When we talk about good communication we naturally assume that everyone is 100%, with all their working parts in good order, when there are no external signs of impairment.  But the reality is that many people are not in tiptop shape, no longer at full ability, and have physical issues that hinder their ability to communicate as well as they would like.

One such limitation is hearing, or more accurately loss of hearing. Not only the elderly but many others have some degree of hearing loss due to accident, injury, and environmental conditions.  Of real concern is today’s youth with loud music emanating from deeply embedded ear buds.  When you can hear the beat of the music on the outside, the decibel level inside the ear canal has to be damagingly loud.  This is a future problem to be dealt with on a massive scale.

Todays hard of hearing population is largely the elderly, with more and more baby boomers (the largest generation) reaching the elderly ranks every year.   When my mother-in-law was in her 70s she was a poster child for elderly vanity – growing deaf from years of mill work, but refusing to wear a hearing aid because it “made her look old”.  I gently pointed out that no one would think badly about a 75-year-old woman with a hearing aid, but she would have none of it.  Instead she would rather sacrifice her quality of life, missing large chunks of the conversation happening around her.  I can’t imagine that vanity was worth the trade-off, but apparently she thought it was.

Another issue with people who are hard of hearing and also vain is they don’t always admit that their hearing is going. My mother-in-law would nod which signaled tactic understanding, but that wasn’t the case at all.  She was loath to speak up and ask you to repeat several times, so she just gave up trying to understand.  But without saying something, and not reading confusion on her face, she just went along with the ‘conversation’.   When the other person has no way of knowing that they are not heard and therefore not understood, it really is a one-sided exchange.

So how does one communicate with the hard of hearing?  The tendency is to shout but that’s not helpful if in shouting the voice pitch rises. A good idea is to drop the pitch of your voice as low as you can, as the higher tones are the first to go when hearing declines.  Another help is to talk slowly and enunciate clearly with your lips while being sure to face the person, since many who are hard of hearing have become good lip readers.

Developing the trait of patience is always appreciated by the hard of hearing, which is not always easy to do.  Instead we often grow impatient with their disability, which is not their fault, and start treating the elderly among us like children. The disrespectful way we treat our elderly in America is another topic entirely.  But for this discussion, communicating with the elderly, hard of hearing or not, in a respectful, perhaps loud, manner shows wonderful character.

Perhaps you recall the ‘mosquito buzz’ rage a few years back, when teenagers learned that adults couldn’t hear certain tones at certain ages. So to avoid getting caught receiving a text or a call in class, students would set their cell phone ring tone to one of these high pitches which they knew their teacher would not be able to hear. This same concept was turned against them when malls (not the US) would annoyingly pulse the same high (17 kHz) tone from speakers to harmlessly repel teens from loitering, without notice by adult shoppers over the age of 20.

If you want to test your hearing ability for this tone and other  frequency tones (below 50 years, below 40 years, and below 24 years) – here’s a link to a You Tube video to test your over 20-year-old hearing loss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrewnzQYrPI

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Hearing is a big part of communication, so impaired hearing can have a huge detrimental impact.  While the responsibility is largely on the impaired person to get help, that may not be fully possible to restore hearing back to the original pristine state.   Paying attention to body language conveyed in facial expression is important to facilitate full understanding.

There was a TV show on last spring called The Pitch.  Basically it was a reality show that each week followed two different ad agencies around for a full week, as they developed an ad campaign for a prospective client.  At the end of the show, each company would pitch the client their ideas and hope to win the account.

What was interesting about the show, from a communications point of view, was grasping an understanding of the customer – but who exactly was the real customer?  Was the customer the retail buyer, so it was important to understand the customer that would buy the product and the ad campaign needed to be geared to the consumer?  Or, was the real customer the CEO, the decision maker who would decide if the ad idea was to his liking?

