#38 Change the Conversation…
Don Draper (Jon Hamm) of Mad Men (2007-2015)
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“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
Why am I quoting a fictional character from a TV show about a Madison Avenue advertising agency set in 1960s New York? Well…
a) why the heck not?;
b) it’s good advice;
c) there is wisdom everywhere if you care to look for it;
d) and, frankly, he’s so damn handsome!
Actually, there are deeper levels to this - allow me to elucidate further.
Life as we know it, as you know it, as I know it - is a sewn together mish-mash quilt of a set of sequences we tell over and over which then becomes the story of our ‘life’.
In short, stuff happens - some of it we like, some of it we don’t, some of it we intended by design, a lot of it seems like it just happens because of fate/destiny/God/Universe - pick your favourite flavour and delete as appropriate.
Therefore, the way we perceive (and review) our lives is how we think and talk about it.
What did we do when?
What was done to us?
Jobs we’ve had, relationships, the hot dates, the disasters, the wins and losses - these are all lived through once, yet told over and over again through the conversations we have with others, although mostly with ourselves.
I’ve written previous articles about how language affects our thoughts (and vice versa) and, by extension, our experience of things.
Example A - child falls over and grazes her knee, parent-figure reassures her “oops, no harm done, just a bump are you ok?” and child replies “Yes, fine Mummy/Daddy” she gets back up, moves on and continues to play - all is well. Incident gets filed away in memory as a minor occurrence.
Example B - same child falls over and grazes her knee, parents run over in a panic “oh my god, you’ve scraped your knee and it’s bleeding!”, the child reacts to the reaction of her parents, looks down, sees blood and the panicked faces she starts to cry “Waaahhhh!!!”
It’s the same incident, with same level of injury. However, it’s how it’s reacted to and described differently that switches the narrative and the meaning of the experience, so that it now becomes a traumatic event and is internalised as such.
I often ask clients to be specific and mindful with the words they use, and how they describe troubling moments, especially when it can cause a spiral of negative thoughts. One bad thought feeds another and before they know it, they’re in meltdown. The reason I say be careful with your words, as in the example above, is this; how we tell our stories, and subsequently retell them, adds weight to the memory which then becomes our lived experience.
Numerous studies have shown how memories can be unreliable in terms of giving evidence (see eyewitness testimony studies specifically on the effects of stress/anxiety and reconstructive memory) because each time we access a stored memory, we change it depending on our current emotional state (see the Pixar film ‘Inside Out’ for an excellent representation of this).
Therefore, previously happy memories may become tinged with sadness or anger if we retrieve it in a depressive or resentful phase - it’s almost like gaslighting yourself;
“Oh, yeah it probably wasn’t as good as I remember” or “did that day go how I thought it did?”
Or, you can whip yourself up into an angry fervour by remembering something as much worse than it was, therefore increasing the perceived sense of pain over time, family rifts can escalate in this way.
In his book, The Four Agreements, Don Miquel Ruiz outlines one of the most important tenets in the first agreement:
Agreement 1: Be Impeccable With Your Word
Ruiz states that while this agreement is the most important, it is the most difficult to honour.
He analyses the word ‘impeccable’ which comes from the Latin word ‘peccatus’ meaning ‘sin’, and the prefix ‘im’ means ‘without’.
Ruiz describes a sin to be anything that goes against oneself, and therefore being impeccable with language means to take responsibility for one’s actions and remain without judgement against oneself and others.
In essence, this agreement highlights the significance of speaking with integrity and carefully choosing words before saying them aloud.
So, back to Don Draper with his beautiful suits, perfect hair and impeccable words;
“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
Why is this simple statement so, potentially, powerful?
As I’ve alluded to above, if our lives are just the stories we tell ourselves and others based on conversations we have, and as an ongoing internal dialogue; then if we’re not happy with how our lives are going, change becomes possible when we change our thoughts, those thoughts feed into the resulting language we use and shape the conversations we have about our lives and finally, our behaviours will change in alignment with those thoughts.
Often, when something seems so difficult, insurmountable and you feel completely stuck in a rut, all that’s needed is a perspective shift that allows you the mental headspace to start making changes.
This starts with how you describe situations - whether you choose to cling on to past insults and hurts, or let them go and grow.
Past experiences, traumas, failures that keep coming up for you will hamper your future if that’s what you choose to focus on. It’s the equivalent of driving your car while looking out the rear window, and hoping that what’s behind you will somehow guide your steering going forwards, then wondering why you keep crashing into things.
By shifting your perspective from a disempowering past, you can change the way you tell your story, being present with what is actually occurring and adjust accordingly. The past can serve as a useful reminder, but it shouldn’t be used as a guiding principle upon which you base all of your thinking and decision-making.
In short, change the conversation with your past, change the conversation about what things mean to you, change the conversation with yourself and others, reframe things in a more positive and empowering way, to enable you to progress without feeling like you‘ve left the handbrake on.
Face the way you’re going and see where you go!
Love
Peter x
