THE TEN MOST COMMON CHARACTERISTICS
OF CONTROL FREAKS
Welcome to the first of our lessons from “The Control Freak Series”. Before we get into the meat of our material today, which will cover the ten most common characteristics of control freaks, let us try to figure out what a “control freak” is. Okay, the floor is open, what is a control freak?
Some suggestions I came up with:
· Micromanager.
· Bossy.
· Wants his or her own way.
· The critical one. Nothing is ever right.
· Nitpicker.
· List maker and list keeper.
· Seeks perfection, never gets there.
· Always wants to win.
As we can all see, there are many kinds of people we think of as CFs, so now let’s look at what our study book says. On page 2, the author defines a control freak for in this way:
Control Freaks are people who care more than you do about something and won’t stop at being pushy to get their own way.
Do you think this describes the God of our Bible? Why or why not, after all don’t we proclaim that God is in control? Let us spend a moment or two on the subject of “who is in control” by referring to Scripture.
1 Chronicles 29:10-14 – After we read it I am going to quote verses 10 and 11 from a particular version, The Living Bible, which a paraphrase, not an exact translation, but I think it get’s the point across very well.
(11) Yours is the mighty power and glory and victory and majesty. Everything in the heavens and earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as being in control of everything. (12) Riches and honor come from you alone, and you are the Ruler of all mankind; your hand controls power and might, and it is at your discretion that men are made great and given strength. TLB
As we can see from this wonderful prayer of David, which are his last recorded words, that David, after all the stunts he pulled in his life and all the antics of his dysfunctional family, has finally come to the point of view that God is in control of everything. Do you believe that?
Okay, since you do, let us now take a look at this Scripture, 2 Peter 1:5-8. In these verses, Peter is telling us to work at developing certain attributes, one of which is “Self-control”. Since we find this listed as a virtue by Jesus’ right hand man, it would imply that control in our own lives is something we have power over. Doesn’t that contradict what our previous Scripture said? It certainly seems to, but it actually doesn’t, because we are comparing “apples with oranges”.
God is in control – this is a “big picture” statement. Ultimately God will see His purposes completed. However, God limits Himself, because of His love for us, in that He will not violate His own character. He created us with the God given right to make choices for ourselves, and to be responsible for our own actions. Translated, this means that he created us with the power to exercise control over our own lives, not as puppets. We can choose to do it His way, or do it our way; we can choose to allow Him to control us, or to not allow Him to control us. (Open for discussion)
Having said all that, let us go to today’s actual lesson. The ten most common characteristics of control freaks.
1. Obnoxious – Let me say this right away, when I was younger, I was obnoxious. I can still get that way, but I’m not so much that way any more. Tell me, what does the word obnoxious mean to you? It is interesting to me that the root word here is the Latin noun “noxa”, meaning damage. From this we get the word noxious, meaning either damaging to the physical health or harmful to the mind or morals. It is further developed in English to obnoxious, another descriptive adjective, meaning “highly offensive or disagreeable”, or “likely to cause harm, injury or evil”. We see an example of this in 2 Samuel 10:1-7. The sons of Ammon became odious (obnoxious) to David because of their unwarranted treatment of David’s servants. In this biblical example, the result was war! Simple bad behavior is not obnoxious, intentional bad behavior is! Intentional bad actions are the product of a malicious mind and heart, where the control freak is trying to have power over people around them through fear of being damaged.
2. Tenacious – Okay, okay, I can do this too! This is one of those character traits that can be a tremendous strength or a disastrous weakness. In the verses from 2 Peter we looked at earlier it talks about adding “perseverance” to your life as a positive quality. The author here is really discussing the person who is tenacious in the sense of stubborn idiocy. Do you remember the story of Balaam and his donkey from Num 22:22-30? Let’s read it now. We are all told that a donkey is an obstinate or stubborn creature, what is our experience here? I think it shows that humans can be way more stubborn than any donkey! A stubbornly tenacious person is a control freak because it is all about having things their way, even when they are 100% wrong.
3. Invasive – Did you ever feel emotionally invaded? Well you may have met a control freak. When I was studying for my MBA, I took a class in industrial management, and we learned that it was normal to get hold of as much information about any situation we could, subject only to legal, financial and time constraints. The mantra “information is power” was spoken many times. This is exactly what the invasive control freak does, he or she gets as much information as they can, and then they have control over people. More information often leads to more control. They can be subtle, getting information in tangential ways, like talking to your friends, showing concern for you, but all the while picking up that juicy stuff on you. They can also be direct, asking you face to face a question they want to know the answer to. These people invade your lives!
I must also point out that people who are not control freaks might do this too. The difference between the CF and non-CF is that the CF does it constantly and in almost all their relationships, the non-CF does it when experiencing a sense of concern for others.
There is a character out of the Old Testament that exhibits in one of the stories about him some aspects of this “invasive” trait, and you might be surprised whom I picked. His name is Joseph. Let’s take a quick look at Gen 42:6-17. This is the beginning of the story about the move of the family of Jacob (Israel) to Egypt. In it we can clearly see controlling aspects to Joseph’s nature, recognizing some of his family, he starts to ask about the others and about their lives. Sometimes we think about Joseph as a long lost son, but he was also the most powerful man in the known world, he was used to being in charge and in control. Notice how he was not honest with his brothers, at least in the beginning, about what he knew and about his motives.
4. Obsessive – Does anybody relate to this? Have you ever gone through a period of your life where you have single mindedly focused on one thing. Everything you do revolves around it, you wake up thinking about it, you dream about it, you talk to everybody about it, you manipulate your life around it. That is the way it can be for a control freak. I honestly believe that most obsessive people are not in touch with their obsession, and don’t have an immorally controlling motivation about it. However there are a few who do. Can you think of some examples? How about someone who wants a big attaboy at work for getting a significant project finished, or maybe the same person looking for a promotion.
The core problem here is that this CF misses other important issues. Let me give you an example of this. The man of the household is studying something to get an extra degree so that he can advance his career. He comes home each night and hits the books, he is single minded about it. His wife continues to try to let him know how the family is doing, the kid’s grades, their friends, etc., but he really isn’t listening. One day he comes home, and there is nobody there, he thinks they are all out doing something, so he grabs some food, and hits the books. At 10 pm he quits for the evening, heads to the bedroom and remembers he hasn’t seen or heard anybody all evening. He finds a note pinned to his pillow, it says, “The kids and I have left you, how long did it take you to notice?”
Scripture provides us with some obsessive examples. Let’s look at 1 Sam 18:6-9. In this passage we see that Saul, the first king of Israel, is faced with the fact that David, who has just slain Goliath, is now more popular than the king himself. In verse 9 we see the beginning of Saul’s obsession with David. Right after this Saul tries to kill David with a spear, but he failed, this was merely the first of many attempts by Saul to kill David. This obsession lasted for the rest of Saul’s life and ended up consuming him, with the final result being suicide during a losing battle (1 Sam 31). How about that for an obsession?
5. Perfectionistic – Will anybody other than me admit to being somewhat of a perfectionist? I want to begin this section of our lesson by defining “Perfectionism”.
· Perfectionism (from Webster’s): A predilection for setting extremely high standards and being displeased with anything less.
I want to open this up to the class for examples of yourself or others in your life and how they demonstrate being a perfectionist. Let us try to pick out some common behaviors or phrases that they may use.
· Not good enough.