Watching the show with dual viewpoints was most interesting, especially when the ad agency had a good understanding of the core customer and how to appeal to the consumer, but the CEO didn’t agree with the direction.  So – should the ad agency work to please the decision maker to win the account, but deliver what they consider to be an inferior product?  Or should the ad agency stick by their guns and argue for the better idea, in hopes of proving value with stronger retail results, but risk alienating the CEO and not getting the client?

This happens more often than is realized, in different contexts.   You may think you know who you are pitching, but in reality that isn’t the real customer.  Part of clear communication is not only expressing ideas clearly and succinctly for good understanding, but also having a clear recognition of who you should be dealing with.  Often much time is wasted explaining our position to the wrong person.  This can be avoided by thinking to clarify the right person up front; simply taking the time to do so.

But when emotions run high, clear thinking and clear communication can go out the window.  We lash at whoever is closest and seems potentially responsible, because it’s the easy route, which can later be regretted when it turns out that we have unleashed a torrent of nasty words on a largely if not wholly innocent.

Or what if we find ourselves in a similar dilemma as the ad agency above – right person, but our action may result in an undesirable consequence.  What to do?  While that answer does depend largely on what’s at stake, if it is assumed that high stakes are high, most people show their character at times like these.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  When communicating with others, an often overlooked consideration is who the real ‘customer’ is in a transaction.  When exercising good communication be clear on this point – or time, energy, and resources will be wasted.  Another consideration – when the real customer is accurately determined, but the message is undesirable – should you taper your communication accordingly (assuming high stakes)?  Can you really serve two masters?

Sometimes it takes strong communication skills to convince someone of something – but it’s not so hard if you know their convincing pattern.  So if you really need to convince someone of something that’s important to you, now’s your chance to learn how!

Here’s an example – this really happened to me.  Back in the day I was driving my family friendly van, turned a corner and the transmission died right there in the middle of the road.  So I had it towed to a transmission specialist who charged me about $1500 to rebuild the transmission. The rebuilt transmission lasted 10 days and broke down again!  I marched back down to have them stand behind the repair, which they did, and we went through the full song and dance routine another lap around the dance floor.  Then within a month of the second rebuild, the car actually died a third time from the same disease!  I was beyond annoyed to have to go back, plus adding insult to injury, the garage guy starts questioning me about what I was doing to the transmission!  (Huh?  I was driving it.) He offered to go half with me on the cost of the third repair; I counter offered to take him to the Better Business Bureau if he didn’t cover the third repair 100%, which he reluctantly did.

When I got the car back for the third time do you think I was convinced that the repair was going to hold?  Was it a) ‘third time’s a charm’?  Or b) ‘those bums can’t do anything right – I’ll never trust their work’? Or maybe c) ‘I’m sure this is the final time – they know what they’re doing – the other two times were just flukes’?  Then there’s the possibility of reaction d) ‘I have to give it a few years before I decide whether to recommend their work or not’.  All of these choices represent convincing modes.

Convincing modes are what it takes to convince us of something, with 4 representative styles

a)      Number of times – it takes a set number of times and then you’re convinced (i.e. “I’ve gone to that restaurant 3 times now and it’s been great each time, so I can recommend it to you.”)

b)      Repetitive – never convinced, each time is a new evaluation (i.e. “Sometimes that restaurant is good and sometimes it’s off, so I don’t know what to tell you; check it out yourself.”)

c)       Automatic – is easily convinced, with little information, assumes the rest is positive (i.e. “I heard that the new restaurant is good; we’re trying it Friday night and I’m sure it will be great.”)

d)      Period of time – it takes a set period of time to be convinced (i.e. “We’ve gone to this restaurant for a several years now and I recommend it.”)

In addition to convincing mode, there are also delivery channels to convincing:

1)      Visual – “I need to see it to believe it.”

2)      Auditory – “I heard it directly from the source, so I believe it.”

3)      Kinesthetic – “I need to play with it to believe it does what it says it does.”

