I'm Not Listening

Recently I was visiting with a friend and we were having a lively discussion about something --I can’t remember what.  It was probably about food and cooking as we were in the kitchen and we talk about cooking quite often.  In the middle of our conversation, he said to me, “Could you repeat that? I wasn’t listening.”  The honesty of that statement was precious and frankly, funny to me. How many people would say that?  How many people would lie and say something else, like “I didn’t hear you,” for fear of the repercussions of their honesty?  Would you be offended?

Possibly in the past I would have made it mean something, like they don’t care, or held some sort of idea about appropriate behavior, or that he should be listening.  No longer.  Mostly I am interested in what’s true for the people I am in life with.  I no longer hold others responsible for my emotions.  In this case, I just began laughing.  I thought it was funny.  I suppose I don’t take myself (or life) as seriously these days.

Let’s explore this a bit further. The underlying question is do I value honesty?  If I say I do, and someone is honest with me, how do I let them know that I appreciate that my need was being met even if I didn’t like what they were sharing?  In the past, I didn’t.  I said I valued honesty, yet tended to punish people if they said things I didn’t like or want to hear.  If I value honesty, am I able to hold my side of that need being met.

In addition to honesty, what other needs might be at the root of your distress if something like this is said.  One of them I’m guessing is a version of quality of connection, to matter, and the like.  In this case, I want connection, and my friend shared that he wasn’t listening.  In that moment I am in a choice point.  I can let him know how ‘wrong it was’ for him to ‘ignore me, or stop listening’ to me, or I could ask what was he focusing on instead?   Which choice leads me to more of the needs of connection being met? 

If I asked him what had his attention, I likely would increase the experience of connection between us.  If I made him wrong and told him so, or even stormed out of the room because I was so upset I lost an opportunity to connect more deeply --which is what I was longing for.

The point of this writing is to illustrate (clearly, I hope) how simple it is to generate the needs we’re hoping for in most situations. It does require slowing down, and looking for the needs.  Tracking on needs is the ‘how-to’ of fabulous communication, leading to fabulous relationships, or at very least mutuality and mutual understanding.

The next time you lose connection with another, or you hear yourself asking for connection try another approach.  Rather than assign the loss of connection to their actions and then insist that they restore the loss, try these two things instead:

1.  Notice if you have contributed to the loss --even if only partly.
2.  Consider if there is something that you could say or do that would restore (or add to) the connection that you are hoping for?

One of the quickest ways to have needs met in any situation is for you to immediately consider how you could generate more of what needs are being asked for, or longed for in the moment, rather than express your displeasure and insist that the other(s) do something different so you can be happy.  Accepting the power you have, and with grace use it to contribute to everyone’s joy and needs being met is one of the gifts of the practice of NVC.