Change Your Narrative, Change Your Life

Most of us, knowingly or not, think of our lives as a story. We have an idea of what we think might happen next, feelings about what we want to happen, and our own understanding of what has happened in the story so far. This narrative of what has happened so far in our stories is what I'm writing about today. Our narrative explains how things currently are and how we got to where we are. It justifies how we see ourselves and the world around us.

Our narrative helps us to prioritize and filter out information. It helps us to justify our hopes and desires. It's foundational to our worldview. We build a coherent narrative for our lives to make sense of a complex world, one which we actually have very little control over. The problem with this is that we sometimes build a narrative that justifies or ignores ideas and behaviours that actually hurt us or the people around us. We sometimes take a self satisfying position. We build a narrative of our lives that fortifies our self doubt and helplessness, that either skims over or magnifies our flaws rather than looking at ourselves realistically and challenging us to improve.   

While we may not have control over external factors in our lives, we do have a lot of influence over our selves and the people around us. 

When something contradicts our own beliefs, values, or sense of self (summed up in our narrative) we either disregard it, or we get defensive about it. It can be easy to dismiss a challenge to our narrative. 

But... sometimes we really need to listen to those challenges. Sometimes it's the difference between us moving forward or staying in a rut. Sometimes we let ourselves get away with failing ourselves and the people around us and explaining it all away because we've framed a situation in a certain way. It's easy to make excuses and invalidate the experiences of others to serve our needs and enhance our sense of self. It's easy because it requires no further thought or consideration and many of us have not trained our minds to think in that way. 

It takes work and practice and an ongoing commitment to really thinking about the context and relationships involved in a situation to get better at this. It's a process, it's a journey. It's not some quick fix thing, but it's worth it. 

Think of the last time you felt upset towards someone or something. How did you react to that? Did you lash out? Did you spend the afternoon sulking? How much of this reaction was tied to your ego, or sense of self? How much of it was tied to your own expectations of how the situation would go?

Our expectations of the world emerge from our narratives, and are parameters that we're able to choose. Sometimes the situation isn't the problem. Sometimes there isn't someone else to blame.  Sometimes the problem really is in our narratives. Sometimes the solution is in empowering ourselves to take ownership of the circumstances we can. The problem is often in our own explanation or expectation. It's our expectations not being met that usually unsettles us, we hate uncertainty. Sometimes our narratives are not helpful or useful, sometimes we frame the world around us in a way that hurts us and the people around us.

That's important to think about.

It's not always necessary to change the situation, sometimes we're just looking at it the wrong way. 

Value the constructive criticisms, value the challenges, value the opportunities to grow, and value the experiences and perspectives of others. Don't interpret everything as a personal attack or a reason to just lay down and give up. Remember, this is a process. We won't always be perfect, but if we're doing our best and open to learning we're going to go a lot further than if we're closed off.

Non-verbal Communication: What you need to know.

Non-verbal Communication: What you need to know

Communications scholars and other scientists have long been aware of the important role of non-verbal communication. The tiny facial tics, the way we carry ourselves, how we may make eye contact with one person and avoid it with another. Some suggest that less than 10% of our communication is actually transmitted through our carefully or not so carefully selected spoken words.

This means that our non-verbal communication is hugely important.

The good news is that much of it is possible to change. To really look at how to do that better, we need to understand a few basic things.

Values and Norms 

Every one of us is seeing the world around us through a particular lens. While this worldview is our own in that probably nobody else will grow up in the exact same circumstances as us, it is still based in those circumstances. The worldview that we adopt is built out of the time in history and geographic location that we're living in. The way that we will choose to interact with the world around us will be mostly based on these ideas we've adopted. In that way, those ideas are handed down to us. Those are values. Social prescriptions determined by the circumstances that we're born into. Norms are acceptable behaviours based on values.

Yes, this has everything to do with how we communicate.

Culture

Culture is a term used to describe how any group of people explains the world around them and how to interact with it. Culture guides values and norms, it is the system of beliefs that cultivates and supports them. It includes how we behave, the language(s) we are expected to speak, the shared or common meaning of gestures and words in the language. It's often shaped by the complicated histories of the region where the culture dominates.

In terms of communication, we learn culturally what to expect from the people and the world around us. When these expectations are not met by us or by others around us, people tend to be upset because it seems to attack their worldview. The culture we've adopted helps to define a certain perspective and provide some guidelines about how to behave and communicate to build social bonds.