· You can do better.
· Let’s do it this way.
· Keeps every document, and files it.
· Has an immaculately clean house and yard.
· Their car is never dirty.
You get the picture; perfectionism is very demanding on the person encumbered that way and also on their family and friends. There is an example from the Bible that I really like. The story of Martha and Mary found in Lk 10:38-42. Who is the perfectionist here? (Martha) What does Jesus point out to her? (You are worried about so many things: and, by implication, that shall be taken away from you, choose better things like Mary has) I wish that perfectionists all over the world could hear that message.
I do want to say a little about perfectionism as compared to excellence.
· Perfectionism involves the setting of high and mostly unrealistic standards.
· Excellence implies the setting of high and achievable standards.
Scripture tells us in Ph 1:6 that we won’t be perfect until the day of the Lord, which means His second coming. It also tells us to apply ourselves to being excellent in everything, and from 2 Pet 1:8; we learn that it makes us useful and fruitful in Jesus Christ.
The message for all of us here is to do our best, and to not waste our emotional energy or destroy our important relationships through trying to be perfect or worse than that demanding that those around us are perfect.
6. Critical – Right up behind perfectionism we find criticism; the two seems to go hand in hand for some people. Most perfectionists seem to hand out a lot of disapproval, but “critics” are not necessarily perfectionists.
Our author says it well when describing some control freaks. On page 29 he says, “Control freaks can be some of the most painfully critical people you’ll ever meet”. I call such wonderful citizens “The Log People”. Let us look at Mt 7:1-5 to find out why.
I think we have to understand what is going on inside a “log person”. They believe the lie that their criticisms will make a difference in the lives of everyone. Underneath it all lays the great problem of pride and arrogance, and at its root the critic is trying to play God. In Jn 16:5-11, Jesus explains it as the Holy Spirit coming to the world to convict all of us of sin. The Holy Spirit’s conviction is the criticism of God on our lives and it is always for our benefit. When others criticize us it is rarely for our benefit when unsolicited and only sometimes for our betterment when we ask others for feedback.
In Num 12:1-10 we see Aaron and Miriam (Moses brother and sister) criticize him for marrying a non-Jew. God took offense as He had approved the marriage. So he turned Miriam into a leper as a consequence. The good news is that He let her stay that way for the next seven days only, but it made His point. Don’t criticize; there may be unintended consequences. Let us look at God’s specific instruction on this matter in James 4:11-12.
7. Irritable – Does anybody here this morning get cranky or impatient with others? When you don’t get your own way do you make every one around you miserable? I’m sure I’ve done my share of that kind of behavior, but I really don’t like people who do this consistently. They come across to me as extraordinarily self-centered. What do you think?
In Num 21:4-5 we see a result of this. In verse 6 God sends His message in the form of some nasty critters. While I think it is unlikely that we will have to deal with such a problem, I think we must understand His perspective. Who are we to not accept those around us and the state of our lives? God wants us to have a good perspective on where we are in everything. We know that people are fallible, so why do we think they can do everything right. We know that everything we have is allowed by Him, so why are we so ungrateful? We know that some things take time, so why are we impatient? It is because we want our own way in all things!
8. Demanding – What can I say here? A Control Freak can enter into coercive behavior to get things the way they want. Sometimes they hide behind the idea that “we are all trying to do the best we can, so I have to push you”. Excuse me if I say that that is all hogwash. I just love that stick-um I saw one time that said, “An emergency on your part does not constitute any urgency on mine”. There are many things that I think about as motivation for a demanding CF:
· So I, the CF, can impress others.
· So I, the CF, can leave work early.
· So I, the CF, can feel in charge.
Whatever the reason, whenever someone demands something of me, they are usually trying to make their problem mine!
How about these CF’s? Let’s look at Mt 23:1-4. This is the section of scripture where Jesus exposes the “teachers of the law”, the Pharisees, as major league hypocrites. They demand adherence to the law, but of course they didn’t follow their own teachings. They simply wanted to control the Jewish population.
9. Rigid – This describes the CF who is a “do it my way” kind of person. I am like that; sometimes I really believe that I have the best method for dealing with a situation. The problem for me is that this is sometimes true, so I believe that I have it right all the time. And that is wrong! My motivation may be okay; I want to get something done by the most efficient method possible. The reasoning fails to take into account another person’s experience and abilities. Insisting on my way becomes insisting on inevitable failure. How stupid can I be!
We all love the song “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. After all, he did it all his way, and that is very American, what’s not to agree with? The trouble is, he ran over everybody in his life to do it. Let us look at another “I’ll do it my way crowd”. In Joshua 7:2-5, the men of the Israelite army decided to attack Ai their own way. The result was demoralizing failure.
The lesson here is that if we want demoralizing failure, then do things your own way, be rigid!
10. Close-minded – Right on the back of “I’ll do it my way” comes “I won’t do it your way”! This CF has a very difficult problem to deal with. They are so arrogant that they cannot see that other people have good ideas. They willfully exclude other people from input so that they can control the outcome of everything they deal with. This is the exact opposite of what scripture says to do in Pr 11:14.
I need to say a little something here. There is at least one thing we need to be close-minded about. That is this:
· God’s way is the best way.
How many of us have experienced our own close-mindedness by trying to do things our own way? With the inevitable result of less than stellar results.
For our biblical character reference here I would like to show us the example of open-mindedness of Nicodemus in Jn 3:1-3. He is the only recorded Pharisee who looked for the truth in Jesus.
That concludes our lesson today, and I know it has probably raised more questions about life than it has settled. In the next few weeks we will apply some of the ideas expressed today to our real life situations.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
What we can change.
Now we are finally getting down to the place where “The Rubber Meets The Road”, we are about to look at what we can realistically do with ALL the things we have been learning. It is time to change! Are you ready?
First, let us take a quick look at where we have been.
We have learned that the DNA of Relationships is made up of three strands:
1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.
We have come to understand that how we internalize these three basic truths will determine the quality of all our relationships. The author of our study guidebook has given us some practical tools to use, which can help us improve our relationship situations. These are:
· Take Personal Responsibility.
· Create a Safe Environment.
· Keep Your Battery Charged.
· Listen With the Heart.
· Adopt a No-Losers Policy.
I want to be sure that we notice that these tools are all personal action items. Each of the five statements begins with an “action verb”, and each speaks to something we have personal control over. This is where today’s subject of change begins, with personal control.
I like what the author says about change:
· There is no guarantee of success.
I agree with him that this needs to be said. When we start a process of change in our lives, we can set our expectations. If we set them in high places we are more likely to experience frustration or even pain when our change goal(s) are not met. If we set our eyes on progress and not a target we can more easily deal with how our attempts at change are going.
What is missing from this entire chapter is this:
· No change, guaranteed failure.
Definitions and quotes:
Webster’s – To become different.
John Kennedy - Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
M. Scott Peck - The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Life is a progress, and not a station.
Unknown - Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
On that lighter note is it finally time to really get down to it. Let us begin by asking a few questions:
· Is change something that God wants from me? Yes!
· If it is, then what does He want me to change?
· What does He want me to change to?
We are going to focus for the next few minutes on the “what does He want me to change” question.
I want to take a look at three scriptures here, Rom 12:2, Ph 2:12-13 and Eph 1:18.
