In our Top 5 Posts from 2007 series, this post is #4! The message is as important and valid today as it was when we first published it in 2007, so we’re pulling it out, dusting it off, and giving it another moment in the sun. Enjoy!

You may think it’s obvious, especially to one of the presenters of a communication workshop, but how easy I forget. Talking soothes my worry, clears my mind, articulates my emotions, makes my relationships stronger and closer. It’s how I share who I am with you. It’s how we merge our perceptions, our worlds, together. In my opinion, there is altogether not enough of it going on. And yet…

Sometimes, I get wrapped up in fear or worry and all the positive aspects of talking just go, float away, dissipate, cease to stick in my head. I bottle up and shut down. I spend hours, days, occasionally weeks stuck in this box of my own creation, wondering why things have gotten so bad. I wonder where all the stress in my shoulders originates, why I’m snipping at everyone, why I’m so worn out.

And then, I remember. I breathe. I think. I find an opening, a good time and a good setting, and I talk. We talk. Usually, it’s a flood of words and emotions as worry and fear pour through me taking form and expression. An exchange of who I am, my perception, my world – sharing and merging into who you are, your world. For a time, we talk while the outside fades; we focus on communication and sharing. It’s sacred, beautiful, special. And, in the end, everything is better.

In our Top 5 Posts from 2007 series, this post is #3! The message is as important and valid today as it was when we first published it in 2007, so we’re pulling it out, dusting it off, and giving it another moment in the sun. Enjoy!

Today was a good day because…

…we’ll get to that in a moment.

I have this big mental paintbrush that tends to roll over my recent past with a thick coat of misery paint. I remember the bad things that happen, but not so much the good things. As a result, I tend to feel like I’ve had a really awful week when really, only a few difficult things have happened in a slew of good stuff.

Sound familiar?

I found a way to combat this.

One of the things we talk about in The Usual Error is the power of endings. For example: think of a movie where the main character dies right at the end for no good reason. Even if the movie was fantastic, it’s likely we won’t remember it well. It’s all about endings.

Our brains remember only the most recent events most clearly, except for bad or challenging or difficult things – those we remember with eerie clarity. They’re big black spots on our mind-maps. In an effort to help myself remember the good stuff without such a heavy focus on the bad, I’m using the power of endings to my advantage.

Every night before sleep, but after I get in bed, I review my day. My family and I, all cozied up in bed together, talk about the good things that we remember happening throughout the day and discuss how happy those things made us. We don’t even discuss anything negative; the point is to just relax and focus on the positive of our day. Now, as I look back on my week, the good things are there, standing out among the bad – they now have equal importance and equal marks on the mental map of my life.

This is outstanding! How this one simple thing has really changed my life!

Today was a good day because I wrote this blog post. I had one of my favorite lunches. I spent several hours curled up on the couch with my lovely wife. I cleaned up my office space so I could work in it again. I finally installed my camera software so I can upload my new pictures to my Flickr account. I found some money squirreled away in my desk! I watched some of my favorite shows and had a really yummy dinner, played fun games with my family, and snuggled a lot.

What an awesome day!

This is the story of how The Usual Error book came to be.

A long, long time ago in an apartment not all that far away (depending on where you live, naturally), there was a triad of women who communicated all the time. Though they shared many things, it was easy to see that they were different in some ways: one was a Writer, one a Wizardess, and the third a Wanderer. It was hard work being a triad, all married to each other, and they learned many, many important things about communication. Eventually, they decided to present workshops to share their wisdom with others.

The workshops were a rousing success! The triad was pleased; their work was much loved and desired throughout the land. The people kept begging the triad to write their wisdom in a tome, and after many months of such pleading, the triad agreed.

Work on the tome began.

The triad worked on the book together for a few months, slowly crafting it from the wisdom in their hearts. A rough draft was finalized and submitted to the evil warlock who lived in a nearby tower. He crafted pictures to help the messages in the book be clear, and the triad approved.

But, as such things happen, our triad began having problems. The tome of communication was set aside and gathered dust, all but forgotten.

Eventually, the triad was dissolved. In the aftermath, the book lay still in the dust, untouched. The Writer and the Wizardess stayed together, now a couple, and the Wanderer went her own way.

After a time, the sorrow and grief faded, and the couple that remained unearthed the tome of communication. They dusted it off and read through it, marveling at the goodness it contained. They decided to work on it, edit it, and put it through the processes it needed to be shared with all the land.