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Once you know how a person is convinced, the mode they use and channel they prefer, you can use this knowledge to convince them of your goal.  How do you find out?  Ask them about the last time they made a major purchase.  By listening carefully to the response you will get all the information – the language they use will tip you off to the channel and the details of how the purchase came about will tell you the mode. 

An online colleague who I’m in regular contact with took me by surprise the other day when she said she had “a rough month but was getting over it” and I assumed that she had been sick with the flu. I told her I was sorry she was not ‘feeling well’; she emailed back that it wasn’t the flu, it was that her husband of 42 years had died last month unexpectedly. (!!)

While with e-mail it’s hard to accurately discern tone, I had the distinct impression that this was a fact that I already knew about (?)… Or maybe it was just me reading tone at the something that wasn’t there. Yet I immediately I wondered: did I miss knowing this? If so, how did I miss knowing this – did I dropped the mental ball and had I somehow overlooked this big point? Or was I really learning this for the first time?  It can be so hard to know what’s ‘real’.  In any case, how should I appropriately respond back?

Ambiguous communication happens when we are dealing with hard topics.  At those times it’s not easy to be crystal clear in our communication, precisely because the subject matter is hard, may be recently raw, and the edges feel too sharp to address head on.  To spare uncomfortable feelings we touch on the subject ever so lightly without pushing for details, which leaves one necessarily a bit in the dark.

Dealing with sensitive topics via email makes a hard job even harder.  With only words and no soothing body language to get across the deep feelings, and no tone of voice to help, words can be so inadequate.  When the gentle pat or soft tone or sad eyes are missing, the words are hard pressed to do an adequate job.

To make matters worse, words to communicate sadness are usually reduced to “I’m sorry for your loss”, yet the same “I’m sorry” words are used to also communicate guilt and remorse.  English is way too ambiguous!  With no separately distinct way to easily express these close emotions, no wonder we may have to throw up our hands and say, “I’m at a loss for words”.  Indeed!

“I’m sorry to hear of your husband’s passing.” (sadness)

“I’m sorry this happened to you.”  (sounds like guilt, guilty for being ‘spared’ which is foolish)

“I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner” (remorse)

“I’m sorry I was so insensitive to what you were going through.” (guilt for not acknowledging sooner)

And there are a boatload of other “I’m sorrys…” some more genuine than others, expressing various degrees of sadness, guilt and remorse (and sometimes shame is thrown into the mix) – whew!

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  The hard stuff should be addressed in person, face-to-face, if the relationship is important, otherwise your written message has a hard time expressing accurate feelings fully.  But if distance is a factor (either physical distance or relationship distance) then any support is better than silence.  Carefully choosing the language is advisable, as some words like “I’m sorry” can convey several different meanings.

It’s not quite Valentine’s Day yet, but the topic of love is in the air.  When I was in the dating pool, admittedly many decades ago, the L-word was sacred and not tossed around lightly – you ‘worked’ hard to earn hearing those 3 special words.  Today this expression of genuine deep affection is tossed around as just another way to end a conversation – “love ya” – what’s happened to our communication?  The formerly 3 most powerful words in our vocabulary, with the power to move mountains, reduced to a nod.

This shift in weight of the word ‘love’ brought me up short when my youngest daughter, at 15, was signing off her phone conversations with her then 17-yr old boyfriend with “love you” – !  Wow – did she know the implications of that word and potential ramifications of using it in this tender relationship?  As I verbally flipped out on her, with my old-fashioned preconceptions, she casually informed me that everyone communicates that way today, and it doesn’t carry the same weighty meaning that it apparently did ‘back in the day’.  This is unfortunate that love has degraded to such a point.

When the expression of this deep emotion is diluted, as it apparently is in our language today, we lose a channel to communication an important concept, that there is no other word to replace.  The old concept of love went way deeper than just the surface – it was deep, it was heartfelt, it was solid, strong and steadfast.  It meant something that was universally understood and respected.  When we lose the ability to fully communicate that concept of love, that loss is lamentable.