· In Rom 12:2 we see Paul using the word “transformed” where “changed” could have been used. We all know and understand that to transform is to change, so why is this change put this way? The answer to this is found in the original Greek, Paul used the word “metamorphoo” from which we get “metamorphosis”, and that signifies a radical change. A good example would be a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
· Ph 12:12-13 talks about “working out our salvation”. This scripture gets to the heart of what Godly change is about; we work, on our own, salvation. The Greek word used here (soteria) can be used in the sense of salvation, as in “being saved”, but also in another meaning, becoming healthy or sometimes, being delivered. It can be used in both a physical or moral sense. The message here is that change involves our own effort, our own being, and our own body and soul in our actions.
· Eph 1:18 discusses our need to have our hearts changed, or enlightened, so that we know the hope of His calling. The word calling refers to His plan for us.
· I also want to point out that all three of these scriptures refer to this “change” as being within God’s will. More on this in a few minutes.
Notice that the three scriptures refer to three different aspects of our inner being. Rom 12:2 covers the mind, Ph 2:12-13 focuses on our will (or purpose) and Eph 1:18 identifies the heart. It is with this knowledge that we make the following statement.
· It is God’s will for me to change.
Since this is true, we can also make another statement:
· It is NOT God’s will for me to NOT change.
Having established that God wants us to change, we can now look at “what” He wants us to alter. The answer to this has already been spoken about today. We identified three aspects of our inner being. The mind, heart and will; and what are these usually called when combined together? The soul!
So now we know that God wants us to change, and what about us He wants to change. The next question we would like to have an answer for is the third one from earlier in the lesson:
· What does He want me to change to?
The answer to this is really very straightforward. Let us take a look at Col 3:10. After we read it I will quote it from the Living Bible, which has an excellent paraphrase of the verse.
You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. TLB
See, I told you it was easy. God wants us to become more like Christ. He wants us to “try constantly” and “continually learn”. This brings me to a more definitive statement about change, which I have written in the first person.
· I know it is God’s will for me to continually try to change my soul to be more and more like Christ.
I want to spend just a moment now on a little theology. When God created us, he said in Genesis 1:27, that He created us in His image. We know that God is spirit, Jesus Himself said this in Jn 4:24. This means that we were created in His image, but in a spiritual sense. Because of our disobedience our spirit, or soul, became damaged, and was no longer the exact image of God. The intimate connection between man and God was broken. But God had a plan! He sent Jesus to us, and He lived, as a man, a perfect and righteous life, demonstrating how we can be, if we choose. Jesus had an intimate connection with God the father. God has therefore, through His son, Jesus, shown us how to get back to being “the image of God”. We are to become like His son, Jesus. If any of us desire a more intimate connection with God, we must work at becoming more like Christ, we must change by moving toward Him. Finally, God knows how hard it is for us to throw off the chains of sin, so not only did he tell us to work on changing, but He gave us a helper, Himself, in the form of the Holy Spirit. What a God we have! If you have any questions about this subject I would be glad to address them now.
At this point I think it is highly, and I mean highly, important to say something. I am now holding up my Bible, and I am going to make a statement for you.
· Nowhere in this book does it say I can change another person!
Why is it that we believe the great lie that we can change somebody else? That is actually a question that we will cover in our next study, starting in two weeks time, called “The Control Freak”.
Now I’m going to look at some of the points the author covers in the change chapter.
Serendipity
This word comes from the Persian fairy tale of the “Three Princes of Serendip”, where these three characters were always making valuable and beneficial discoveries when they weren’t looking for them. Change brings “Serendipitous” events.
By agreeing with God that personal changes in one’s life are necessary, or put another way, realizing that we need to stop the insanity of repeating our failing behaviors or decisions; we are opening our lives up to changes that God wants to make. When we say to the lord, “I’m going to try to do it your way”, we break down the barriers of disobedience and rebellion in our lives, allowing Him to work in us, and just as the Philippians scripture we read earlier says. When we work at change, and He works with and in us, wonderful things can happen. After all God promises He will never do anything to harm us, let’s look at James 1:17 and Ps 119:68.
The book uses an example of a wife who spent years trying to change her husband into something she wanted. When she finally “got it”, which means she realized that she can only change herself, she started to spiritually mature. Then her husband found that he didn’t have to spend a great deal of his time and emotional energy on dealing with her constant whining, so he was able to focus more on his own actions. Then under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, he changed, and it was better for both of them!
Guarantees
There are none! When we embark of a journey of change, we may set sail with a particular destination in mind. Sometimes we simply cannot get there. An example could be, we take up running, intending to run a marathon after some training, but you develop bad knees, and have to give up your dream. The change you were making was a healthy choice, but the reality of bad knees stopped you. If you had set yourself a high expectation of running the big race, and couldn’t do it, you are setting your heart up for a bad experience. What if you had said, I’m going to begin running, and see how I do. You have begun the same journey, but you are allowing the road you travel to tell you how much you can do. When your bad knees get to you, you can say, I’ve gone as far as I can on this road, I need to take a new one. That is when you could take up swimming, which is also a healthy road.
The book says this very well on page 177; I’ve modified it slightly:
If you choose to travel down the road of personal transformation, the worst that can happen is that you will end up with a life that is far more enjoyable, satisfying, fulfilling and helpful to others than the one you have now.
It is important to understand that even if you desire to change into someone that is more honoring to God, it doesn’t mean that it is guaranteed to happen. As an example, I love praise and worship music, and I desire to be able to play an instrument and more importantly, be able to sing strongly and with perfect pitch. It hasn’t happened yet!
Personal Power
When we decide to change, we must be careful to only work on ourselves and the things we actually have control over. You only have the personal power to deal with your “stuff”. I think the serenity prayer says it so well:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Do you accept the things and people around you, just the way they are? Or are you a perpetual victim, not changing the things you can? Do you have the wisdom to be able to differentiate one from another? These are questions you can ask yourself later.
Motivation
I want to say a few words here about the “why” of change. In is important to be honest with your self about why you desire to change. Let us look at a very instructive verse from the book of Jeremiah, Jer 17:9. We have probably all heard that before, and I think it is smart for us to consider what it is saying before we begin changes. What is our real motivation? Is it to change to other person, is it to manipulate somebody, and is it for selfish gain?
The best example of I could think of in the area of motivation is found in Ps 51, let us read Ps 51:1-12. Do you remember the background to this Psalm? It is found in second Samuel, chapters 11 and 12. It is the story of David and Bathsheba.
In this Psalm, David is heartbroken because of his actions, and in verse 10 asks God to create in him a “new heart”. He asks God to destroy his old motivations and replace them with something pure. He wants to change, and he comes to God confessing his sin and seeking cleansing and purifying from God so that he can be made into somebody new.
Couldn’t that be the motivation and goal of our change? To have a clean and pure heart, made that way by God Himself. Just like David, our desired changes ought to involve only two people, God and ourselves.
That concludes today’s lesson on change. Next week we’ll be tying it all together, with our concluding lesson for this series. The week after we will begin our new study, which is called “The Control Freak”.
First, let us take a quick look at where we have been.
We have learned that the DNA of Relationships is made up of three strands:
1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.
We have come to understand that how we internalize these three basic truths will determine the quality of all our relationships. The author of our study guidebook has given us some practical tools to use, which can help us improve our relationship situations. These are:
· Take Personal Responsibility.
· Create a Safe Environment.
· Keep Your Battery Charged.
· Listen With the Heart.