The couple labored day after day, week after week. Months passed, and still they toiled. Words were deleted, changed, rearranged, until the original tome was drastically altered. The couple’s hearts were pulled twiceways; they felt joy at being tied to the tome but uneasy at being tied to the Wanderer for all time.

They sat with the situation in their hearts. They both came to realize that they would not be happy to have the book tied tightly to the Wanderer. The tome which was once the work of the triad was shifting more and more toward becoming the work of the couple. Since the tome was written on magickal paper called “wiki” in the language of wizards, they could trace each word back to its author. They saw that the Wanderer’s words waned with each edit, and now numbered few. The couple discussed the problem at length and decided to offer the Wanderer a fair bargain.

The bargain was a two-forked path. The first path was an offer of much gold in exchange for the Wanderer’s remaining words and her claim to the tome. The second path was that the couple could craft the tome into a work that was theirs alone.

The Wanderer chose to accept the gold. She made her mark on the contract and agreed to the arrangement.

All was settled… or so it appeared.

After the tome of communication was completed and offered up in the marketplace, the Wanderer found herself unhappy. She went to the marketplace and cried out to all who would listen, denouncing the couple as hypocrites even as she praised the book itself. The couple were saddened, but they chose to remain silent, to avoid airing their private matters in public.

Years passed, and the couple followed their hearts to a new path. The book, though certainly not forgotten, took a lesser role in their new work. But the unhappy cry in the marketplace still haunted the heart of the Writer.

As is the way when we follow our hearts, the couple’s new work took them further into the sunlight. They knew the importance of being open and authentic, and what had once been a private matter in the cool shade was now coming into view, illuminated by the sun’s rays. In the spirit of authenticity, with her heart’s desire ringing clear, the Writer knew what she must do.

And so, the Writer wrote the story of the tome of communication, to share openly the way it came into being.

And this, my friends, is that very story.

In this video, I explain why relationships don’t exist, and what you can do about it. Includes more stick figures than you can shake a… never mind.

This is the second half of my over-enthusiastic reply to my dear friend.

Being able to express your feelings to your children is super hard when you’re a parent.

We need to be able to be angry, but we don’t want our anger to hurt our children.

We need to be able to be sad, but we don’t want to make our children afraid.

But being open with them about how you’re feeling is important – we just need to learn to be calm about it. For example, saying “I feel really angry when I find out that you’re lying to me,” instead of screaming “How dare you lie to me!!” Or saying, “I feel sad when you hurt your sister like that,” instead of “Stop being mean to your sister!” Make it about observations, not judgments.

I’m not suggesting we learn to be devoid of emotion; on the contrary. I’m naturally loud – and I raise my voice when I get upset or excited, making me louder still. My son has been around my loud mouth his entire life, and he knows that Loud Mom is Emotional Excited Mom, but he’s not afraid. He doesn’t cower. Sometimes he’ll tell me, “You’re being extra-loud,” and I’ll make the effort to quieten a bit. I’m also very emotional and sensitive. I’ve wept in front of him, I’ve flipped out in front of him, and he’s okay. But I am saying that it’s important, when we’re communicating with our kids about their behaviors, to be clear and calm as often as possible.

Children shut down super-fast when they feel defensive; they’re not well-equipped enough to deal with blame, so they just stop listening and stop thinking. We need to find ways around their defensive triggers to avoid losing our ability to communicate with them. Making our feelings clearly about us helps avoid making our kids defensive. We’re not blaming when we say “I feel sad when you cheat at this game” – we’re talking about ourselves. Again, observations instead of judgments – that, they can hear.

Sometimes with kids (and hopefully not with adults), hitting, biting, or other kinds of physical harm are involved. If that happens, a little yelling goes a long way. A loud, sharp command like “Stop right now!” is a very effective way to put an immediate halt to physical violence. (People, especially children, respond startlingly well to loud, sharp commands.) Then, after a time-out break to let everyone cool down (and for any damage control), you can go back to talking about feelings.

When physical harm does happen, it’s even more important to avoid defensiveness because communication is more vital. We need to get our point across clearly and quickly. Rephrasing “Don’t ever bite!” to “It really, really hurts me when you bite,” helps focus on why biting (or hitting, etc) is unwanted. Children need to understand why their actions are undesirable or they’re more likely to repeat them.