Our English language is woefully lacking in being able to full describe meaning in so many areas.  There just aren’t words to accurately describe specific situations, concepts, feelings.  Then when the channel of communication – largely digital – is added to the language gap, our communication becomes more flawed.  When “I love you” is reduced to “143”, “831” and “459” – wow! (How many of you over 30s knew that these 3 number sequences were all text speak for ILY?)

143 (1 meaning, 4 letters, 3 words), 831 (8 letters, 3 words, 1 meaning), 459 (ILY on keyboard)

1432 = I love you too (!)

Help!  I’ve entered into a world that I no longer recognize!  But the worse part of it is that in this new world deep, meaningful communication can be hard to achieve.  Can you really express your feelings adequately in numbers?  How much heartfelt meaning can you attach to 143?  The younger generation is losing the ability to express themselves linguistically, if they ever even had the ability in the first place.  They ask for a date and break up with a text.  Who remembers how to have a real conversation anymore?

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:   The goal should always be for clear communication, but in today’s world of near constant communication, with the availability of digital channels 24/7 and seeking the shortest way possible to expend minimal keystrokes, real communication gets short changed and meaning is sacrificed as unimportant (“oh, s/he knows what I mean…”).  When meaning equates to not just love but the full range of emotions, we do a great disservice to important relationships.  As constant and superficial communication become habitual, there should be no wonder as to why the meaning of an important word like “love” has eroded to the equivalent of “see ya”.   This can be changed, but it requires real effort to do so.   

It’s “Casual Friday” that’s why I’m working in my pajamas!  Oh my, perhaps this casual  trend has gone a little too far…

But seriously, why not wear ‘dress’ jeans at work?  Hey, they look pretty good… even if I never wash them because they’re so comfortably broken in…  I’ll tell you why not – your credibility is on the line (and about to fall off).  Your brand never takes a day off, it doesn’t know if it’s Friday or any other day, and it reflects on you with every eye that sees you in public.  You can be as certain as the sun rising, that an opinion will be formed, positive or negative, by everyone who sees you, and that opinion will carry forward.   And a negative opinion, although not a deal breaker, is still a negative opinion that needs to be offset.

Now if you don’t work in a professional office, you can skip today’s edition – you’re fine if your standard office décor is casual, i.e. computer programmers, ad creatives, etc.  But do look at what your boss is wearing and take your cues from there.  If you want the next job, you have to look the part before you are considered.  If you don’t look like you fit the role, you won’t be seriously considered, no matter how talented you are.  Appearances are that subtly important.  (If your boss is in jeans, you’re golden.)

You may think that talent carries the day, but think again.  From appearances alone, we instantly deduce economic level, education, social position, sophistication, trustworthiness, moral character and success.  And this is all on first glance, within fractions of seconds – why risk not giving yourself the best advantage?  Clothes can do that for you.

No, it’s not fair, but life isn’t fair.  Yes, you should indeed have a chance to prove your value and not be typecast by your clothes, but people don’t work that way.  We have so much data coming at us all the time, we are forced into looking for familiar patterns, so our brain can move on to the next consideration.  A familiar pattern is that someone who is dressed well is smart, competent, a good person, and successful.  The opposite pattern is also universally held about those who aren’t dressed as well – not as smart, competent or successful.  Not true, you say, but you may never get a chance to prove otherwise.  And if you do, it’s an uphill battle you don’t need to fight.  And it’s even worse knowing that you brought it on yourself.

The business uniform (dark suit, white shirt, tie, dress shoes) is a powerful tool in business that isn’t fully recognized for what it is.  Studies have shown that the business uniform ranks right behind the military uniform and the police uniform in credibility, authority, and power in the eyes of the general public.  We not only love a man in uniform (the protector image), we will follow where he leads, and believe what he says.  It is a powerful tool that business women have at their disposal also.  But you need to choose to use it.

