There is an old saying to “Think before you
speak.” Have you ever known anyone to
replace that phrase with “Think and Feel
before you speak?”
How do you think language and communication would
change?
Would people be more thoughtful?
Would they be kinder and more honest?
Would there be less miscommunication?
Do you believe that if the two committees (head and
heart) met before words ever escaped anyone’s mouth, that the world as we know
it would actually be different?
There are several things to consider when it comes
to the empathy LINK:
- Authentic empathy and compassion
- Learned empathy and compassion
- Programmed empathy and compassion
Then there is TRUTH.
Sometimes humans speak what they think is their
truth, but quite often it is not their truth - it is their learned and
programmed truth.
Until we start dissecting learned and programmed
truths through introspection, chances are, daily functioning has default
behaviors, of which everyone is guilty.
If you have put in the time and the work
internally, you know that when you finally arrive at the place of your own
IT IS HERE – that we can TWEAK your LINK so you can
start communicating more effectively with yourself and own your own truth first
before you open your mouth to spout a non-truth or a learned or programmed
truth.
Is it necessary to have filters? YES.
However, the purpose of this exercise in dissecting
truth is so that you can be kinder to yourself and start from this place before
you start the domino effect of non-truth and speaking thoughts and feelings,
which are NOT YOURS.
WHY is this necessary?
It is necessary because you will hurt less people
if you are yourself.
In the end, you will harm yourself less when you
are honest and can start from an honest place rather than a pre-programmed and
learned place.
Getting to the root of who you are and your own
authenticity from the core is the starting ground to healing, growing, and
becoming real with your own path so you can live your real journey and not the
one that you are conditioned to believe.
Unbelievably, many people are not living their
lives as their authentic self. Many will
‘go along’ with ideas that are not their own, or worse … live dreams, careers
and lives that they THINK they should be living because their grandparent or
parent always wanted them to become a _________(fill in the blank – astronaut,
lawyer, or whatever), but that isn’t who they are.
Nevertheless, this is NOT your fault. You did not know that you could question what
you learned and how you were told things should be for every thought, feeling,
idea, opinion, or belief.
Some of the most brilliant children in school are
the ones, who have failing grades, but they are labeled automatically with the
idea they have a learning problem or disability – but the TRUTH is often that
they do NOT. Not everyone learns the same way.
Not everyone excels in traditional methods of learning. Everyone is different.
It is the same with work. Some people thrive in a busy, chaotic
environment. Some need quiet space and
no noise to concentrate.
SO HOW IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT WITH COMMUNICATION?
THINKING VS.
FEELING
Empathy and Compassion are key components of
communication but they are often missed because communication is misunderstood
from the get-go.
Some people need to process their thoughts to
understand their feelings.
Some people go straight to their heart for answers
without consulting their brain.
Which are YOU?
Do you lean more toward one or the other? Is it possible to only have one method?
Yes, sometimes.
However, if the two are merged as a center,
checking in with understanding which one (the brain or the heart) is OVERRULING
– we get to comprehend a deeper level of how we function as communicators.
Have you ever had a feeling that you did not
follow?
Have you ever had a thought that popped into your
mind but you ignored it?
This is what happens when the two separate spaces
remain just that… separate.
A collective decision-making process within
YOURSELF is no different from having a ‘meeting’ at work or school or in any
other structure or organization.
People have meetings every single day in some form
or another, but they do not have it daily with themselves.
Here lies the struggle within the root of the
problem. How can you effectively show up
and communicate when you do not know what is driving your thoughts or feelings
and if the committee internally has met in order to express yourself from your
TRUE PLACE?
What would your day look like if you never uttered
the words “I think” without consulting your heart FIRST?
Would you be more confident in your choices? On the other hand, do you mistrust one over
the other? Does logic always win?
Many people who operate their internal navigation
system from the place of logic make choices everyday based on their experiences
and thoughts, learned ideas of behavior and habit.
What becomes familiar and ‘known’ is something that
is a set of ideas acquired over time.
Sometimes it does not come from actual personal experience. Sometimes it comes from the programming of
your parents or your grandparents and so on.
You established your beliefs based on your
environment, learned behavior, society, and based completely on your own
pre-programming of ideas, strengths, weaknesses, insecurities, and challenges.
What if your THOUGHTS were actually WRONG – simply
because none of your own thoughts are truly your own?
Let’s take advertising into play for a moment. If you watch a television commercial enough times,
you may psychologically adopt and adapt your ideas to the fact that you think a
product is of good quality simply because the commercial makes you FEEL
something. Maybe you have not even tried
the product yet, but internally within your emotions, you are being stirred
without realizing it in your consciousness.
Your logic tells you that you are watching a
television commercial.
