Recognize the stories you’re telling yourself

Here is a game-changing technique from Crucial Conversations, to help us navigate difficult conversations.

Maria and Louis had prepared for a presentation together. During the presentation, however, Louis took over and did all the talking. Maria was upset. She said to herself: “He doesn’t trust my abilities. He thinks that because I’m a woman, the male executives won’t listen to me.”

Maria has fallen hostage to a story she’s telling herself to explain what’s going on. (This isn’t about who is right or wrong, but how Maria can communicate in a way that gets her needs met.)

People who are bad at communication are unaware that it’s their emotions, not the other person who is “the problem.” They treat their emotions like the only valid response and make no effort to change or even question them.

People who are good at communication realize if they don’t get control over their emotions, things will get worse. This group of people will often suppress or push down their emotions in order to remain in dialogue.

The best at communication do something entirely different. They aren’t held hostage to their emotions and don't try to hide or forcibly control them. They use their emotions to understand what’s happening in the situation, and combined with their communications skills, are able to choose behaviors that influence better results.

This is a leap, though. It takes practice to get to the point where you can identify that imperceptible gap between reaction (emotional response) and response (the story we lay on top of the observable facts).

Our brains work like this:

See / Hear > Tell a Story > Feel > Act

Your stories create your feelings. Other people don’t make you mad. You do! No one else is telling you your stories. You have options. What you see and hear may not be under your control, but the rest of the chain reaction is.

Don’t believe this? Ask yourself if you always become mad when someone laughs at you. Your response isn’t hard-wired. Something happens between their laugh and your interpretation. Your story would be different if the person laughing is your “annoying” boss or your “sweet little” nephew.

Back to Maria and Louis.

There could be hundreds of other reasons why Louis dominated the presentation that had nothing to do with Maria. It turned out that Louis had received some last-minute information and didn’t have time to tell Maria that he felt the need to steer the conversation in a new direction.

Tomorrow’s Daily Tip will discuss three common stories we tell ourselves in this flash-instant between observing something and interpreting it with a story.