Perhaps your thinking is that you can look great Monday through Thursday and be comfortable on Friday, since a majority of the time you are in ‘uniform’ and everyone knows you; your good reputation is solid.  While the latter is true, what about those new clients that you are meeting for the first time on a given Friday?  Is it worth the risk, if it could be a potentially big account?  It’s up to you to decide the price of comfort.

Whenever I go into a bank on Casual Friday and everyone, including the manager, is in jeans, I walk out disgusted; it’s a visual affront to me.  No wonder the banking industry is in trouble.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Appearances really are everything.  You really can’t get a re-do on a first impression.  People are subconsciously judgmental by what they see; it’s hard wired in our brains to be so.  You have full control over how you dress and the impression you choose to manage (or by default, not manage) that others have of you and your abilities.  While actions, words and body language all have a role in communication, a big silent player is clothing, and it speaks volumes.  

With clear communication as the goal, when is it TMI – too much information?!?  Way too much information?  (i.e.  I don’t know you well enough to go there with you) Too much PERSONAL information (that I’m not comfortable hearing)?  Too much technical information (stop!  I’m in data overload)?

We all have different communication styles, different levels of comfort, different perceptions of closeness, and often different desires for closeness with a given person.   When information comes bombarding our way – which it does all the time, every day – we need to make sense of it all, or we will shut down and not take any action due to overwhelm.  So what to do with TMI?

I frequently present training material to groups, which presents the challenge of holding the interest of the most advance who easily understands complex concepts alongside the less interested who struggle to keep up, as the material snowballs steadily forward.  Trying not to bore the former or lose the latter is the challenge.

To the uninterested – who became uninterested when the falling behind starts, or perhaps fall behind because of it – it’s TMI: please stop as this is becoming torture, reads: my ego senses failure coming that I need to protect against.  Then the problem that develops is that without informational backup, understanding is weakened and perhaps nil.

Now the question is: do we really need to have true, complete, full understanding?  Is blind faith enough?  For example, we are told to shut off our cell phones and other electronic devices when  in an airplane during takeoff – no reason, just do it (blind faith that someone who knows more about it than you do has deemed this necessary).  Do you do it?  Some do, some don’t.  And for those who don’t, there are no consequences, so the bad behavior is reinforced (they likely do it again and again with the same positive result – so they ‘get away’ with it).

If you want 100% compliance with instruction, you should give the ‘why’ information, which, if the reason is compelling, would get a higher degree of participation, less renegades deciding for themselves.  The importance of the desired behavior should dictate the amount of explanatory information given.

I heard on one flight that the reason they request electronic devices be turned off is that the wireless signals interfere with the pilot’s bells and whistles needed to get the plane off the ground.  This made good logical and plausible sense, but still I rationalized (yes, I’m one of the nonconforming renegades referenced) that it would take the strength of all the devices combined to have enough of an impact; my single renegade device remaining on would have little effect.  So was this good information or TMI?  It was TMI – most people are law abiding and will comply without needing to know the why, and the renegade is still the renegade.  The information (accurate or inaccurate) didn’t change the behavior for those non-compliers and so it becomes extraneous.

Now I just learned that the real reason airlines request you turn off electronic devices not because of signal interference but is actually due to the risk of fire.  It turns out that lithium batteries are highly flammable and lots of them are used in aircraft, so adding the battery power of the travelers’ powered-up electronics, which there are a lot of these days, with the plane’s battery power during takeoff is a fire hazard inside the cabin (not desirable plus a personal fire will ruin your device!)  So is this new information helpful/necessary or TMI?  If it will serve to change the behavior, it is good information, which is the case here.  Who wants to risk losing their valued electronic device?

And what’s really interesting is the misdirection of the 1^st piece of information – whether unintentional or not!

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:   When information serves to influence the desired behavior in the right direction, it is valuable, even if the desirable behavior may not be.  Anything else, accurate or unintentionally inaccurate is extraneous.  By this definition, all gossip is TMI, since no desirable behavior results; ditto for all ‘misery loves company’ information.   So whining about that nasty plantar wart growing on the bottom of your foot – TMI!  

