Have a willingness to learn and to act
Continuing with the foundations of mindful communication . . .
Do you know the difference between between someone who is behaving in a certain way and someone who IS a certain way?
It is a persistent unwillingness to learn and to change or grow.
All of us lack skills in certain areas of our lives, including communication. This is not problematic AT ALL.
What causes problems is when we refuse to learn from our mistakes, from feedback of those around us and to change our behavior in response.
When we tell ourselves or those around us things such as
This is who I am
I am not one for expressing my feelings. I'm just not comfortable with it.
I am too old to change
I am not going to change so get used to it
I have always talked like this
Everyone in my family raises their voices – what is the big deal?
. . . or any version of the above . . .
We are blocking our own path to growth and losing chances to make our relationships and our lives better.
Acknowledging that we may have something to learn is the first step to learning and growing as individuals.
This can be more challenging for some of us than others. The alternative, however, is to live resisting the pull to reach our full potential, and to disappoint those who see something greater in us individually as well as for our relationship to them.
To apply this to communication:
Learning communication skills is relatively easy once we are open to it.
Practicing them consistently and creating change is a little more challenging.
The hardest thing though, is to continue to do what we are doing and expecting our lives and our relationships to magically improve. To stubbornly resist changing and growing.
This takes sooooo much more energy, don't you think?
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