be less selfish

I’m currently at a corporate training session on improving communication skills, and all day I kept thinking, how much of all this communications styles stuff just boils down to being less selfish? Almost any significant misunderstanding I’ve ever been party to has come about through inability or unwillingness to adapt my own communication style and to try to meet the other’s needs. Lately, well before this course, I’ve really been noticing in myself that I can be a very bad listener, especially to family and people close to me. It’s not really deliberate – my mind’s just elsewhere. I really need to make an effort to really tune in and respect those talking to me. Sometimes I have to get them to repeat what they’ve just said and admit that I just wasn’t listening.

I’m keeping this goal on here for now because it’s a good reminder when I see it on my list, but I don’t see how I could ever mark it done. It’s just too amorphous a goal for me – I need something concrete, something measurable. So I need to put on the old thinking cap and think how I could phrase this, what specific things I can work on to accomplish this goal.

The other day I had a really selfish episode. I was on a long bus ride with a bunch of coworkers. I was feeling sick and achy and had claimed the back seat so that I could lie down in some semblance of privacy (the back seat is half again as long as the others). However, the back seat also is the one where you can hook up a little table for card games and so on. So when they called a cribbage tournament I offered (inwardly very ungraciously though I hope it didn’t show too much) to give up my seat until the card games were done. They never finished. I spent almost the whole trip resenting it. And resenting the movies that they kept playing at super-high volume full of crashes and loud pounding music. I have never spent such a miserable bus trip – I usually enjoy them. But you know what? Had I approached it with an attitude of true selflessness, had put the enjoyment of others above my own desire to curl up and be grumpy, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Maybe I would have gotten into the games, or the movies, or at least tried not to look so grumpy!!!

Thankfully, I’m feeling much better now – both physically and emotionally. I’ve been getting lots of sleep and exercise and I’ve purchased some earplugs and a sudoku book for the way home at the end of the week. I’m not going to let my own selfishness interfere this time.