Of course these things vary from family to family, neighbourhood, town, etc.. but generally there's a dominant strain of culture that defines certain expectations and unwritten rules that the majority of people adhere to when out in the public interacting with others. The difference is in the level of immediacy of the communication. We learn about culture through a process of socialization.

Socialization

This is where it all ties together. Socialization teaches us how to use and interpret words and non verbal communication. This is where we start to run into problems.

Our culture attaches some generally agreed upon meaning to a word. A symbol and a sound. We learn these meanings in a certain time and place and attach our own personal understanding to them based on our worldview, our values and experiences. We then use these words to communicate our understanding of them. To put the idea out there that we want to convey. We need these words, we depend on these words.

The problem is that words sometimes have many different formal meanings, and unique personal meanings to individuals. It's not uncommon for people to choose meanings other than what you meant. In fact, it happens all the time.

You can probably think of times where you've been saying something that you thought was common knowledge, while your recipient looked confused or responded differently than you expected. Only to ask you a moment later what you meant by the words you chose. Think of the times in your life when you've been talking to a specialist in some field who has loaded their interaction with you up with jargon and forced you to make due with educated guesses based on their tone of voice and body language.

There is always much more being communicated than just words.

Non-Verbal Communication

When we aren't sure about what words mean, we look to the non verbal indicators to understand what the communicator is trying to say. Perceived meaning is based more on how something is said and how the messenger looks. The look on their face and tone of voice.

Basically, when we're not totally understanding what someone is saying, we use their non verbal indicators to fill in the blanks or make assumptions about what they're communicating.

For example, you're on vacation and aren't fluent in the use of the regional language. A local approaches you smiling and trying to tell you something. You're able to make out some of the basic words but aren't entirely sure what they said and so aren't sure how to respond. You apologize for your lack of understanding but leave the interaction feeling good because judging from their tone of voice, the look on their face, and their laid back body language you pieced together that they were just trying to tell you a joke as a friendly gesture. Getting back to your hotel you look up some of the words you picked up that weren't sure about and sure enough, they were telling you a joke that was actually pretty funny and unfortunately wasted on you.  

Non verbal indicators are going on all of the time and informing our understanding of every interaction we have. In this way, non-verbal indicators can reinforce or contradict verbal messages, sometimes negating what is actually being said (think shaking your head no while saying yes or curtly responding that your day was fine when asked "how are you?").

This is important to think about because it has a lot to do with building and changing our relationships. Most of the time, the non-verbal signals we're sending off during communication are unintentional, happening at a subconscious level. They're critical parts of our communication that we rarely think about or have much awareness of.

If we think about using non-verbal indicators more consciously and deliberately, we can use them to our advantage. We can start to identify and remedy behaviors that aren't helping us communicate the way we want.

Touch is a good example of a non-verbal signal. Touch can be a very powerful communicator. In Canada, we tend to be a generally low expressive culture. In many circles, touch is limited to handshakes and maybe a hug here and there. Although touch is often limited in it's use, it is still expected in many circumstances. To not shake hands coming into a job interview or meeting with a potential client would seem strange, even off putting to most, while a gentle hand on the shoulder or back can indicate closeness and warmth to a friend you're discussing something sensitive with. It seems to say "I'm here for you". A hug may say "I'm happy to see you" or "It was great to see you" with no verbal communication at all.

Like most communication, successfully doing this requires an understanding of the dynamic of your relationship with the person you're trying to communicate with. This basically means an ongoing assessment of their non verbal cues toward you and cross referencing that with your historical knowledge of who they are and how they like to communicate and are comfortable with. Then filtering that through your own personal boundaries, identity, and understanding of how to communicate and coming up with how to interact with them. Then fitting all of that into whatever social context you're in. For some of us, this comes pretty naturally and our brains do all of this for us in a split second. For others, it may take some practice, but it'll be worth it and you and all of your relationships will benefit.

Here's a quick summary of a few things to be cognizant of when taking part in non-verbal communication (all the time). Non-verbal communication:

1. Affects verbal communication

• Can replace a verbal message 
• Can reinforce a verbal message
• Can contradict a verbal message

2. Shapes the relationship we're building with another person

• How we look at someone - gaze
• The distance between you
• The use of touch
• When and how our voice rises and falls

3. Directly communicates our emotions before and during verbal messages

• The look on our face (happy, sad, scared, angry, surprised, disgusted)
• The sound of our voice

That's it for this very basic article. Be sure to share this with your socially awkward friends/enemies, the people who stand way too close to you, and your one friend who is always making uncomfortable advances to strangers with complete lack of self-awareness! Stay tuned for more.