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My son and I were having a very heated conversation about a very emotional subject last night. At some point he pointed out to me that my emotions were clouding my judgment and impairing my ability to be effective in the situation. Body: My son and I were having a very heated conversation about a very emotional subject last night. At some point he pointed out to me that my emotions were clouding my judgment and impairing my ability to be effective in the situation. Not what I wanted to hear from my child, but true none the less. I am a "live from the gut" kind of gal. I lead with emotion a lot of the time. It usually serves me very well. However, when I'm dealing with a difficult subject, and my emotions are running a muck and running the show, the end result is often, well, mucky. Complicating things, in this conversation with my son, was the he was in the same boat. So there we were, two of us, paddling up stream, all emotional, less then effective, with clouded judgment. It was like chaos squared. I see this chaos squared syndrome in complicated emotional conversations between people all the time. It doesn't matter if it's a husband and wife, child and parent, business partners - anytime you put the energy of two highly charged emotional people in one confrontational conversation, getting clear gets almost impossible. So, how do you work your way out of this communication quick sand? It's very simple. Go straight to the facts. What do you know for sure?? When we agreed to commit to only reacting to what we knew for sure, both my son and myself found we had very little to be upset about. Making assumptions, dealing in speculation, guessing, and basing opinion on past history, is a sure fire way to make yourself crazy. None of those things are based in fact. None of those things are based in the here and now and we all know that now is all there really is. Truth of the matter is when we looked at our situation almost everything we were both upset about wasn't real. It was almost all speculation. We knew very little for sure. What we did know for a fact was manageable. The most important thing we knew in the all important moment of now is that we loved each other very much. How much time do we spend worrying about things that aren't established fact? How much do we speculate we know about other peoples feelings and motives? How often do we spin out about what we are afraid might be true, but aren't sure?? This wouldn't be a bad habit is we were in a pattern of supposing that everyone was out to make our day and conspire on our behalf. However, for most of us, our imaginations take us in a much darker direction. Even bigger problem is we get in a pattern of taking what we are imagining we know as FACT even when it's not. So the next time you are in a conversation where you find your less then lovely emotions directing the show, take a step back and take a cold hard look at the facts. Write down what you know for absolutely certain and let everything else go. It's like a magic wand that works magic on your most difficult moments.
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