· Adopt a No-Losers Policy.
I want to be sure that we notice that these tools are all personal action items. Each of the five statements begins with an “action verb”, and each speaks to something we have personal control over. This is where today’s subject of change begins, with personal control.
I like what the author says about change:
· There is no guarantee of success.
I agree with him that this needs to be said. When we start a process of change in our lives, we can set our expectations. If we set them in high places we are more likely to experience frustration or even pain when our change goal(s) are not met. If we set our eyes on progress and not a target we can more easily deal with how our attempts at change are going.
What is missing from this entire chapter is this:
· No change, guaranteed failure.
Definitions and quotes:
Webster’s – To become different.
John Kennedy - Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
M. Scott Peck - The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Life is a progress, and not a station.
Unknown - Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
On that lighter note is it finally time to really get down to it. Let us begin by asking a few questions:
· Is change something that God wants from me? Yes!
· If it is, then what does He want me to change?
· What does He want me to change to?
We are going to focus for the next few minutes on the “what does He want me to change” question.
I want to take a look at three scriptures here, Rom 12:2, Ph 2:12-13 and Eph 1:18.
· In Rom 12:2 we see Paul using the word “transformed” where “changed” could have been used. We all know and understand that to transform is to change, so why is this change put this way? The answer to this is found in the original Greek, Paul used the word “metamorphoo” from which we get “metamorphosis”, and that signifies a radical change. A good example would be a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
· Ph 12:12-13 talks about “working out our salvation”. This scripture gets to the heart of what Godly change is about; we work, on our own, salvation. The Greek word used here (soteria) can be used in the sense of salvation, as in “being saved”, but also in another meaning, becoming healthy or sometimes, being delivered. It can be used in both a physical or moral sense. The message here is that change involves our own effort, our own being, and our own body and soul in our actions.
· Eph 1:18 discusses our need to have our hearts changed, or enlightened, so that we know the hope of His calling. The word calling refers to His plan for us.
· I also want to point out that all three of these scriptures refer to this “change” as being within God’s will. More on this in a few minutes.
Notice that the three scriptures refer to three different aspects of our inner being. Rom 12:2 covers the mind, Ph 2:12-13 focuses on our will (or purpose) and Eph 1:18 identifies the heart. It is with this knowledge that we make the following statement.
· It is God’s will for me to change.
Since this is true, we can also make another statement:
· It is NOT God’s will for me to NOT change.
Having established that God wants us to change, we can now look at “what” He wants us to alter. The answer to this has already been spoken about today. We identified three aspects of our inner being. The mind, heart and will; and what are these usually called when combined together? The soul!
So now we know that God wants us to change, and what about us He wants to change. The next question we would like to have an answer for is the third one from earlier in the lesson:
· What does He want me to change to?
The answer to this is really very straightforward. Let us take a look at Col 3:10. After we read it I will quote it from the Living Bible, which has an excellent paraphrase of the verse.
You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. TLB
See, I told you it was easy. God wants us to become more like Christ. He wants us to “try constantly” and “continually learn”. This brings me to a more definitive statement about change, which I have written in the first person.
· I know it is God’s will for me to continually try to change my soul to be more and more like Christ.
I want to spend just a moment now on a little theology. When God created us, he said in Genesis 1:27, that He created us in His image. We know that God is spirit, Jesus Himself said this in Jn 4:24. This means that we were created in His image, but in a spiritual sense. Because of our disobedience our spirit, or soul, became damaged, and was no longer the exact image of God. The intimate connection between man and God was broken. But God had a plan! He sent Jesus to us, and He lived, as a man, a perfect and righteous life, demonstrating how we can be, if we choose. Jesus had an intimate connection with God the father. God has therefore, through His son, Jesus, shown us how to get back to being “the image of God”. We are to become like His son, Jesus. If any of us desire a more intimate connection with God, we must work at becoming more like Christ, we must change by moving toward Him. Finally, God knows how hard it is for us to throw off the chains of sin, so not only did he tell us to work on changing, but He gave us a helper, Himself, in the form of the Holy Spirit. What a God we have! If you have any questions about this subject I would be glad to address them now.
At this point I think it is highly, and I mean highly, important to say something. I am now holding up my Bible, and I am going to make a statement for you.
· Nowhere in this book does it say I can change another person!
Why is it that we believe the great lie that we can change somebody else? That is actually a question that we will cover in our next study, starting in two weeks time, called “The Control Freak”.
Now I’m going to look at some of the points the author covers in the change chapter.
Serendipity
This word comes from the Persian fairy tale of the “Three Princes of Serendip”, where these three characters were always making valuable and beneficial discoveries when they weren’t looking for them. Change brings “Serendipitous” events.
By agreeing with God that personal changes in one’s life are necessary, or put another way, realizing that we need to stop the insanity of repeating our failing behaviors or decisions; we are opening our lives up to changes that God wants to make. When we say to the lord, “I’m going to try to do it your way”, we break down the barriers of disobedience and rebellion in our lives, allowing Him to work in us, and just as the Philippians scripture we read earlier says. When we work at change, and He works with and in us, wonderful things can happen. After all God promises He will never do anything to harm us, let’s look at James 1:17 and Ps 119:68.
The book uses an example of a wife who spent years trying to change her husband into something she wanted. When she finally “got it”, which means she realized that she can only change herself, she started to spiritually mature. Then her husband found that he didn’t have to spend a great deal of his time and emotional energy on dealing with her constant whining, so he was able to focus more on his own actions. Then under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, he changed, and it was better for both of them!
Guarantees
There are none! When we embark of a journey of change, we may set sail with a particular destination in mind. Sometimes we simply cannot get there. An example could be, we take up running, intending to run a marathon after some training, but you develop bad knees, and have to give up your dream. The change you were making was a healthy choice, but the reality of bad knees stopped you. If you had set yourself a high expectation of running the big race, and couldn’t do it, you are setting your heart up for a bad experience. What if you had said, I’m going to begin running, and see how I do. You have begun the same journey, but you are allowing the road you travel to tell you how much you can do. When your bad knees get to you, you can say, I’ve gone as far as I can on this road, I need to take a new one. That is when you could take up swimming, which is also a healthy road.
The book says this very well on page 177; I’ve modified it slightly:
If you choose to travel down the road of personal transformation, the worst that can happen is that you will end up with a life that is far more enjoyable, satisfying, fulfilling and helpful to others than the one you have now.
It is important to understand that even if you desire to change into someone that is more honoring to God, it doesn’t mean that it is guaranteed to happen. As an example, I love praise and worship music, and I desire to be able to play an instrument and more importantly, be able to sing strongly and with perfect pitch. It hasn’t happened yet!
Personal Power
When we decide to change, we must be careful to only work on ourselves and the things we actually have control over. You only have the personal power to deal with your “stuff”. I think the serenity prayer says it so well:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Do you accept the things and people around you, just the way they are? Or are you a perpetual victim, not changing the things you can? Do you have the wisdom to be able to differentiate one from another? These are questions you can ask yourself later.
Motivation
I want to say a few words here about the “why” of change. In is important to be honest with your self about why you desire to change. Let us look at a very instructive verse from the book of Jeremiah, Jer 17:9. We have probably all heard that before, and I think it is smart for us to consider what it is saying before we begin changes. What is our real motivation? Is it to change to other person, is it to manipulate somebody, and is it for selfish gain?