Nevertheless, your heart still cannot get enough of
watching those puppies or that baby or that heartwarming ‘moment’ and suddenly you
are buying a camera, a burger, or a computer and you do not need any of it.
How many times have you been moved by a Super Bowl
or holiday commercial? How has it influenced
your emotions psychologically, to purchase what was being sold to you?
How many times did you vote for a candidate based
on words before actions were met, but the words resonated with something you
were taught to believe would happen?
How authentic is the human word?
How genuine is the action, which follows?
What do you believe and WHY? Have you ever questioned “The WHY?”
Now take a look at some of the most popular
Instagram accounts and see if maybe they are popular BECAUSE they give you the
idea that IF you follow, MAYBE you might be ‘cool’ and ‘popular’ or allow you to
dream about traveling great places or eating delicious food or looking that
amazing/healthy/fit/beautiful/stylish as well.
Maybe they are just the way they are in your mind
because you were TOLD, “this is just the way it is.”
Think back to when you were a child and you were
told that you had better put on a jacket or you would get sick.
Now think about how many times you have actually
caught a cold or flu when you did wear a jacket – it just so happened to be
when you did not wash your hands after touching the grocery cart or the gas
pump. Nevertheless, you were wearing
that trusty jacket.
Logic sometimes is not detailed. So how are you to truly function
authentically when you do not have all the information and only operate from
the information given?
If you were provided an entire laundry list of
items on the 1001 ways you could not get sick and referred to it as a whole and
NOT just ONE specific piece of information, maybe you could go decades without
ever getting sick, right?
Well, if you look at the 1001 items on a laundry
list the same way you look at the heart and mind merging together before you
communicate, perhaps communication could be double teamed with a more cohesive,
comprehensive, thorough and complete connection with who you really are.
Our empathy LINK is what connects us to others,
yes. It happens EVERY SINGLE DAY.
When was the last time YOU DID THAT FOR YOURSELF?
Your own mind, your own heart, and check in with
your own EMPATHY LINK.
What if you merged your mind, your heart, and your
gut together as a triple threat power source for actually trusting everything
in your being before you actually communicate words?
Words are more than just words; they are words, feelings,
and instinct.
They are a blended mix of REACTION VS. ACTION.
Sometimes people speak before they think – but more
often they speak BEFORE THEY FEEL what it would be like on the RECEIVING END of
what it is they are saying.
Now think about that for a second.
How many times has that happened to YOU?
When we look at disagreements and arguments which
are usually based on miscommunication, misunderstanding and often escalate from
EGO OR HURT – we can further examine the TRUTH of all you have just read.
You are being tossed a bunch of information in a
single day. Though quite often there is
not enough time to process the information within your own being to ask
yourself if you are being honest with your own Empathy LINK.
As human beings, sometimes we are our own worst
critic.
You know that it is true, that there is no one
harder on yourself than YOU are.
Sometimes you are harder on other people only
because you are judging from a place BEFORE your head and heart have a MEETING.
So, if you were to put yourself in the other
person’s shoes – would you SEE that maybe if the other person has mixed
feelings just like you are that you are not really having a REAL CONVERSATION?
Imagine two pre-programmed or learned behavior
communicators speaking. What if neither
consulted with their own head and heart nor chose to ONLY speak from ONE PLACE
and not a fluidly connected place? Would
this open the door to more miscommunication because neither person is speaking
from their TRUTH?
So why is it that you cannot be nicer to yourself
with your own thoughts? Why are the
WORDS you tell yourself not as kind as you would want them to come from another
person? Alternatively, why are the words
coming from the other person not in the same place?
THIS IS WHY there is miscommunication, because
assumption comes into play. You may
think you are being as truthful as the other person and both of you are
assuming the place of that the other has done the actual communicative work
between their own head and heart to SPEAK AUTHENTIC WORDS.
Are you now seeing that the root of all your
miscommunication has to do with a weak muscle within of not having exercised
that heart-and-mind TRUTH connection?
Have you come to believer through learned behavior
that you are not worth the kind words? Is
your ‘all’ not enough in your eyes? If
so, who told you so? Is it truly YOU or
is it the old tapes of learned behavior from growing up?
As we ponder the question of empathy for others, we
may have to ask ourselves where the empathy is from within. We cannot truly be authentic with our empathy
or our compassion until it starts FROM US AND WITHIN US FIRST. EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION (what comes out of our
mouths) cannot be REAL until the INTERNAL COMMUNICATION IS REAL and we start
with our own truth and ourselves.
What would your relationships look like?
What would your life look like?
FIND OUT and start your internal connection between
your mind and heart today and see how different your life can be when you begin
LINKING the two together to LINK YOUR LIFE to a more authentic place.
Namaste.