Asking questions is very effective, too. It makes a kid pause and think about what they’ve done – and the why behind it. Like, “How do you think your sister feels when she finds her book in your room instead of where she left it?” or “How do you think your little brother feels when he’s left out?” Or even, “How do you think I felt when you bit my arm?” Avoid yes or no questions, because then you’re likely to get an unhelpful yes or no answer.

Again, keep your focus on the feelings of the injured child (or adult) instead of blaming – but do call attention to the undesirable behavior. A kid’s gotta know what actions are unwanted and which actions are okay.

Also, reinforcing good behavior is far more effective than punishing unwanted behavior. So, add a little praise to the equation – especially with kids (but adults respond well to this, too). “I felt sad and angry when you lied to me, but I felt happy when you promised to be honest from now on. Thank you.”

And always, always, always focus on behavior, actions, and emotions. Never tell a child that she herself is bad. Rephrase “you make me so angry” to “I feel angry when you act this way.” Replace all instances of “you make me…” with “I feel… when…” Children are smooshy and impressionable. If they hear “you’re bad” or “you make me angry”, they’re likely to take it in and make it part of their self-concepts, and nothing good comes of that.

Communicating with children is trickier than communicating with adults. Adults usually know what they want; kids often don’t. Adults usually know how they’re feeling; kids are still learning how to know that. Adults tend to understand, at least to some extent, our motives behind our actions; kids often have no idea. But being able to clearly communicate our feelings and desires with our children will improve the lives of all involved.

It’s well worth the effort.

Reintegrating with Pace after our separation during BlogWorld and my cruise has been unexpectedly difficult.

Both of us grew so much in such a short time, and we’re finding that we each have new and different edges, rough spots, sore spots, tendernesses that weren’t there before. She is bold and acted boldly, I am sensitive and have found a few of her bold moves painful.

Not to mention the different speeds at which we lived the past week: at BlogWorld, Pace sped up and lived at three times our normal speed, but on the cruise, I slowed way, way down and lived at a quarter of our normal speed.

Thus, reuniting hasn’t been altogether easy. We have, in fact, had multiple fights. Lots of tears have been shed. We’ve miscommunicated more, jumped faster and more often to wrong conclusions, and generally been having trouble with each other.

Working together and living together, building personal and professional lives together, is challenging on the easy days. But after spending so much time apart, in such radically different environments, we’re learning new and interesting lessons on how to make things easier.

Most importantly, remembering to talk about feelings instead of actions. If I talk about her actions, she feels bad and gets defensive. But if I talk about my feelings, she can hear me. She can listen. She can understand where I’m coming from instead of feeling like I’m pointing fingers at her or like I’m making accusations.

Remembering that we’re on the same team: it’s me and Pace against the problem, not me against Pace or Pace against me. When we’re on the same team, we can talk about how to make things better instead of focusing on what’s currently broken.

But – and this is a very important but – we can’t do that until we’ve both had a chance to talk about our feelings. If I’m still upset or hurt, jumping into problem-solving mode is only going to exacerbate my hurt feelings, not relieve them. I need to feel heard, understood, and soothed before I can move on (and so does Pace). So, we’ve learned to wait it out, to take extra time and have extra patience when feelings are raw.

Knowing that spending time apart, especially when we’re doing vastly different things that result in vastly different experiences, will be both good and bad. We each thought that reuniting would be all rainbows and dandelions… but then, when it wasn’t, we had to deal with our crushed expectations on top of our sore spots. If we’d known that things might be a little rocky at first, at the very least we would have had better expectation management, which would have smoothed out a few of those rough edges right away.

Being compassionate for hurt feelings, even if we didn’t intend hurt feelings. One of the problems we ran into was one of us feeling defensive and being uncompassionate. If we could have held on to knowing that it’s okay to feel the way we feel, regardless of how we feel – and be compassionate for each other when our feelings are hurt, (which means not beating up on ourselves or each other), we could have avoided a few of those arguments.

We’re getting through the rocky reunion and finding that our strong, loving connection is still there – and might just be even better than before. But whew, those first few days were rough!

