Recently on our Social Media we posted the above quote about the importance of giving your spouse the benefit of the doubt while waiting for all the facts to come in. Basically jumping to a negative conclusion in your relationship will most definitely lead you to a world of hurt. Avoid that.Recently I had an experience where I was given the opportunity to "practice what I preach" my boss at work. It wasn't easy and my emotions were really telling me to do something else. AVOID, ABORT, STUFF. If you want to see us discussing this story at length watch our video As I have pondered this situation I have come to a new conclusion about communication that I hadn't before. First the worst thing you can do when you have partial details is to assume negative intent and tell your partner why they did what they did. This judgement/criticism is definitely going to lead to negative conflict. The Attack/Defend Cycle in full effect. For example had I started in on my boss with, "You are such a micro-manager, you don't trust anyone!"Bad...The next thing we teach is to get in touch with your feelings and start by sharing them. The proverbial "I Statement." Now this is better but in some cases especially when we don't have all the details can still get us in trouble because these feelings we are describing are based on perceptions that may or may not be accurate. If I tell my boss, "I feel unfairly scrutinized, mistrusted and upset..." without knowing where she was coming from I'm basically laying all my cards down at the beginning of the hand. Fold...My usual magic bullet to communication is the...Read More