The best example of I could think of in the area of motivation is found in Ps 51, let us read Ps 51:1-12. Do you remember the background to this Psalm? It is found in second Samuel, chapters 11 and 12. It is the story of David and Bathsheba.
In this Psalm, David is heartbroken because of his actions, and in verse 10 asks God to create in him a “new heart”. He asks God to destroy his old motivations and replace them with something pure. He wants to change, and he comes to God confessing his sin and seeking cleansing and purifying from God so that he can be made into somebody new.
Couldn’t that be the motivation and goal of our change? To have a clean and pure heart, made that way by God Himself. Just like David, our desired changes ought to involve only two people, God and ourselves.
That concludes today’s lesson on change. Next week we’ll be tying it all together, with our concluding lesson for this series. The week after we will begin our new study, which is called “The Control Freak”.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Listen With The Heart
LESSON SEVEN – LISTEN WITH THE HEART
Just as we did last time let’s briefly cover what we have learned so far in the first six lessons:
In Lesson One: We learned that “Life Is Just Relationships, The Rest Is Just Details”, said another way, “Everything In Life That Truly Matters Can Be Boiled Down To Relationships”. In God’s account of His creation of mankind, found in chapter two of the book of Genesis, He (God) summed it up this way, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). This is a very big statement, as it is the only thing that God said was not good in the whole creation story. We were made for relationship!
In Lesson Two: Also from chapter 2 of Genesis we identified the three principles that God designed us to live by, our book calls these “The DNA Of Relationships”:
1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.
We also looked at Genesis chapter 3, and showed how the fall of man and the introduction of sin into the world was a direct result of not following these principles combined with God’s one simple instruction, (don’t eat the forbidden fruit).
In Lesson Three: We began to see that as a result of the fall, fear was introduced to the human soul. As Adam said it in Gen 3:10, I was naked and afraid. We identified how it is some basic or core fears that rule how we react or respond in problem situations in relationships. The author calls these responses a “Fear Dance” since it always involves at least two people.
In Lesson Four: We began the process of learning to dance a new dance. We identified the first new dance step, taking personal responsibility for our thoughts. We discovered that by exercising the fruit of the Spirit known as self-control, we could transform our minds, leading to better personal control over our feelings and our actions. We confirmed that this is indeed possible in our lives, and that God encouraged us to do that very thing as we looked at the meaning of Rom 12:2. We learned that we could create a better life for ourselves.
In Lesson Five: The concept of “creating a safe environment” was introduced, and we looked at five actions we can personally work on to become safer people. These were; Respect The Wall, Honor Others, Suspend Judgment, Value Differences, and Be Trustworthy. Notes for this lesson are available on the blog.
Last week, in the sixth lesson, we looked at “taking care of yourself”. This lesson focused on the need to be in good spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical condition, and highlighted the need to love oneself. We also noted that the Bible states this need in nine separate places, which emphasized that this is a highly important issue.
Today we are going to focus on the topic of emotional communication, sometimes called “listening with the heart”.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
What does this phrase, “listening with the heart”, suggest to you? The author doesn’t really define it for us. My answer to our question here is “empathy” or “having empathy for”. Webster’s defines empathy as “Identification with and understanding of another’s feelings, situation and motives. After I did a little digging I discovered that our English word is derived from the Greek word “empatheia”, which is sometimes translated as “to experience with” and often as “to suffer with”, and on occasion as “to have passion with”. I say all this to try to get over to you what this “listening with the heart” expression is really getting at. It says we are to do our best to identify with others feelings. (Gal 6:2) {Mention that Christ’s “Passion” is the greatest act of empathy of all time, as he felt the pain and burden of our sin, and then acted out of love for us by allowing Himself to be killed.}
My first reaction to this was “You have to be kidding, how is that possible in all of our relationships?” Well, apparently it is! Let us start by connecting with a basic truth.
· Communication is more than words.
The author says it differently; “The real message is often the emotion beneath the words”.
Have you ever noticed how when someone has spoken with you, and you believe you have understood, that sometimes you realized that you really didn’t understand? That there is some form of disconnect between the words you heard and the eventual apparent meaning. Let me give you an example:
You are part of a married couple, and your teenage daughter, who usually gets good grades, comes home with a “C”. Your spouse says, “Our daughter brought home a “C” today”. You hear this and respond with “Okay, I’ll talk to her”. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? They are dealing with a potential problem quickly. Then the first spouse says, “It was in Math, she never gets bad grades in Math”. You have the first sign that you really didn’t understand the original message. So you rationally say something like, “Oh, does she have a new teacher or something?” Your spouse finally comes out with “It is the or something!” Now your brain kicks into real listening mode as you say, “What did I miss?” Then the real message hits your ears, “Our daughter has a new boyfriend, and he is in the Math class with her, and we don’t know him, and I think he may be a bad influence, and I don’t know his family or if they go to church!”
Do you see how the first spouse started with something in their mind, a concern about a new relationship the daughter is in, but delivered the message that a bad grade has occurred? Can we see how the simple word message that began this whole exchange didn’t convey the underlying feeling and wasn’t received as a major concern statement? And can we also understand how the ball could have been dropped if the second spouse didn’t go beyond the words and find the feelings?
Now here is another example for us men. What if, in our daughter’s low-grade problem from above, we had responded in typical male fashion to the opening statement? What if we had gone straight from the problem to a solution like, “Okay I’ll ground her until the grades come up!” We would probably be thinking, “I got that fixed!” or even “Bring on the next problem, I’m in full solution mode!” We would have missed the whole thing. Psychologists call this dealing only with “the presenting problem”, and never getting to or discovering the “real problem”.
Okay, it is now the ladies turn. How about if you were the first spouse and you told your husband about the issue as we have outlined. Then he responded in another typical male fashion with “okay, let me think about it”. You know that this situation is actually more serious than the grade suggests, so you say, “Please talk to her now, I’m worried”. Sound reasonable, yes of course it does. But, you don’t know that your husband has something else on his mind, he has had a bad day and just needs time to unwind, and then he will be able to help. In this case, the wife didn’t go behind the message to get at the feelings of her husband.
This non-empathy we have described here can lead to antagonism between the husband and wife. When the man went into full solution mode, he missed the real problem and almost certainly grieved the wife because her concerns were so easily brushed off. In fact she really wasn’t listened to. In the second case the wife persisted in pushing the husband to do something ‘now’, going down the road of nagging. He may feel like the load he has been carrying today just had a whole stack of bricks added on top, and his own wife did it to him, doesn’t she care how he feels?
I hope by using this simple example we can see how not getting to real message can lead to the worsening of relationships. BTW – The new church-going boyfriend had helped the daughter get a “C”, otherwise she would have gotten an “F”, and apparently she was worried about all the arguing Mom and Dad were doing recently!
Now let’s get to the more practical aspects of today’s lesson and ask the question, “What can I do to develop an empathy for others”?
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION THROUGH EMPATHY – WHAT I CAN DO.
First – Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
I want to open this up now to see what we might understand by this “emotion touching us” thought, how about some ideas?
For me it suggests we can experience at some level the feelings of the other person in a relationship. It can be either positive or negative. Maybe our spouse has had a promotion and we share in the joy and happiness, or our son has lost his starting position on the football team, and it hurts and he is embarrassed.
