My Communication Is The Response I Get
There is a very real tendency to spend too much of our lives listening and watching, without offering anything in return. We are conditioned by society to believe that we are not worthy, that we don’t deserve the attention and energy of others. As children, we are taught not to speak up or interrupt because it feels rude.
We internalize this message of worthlessness as adults; when people ignore us or we get brushed aside at work or school, it reinforces how worthless and useless our opinions really are. We begin to believe that our feelings do not matter and we stop showing up.
To be a human being is to respond. To respond, in fact, is to be present and present with others, to acknowledge that we are part of the same connected web where we are no longer alone in the world. We become part of something bigger than ourselves when we take responsibility for our response.
Most of us have not been given the tools or training to respond to others in a manner that is free and open. We come from a place of fear and are taught to avoid confrontation. We don’t want to make things more difficult than they already are, so we say nothing, letting things fester inside us.
But what does it look like to communicate from a place of freedom? What if our response was a response of love? How would we communicate then?
We could respond to someone making a harsh or disparaging comment with the understanding that they are in pain and want nothing more than to feel understood. We can offer them what they want, which is connection, without making them wrong for feeling the way they do.
We could respond to someone who is angry with us in a situation by simply being honest about our actions and letting them know we will do our best to avoid the mistake again. We are not trying to make them feel bad, but simply offering our best in that moment to clear the air. We are taking responsibility for creating the problem and we are offering a solution for moving forward.
Avoidance is a learned response that is disempowering for everyone involved. It may feel safer and more comfortable to just go along with the status quo and avoid conflict, but it is more empowering to take responsibility for our response.
The idea here is not to be afraid of your feelings or think that you can never have an honest response. On the contrary, responding from a place of love feels so much better than keeping it all bottled inside–it lights us up and fills us up with joy and empowerment instead.
A response of love means being honest with yourself and the people in your life. It means listening to your feelings and those of others, taking generosity into account. Being generous is a win-win situation; we get to feel good about ourselves when we are generous, and so do the people we are being generous with. We can’t be giving and forget about receiving, however; giving must be balanced with receiving in order to keep both parties feeling good about themselves.
For our communication to feel open and free, we must take responsibility for our own space and our own feelings. This means we are responsible for what we say and how it will be received by others. We do not want to give people a “bad vibe” or make them feel badly about themselves. Our words should lift up the people around us, not weigh them down.
There is a lot of fear when the idea of communicating from a place of love comes up.
Conclusion
We fear we will be vulnerable and softened if we communicate from a place of love. We fear that we will lose the edge that makes us strong, independent people.
Part of the problem is that many of us take our strength, independence, and toughness for granted; these are qualities we have developed over time to protect ourselves. If we give in to vulnerability, others may see our soft underbelly and do harm to us.