I recently had a client express a 3^rd party point in a mean way, with unnecessary (and exaggerated) detail which begged the question – why?  Why do some people decide to say certain things, in a certain unpleasant way – what is the point?

While this didn’t bother me as much as it might have bothered another (I have pretty thick skin), it did make me wonder about the motivation for this behavior for longer than if I had just moved on from the situation.  I took some time to think through what happened, as a way to learn more about this personality trait.

The major reasons that someone is mean are:

1)      To make you feel bad, which somehow makes them feel good (warped, but it happens when the person has low self-esteem)

2)      To take you down a peg, if they feel you need taking down (by another name, jealousy)

3)      They really believe in what they are saying and further believe that you need to hear it (i.e. big ego) plus absence of the empathy gene

4)      They love to be the harbinger of bad news and enjoy seeing the damaging reaction (sadist)

5)       Other people do it to them, so one bad turn deserves another – not! (misery loves company)

6)      Nasty people simply exist

Knowing the various reasons why someone might behave in a mean way is only one part of the equation.  The second part is what to do with the knowledge.  This is where many people get hung up – they either don’t do anything with the information, or don’t know what to do with it, once they know it.

The easy route (we all like to take the easiest route) is to push the mean communication aside and not deal with it.  “He’s just having a bad day” or “that’s just the way he is” are common dismissals, which are fine to follow, if you don’t care about the relationship much.  If you do care about the relationship, or you need to care because the person is a big presence in your life (i.e. boss, close co-worker) the hard route is to address the situation (being confrontational – oh my!) so you can work out how to deal with it properly.

Let’s take the above reasons one at a time and walk through a healthy way to communicate back:                                          RE:   1) Recognize that it’s a self-esteem issue on his part and not a personal attack on you.  Help build his self-esteem if so desired, but recognizing it for what it is, and for what is not, is the biggie.

RE:   2) Recognize that it’s his jealousy issue against you that’s the root cause, not the item itself under discussion; he will jump on any fault he can find in you, so this is a personal attack.  Dealing with jealousy is best done by taking you taking your own self down a peg, demonstrating that “you and I are a lot alike” which is how to create rapport with someone who feels dissonance.

RE:   3) Ask, “Would you help me to understand why you think that?”  Asking someone with a big ego for his advice strokes his ago.  “Tell me, what would you do if you were me?” even if you have no intention of following his advice.  Letting him give his advice unchallenged lets you win this round.

RE:   4) Don’t give credence to this type of behavior.  The only way to shut down bad behavior is to not give the expected reaction.  When it doesn’t get the desired attention, bad behavior eventually stops.

RE:   5) Ask, “I wonder why you would say that?”  The direct approach, with genuine curiosity, helps him to recognize an unwanted behavior pattern that does not need to be replicated.

RE:   6) Serious negative personality types that won’t change need to be avoided.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Mean communication is often symptomatic of deeper issues on the speaker’s part.  While we can’t change another person’s behavior and can only change our own behavior, what we don’t but should do, is to change our reaction to another person’s behavior.  This is within our power to do, but often we don’t exercise this power, and instead go into emotional reaction mode, responding with shock, hurt feelings, or dismissal.  There are better ways to deal, which work towards stronger communication.

Usually when we communicate, we try to get close to the other person, close the gap, and deepen the relationship.  Or not.  Certainly there are times when we don’t necessarily want much of a relationship with the other person, i.e. the UPS guy, the nasty co-worker in the other department, the annoying neighbor.  But for our purposes here let’s put those trivial relationships aside and focus on the relationships that we do want to nurture.  (And actually, by understanding distancing language better, you can use this knowledge to distance yourself even further from those other relationships, if you so choose to do so.)