Just for fun, which famous person used the communication and empathy approach to achieve enormous success? Bill Clinton! His famous line was what? Yes “I feel your pain”. He used this to get to the very top of his chosen profession, politics. He also used it to get other places too! He is what I would call a “master” at this empathy thing.
Why is this so important? Why is “allowing emotions to touch me” so very important? Let us consider the spouse and their promotion. This is the situation, your spouse is up for a new job at work, and they hear that they have got it. They come home, burst through the door, and say with a big grin, “I got the job, the promotion”. And you do this:
· Carry on doing (the meal preparation, reading the sports news, watching TV) whatever you were doing. And you respond with “That’s nice, dear, congratulations”. Can you guess how your spouse might feel? Will they believe you care? Okay, how would it be if you did this:
· Stop what you are doing, joined in the grinning and went over and delivered a hug, or more! And you said, “That is great, I’m so proud of you, what can we do to celebrate”. How might your spouse respond, would they believe you cared?
This was an easy and obvious example to demonstrate that it is way more caring to share in the wonderful feelings than to not let them in. I will say a little more about this in a minute.
How about the other side? What if your spouse comes home and walks in head hanging down and says, “I didn’t get it, they gave the job to someone else”. Do you:
· Look up and say, “I’m sorry dear, that’s tough”, and then go back to your business. What are they to get from that, how might they feel? Do you care? Or would you:
· Stop whatever you are doing, and go over to be there and listen. Not saying anything right away, just look and try to sense where your spouse is emotionally, and “feel their pain”. What is your spouse getting from you? Are you caring, yes you are, are you sharing, yes you are, and you haven’t said a word!
I want to point out something here by using a cute phraseology:
· Shared joy, is joy doubled, shared pain is pain lessened.
When we share joy, or any positive emotion, it takes nothing away from the source individual; in fact the total amount of joy grows. When we share pain or any negative emotion, the burden of the negative emotion is lessened in the person feeling it. This is one of those aspects of how God created life that we sometimes miss. He wants us all to have a full life, where we have great joy and only minimal pain. What does this say to you about how we ought to share our emotions?
When we ‘allow others emotions to touch us” we are demonstrating that we care, and we are accentuating the positive but lessening the negative. That is why this is important!
Second – Listen With Feeling
Very simple to say! Difficult to do well! This is a small thing but a big issue, and follows on from our discussion above. I only have a couple of points to make here.
· The person who is transmitting to you needs to know you care. If you listen with feeling, demonstrating that you feel the pain or joy, they will have a sense of reassurance that they are understood. You might listen by nodding your head or saying things like, “that’s the pits”. This is sometimes called active listening.
· Agreement is not necessary. You don’t have to agree with your partner’s statements, but you do have to understand them. This involves getting behind the words and understanding the emotions behind them, or as we said earlier, being empathetic. Having empathy does not include having to agree!
Third – Discover Through The Dynamic Process
The book uses this definition, “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. What a mouthful! The first thing I spotted when reading this was the word “discover”, and I said in my head, “discover what?” It was a really good example of one of those thoughts I always seem to have in mind, which is “What is the point?” This is a common kind of thinking in men. It gets to the “bottom line” and if the bottom line is interesting then we look for the detail. So, if it is okay with everybody I’m going to start this section by going to the bottom line.
Discover what, that was my question. What exactly does effective communication discover and how does it happen? When I reflected on this for a little time I came to realize that the answer is simple “It doesn’t matter”. This may sound strange, but here is why.
When communication is effective, both parties are working together to achieve a kind of bonding around the understanding of what needs to be communicated. Discovery could mean something factual, like “I had a wreck on the way home”, or it could be “I’m not feeling well, I think I have a bug” or maybe “I’ve had a frustrating day, and I’m a little angry about it”. It could be almost anything. The whole point of discovery is that an emotional connection is made and relationships are enhanced!
Some of you may remember a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. In this book he describes a habit called “Begin with the end in mind”, and this is exactly what discovery is all about. You begin effective communication with the objective of discovering whatever needs to be discovered. There is a truly superb example of this habit, which is actually a biblical habit, found in the life of Jesus. In Matthew chapter 4, right after His temptation, we see Jesus begin His ministry. What does He do first, where does He begin? Let’s look at verses 18-22. We can see that his first action is to pick His disciples. This is because He (Jesus) knew where He was going and that His disciples would be the people carrying out the great commission after His ascension. He taught His followers, He helped them go through discovery over a three-year period until the bond between Him and them was so incredibly strong that they would die for Him. Is that where you are with your serious relationships?
Remember our definition? “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. The words “dynamic” and “process” appear in it. I don’t find these two as mysterious as the “discovery” word so I’m only going to say a few words about them.
Dynamic is exactly what it means, as per Webster’s, “Marked by continuous change, activity or progress”. Serious communication in a relationship is marked by all three factors, change, activity and progress. After all, if all you talk about is one subject day after day, you will tire of the talking and of the relationship quickly. But we all know that our best relationships are indeed marked by changes in subject material, interactive give and take and a general movement to the discovery we talked about earlier.
Process, which Webster’s says is “A series of actions, changes or functions that achieve an end or result”. Effective communications is certainly that. There is always a movement toward the end, which is what? Yes, discovery. There is almost always a whole set of minor discoveries to be made as communication progresses.
One of the great benefits of effective communications is what our definition calls “energy maintenance”. The book says this is where a relationship is kept, “fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy. For some reason, this whole section made me picture a dating relationship. Do you remember dating? Wasn’t it fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy? That was because “effective communication” was going on! One of our author’s co-workers came up with a great idea; what if I listened to (fill in your significant other’s name) like it was the first time? Wouldn’t that action on our part spice up, in a very appropriate way, our relationship? I’ll leave that with you to answer.
Fourth – Work!
I knew this was going to be hard! Our book says it though, “Effective Communication Takes Work”. But all is not lost because this work can be managed through the correct setting of our expectations. The book gives us three major examples:
· Expect problems and misunderstandings.
· Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience.
· Expect a lot of trial and error.
Expect problems and misunderstandings - I think we would all agree that there will always be “P & M” in communication until the end of time. Why is it such a surprise to us sometimes when we have a misunderstanding? Effective communicators expect this to happen. My wife and I have always had misunderstandings, after all we speak different languages, I speak the Queen’s English and she speaks Okie English. We still get surprised from time to time. If we always knew that there was a chance of a miscommunication, wouldn’t we be a little less quick to get frustrated, hurt, disappointed or angry?
Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience – Give it time! Effective communication needs that dose of realism called patience. Sometimes I just don’t get it! That can frustrate my wife, and if she is not patient with me, she might end up by abandoning the attempt to discuss something of importance. We are both losers if this happens. At the beginning of our lesson today we talked about the need to get to the emotion behind the message. I’m not sure that can be done well if we rush our communication. We must expect that the “dynamic process of discovery” we have discussed requires a little time and a dose of patience.
Expect a lot of trial and error – Think of communicating as always learning to ride a bike. You are always going to wobble a bit, sometimes fall off and on occasion get some bumps and bruises. Keep on trying, you’ll get there! If one way of communicating doesn’t seem to be working, try something different.
Fifth – Avoid the Blame Game.
The point of communicating is the enhancement of relationships, to develop understanding of each other, not to point out who is right and who is wrong. Jumping into trying to figure out who did what to who is totally useless. After all you can be 100% right, but your spouse won’t talk to you. This is because proving yourself right says, “I am important, and you are not!” A very destructive behavior.
