Question your internal monitor when. . .

# Chapter 331

You have to pay attention to how people experience you in the world. It is not enough to know what you feel and what you intended and to be in touch with yourself. How do others experience you? That is a critical question. One, I am asking myself because of two recent events when the two people I am most responsible for both got their feelings hurt in one of our interactions and both accused me of “yelling at them”. My immediate internal and external response both times was that I was not yelling at them! My internal monitor said that I was not yelling, that my response was appropriate for the conversation and context according to me.

Obviously their internal monitors read things differently. So much so that they both had emotional outbursts and were clearly hurt by how they perceived my tone or volume or both. If one of them had this experience that is questionable, but if both of them have this reaction, then there are no questions that something in my manner, tone, volume, non-verbal, or actions set off their internal radars. You should sit up and pay attention when this happens. I am trying to sit up and pay attention because the people that I am most responsible for and to are having a problem with me.

Of course our brains try to shift the blame and reasons to the other person, but that is always a wasted action because it never addresses the stuff you and I are doing and that we need to moderate or change. If you are unable to accept input about your behavior and actions, then you need to stop reading this blog because it is only for those who want to move forward and make the world, including your world, a better place for everyone. Since I am almost 60 years old and am the person under scrutiny here, with a life demanding that I change something, then I am pretty sure that you have some changing to do also. Stop that defensive thought and get to it.