Just goes to show you that “happily ever after” doesn’t mean “easily ever after”.

show me someone who never stops caring for others, and i’ll show you someone who’s trying to defeat her belief in her own unlovability by milking others for gratitude.

show me someone who never stops caring for others, and i’ll show you someone who doesn’t feel safe when she can’t maintain the illusion that she controls external events.

show me someone who never stops caring for others, and i’ll show you someone who likes others to be weak and needy so she can feel strong.

show me someone who never stops caring for others, and i’ll show you someone who is so exhausted that she’s most likely to break just when she’s needed most.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone who has the capacity for focused, centered, whole-hearted attention.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone who can be flexible and spontaneous in the face of the unexpected.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone who can delight in others’ independence and respect them enough to let them learn from their mistakes.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone with a bright spirit and a healthy body.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone who’s genuinely capable of thinking of someone other than herself.

This was written by a friend who wished to be quoted anonymously.

When I read it, it reminds me of the importance of holding healthy boundaries.

What comes up for you when you read it?

This week, we’ve come across a lot of people talking about talking. So what are we going to do? That’s right, we’re going to talk about talking about talking.

Talent is a myth

Litemind has a good article about why talent is a myth. We mentioned this in The Usual Error when we were talking about rephrasing limiting words like “can’t”.

How to recover from a communication landmine

Liz Strauss (the Successful and Outstanding Blog chick) wrote a great post about how to recover from a communication landmine. She gives a different approach to coming to terms and what did you intend?

The problem of context in communication

Iris of Pegasus Librarian writes about the problem of context in communication. How do you know how much context is relevant when trying to communicate an idea? In the absence of shared context, what will the other person assume? Will it even make sense, or will communication be completely flummoxed by the usual error?

Only say things that can be heard

A communication gem nestled in a wiki of software design patterns: only say things that can be heard. If the listener isn’t able or willing to hear what you’re saying, there’s no point in saying it. Either forget it, try again later, or try to say it in a way that the other person can really hear.

The tale of the slow elevators

The lovely folks at 37 Signals recount the tale of the slow elevators. It’s a cute example of the importance of asking “What problem are you trying to solve?”

Have you got any?

If you have any interesting communication-related stories that you’ve experienced or read, let us know in the comments, and maybe we’ll use them in a future Community Update!

Whenever I wrote an online profile, I used to introduce myself with:

Hi! I’m Pace. I’m a bi poly kinky pagan gamer geek.

Now I say:

Hi! I’m Pace. I’m a spiritual idealist entrepreneur.

I’m still bi, I’m still poly, I’m still kinky, I’m still pagan(ish), I’m still a gamer, and I’m a geek. I still identify with each and every one of those labels.

So why the change?

It’s because of marketing. And since marketing is communication, it’s about communication.

The point of communication is to successfully convey what you want to convey. What you intend to convey doesn’t matter as much as the actual result of your communication — what the other person ends up understanding.

What does this have to do with your online profile, Pace?

How you identify doesn’t matter as much as the actual result of what you write about yourself. What kind of people will it resonate with? What will the outcome be?

In my case, I already have oodles of cool friends who are bi poly kinky pagan gamer geeks. When you co-lead the Freak Revolution, you can expect that. (: But I don’t have many friends who are spiritual idealist entrepreneurs, especially not in Austin. So that’s what I want to focus on.

Of course, honesty is paramount. If people feel baited and switched (regardless of whether you intended to bait and switch them), no one wins. But even among the true stories, there are millions of different true stories you can tell about yourself. Each of them will resonate differently with different people.

What story do you want to tell?

Wait, this isn’t just about online profiles?

Can you see how this applies to everything?

• Your website
• Your blog
• Your business
• How you dress
• What you talk about on a first date
• How and where you spend your money
• How and where you spend your time
• How you live your life

In everything you do, you tell a story. Sometimes with words, sometimes with actions. Usually, we think self-consciously, “What does this story say about me?”

Today, I want you to think about this question instead:

What outcome will result from this story?

Here’s an interesting example of how different people can read very different things into the exact same words.

Imagine this.

Alice and Betsy are emailing each other in an attempt to make plans to meet. Betsy initiated the attempt, they’ve already agreed on a location, and now it’s gotten down to picking a time.

Alice volunteers, “I’m free every Saturday and Sunday, from morning until 3:30 in the afternoon.”

Betsy replies with, “I’m available every evening after 8, and all the time on weekends.”

What, if anything, would you assume about Alice and/or Betsy based on this reply? What might you guess about their intent, reliability, level of personal responsibility, or desire to actually follow through on these plans?