Big First Vomitty Post

Okay, so I'm finally sitting down and doing this. I make no promises about consistency or duration, but I'd be willing to bet this will probably have a pretty good run. Disclaimers from the outset: these are all my own views. If they're based in some fact or evidence, I will provide sources to check out. I want that known so no one takes these ideas as "singular truth," it's just what I happen to think at any particular time.

Onwards!


First posting: Randy Pausch and the waterfall of ideas that follows.

I know this is sort of old news (getting off on the wrong foot?!) but the advice Pausch gave in his speech really resonates with me. I seriously recommend that everyone check out his lecture (especially since I don't want to bore you with a laundry list of every piece of advice he gave). Don't be intimidated by the length of the footage. Take some time off from Halo 3 or Gossip Girl or whatever and just watch it. While he makes many brilliant points, there is one he addresses a few times but which is glossed over in pretty much every report I've seen on him.


How you say something is just as important as, or perhaps even more important than, what you're saying.


Color me an English major and all that fun "analysis" stuff, but this is such an important communication concept. It seems to me that people often discount the power of the words that they choose. Not even just the words you choose, but how you phrase it. Let me try to exemplify this through childhood and teenage memory:

Rebellious child that I was, I frequently argued with my Mother. While there were many varied topics, I remember consistently running into one phrase no matter what we were discussing. The conversations would usually proceed as follows.

See: I want to go to (insert event here), you have to let me go!
Momma: You're being rude.
See: No I'm not! You're just not listening to me right!
Momma: It doesn't matter how you think you're saying it, it matters how I'm hearing it.

So, we'll say that at the tender age of 10 I wasn't exactly ready to "hear" the sage advice my Mother was giving, but that phrase which she repeated over and over again stuck with me through the years. As time went by, and I paid more attention to not only my interactions but the interactions of people around me, I started to notice that often times one side was either seriously not listening or *gasp* maybe what the other side was saying just wasn't being conveyed in the right way. This probably became most potent for me when I got into a volcanically large argument with my high school boyfriend, and realized for the first time that I was coming up against the same wall I came against with my Mother... but with someone my own age. I no longer had the fall back of "she's an authoritarian/dictatorial/archaic/crazy" figure who was holding me down. This was someone who cared about me and who should, technically, understand where I was coming from especially since he was a peer.

Totally wrong.

Here's the easy way out: blaming him. He just wasn't understanding. He's just stubborn. He's just a jackass? He just didn't care? Dudes just don't listen.

It's a pretty quick downward spiral, and involves a lot of "justs," which in my opinion is getting close to "never" or "forever" and all those other fun absolutes. None of which are particularly helpful or realistic in the end. After that particularly detrimental argument, I went home and considered what had caused the break down of communication, which is when my Mother's words popped into my head. Was it possible that what he was hearing, and what I was saying, were completely different?

This story has a happy ending (uh, for my own growth, not for the relationship -- and honestly I don't recall the outcome of that argument) but it did come at the cost of swallowing my pride a little. It's always the times that we're trying to defend a point most ardently, or our feelings have been hurt the most, or we just really need the other person to hear us that we forget what we're trying to say can come across really badly. For me, I always know when that feeling hits because I get an uncomfortable heat in my chest that will rise up into my cheeks. That usually spells, "See has something really important and big and loud to say!" Which, now, is when I take a deep breath, count to 10 and seriously reconsider the inappropriate words I'm about to let loose.

It's only when I started thinking about how the other person would want to be approached about a sensitive topic, that I understood how I had to convey my thoughts. That is to say, empathy and sensitivity are important.

Pausch talks about it specifically when he was asking to take his Sabbatical time to work at Disney Imagineering. The first guy he talked to wanted to know more about it and why he was going, but broached it by trying to pressure Pausch into giving more information. He assumed that if he could push Pausch into a corner, he'd get what he wanted to know. Pausch asked both men: "Do you think this is a good idea?"

First guy: "I have no idea if this is a good idea."

Pausch figured that talking to the first man was useless (because he wasn't really listening) and decided to find the Dean of Sponsored Research (or something like that) instead. That guy's response?

Dean of SR: "I don't have very much information. But one of my star faculty members is here and is all excited, so I want to learn more. "

The second response immediately put Pausch at ease, and if you watch the video he expounds on how much he loves the second man. He obviously left a good impression.

Anyways, this post has gotten pretty heavy. All I'm really trying to say, in light of some recent personal experiences, is seriously consider how you're saying what you're saying to someone.
Doing that changed many of my relationships for the better, and the few times that I went lax on it and decided to just say whatever the hell I wanted? Well, let's say that I distinctly remember the times I let myself slip and I still shake my head in shame every time I think about the look on the other person's face.


If you want some more evidentiary support then check out the recent article on Marital Spats in the NYtimes.

"Recent studies show that how often couples fight or what they fight about usually doesn’t matter. Instead, it’s the nuanced interactions between men and women, and how they react to and resolve conflict, that appear to make a meaningful difference in the health of the marriage and the health of the couple."

Too bad my alma mater didn't have a Communications major, I might've really kicked ass at that.