The Mistake You're Making Before You Even Speak
There’s a hidden mechanism at the heart of conversations. For most people, most of the time, this mechanism is messing things up, causing misunderstandings and confusion. And they don’t even know that it’s there.
The mechanism operates in the bit of a conversation that’s just after someone says something and just before you respond.
That bit, there.
For you, what’s happening just there?
That’s the place where we make meaning.
Their words come in. Our reactions, decisions, or advice go out. But what happens in between - how those words are interpreted, reshaped, added to, or quietly replaced by our own assumptions - is practically invisible.
We assume we know what their words meant.
What we rarely notice is that we’ve been responding to what we heard - our own version of what was said - and not to what was actually said.
That, in turn has consequences. People’s words have meaning for them. Our meaning is, almost certainly, different.
When they say “support” it’s never exactly the same kind of support you have in mind. Same with “overwhelm”, “stuck”… even “elephant”, “flower” or “frog”.
And so the mechanism kicks in. You respond to your (mis)interpretation of their words, not to what they actually said.
They feel unheard, misunderstood. You take your next action based on duff data.
And it’s possible to stop doing that. To notice the hidden mechanism in action, and to do something different in that moment.
What kind of “something different” is that?
You could pause your inner interpretation engine just long enough to ask a question like “What kind of …?”
What needs to happen for that to happen in your next conversation?
That's beautiful Judy. It's definitely one of the specific areas I focus on in sessions. I used to be one of those people who had to fill that awkward space, that in-between. Now that I know the power that moment holds, I can enjoy it!