There you have it, with that message to avoid the blame game, we conclude our lesson. Let me summarize what we have focused on today.
The basic message today was “listen with the heart”, which is sometimes called empathy, and we identified five actions we can take to help us become empathetic.
· Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
· Listen With Feeling.
· Discover Through The Dynamic Process.
· Work!
· Avoid the Blame Game.
Next week we talk about the idea of teamwork, and adopting a no-losers policy.
Just as we did last time let’s briefly cover what we have learned so far in the first six lessons:
In Lesson One: We learned that “Life Is Just Relationships, The Rest Is Just Details”, said another way, “Everything In Life That Truly Matters Can Be Boiled Down To Relationships”. In God’s account of His creation of mankind, found in chapter two of the book of Genesis, He (God) summed it up this way, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). This is a very big statement, as it is the only thing that God said was not good in the whole creation story. We were made for relationship!
In Lesson Two: Also from chapter 2 of Genesis we identified the three principles that God designed us to live by, our book calls these “The DNA Of Relationships”:
1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.
We also looked at Genesis chapter 3, and showed how the fall of man and the introduction of sin into the world was a direct result of not following these principles combined with God’s one simple instruction, (don’t eat the forbidden fruit).
In Lesson Three: We began to see that as a result of the fall, fear was introduced to the human soul. As Adam said it in Gen 3:10, I was naked and afraid. We identified how it is some basic or core fears that rule how we react or respond in problem situations in relationships. The author calls these responses a “Fear Dance” since it always involves at least two people.
In Lesson Four: We began the process of learning to dance a new dance. We identified the first new dance step, taking personal responsibility for our thoughts. We discovered that by exercising the fruit of the Spirit known as self-control, we could transform our minds, leading to better personal control over our feelings and our actions. We confirmed that this is indeed possible in our lives, and that God encouraged us to do that very thing as we looked at the meaning of Rom 12:2. We learned that we could create a better life for ourselves.
In Lesson Five: The concept of “creating a safe environment” was introduced, and we looked at five actions we can personally work on to become safer people. These were; Respect The Wall, Honor Others, Suspend Judgment, Value Differences, and Be Trustworthy. Notes for this lesson are available on the blog.
Last week, in the sixth lesson, we looked at “taking care of yourself”. This lesson focused on the need to be in good spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical condition, and highlighted the need to love oneself. We also noted that the Bible states this need in nine separate places, which emphasized that this is a highly important issue.
Today we are going to focus on the topic of emotional communication, sometimes called “listening with the heart”.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
What does this phrase, “listening with the heart”, suggest to you? The author doesn’t really define it for us. My answer to our question here is “empathy” or “having empathy for”. Webster’s defines empathy as “Identification with and understanding of another’s feelings, situation and motives. After I did a little digging I discovered that our English word is derived from the Greek word “empatheia”, which is sometimes translated as “to experience with” and often as “to suffer with”, and on occasion as “to have passion with”. I say all this to try to get over to you what this “listening with the heart” expression is really getting at. It says we are to do our best to identify with others feelings. (Gal 6:2) {Mention that Christ’s “Passion” is the greatest act of empathy of all time, as he felt the pain and burden of our sin, and then acted out of love for us by allowing Himself to be killed.}
My first reaction to this was “You have to be kidding, how is that possible in all of our relationships?” Well, apparently it is! Let us start by connecting with a basic truth.
· Communication is more than words.
The author says it differently; “The real message is often the emotion beneath the words”.
Have you ever noticed how when someone has spoken with you, and you believe you have understood, that sometimes you realized that you really didn’t understand? That there is some form of disconnect between the words you heard and the eventual apparent meaning. Let me give you an example:
You are part of a married couple, and your teenage daughter, who usually gets good grades, comes home with a “C”. Your spouse says, “Our daughter brought home a “C” today”. You hear this and respond with “Okay, I’ll talk to her”. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? They are dealing with a potential problem quickly. Then the first spouse says, “It was in Math, she never gets bad grades in Math”. You have the first sign that you really didn’t understand the original message. So you rationally say something like, “Oh, does she have a new teacher or something?” Your spouse finally comes out with “It is the or something!” Now your brain kicks into real listening mode as you say, “What did I miss?” Then the real message hits your ears, “Our daughter has a new boyfriend, and he is in the Math class with her, and we don’t know him, and I think he may be a bad influence, and I don’t know his family or if they go to church!”
Do you see how the first spouse started with something in their mind, a concern about a new relationship the daughter is in, but delivered the message that a bad grade has occurred? Can we see how the simple word message that began this whole exchange didn’t convey the underlying feeling and wasn’t received as a major concern statement? And can we also understand how the ball could have been dropped if the second spouse didn’t go beyond the words and find the feelings?
Now here is another example for us men. What if, in our daughter’s low-grade problem from above, we had responded in typical male fashion to the opening statement? What if we had gone straight from the problem to a solution like, “Okay I’ll ground her until the grades come up!” We would probably be thinking, “I got that fixed!” or even “Bring on the next problem, I’m in full solution mode!” We would have missed the whole thing. Psychologists call this dealing only with “the presenting problem”, and never getting to or discovering the “real problem”.
Okay, it is now the ladies turn. How about if you were the first spouse and you told your husband about the issue as we have outlined. Then he responded in another typical male fashion with “okay, let me think about it”. You know that this situation is actually more serious than the grade suggests, so you say, “Please talk to her now, I’m worried”. Sound reasonable, yes of course it does. But, you don’t know that your husband has something else on his mind, he has had a bad day and just needs time to unwind, and then he will be able to help. In this case, the wife didn’t go behind the message to get at the feelings of her husband.
This non-empathy we have described here can lead to antagonism between the husband and wife. When the man went into full solution mode, he missed the real problem and almost certainly grieved the wife because her concerns were so easily brushed off. In fact she really wasn’t listened to. In the second case the wife persisted in pushing the husband to do something ‘now’, going down the road of nagging. He may feel like the load he has been carrying today just had a whole stack of bricks added on top, and his own wife did it to him, doesn’t she care how he feels?
I hope by using this simple example we can see how not getting to real message can lead to the worsening of relationships. BTW – The new church-going boyfriend had helped the daughter get a “C”, otherwise she would have gotten an “F”, and apparently she was worried about all the arguing Mom and Dad were doing recently!
Now let’s get to the more practical aspects of today’s lesson and ask the question, “What can I do to develop an empathy for others”?
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION THROUGH EMPATHY – WHAT I CAN DO.
First – Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
I want to open this up now to see what we might understand by this “emotion touching us” thought, how about some ideas?
For me it suggests we can experience at some level the feelings of the other person in a relationship. It can be either positive or negative. Maybe our spouse has had a promotion and we share in the joy and happiness, or our son has lost his starting position on the football team, and it hurts and he is embarrassed.
Just for fun, which famous person used the communication and empathy approach to achieve enormous success? Bill Clinton! His famous line was what? Yes “I feel your pain”. He used this to get to the very top of his chosen profession, politics. He also used it to get other places too! He is what I would call a “master” at this empathy thing.
