The 2 C's

“You know what. I really can’t stand that. It is so distracting. Why can’t she stop doing it?”

“He will never understand. He’s always been this and nothing is going to change.”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell her this. My relation with her is not like you and your sister. We don’t connect or share much. So I don’t think me asking will work.”

So what is the one common factor about these dialogues?
It is the very fact that the issue is not being discussed with the person involved but with somebody else. And this aspect has been grabbing my attention way too much lately.

Most problems I hear from people of my circle actually boils down to this – lack of the 2 C’s.
Confrontation & Conversation

                           Source : https://goo.gl/images/eN9vGx

“Sometimes you just need to talk about something – not to get sympathy or help, but just to kill its power by allowing the truth of things to hit the air."

I agree that the word Confrontation has a bad reputation. But that’s just because somewhere along the way we’ve forgotten or missed what it actually means. It simply means to look at issues and solve them. We can only affect the outcome directly if we speak up.

At most times, we avoid this just to pass straining our relationship and we forget that we’re just paving way for a bigger mess. It makes it even worse when you talk about it to everyone else except the person involved.

That one friend who has been indifferent lately and you’ve been wondering why. ASK them.

That little routine of your partner which annoys you. TELL them.
That colleague who is not taking responsibility for their part of the work. DISCUSS it.

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.” 

Every such instance happens to be due to a single reason – avoiding “difficult conversations.” When we avoid difficult conversations the issue never has a chance to be resolved. Plus, as we play the stories over and over in our mind, the stories gets louder and the people in the stories become bigger and bigger villains. Difficult conversations are an opportunity to build trust and respect which in turn helps in improving our relationships with other people and/or organizations.

Recently someone very dear to me had this kind of a ‘difficult conversation’ with people really important to him. It was something he kept putting off for years and eventually he even stopped realizing the relevance of it. But when he was finally urged to do it and he gathered the courage for the same - he said he had no clue this could feel so good. And also he became the bigger person they look up to.

“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.”