Blessed Saturday everyone!
The journey continues through the book, Crucial Conversations, with the excerpt below.
There is an intermediate step between what others do and how we feel.
There’s always an intermediate step because actions themselves can’t and don’t cause emotional reactions.
What is this intermediate step?
Just after we observe what others do and just before we feel some emotion about it, we tell ourselves a story.
We add meaning to the action we observed.
We make a guess at the motive driving the behavior.
We also add judgment.
And then, based on these thoughts or stories, our bodies respond with an emotion.
Stories provide our rationale for what’s going on.
They’re our interpretations of the facts.
They help explain what we see and hear. They’re theories we use to explain why, how, and what.
As we come up with our own meaning or stories, it isn’t long until our body responds with strong feelings or emotions.
Even if you don’t realize it, you are telling yourself stories.
Storytelling typically happens blindingly fast. When we believe we’re at risk, we tell ourselves the story so quickly that we don’t even know we’re doing it.
Any set of facts can be used to tell an infinite number of stories.
Stories are just that, stories.
These explanations could be told in any of thousands of different ways.
If we take control of our stories, they won’t control us.
People who excel at dialogue are able to influence their emotions during crucial conversations.
They recognize that while it’s true that at first we are in control of the stories we tell – after all, we do make them up of our own accord – once they’re told, the stories control us.
They first control how we feel and then how we act.
And as a result, they control the results we get from our crucial conversations.
Until we tell different stories, we cannot break the loop.
If you want improved results from your crucial conversations, change the story you tell yourself – even while you’re in the middle of the fray.
~Evolution of Self
#crucialconversations #people #stories #changethenarrative #weekendword