Foundation 1 - Smile
SMILING WITH YOUR EYES- No kidding! The Affect Theorists talk about the face being the center of our emotional lives. It was hard wired into our brains since the beginning of human stirring that the smile made the first connections-insuring the survival of the species. Yet, with the contemporary tendency toward "numb out", we keep the straight face.
I always thought the furrowed brow, non-flustered Clint Eastwood character Dirty Harry's look as he said, "Make my day", was cool and smiles weren't. We've learned that smiling at a stranger is dangerous or untough, leaving us vulnerable to attack. In this day and age it's a wonder anyone ever gets together.
I was in a training group one time where I met a man whose sole profession was to help people regain their smiles and laughter. I started out in the "make my day", stiff lip face. I seriously doubted that he had any remote connection with humor. But we had a lot of fun in our group with his leadership. At the end we were all throwing our heads back and gripping our stomachs in laughter. We didn't realize how flat we had been until we finished the workshop. The group's skeptical tentativeness was replaced with broad smiles. We were far more at ease and open with each other from that point on.
Foundation 2 - Sensory Specific Communication
USE OF SENSORY SPECIFIC COMMUNICATION- When I want to have some fun, I'll ask someone how they are doing. When they say fine, I'll ask them how they know. I get the greatest answers from Kids. We all need to be able to ask ourselves how we believe what we know.
When a man says, "I see that she's uptight" He can't see "uptight". The question is, what did he see that lead him to believe that she was up tight? What, When, How and Who "specifically" needs to be asked- relentlessly asked of ourselves and others until we get to the lowest sensory specific common denominator. This is the only way to lower the probability of a misrepresentation. When I coach couples, I constantly ask them for sensory specifics on how they know things about each other. "What specifically did you see or hear from her that led you to believe that she was angry?" "When specifically did she say that" This is the only way to separate fantasy from facts. If the person can't remember these concrete points, then there is a good chance that they are confusing their fantasies with what really happened.
When someone is forced to take on someone else's fantasy and judgment as a fact about them, we get defensiveness, contempt and conflict. Statements like, "you never acted like you cared about me" or "her attitude caused the problem" will do it every time. We constantly assume that our belief of what happened is a perceived truth of what happened. Alfred north Whitehead called this the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness"- assuming that a fantasy is a fact.
Relationships can only survive on accurate referencing of significant events between two people. Relationships deserve such care. Robert Johnson, the Jungian lecturer and author on relationship says that God is relationship. If that is so then the spirit of relationship is more significant then we could ever have imagined.
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