In our previous blog: When Conversations Get Tough: How to Talk with Complete Candour while Remaining in Connection, I talked about how we can have critical and sensitive conversations with people who matter to us, and on things that matter to us….
With complete honesty while remaining in connection!
And while writing that blog, I realized:
YES! Your ability to talk with love and from power matters…. A LOT!
In fact, knowing how to handle conversations with truth and tact will radically transform every relationship in your life!
YET, even if you were the master of critical conversations,
even if you crossed all your T’s and dotted all your i’s in communication, there are times when that relationship is simply not going to give you what you need.
AND, you cannot be the master of critical conversations without mastering your inner world of thoughts, feelings and desires FIRST.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the absolute best in conversation – you know those people you see and you wonder:
“Does he ever get ruffled?”
OR “how does she seem to get what she wants so effortlessly?!”
Those people have not only mastered the art of PERSUASION. They have mastered the art of INNER PERCEPTION.
So I decided, today is the day! (don’t you just love these declarations? 😜)
where we get to turn every conversation into a practice rink for knowing ourselves and getting our desires met – EVERY TIME, WITH OR WITHOUT THE OTHER PERSON’S PARTICIPATION!
Oh yes, and today, like last week, we’re gonna take a scenario and unpack it. And it will feel a little like last week.
But instead of looking for how we communicate with candor and create connection, we are gonna look for
HOW WE CAN MANIFEST OUR DEEPEST DESIRES FROM EVERY DIALOGUE
Your closest friend recently moved to another country. Before then, you were neighbors, and you did most things together. You worked out together. You prepped meals together, and you hung out at least a couple of times a week together.
It has been a couple of years since, and you have managed to speak to each other at most once every 3 or 4 months. You call her and she doesn’t pick up. She doesn’t initiate, and rarely does she return your calls.
You have talked to her a number of times about this. You’ve let her know how much this friendship means to you, and asked her to be more responsive. She shared with you how busy life is, and promised to connect more often, and yet nothing materializes.
Later on, you spoke about your concerns regarding your drifting friendship, and you noticed how she reacts with sensitivity and defensiveness.
The more you try to communicate your dissatisfaction, the greater you two drift apart. So you learn to hold your tongue. You have tried the three techniques we’ve covered in our last blog, and yet nothing is changing.
So you no longer broach the topic with her and yet, you can’t seem to let go of the situation internally.
The thought and emotional patterns you have regarding this situation are pulling a lot of your energy and dampening your joy.
KNOW THYSELF: TUNING IN TO UNCOVER YOUR PERSONAL POWER
Every time I place my hands back on the keyboard and think about the first step – KNOW THYSELF -, I imagine the crestfallen look on your face.
I imagine that after you confess to me that you feel that your best friend doesn’t care about you anymore and that today, you have nothing to show for all the effort and energy you’ve poured into this friendship in the past 10+ years…
I respond by telling you: “but this is no longer about your friend; it is about you.”
“I didn’t come to you to find myself. I came to you to find a solution!”
We generally go to therapy, hire people, and spend so much of our money and time looking for the magic key to GET WHAT WE WANT WITH A SPECIFIC PERSON AND IN A SPECIFIC SCENARIO.
We try and try to crowbar our reality into another person. We try coercion. We try control. We try giving in. We try compromising on our desires. And that leaves us feeling bitter and dissatisfied.
And we do that because…
let’s face it, we are really (really) resistant to the idea that we can still get what we want even if it doesn’t look like what we’ve imagined.
This is what people who seem to “always get what they want” intuitively get.
They get that to meet their soul’s deepest desires, they need to:
- #1: Invite others into their vision by mastering the art of speaking with truth & tact (if this intrigues you and you haven’t read our last blog, check it out!);
- #2: Use every conversation as a window to uncover their personal power and meet their desires. AND this is what we’ll be doing in this blog!
