my days go by very quickly and it seems as if there is not enough time to do what needs to be done.   The way that I know myself to be loses velocity because I know that I don’t manage my word with integrity.

Managing your word, or being your word, is truly a matter or integrity.   And it is something that will make the most marked difference in how well your life works or doesn’t work.   Living a life of integrity means that one always honors his word.   Notice I wrote “honors” and not “keeps.”   That’s because a person with integrity will do everything in his power to keep his word.   But, when he knows he will be unable to do so, in order to preserve the honor of his word, he communicates his inability to keep his word to the person to whom he gave his word.   So, a person of integrity will always honor his word even when he cannot keep it.

Managing our words, then, becomes a way of life for those who want their lives to work.   We manage what we say because we bind ourselves to those words.   We manage what we don’t say so that we aren’t bound to empty promises that will cause our words to lose their weight with others.   When what we say is the same as what we do, others listen to us differently and regard us in different light.   They begin to know us as people of our word and they align with what we say because they know that what we say defines who we are.   And that becomes the framework for living created lives and living lives that we love.

Copyright ©2009.  All rights reserved.

Perceptions – Part II

For the past couple of days I’ve been blogging about how we, as humans, have a propensity to make up explanatory stories about ourselves and others. So, along that vein, I wanted to write a second part to my previous blog on “Perceptions.”

As a quick refresher for those who have already read that blog, I’ve posted bits and pieces from my previous blog below:

We all have powers of perception when it comes to “reading” others. We perceive people to be upset, to be dangerous, to be lighthearted and fun to be around, and to be serious and void of humor.

While perception is a valuable tool for us to use in our communications with others, there is a particular trap we often fall into when it comes to perception. This trap, of “preconceived notions” isn’t reserved for people we’ve just met. It also interferes with people we’ve known for a long time.

If we only relate to others as we “know” them to be, we never leave room for them to change, grow, or transform. They can only “be” who we perceived them to be. And, in our worlds, once they do change, we don’t see it because we’re never looking for it. We’re only looking for the evidence of what we “know” to be true about them. And, we will always find the evidence we are looking for to support our assumptions / perceptions about others.

So, today’s blog is really a simple exercise that will move you into a place of letting go of what you “know” about another. If you’re anything like me, when you see an exercise, you’re probably tempted to just read it and see what you glean from it. But, I promise you, that the value of this exercise is in actually doing it.

So, please grab a clean piece of paper and write down the name of the individual you want to use for this exercise. I would recommend using a spouse or partner or a family member – someone to whom you are very close and have daily interaction.

Now, take as much time as you need and write down the answers to the following questions as related to the person whose name you wrote down:

What is it that I already know about this person?

What opinions do I have about this person?

What judgments do I have about this person?

What are his or her strongest attributes?

What’s wrong with him or her?

What decisions have you made about this person?

What true about this person?

What does this person think about me?

What is this person's relationship to money?

What is this person's relationship to sex?

What is this person's relationship to communication?

What is this person's relationship to intimacy?

What is this person's relationship with me?

Whew! You’re finished with that part; now for the fun part:

Look over your lists of the things you think about this person and the things you believe that he or she thinks about you. Where did all of those ideas come from?

I’m guessing that you didn’t write down how you see this person in the future.

And, the present is happening now, and now, and now, and now. So, you couldn’t have gotten your notions from the present because each present moment quickly becomes the past moment.

So, I believe that you’ll agree with me that everything you believe to be true about this person came from your past experiences of this person. Could this person have changed and you have not recognized it?

I wrote in my previous blog that “In order to compensate for this ‘trap of perception’, we must give up, anew, our previous perceptions about a person each time that we interact with him or her. Only then, do we allow another the space s/he needs to be fully self-expressed as who s/he is, in the present.”

Consider that your intimacy with a person is directly related to your ability to be with who he or she is in the moment. We’ve always looked at intimacy as something that we feel, based on the happenings or events of our past. But, really, intimacy is being able to share exactly who you are at any given moment and the person with whom you are sharing being able to understand that and not let past interactions interfere with his or her perceptions of you in the present moment……and, vice-versa.

Now, look at the list of things you wrote down once more and ask your self these questions:

What would be possible with this person if I could give up knowing all of this stuff, and could discover him or her newly?

