Direct vs. Indirect Communcation
I've been talking about power this year. Your personal power.
With today's partial lunar eclipse blowing through with some big-ass changes, there's no better time to up your personal power skills. In this post, I'm sharing one of the things I love -- communicating with power.
Take Kristen, my youngest stepdaughter. She’s an amazing young woman in her 20s living on her own.
Recently, we were talking about the roommate she took on for the summer. I asked her how it was going.
She said, “It’s OK, but he’s so messy. He leaves his stuff everywhere, and it’s driving me crazy.”
“Wow,” I said. “That would drive me crazy, too. Have you talked to him about it?”
“No. I keep dropping hints. I thought his mom would tell him to be neater, especially after she came for a visit," she said. "Apparently she didn’t.”
“Sounds like it’s time to tell him how you feel,” I said. “Shoot from the hip and tell him exactly what you want.”
Kristen looked at me with fear in her eyes. “I can’t do that. I can’t tell him that,” she said. “I’m scared of telling people that kind of stuff.”
Let's talk about the 2 ways of communicating.
Indirect
This way is about communicating without communicating. Like Kristen mentioned, this way relies on things like:
Dropping hints.
Beating around the bush.
Using sarcasm to veil your true feelings.
Asking other people to do it for you.
Direct
Direct communication is saying what you mean and meaning what you say. No hints, bush-beating, or pawning it off on someone else.
Here's the thing about indirect vs. direct communication:
Indirect is something that most of us try many times. I certainly did in the first half of my life. It seems easier somehow, because you think you can avoid conflict.
Most of the time, however, indirect communicate fails miserably, because it requires that the other person read your mind. Dropping hints is like expecting the other person to be the Amazing Kreskin. This pretty much guarantees that you’re going to be frustrated. What's more, indirect communication is also a way of denying your personal power.
Direct communication connects your personal power (3rd chakra) to your voice (5th chakra) and has them singing together in harmony.
It also puts you and the other human on track for harmony, because you've told them exactly how you feel and what you want.