Step 1: Identify Your Unmet Desire
- What is the unmet desire(s) that are driving my dissatisfaction?
- I desire to have a stronger connection with my friend.
THIS IS WHERE WE GO BEYOND UNDERSTANDING TO PERSUADE AND GET TO UNCOVER THE KEY TO OUR UNCONDITIONAL FREEDOM.
- What unmet desire(s) did my friend’s absence reveal to me about my life? In other words, if my friend was no longer in the picture, what unmet desire would I still have?
- I don’t want to feel alone (Ohhh, so I want to have a deep connection with friends).
- Truth is, my friend was my accountability buddy and companion at the gym. I would like to have that again.
- My friend gave me perspective and brought level-headedness to my life when I was feeling ungrounded and reactive. I want to have friendships that help me see what I am not seeing.
Step 2: Identify Your Resistance to Meeting Your Desire
- What is holding me back from building new friendships in my life that fulfill my unmet desires?
- Are you kidding me? It took us 10 years to build this friendship! AHA! So I believe I can’t have a deep connection with people whom I haven’t known for years.
- She held many roles in my life: my accountability partner, my partner in activities, my confidante, etc. I can’t find that!
- People make friends in their teens and early twenties. After that, they don’t have time for new friends.
RAISE YOUR LIFE TO YOUR HIGHEST DESIRE BY CHALLENGING YOUR RESISTANCE
- How can my limiting beliefs be untrue?
- Can I perhaps experience a different kind of connection with new friends? Yeah, there is excitement and possibility and exploration in a new friendship. That is fulfilling in its own way.
- Yeah, maybe one person can’t be all the things my friend was to me, but can I have different people in my life who now fulfill those needs? I don’t think so.
- Fair enough. I may be wrong though. So, if I suspend belief for a moment, what would I need to do to have a few friendships that fulfill my different desires? I would need to go out and do things I love, meet many new people, and proactively seek to connect. But, I told you, it is too late to make friendships now!
- Are there people out there who like me are actively looking to create meaningful friendships? What about people who have moved countries like my friend? Would they not want to make new friendships? Or people whose closest circle of friends are mostly married? Or people like me who have friends who are now unavailable?
- Ok, so what if I tried doing what I love and meeting people for the next month from a place of curiosity, how could my life be different?
Now imagine that you ended up creating the kind of friendships that fulfilled you in the ways your best friend previously had, perhaps even in ways that exceed what you had.
Can you feel how the pressure you experienced regarding the loss of your friend changed?
You have shifted into a space where you are creatively finding ways to meet your core desires.
You are no longer waiting for your friend to turn around and make that call.
And when you go and you create what fulfills you, you lift yourself up.
You have identified the core source of tension and you have directed your energy towards the actions that would resolve that tension!
And THAT puts you in a different state of feeling, thinking and being, one where you are not depending on another person to fulfill your needs!
And this is exactly why people who routinely and naturally
- tune in and identify their desires,
- and then expand their lived reality to meet those desires
very often have those people who pulled away from them come back and vye for their energy and attention.
It is because they feel different. They do not feel powerless. They do not feel demanding. They do not feel heavy or off-putting.
They feel in charge. They feel free. They feel light. They feel joyous.
And if there is one thing that is most likely to attract people consistently, it is that: the experience of a whole, free, self-determined human in their creativity and joy!
Until next time,
Much love!
Other content that might interest you:
- When Conversations Get Tough: How to Talk with Complete Candour while Remaining in Connection
- Tension is Not Stress – The 3 Common Mistakes We Make When Dealing with Tension
- Redefining Tension: The 3 Counter-Instinctive Ways We Can Use Tension To Improve Our Lives
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Blog collaboration: Mike Popovici & Lulwa Saffarini, Blog written by: Lulwa Saffarini
Photo Credits:
- Main photo (2 people talking on rail tracks): Photo by Megan Ruth from Pexels
- Where’s Waldo picture – copied from this article
