Tag Archives: RealMatters

A Complaint Is An Opening

Anxiety, Categorization, Change, Differences, Emotion, Intimacy, Psychology, Relationships, Sociology, Uncategorized, Work-Life Balance, Worry, , , ,

We all feel great after receiving a compliment. It makes us happy and, while we try to stay humble, we might have the urge to share the compliment with cherished family or friends. Compliments, after all, are affirmations of our worth.

Complaints or criticisms, however, rarely make us feel good about ourselves. When we hear one, often our first reaction is upset. Then we add some defensiveness. And for many of us, it ends there; however, we need to learn to work our way to wonder. Why did the person feel that way? What feedback can I get from this? Wonder, then, is the opening to growth.

I will share a recent example. I was teaching an Introduction to Psychology class on Zoom and was enjoying the interaction that had developed among the students. There was an active dialogue, with students sharing orally or in the chat. We were discussing an article about why boys often lose interest in academics. Then, the complaint. One of the students said, “Well, as a man, I can say that I want you to get to the point. Your stories just don’t hold my interest.”

My reaction: immediate upset. Thoughts included: I work so hard to make the material relevant and useful; that was rude; how does he expect me to respond to that accusation? Defensiveness was next. Thoughts included: I have incredible ratings on MyProfessor.com; I have won two awards for Excellence in Teaching, one a statewide award. Who was he to tell me how to teach?

But then, I encouraged myself to move to wonder. Thoughts included: I wonder what kinds of stories would hold his interest; I wonder how many weeks ago he lost interest; I wonder why he still comes to class; I wonder why he felt comfortable sharing his point of view. That was the opening.

Once I recognized that his comment was an invitation for me to engage in a meaningful conversation, the door to growth opened. I embraced the idea that he felt safe enough to criticize me in real time and I was then able to ask how he thought I could improve. We both grew from the exchange of ideas.

I know I’m not alone in my reaction to complaints or criticisms. They are, at their core, feedback. The problem is that so many of us do not know how to provide meaningful feedback. Compliments are easy feedback. The person simply has to tell us what we did right. A complaint or criticism requires that the person includes a suggestion for improvement; it requires that they tell us what they want/need us to do in the future.

Because most people tell us what they don’t want (the complaint) and forget to include what they do want, we tend to go into fight/flight mode, making our response less effective. The fix, however, is to go into “wonder mode”. When I did that, I was able to elicit the feedback I needed from the student. Wonder mode is much more effective that fight/flight mode. It allows us to think and to solve problems.

So, the next time you get some feedback that causes you to feel upset and defensive, try to add the “I wonder.” Say to your supervisor, “I wonder if you can suggest how I can handle that situation next time.” This is a statement that opens a door to growth. The next time your teacher grades an assignment as needs improvement, ask “I wonder if you could offer some advice about what I need to do to improve this grade going forward.” This is a statement that opens a door to growth. The next time your significant other makes a comment that you interpret as a cause for alarm about the health of your relationship ask, “I wonder if there is something I can do to make things better between us.” This is a statement that opens a door to growth, especially if your partner wonders the same.

A complaint is an opening. So, don’t fear it. Instead wonder about it and embrace the opportunity.

Work-Life Balance

Change, Psychology, Relationships, Sociology, Uncategorized, Work-Life Balance, , ,

Every time I hear the term “work-life balance”, I picture a seesaw with work on one side and all the rest of life on the other.  We accept this concept as a reality, as a given.  We suggest that accepting this “fact” is a sign of maturity and adulthood.

But, to me it is such an unbalanced concept.  It is telling us that work is separate from life, not an integrated part of it.  It means work is the priority and everything else must be prioritized on the life side – one’s significant other, siblings, parents, friends, hobbies, and chores, sleep – everything else has to be prioritized on the “life” side.  In other words, work gets 50% and all the rest of life gets the other 50%.

I cannot see how it is possible to actually balance all of life into the hours allocated to it.  For example, if you are lucky enough to have a ten-hour workday (two hour commute, lunch, seven hours of work), then you are left with 14 hours for everything else.  If you follow the recommendations of health professionals then you need eight hours for sleep, leaving six hours one’s significant other, siblings, parents, friends, hobbies, and chores (food shopping, laundry, exercising).  Let’s face it, for most of us, “life” time is further curtailed by our constant connection to work, where we are expected to check our emails/texts from our employer or, as salaried employees, we are expected to bring work home with us (literally or emotionally).  Clearly, that imbalance is what is causing frustration, dissatisfaction, and stress in our relationships. 