What would be possible if I engaged with him or her as if each time we met it was new and I would look for what’s present instead of what’s missing?

What would be possible in our relationship if she or he listened to me newly each time? Would he or she discover things about me that he or she didn’t already know?

Task yourself this week with discovering the people around you, newly, as if you were meeting them for the first time and see what a difference in makes in your affinity for them.

Our Interactions are Shaped by our Perceptions

Perception is one of the tools of communication we have which allows us broader access and insight to the true feelings of those around us. 

We sometimes overlook the power of perception in our daily lives but it absolutely shapes the color of our interactions with others, the quality of our lives, and our willingness to take action on behalf of another.

We all have powers of perception when it comes to “reading” others.  We perceive people to be upset, to be dangerous, to be lighthearted and fun to be around, and to be serious and void of humor.  These perceptions come from others physiological (body) language (standing with open or crossed arms, smiling or frowning, eyes are bright or eyes are glazed, etc.) as well as their tones of voices and inflections of speech more so than in the actual words that they say.

While perception is a valuable tool for us to use in our communications with others, there is a particular trap we often fall into when it comes to perception.  Let’s say that you’re meeting someone for the first time.  It’s been said that first impressions are the most important.  Why do you think that might be?

When we meet someone for the first time, we file away general information about that person in our memory.  Most of us will at least remember the person’s face.  Some will remember the person’s face and their name.  But all of us will remember what we perceived about that person.  We will remember if we liked them.  We will remember what kinds of signals they were sending with their physiological language and other non-verbals - - and by these we will remember if they were enjoyable to be around and whether or not we felt that they liked us.  We will remember if we were offended by anything they said.  And so on, and so on…..

The trap that this creates for us is that we begin to “know” that person by what we remembered from our first encounter.  That’s not to say that those impressions cannot be changed over time.  However, the next time we are in the company of that person, we choose the words we speak, the information we share, and convey back our overall feelings about that individual based upon our past perceptions of the person.

This trap, however, isn’t reserved for people we’ve just met.  It also interferes with people we’ve known for a long time. 

People can and do change.  And, people transform.  My perception about my supervisor at work might be that he isn’t sympathetic to others when they are sick.  He’s never sick and he doesn’t have empathy for others when they are.  However, let’s say that he eats some tainted shell-fish one Friday night and he becomes very sick.  By Monday, he’s recovered enough to return to work and he can hide the fact that he’s been ill.  Neither I, nor any of my fellow employees, know that our boss was sick over the weekend.  Now, unbeknownst to any of us, through his own experience, my boss has developed an empathy for others when they are sick.  But since I don’t know that, I still relate to him as if he were a tyrant when it relates to illness. 

The following Wednesday, I wake up really sick with a stomach flu.  I go to pick up the phone and call my boss but all I can think about is how he has related to me in the past when I was sick and how difficult this is going to be for me to call out of work.  I try to think of other excuses.  I try to determine if I can push through this and make it.  This whole time, I am operating in the trap known as “preconceived notions” as given by the perceptions I have about my boss in the area of sickness.  I’ve gotten myself so worked up that I’ve gone over what our verbal exchange might be when I call in and talk to him.

Finally, feeling that I’m armed as well as can be, I call my boss to inform him that I will be out of work that day due to illness.  He thanks me for calling and tells me that he hopes I get to feeling better soon.  “What?!!!?!,” I think as I hang up the phone.  That wasn’t my boss.  I proceed to ponder over it for awhile and then chalk-it-up as a one time thing.  I continue to relate to my boss as an uncaring, unsympathetic human being.

That is an example of the trap of perception at work.  If we only relate to others as we “know” them to be, we never leave room for them to change, grow, or transform.  They can only “be” who we perceived them to be.  And, in our worlds, once they do change, we don’t see it because we’re never looking for it.  We’re only looking for the evidence of what we “know” to be true about them.  And, we will always find the evidence we are looking for to support our assumptions / perceptions about others. 

In order to compensate for this “trap of perception”, we must give up, anew, our previous perceptions about a person each time that we interact with him or her.  Only then, do we allow another the space s/he needs to be fully self-expressed as who s/he is, in the present.