Why is this so important? Why is “allowing emotions to touch me” so very important? Let us consider the spouse and their promotion. This is the situation, your spouse is up for a new job at work, and they hear that they have got it. They come home, burst through the door, and say with a big grin, “I got the job, the promotion”. And you do this:
· Carry on doing (the meal preparation, reading the sports news, watching TV) whatever you were doing. And you respond with “That’s nice, dear, congratulations”. Can you guess how your spouse might feel? Will they believe you care? Okay, how would it be if you did this:
· Stop what you are doing, joined in the grinning and went over and delivered a hug, or more! And you said, “That is great, I’m so proud of you, what can we do to celebrate”. How might your spouse respond, would they believe you cared?
This was an easy and obvious example to demonstrate that it is way more caring to share in the wonderful feelings than to not let them in. I will say a little more about this in a minute.
How about the other side? What if your spouse comes home and walks in head hanging down and says, “I didn’t get it, they gave the job to someone else”. Do you:
· Look up and say, “I’m sorry dear, that’s tough”, and then go back to your business. What are they to get from that, how might they feel? Do you care? Or would you:
· Stop whatever you are doing, and go over to be there and listen. Not saying anything right away, just look and try to sense where your spouse is emotionally, and “feel their pain”. What is your spouse getting from you? Are you caring, yes you are, are you sharing, yes you are, and you haven’t said a word!
I want to point out something here by using a cute phraseology:
· Shared joy, is joy doubled, shared pain is pain lessened.
When we share joy, or any positive emotion, it takes nothing away from the source individual; in fact the total amount of joy grows. When we share pain or any negative emotion, the burden of the negative emotion is lessened in the person feeling it. This is one of those aspects of how God created life that we sometimes miss. He wants us all to have a full life, where we have great joy and only minimal pain. What does this say to you about how we ought to share our emotions?
When we ‘allow others emotions to touch us” we are demonstrating that we care, and we are accentuating the positive but lessening the negative. That is why this is important!
Second – Listen With Feeling
Very simple to say! Difficult to do well! This is a small thing but a big issue, and follows on from our discussion above. I only have a couple of points to make here.
· The person who is transmitting to you needs to know you care. If you listen with feeling, demonstrating that you feel the pain or joy, they will have a sense of reassurance that they are understood. You might listen by nodding your head or saying things like, “that’s the pits”. This is sometimes called active listening.
· Agreement is not necessary. You don’t have to agree with your partner’s statements, but you do have to understand them. This involves getting behind the words and understanding the emotions behind them, or as we said earlier, being empathetic. Having empathy does not include having to agree!
Third – Discover Through The Dynamic Process
The book uses this definition, “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. What a mouthful! The first thing I spotted when reading this was the word “discover”, and I said in my head, “discover what?” It was a really good example of one of those thoughts I always seem to have in mind, which is “What is the point?” This is a common kind of thinking in men. It gets to the “bottom line” and if the bottom line is interesting then we look for the detail. So, if it is okay with everybody I’m going to start this section by going to the bottom line.
Discover what, that was my question. What exactly does effective communication discover and how does it happen? When I reflected on this for a little time I came to realize that the answer is simple “It doesn’t matter”. This may sound strange, but here is why.
When communication is effective, both parties are working together to achieve a kind of bonding around the understanding of what needs to be communicated. Discovery could mean something factual, like “I had a wreck on the way home”, or it could be “I’m not feeling well, I think I have a bug” or maybe “I’ve had a frustrating day, and I’m a little angry about it”. It could be almost anything. The whole point of discovery is that an emotional connection is made and relationships are enhanced!
Some of you may remember a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. In this book he describes a habit called “Begin with the end in mind”, and this is exactly what discovery is all about. You begin effective communication with the objective of discovering whatever needs to be discovered. There is a truly superb example of this habit, which is actually a biblical habit, found in the life of Jesus. In Matthew chapter 4, right after His temptation, we see Jesus begin His ministry. What does He do first, where does He begin? Let’s look at verses 18-22. We can see that his first action is to pick His disciples. This is because He (Jesus) knew where He was going and that His disciples would be the people carrying out the great commission after His ascension. He taught His followers, He helped them go through discovery over a three-year period until the bond between Him and them was so incredibly strong that they would die for Him. Is that where you are with your serious relationships?
Remember our definition? “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. The words “dynamic” and “process” appear in it. I don’t find these two as mysterious as the “discovery” word so I’m only going to say a few words about them.
Dynamic is exactly what it means, as per Webster’s, “Marked by continuous change, activity or progress”. Serious communication in a relationship is marked by all three factors, change, activity and progress. After all, if all you talk about is one subject day after day, you will tire of the talking and of the relationship quickly. But we all know that our best relationships are indeed marked by changes in subject material, interactive give and take and a general movement to the discovery we talked about earlier.
Process, which Webster’s says is “A series of actions, changes or functions that achieve an end or result”. Effective communications is certainly that. There is always a movement toward the end, which is what? Yes, discovery. There is almost always a whole set of minor discoveries to be made as communication progresses.
One of the great benefits of effective communications is what our definition calls “energy maintenance”. The book says this is where a relationship is kept, “fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy. For some reason, this whole section made me picture a dating relationship. Do you remember dating? Wasn’t it fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy? That was because “effective communication” was going on! One of our author’s co-workers came up with a great idea; what if I listened to (fill in your significant other’s name) like it was the first time? Wouldn’t that action on our part spice up, in a very appropriate way, our relationship? I’ll leave that with you to answer.
Fourth – Work!
I knew this was going to be hard! Our book says it though, “Effective Communication Takes Work”. But all is not lost because this work can be managed through the correct setting of our expectations. The book gives us three major examples:
· Expect problems and misunderstandings.
· Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience.
· Expect a lot of trial and error.
Expect problems and misunderstandings - I think we would all agree that there will always be “P & M” in communication until the end of time. Why is it such a surprise to us sometimes when we have a misunderstanding? Effective communicators expect this to happen. My wife and I have always had misunderstandings, after all we speak different languages, I speak the Queen’s English and she speaks Okie English. We still get surprised from time to time. If we always knew that there was a chance of a miscommunication, wouldn’t we be a little less quick to get frustrated, hurt, disappointed or angry?
Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience – Give it time! Effective communication needs that dose of realism called patience. Sometimes I just don’t get it! That can frustrate my wife, and if she is not patient with me, she might end up by abandoning the attempt to discuss something of importance. We are both losers if this happens. At the beginning of our lesson today we talked about the need to get to the emotion behind the message. I’m not sure that can be done well if we rush our communication. We must expect that the “dynamic process of discovery” we have discussed requires a little time and a dose of patience.
Expect a lot of trial and error – Think of communicating as always learning to ride a bike. You are always going to wobble a bit, sometimes fall off and on occasion get some bumps and bruises. Keep on trying, you’ll get there! If one way of communicating doesn’t seem to be working, try something different.
Fifth – Avoid the Blame Game.
The point of communicating is the enhancement of relationships, to develop understanding of each other, not to point out who is right and who is wrong. Jumping into trying to figure out who did what to who is totally useless. After all you can be 100% right, but your spouse won’t talk to you. This is because proving yourself right says, “I am important, and you are not!” A very destructive behavior.
There you have it, with that message to avoid the blame game, we conclude our lesson. Let me summarize what we have focused on today.
The basic message today was “listen with the heart”, which is sometimes called empathy, and we identified five actions we can take to help us become empathetic.
· Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
· Listen With Feeling.
· Discover Through The Dynamic Process.
· Work!
· Avoid the Blame Game.
Next week we talk about the idea of teamwork, and adopting a no-losers policy.
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