So what is ‘distancing’ language?  Most people don’t even recognize it when they use it and don’t know the subconscious effect that it has.  When we went to distance ourselves from something, it is because it is undesirable, distasteful, or disquieting to our psyche.  Our language reflects this effort to put distance between ourselves and the unwanted item or avoidable discussion with our words.

When we are close to someone we call them by name or by an endearing term.  When we are mad at or upset with them, we distance ourselves by referring to them with an impersonal pronoun or by their formal title. Your mother can be referred to as “mom”, “mother”, “she”, “Jane”, “Mrs. Smith”, “that woman over there” – do you hear the gap growing and the distance lengthening?  The more impersonal it gets, the more distance is created.

“Mom, you’re a great help” or “My mom is a great help” indicates a close relationship.

“Mother, I can do it myself” or “My mother said that would happen” has tension

“Officer, that woman [while pointing to her] said it was OK” is probably a lie,

when a person refers to their own mother as “that woman”.

Or how about the famous line: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!”

Pronouns also create closeness or distance, depending on which ones are used.  When we refer directly to ourselves (“I”, “my”, “me”, “myself”) there is no gap.  When indirect references come into play (“that person”, “those people”, “they” – the indistinct, nameless, faceless “they say that…” – who says??)   a gap is created.

“We” are on the same team, but “they” (those losers!) lost the playoffs;

contrasted with “We won!” those same playoffs.

“That’s my girl!” contrasted with “Your daughter…!”

Overheard at the family reunion, “You people are nuts!” – do you think that he’s close to his family?

Contrasted to, “We’re all nuts in this family!” and proud of it – now that’s a close family member.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Listening to the words used in communication can be a tipoff about how a person really feels about a situation, about another person, about the information being conveyed.  Words that put the person in direct contact indicate true engagement – they like you, they like the topic, they like the information.  Distancing language indicates the opposite – and if the person is attempting to create closeness but using distancing language, be wary of what’s genuine and what’s not.  Subconscious distancing from deception is commonly done.

I recently re-watched the cult classic Harold and Maude, the black comedy about a death obsessed 18-year old.  But underneath all the oddities, Harold had a real point, which was a strong need for acceptance for who he was, as he was.  He just wanted to do his own thing, which wasn’t to die, but to be allowed to express himself in the manner he wanted.  The only place he found acceptance was with a 79 year old woman, which is more than a little twisted, but understandable.

The Cat Stevens soundtrack that the movie is identified with, “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” reiterates the prevailing theme nicely.  The lyrics are:

Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
‘Cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are

And if you want to be me, be me
And if you want to be you, be you
‘Cause there’s a million things to do
You know that there are

The Harold character, even though it was only a movie, was strong enough to communicate to the world who he was, with all his peculiarities – that can take real character strength.  Who can stand up to the world so nakedly?  Peer pressure to conform to society’s norms drives most of us into mainly acceptable behavior.

I also just read the hugely popular book Gone Girl, the leading character Amy was another nut case, but in a psychopathic way.   While it was fairly entertaining as a mystery, it was also telling on the same facet of human behavior – Amy just wanted to be accepted for who she was.  She felt that she needed to pay a role, the “cool girl” or the “good wife” to be accepted, but who was she really?  Again, it was just fiction, but not that far from the truth.  Her parents said they just wanted Amy to be happy growing up, but she wonders how to be happy – they never taught her how.

So she created an image of what happiness was supposed to look like, but couldn’t get acceptance for who she really was.  Not that this is any excuse for madness.  But there is a valid point that we, social creatures all, want others to like and include us.  But what happens when that need for acceptance bumps up against what we might really want to do?  The selfish component of life vying for time and energy against the social component.  Do we really communicate our true selves?  Do we dare?

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  People are complicated.  We say one thing and mean another – the discrepancy of which we expect others to telepathically understand!  Life is hard enough without making waves by always being our true selves all the time.  Often it’s just easier to go along and pick our battles, which means not communicating our real feelings 100% of the time.  This is fine, as long as you know that you’re doing it and you make all your communication a conscious choice.