Being Heard
One of the trends I’ve noticed in recent dreams is a theme of wanting to share some important, insightful information with people but having a hard time being heard. One of these dreams I recall trying to talk, then yell, louder and louder but it came out raspy and quiet. No one paid attention. Now, what this important message is that I have to share hasn’t yet bubbled up to consciousness, but maybe it will someday. When it does, I think I should figure out how to not have it be ignored, because this apparently is a subconscious concern of mine.
So how can we be heard through all the noise of everyone’s personal dramas, issues and general noise of life? To borrow and paraphrase a statement from Mission Minded Management, it’s not about shouting louder or using the boldest font. If you want people to be interested in what you’re saying, be interested in what they’re doing.
I don’t know about you, but I just might be a little more prone to tuning out the person who seems more concerned about stumping their personal theories and opinions without any apparent concern for relevance to my life. My relevancy meter is going all the time and if what you have to say doesn’t trigger it in the very least, I’ll tune out. I might try to pretend to listen to minimize conflict, but I probably won’t hear you and instead occupy myself with developing tactics to shorten the one-sided conversation as quickly as possible. You’d be suprised at how often this occurs when I’m interviewing candidates.
The lesson in this for me? If I want to be sure to be heard, then first pay attention to others and make the message relevant. So. Is this particular message relevant? Blogging is a little trickier because we don’t always get the immediate cues that we’re being read and understood. Also, blogging may not be all about being heard but more about organizing our thoughts and writing it down. Probably not. If that were all, we’d just type up our notes in Microsoft Word and save them on our hard drive for temporary posterity.
So I want to be heard. Don’t we all? I guess it pays to be interested before we’re interesting.
In response to Bev:
I actually think the “being heard” issue is work related. I have observations and important information that I’d like to impart, but the folks that would need to know probably wouldn’t look to me for that kind of information and might be dismissive of me as the deliverer.
The more recent dream about the bluebird landing on my finger– that’s pregnancy related and a reminder to remain happy and content with things as they are.