JL wrote:
Men, quit your complaining! Women find that as a weakness. Learn effective communication.
[You’re] a man! What does complaining do for you and the people around you?
(My rare rant.)
JR:
And what really gets me upset is when one of those adult male humans starts off in to a rant! (just kidding)
JL: I know. Was laughing at myself complaining after I posted.
Was too good to have people poke fun than to delete.
Insert foot in mouth. Lol
….
[Still JL writing:] It is and isn’t a complaint. Here’s how I look at it:
Obviously I have not been living into my potential. Therefore I have to look around & trip punch or kick those verbally around me so they are on my level. Dragging down others so that they won’t feel different then me.
JR:
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Regarding “living in to my potential,” that is one way to say it. That is actually a reference to “what one has NOT been doing.” However, what HAS one been doing / practicing?
Generally, people will identify certain qualities as “right” and other contrasting qualities as wrong or “how people should not be.” This linguistic model can be called a polarized or binary categorization.
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Later, in contrast to the binary model, we might identify a spectrum (rather than just two isolated either/or extremes). Spectrums can be divided in to portions, like a rating of “one to five stars” or a scale of 1 to 10. Spectrums may even allow for objective measurements.
For instance, J.L. mentioned “effective communication.” We could make up something like this: a rate of 33% registrations (or higher) is “effective” and anything less is “ineffective.” That is a binary categorization. However, we can also add more subcategories, like “highly effective”… or even just report the specific percentage, like this: “out of __ number of events and ___ number of visitors, the total percentage of registrations produced was ____ %.”
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We can call that “a conversation for performance.” We can contrast that with “a conversation for justifications and excuses and blame.”If I am embarrassed (which is a form of fear) and I am attempting to repress my embarrassment, then I might practice some “making wrong” to vilify a target of resentment and rage. “It was the fault of the weather, plus the economy, plus what I ate for breakfast.” That is a conversation for “finding fault” or “vilifying.”
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Back to the original context of men (and women), some women really respond well to a man who is practicing a “conversation for performance.” Some women may also be specifically repulsed by a man who frequently practices a “conversation of anxiously attracting social validation.”
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So, how can complaining be part of a conversation for performance? By the way, it can!
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“Stop! You’re going way too fast for me. Can you back up to the thing you said about what you ate for breakfast and explain that part again… slowly?”“Excuse me, but as I am standing here, I’m really getting distracted by something in my left shoe. I think there may be a pebble in there. I’m going to take a quick break to remove my shoe and see if I can remove the annoyance. Otherwise, I may need to get a chair or a stool.”
To make it wrong when someone makes something wrong is… not unusual. Can “making something wrong” be part of a conversation for performance? Of course!
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When we realize that all conversations could be conversations for performance, then we might start getting really interested in what type of performance is the focus of a particular conversation. Is it a performance to create registrations or to attract validation or to simply move a conversation in a particular direction? From the context of performance, what occurs is just different forms of performance.
power of language blog: partnering with reality by JR Fibonacci 