I often wonder why we consider work separate from life rather than a part of it. Perhaps sociologists are right and that work has created such alienation that we no longer feel connected to it.  This seems like a reasonable explanation of why we accept the idea that there is work and there is the rest of life. 

Is this the best way for us to think about our day, though?

What if the term were changed to life-work balance? What would our lives look like then?  I won’t list out what I think it would look like; but I do hope you take a moment to fantasize about it.

What if it were simply life balance?  What if we placed life in the center of the seesaw and we were able to rearrange the parts on a daily basis giving priority where it felt right/needed/ genuine? 

I hope you are fantasizing about what life would look like if life were at the center and work was simply one of the priorities we had.  That seems so much healthier to me.

Categories determine the way we think about the world.  Perhaps it is time to change the way we categorize work-life.  I certainly think it is.

He Said, She Said

Intimacy, Psychology, Relationships, Sociology, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

Words are so interesting.  The first time I realized that the word “sentence” could mean “a group of words that convey meaning” or “what you get when convicted of a crime,” well, I felt my brain explode.  How could a word mean such different things?  English teachers explained the importance of context clues.  We know what the word means because of the surrounding words – the context that the creator has developed. 

In our relationships, we often believe that the shared context is the relationship so the common words we use must mean the same thing to both of us.  We believe that a word has shared meaning and we do not need to check whether or not that is so.  When we are talking to our significant others, we generally feel quite certain that they know what we mean when use a word.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case and these misunderstandings can have negative consequences.  For example, I worked with a couple where the woman had never – in 8 years – said she was sorry.  Over time, he had become convinced that she was indifferent to his feelings; she simply didn’t care if he was hurt.  During a session, she stated quite emphatically, “Why would I say I am sorry?  I NEVER do anything to intentionally hurt him!”  And there it was.  For her, sorry meant she hurt him on purpose and with purpose.  In fact, over that same time period, she had become convinced that he thought she was a terrible person because every time he asked her to say she was sorry, she thought he was saying she had hurt him intentionally.  For him, the word sorry meant, “I know you’re hurt and I wish you weren’t” – it had nothing to do with whether the hurt happened with intent.

Now, think about what the word “commitment” means.  Really think.  How would you define it?

I worked with a couple that had very different interpretations of the word.  They had come in to talk about where their relationship was headed. They had been living together for quite some time.  She said she had begun to question his commitment.  He said, “I’m here aren’t I?” – he felt his actions provided all the evidence of commitment.  Eventually, I gave them each a piece of paper and asked them to write down what the word commitment meant to them.  She wrote three lines “living together, being supportive of individual goals, working toward mutual goals”.  He wrote several paragraphs.  The first began “commitment, being committed.  Being institutionalized.”  He went on to say “Nobody can ask for commitment.  It must be freely given” and added that commitment is a synonym for a trap, a “device meant to capture a living thing, so that it may be subjugated to the control of another entity”.  His focus was on commitment as a method for restricting freedom.  At first glance, these comments certainly seem irreconcilable, making one question if this couple should even be together.  Was this a deal breaker? https://real-matters.com/?p=19

Examining their definitions more closely, though, revealed that their relationship goals were not all that different.  The word commitment had only negative connotations for him, but as we discussed their relationship further, it became very clear that he wanted to spend his life with her; he wanted to make her happy, he wanted everything on her list.   He felt his actions demonstrated that he wanted to live together (he was there, as he had said), they were supportive of individual goals, and they were working toward mutual goals.  She agreed whole-heartedly. 

What they needed was a new language in their relationship. She learned to hear the commitment in his actions and he learned to use his words more often.  They both stopped using the word commitment and learned to see the beauty in the freedom to freely choose to be together.

This couple has been married for many years now.  Every holiday season they send me a card and in it they write, “Still married, but not committed” – makes me smile every time.

What can we all learn from this?  Among other things, we can learn that the assumptions we make about how someone else feels must be shared with them so they can be checked and addressed. We may be wrong about what they are thinking and feeling.  We can learn that the words we say to each other truly matter and that even words that are “common,” words that are used frequently by so many of us, can have very different emotional connotations to them.  When we reflect on the recurring arguments we have with someone who holds a special place in our lives, we might want to look more closely at the words we are using.  We might share our definition of those words and ask for theirs.  We may discover that we have the same goal and it is the words getting in our way, and not the sentiment behind them.

~“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.” ~ Isaac Asimov