“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” ”

— The Talmud

It was a few days until Thanksgiving and I found myself on a Zoom call with the entire extended family. We gathered to discuss Covid-related precautions for the upcoming holiday. I was feeling stressed and worried. About halfway through the call, I got triggered by something that was said, and in an instant my worry transformed into flaming rage. The intensity of my feeling caught me completely off guard. What was going on with me? Thankfully, my wiser self guided me to step away from the conversation before I exploded and might have said something I’d regret.

This is familiar territory for me. Throughout my younger years, many of my relationships became significantly hurt by a conversation gone off the rails due, in part, to one of my intense emotional outbursts.

I’ve learned the hard way that it is absolutely necessary for me to pay attention to what’s happening inside me as I relate to others. This emotional and somatic awareness has become a guiding light in all of the conversations I have today. It helps me navigate the complex and wonder-full territory that is human relationships.

Good relationships are so important to our personal fulfillment and they are also critical to professional success—even during the pandemic, when it’s next to impossible to see colleagues and friends in person. Current pandemic stressors can activate intense feelings, making us prone to expressing ourselves with less of a filter.

As a coach, my experiences and training have taught me that there are three intrapersonal activities that are helpful to pursue before we have a challenging conversation where powerful emotions are at play. If your goal is to have a compassionate, productive conversation, try these steps first:

Attend to your own feelings
Connect your feelings with your needs
Open your mind to the other person’s perspective

Attend to your own Feelings

Feelings are what make good relationships and conversations so rich and satisfying. But have you ever been in a situation where your feelings are disproportionate to the subject at hand? I sure have! Somewhere deep inside, we know we’re either over the top or totally numb (the latter being the flip side of the same coin). When our feelings are so loud (or so quiet) that we can’t concentrate on the issue, it’s time to take a break and attend to ourselves.

That’s because what others do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but it is not the root cause. Our feelings result from how we consciously or unconsciously receive the world around us, including what others say and do. We can explore our cause by asking ourselves questions like: Why am I receiving things the way I am? What does this say about me?

Otherwise, here’s what ends up happening: We find ourselves in a reactive state—not only in relation to the conversation—but also in relation to our feelings. We become perpetually afraid of our feelings, and impatient with them. We try to figure them out or try not to feel them at all!

Instead, we can pause and take the necessary time to witness our feelings without judgment or blame or denial. When we do this, we can experience a palpable shift that relieves some of our momentary suffering. We get to a moment of insight. We can then return to the person and conversation in a different frame of mind.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold once said, “The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is happening outside.” When we become skilled at being present with ourselves, we can experience a natural release of energy that then enables us to be present with the other person.

To help you expand your capacity to be present with your feelings, I recommend a practice called Focusing, developed by Ann Weiser Cornell.

Connect your feelings with your needs

Marshall Rosenberg, founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, taught that judgments, criticisms, diagnoses and interpretations are all alienated expressions of our own needs. For instance, if you say to yourself, “No one understands me,” you are really saying that your need to be understood is not being fulfilled.

Our most empowering move is to take full responsibility, not only for our feelings, but also for the underlying needs, desires, expectations and values the feelings represent. Unfortunately, many of us have never been taught to think in terms of needs. We are accustomed to thinking about what’s wrong with other people and what’s wrong with ourselves when our needs aren’t being fulfilled. When we pivot from blame to responsibility, from judging to learning, we are well on our way to finding our voice and power.

In a world where we are often harshly judged for identifying and surfacing our needs, doing so, even alone with ourselves, can be frightening. Many of us are socialized to ignore our own needs in order to care for others first. But ignoring our needs comes at a great cost. Check it out for yourself. As you sit with your unmet needs, perhaps you will begin to notice how much of your life you’ve missed and how little you may have responded to the call of your own soul. In this case, you can make a courageous change in the direction of worthiness. (See this earlier blog post for a mindfulness meditation to help you make that change.)

I recommend reviewing this list of basic human needs from the Center for Nonviolent Communication to get you started on identifying your core needs.

Open your mind to the other person’s perspective

Once you have witnessed your feelings and become clear on your needs, you will notice a shift in your readiness for that challenging conversation. Something about you might feel lighter and yet more grounded at the same time. The last step is to consciously realize that there are two perspectives in any conversation—yours being one side. None of us has a special claim on reality or truth. We all have particular points of view; and those points of view are equal.

Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, authors of Difficult Conversations dive deep into the reasons it’s important to explore each other’s stories:

We have different information. We notice different things based on who we are and what we care about. For instance, look at the wide range of professions out there! Some of us are artists, others are scientists, others pragmatists.
We have different interpretations. We are influenced by our unique past experiences (combined with other factors like personality) which often develop into “rules” by which we live our lives.
Our conclusions reflect our self-interest. A significant body of research shows that we look for information to support our view and give that information the most favorable interpretation. This is called unconscious bias. It is very human and can also be very dangerous.

The solution? Become curious about the other person’s perspective. To begin, here’s a practice for you: Ask the next person you speak with at least three questions before you share your own perspective. Listen, really listen, to their response. Repeat as much as possible for the next week. Conscious Business Coach Fred Kaufman shares a succinct seven-step process for active listening.

what matters most

In any critical conversation, I practice asking myself: what do I really want? When it came to my family last Thanksgiving, the answer was loud and clear: more than anything else, I want mutually respectful relationships where everyone is included. And so, after I attended to that rage inside of me (practices to process anger and outrage coming in a future blog post), I followed up with my family member with an offer to both listen and share. And we did it right away. We took turns sharing our feelings and our needs and practiced empathy with each other. Easy? No. Necessary? Absolutely.

By the end of the conversation, our value for each other became front and center. I felt humbled to hear a new perspective. We navigated a way forward that was respectful to both of us.

When we find ourselves stuck, we can always ask ourselves, What matters most here? The word “sacrifice” comes from the Latin sacrificium, which means “to make sacred.” When you make a sacrifice, you relinquish a lower goal in order to pursue a higher one. To relate to people consciously, you can keep in mind your hierarchy of goals. What is your ultimate goal, the end of all means? For me, it was mutual respect.

When you attend to your feelings, connect your feelings to your underlying needs and open yourself to the other person’s perspective, you are ready for what very well could be a challenging yet worthy conversation.