Effective Communication in a Time of Division
*Disclaimer: Olivia's video is really shaky but Kyle's is great and he does most of the talking.
Hi Everyone!
In this 8 minute video, Kyle takes us through the process of learning how to communicate with and understand someone with opposing views. He shows us how a little understanding and curiosity might just save our country and our world!
Check out the full video and some main points of our discussion below.
Key Takeaways:
We need to start at the most fundamental level to see our commonality. As human beings, we all literally want the same things. We want to feel connected, to be loved, to be touched, to share, be seen, to have fun, to play, and to be relaxed.
Start with the understanding that we all want the same thing, then realize that we have all been exposed to different thoughts, beliefs, and ideas about how to get those things.
In any conflict, whether you are fighting with your spouse or with someone over politics, we are all trying to get the very same needs and desires met. When you remember that you can start to see that underneath we are all the same.
The key to communicating with someone that is different than you is to be in inquiry with the other person, a state outside our own ego and identity. Most political conversations are ego-to-ego and it doesn’t get anywhere. It’s pointless! How many people have you ever convinced to change their political position?
If you come to a conversation in inquiry, with an open consciousness, then you might actually be open to receive something from the other person.
The “problem” with Inquiry Method is that you might actually get changed by the conversation so the ego doesn’t want to allow you to be in that state.
In inquiry, if someone is talking about their political position you might ask something like this: What’s important about that to you? What do you think that would lead to? If the world could be any way you wanted it, how would it be? How would people treat each other? How would your ideas support that? Help me understand. BUT, you have to be authentic while questioning the other person. You have to have a real desire to understand because you know that we all fundamentally want the same things.
Inquiry helps us get out of our ideas/head. We can become narcissistic and attached to ideas more than to the outcome and impact of those ideas on other people. Inquiry can help us see the fallacy of our ideas and start to break us free of the ego’s hold on them.