The Art of Misunderstanding

 Recently I was out to lunch with a dear friend when she told me to"Stop It".

I had been speaking in a self-deprecating manner without realizing it.

I took her words as an admonishment.

I got reactive. "It's not your job to fix me,"  I returned.

"I'm not trying to fix you--it just hurts me to hear you talk about yourself that way." 

We got a little heated trying to flesh it out all the way. But ultimately it was a tune-up for our communications. It had been building up for a long time...

years?

Prior to this lunch date I had already been reflecting on the Art of Misunderstanding.

 It seems to me that so much of life is filled with misunderstandings that there should be a play-book for how to make them turn into a growth moment.

 But the fact is, life moves so quickly at times, and we have so many communications within a day (and this is ofcourse variable, depending on one's circumstances), that they aren't that easy to track and revise in-the-moment. Enter Insomnia. 

Often we realize while running through a previous interchange with someone what we could have said, or the ways in which we might have asked for clarification. And then it often seems too late to try and hash it out. We may go through days, weeks, even years before we seek clarification. 

When it comes to speaking our truth, sometimes it is so hard to know what we ourselves mean, let alone to figure out what someone else is trying to say.

Since my dad entered his late-eighties I've begun spending a lot more time with him, and I've begun to realize that my parents' marriage was impacted by a lot of misunderstandings. There are things he has explained to me that, possibly, he never was able to discuss with her in the same way (because now he has the power of retrospection). It got me thinking...how many major historical events have been the result of a major misunderstanding?

How do we avoid this? 

It's hard to say. We blurt out so many words throughout the day. If I'm in a good mood, I may tend to let my guard down, or abandon my filter altogether, in which case I could also produce many hurt feelings based on misunderstandings. Certainly a lot of other people in the world must be like this.

 Are you a great projector of ideas into other people's thoughts? That can create havoc on communication. Let them be the one to tell you what they are thinking.

But here is the doozy. At any given time, if we don't ask for clarification, we may be going around thinking we know what someone meant when we may be wrong.

We may be wrong most of the time!

 But somehow we manage to do okay.

If this isn't good enough for you, though, you can ask for clarification without seeming like you didn't actually hear the thing the first time around (which most likely prevents many of us from asking for it).

My yoga-therapist friend Marni Sclaroff (find her link below) is incredibly good at doing this. Her method is often like this...

"I think you said X......show me where I'm wrong."

The listener presumes of level of open-ness to being corrected that is an embracing request for clarification. 

What's your method? I'd genuinely like to know. Please leave a comment below.

At the end of lunch with my friend, we thanked each other for the gut-level honesty, and we were back to laughing within a few minutes. There may have been some processing left to be done later for each of us...revealing layers of self and other and how we manage our words.

Communication is one of life's greatest challenges. Be proud of yourself if you do it on a daily basis without burying your head in the sand. And if you do bury your head in the sand, I understand. 

If the scenario isn't too grave, you may even get to belly laugh for a minute, and bathe in the oxytocin that you recharge into your system. 

See how you did that? Way to go.

m&m

https://www.marnisclaroff.com/