Conversations: do they matter?

Conversations are part of life. We’d be bored without them. Lonely, too. Sharing ideas, discoveries, successes, dramas and dreams—these are the things that enliven our existence and keep us emotionally engaged. But the most meaningful, rewarding conversations are those that get to the nub of the matter: the human dynamics that drive the things we do and say… or avoid doing and saying.

All too often, our conversations are like a game of ping pong—opinions batted back and forth without truly hitting home, usually because they are driven by our insecurities, reactivity and a need to be heard or be right. Often, we seek to convert someone to our way of thinking, rather than truly listening and seeking to learn something from them. And rarely do we engage in meaningful debate (especially about contentious issues) without reacting to someone’s opinion or perspective… unless we have done the inner work of owning our emotions, understanding what triggers them and positively reprogramming our minds. Unless we have done that, we cannot be present.

Yet every reaction is a clue. If we react negatively to something, it simply means that we are out of alignment with who we are and have not yet understood the deeper truth that is trying to break through the conflict we feel inside. Such reactions are also our cue to delve deeper—not into the debate (unless it’s based on some kind of enrichment, personal growth or true learning) but into ourselves, so we can discover what is driving us and why.

Conversations inside and out

Life is all about discovering who we are. And we do that most effectively through our relationships with others. How and what we relate speaks volumes about our ‘story’ and what’s going on inside us; hearing ourselves relate to others in healthy, self-respecting ways is one way of positively reprogramming our minds. We may think in terms of having a job to earn money, doing certain activities for enjoyment, or having relationships in order to find comfort, companionship and love. Those are all worthy endeavours in their own right, but the deeper purpose of all of them is to discover who we are, by challenging ourselves in various ways and engaging with various people, in different environments. In doing so, we get to see our strengths, our weaknesses, our insecurities, our neediness, our level of self-acceptance and self-respect, and (through the degree of wealth, health and love that we attract) just how much we have mastered our own minds and lives.

Social media platforms enable us all to have our say—yet another arena for interaction and, therefore, a way for us to discover more of who we are by flexing our mental, emotional and spiritual muscles. If we come from a place of self-ownership, sharing our personal realizations as we proactively seek to understand our bodies and minds, we inspire others to do the same.

Listening to ourselves, learning from ourselves

The benefit—and the whole point—of any discussion is to understand ourselves better, to hear ourselves expressing who we are, and to then show up as authentically as we can. It’s not so that we get better at containing our reactivity or respecting other people’s beliefs. And it’s not so that we get good at arguing, finding loopholes or defending our position. 

Life, with all its challenges, is designed for our individual growth, so that we get to know who we are, how we function, what we fear, how we have been programmed to think, feel and behave in certain ways, and where that is designed to take us.

Typically, however, if we have not been heard, respected or loved, we tend not to respect or love ourselves, which often leads to not trusting ourselves, exploring our potential or taking responsibility for our own lives, over which we may believe we have no control. From that perspective, things are done to us. Life happens. We are the victims of other people’s actions and ignorance. This can generate defensiveness that prevents us from focusing on the source of it all: our deeper selves.

Consequently, we may feel a need to loudly voice our opinions, seeking validation from others who share our beliefs, while remaining unaware that those beliefs may be undermining our efforts to lead a better life. (We may also fail to realize that we tend to attract like-minded people, thereby ‘confirming’ the validity of what we believe to be true.)

Driving our own bus

We may defer to a perceived higher authority (such as government, industry, religion or gurus), believing in the conventional wisdom they expound, which provides the illusion of safety in being part of the crowd (surely, we may tell ourselves, they can’t all be wrong), and bypassing our own evolution. We end up living largely in reaction to what’s coming at us, without seeking to understand what’s really driving us… and then learning how to drive our own bus.

We need to practise reclaiming ourselves, not rejecting others. That is how we reprogram our own minds—by demonstrating to ourselves, via our words and actions, the healthy self-worth, self-respect and self-responsibility that generate healthy choices and outcomes.

If we are on the receiving end of a needy loud voice telling us what to do, how to behave and how misguided we are in not embracing that same conventional wisdom, what is the healthy response? Once again, it’s all about the dynamics driving things and what we are being prompted to do, rather than getting caught up in the rightness or wrongness of what is being imposed.

Understanding the deeper drivers

If, for example, someone tells us we must take a particular medication or become a vegetarian because that’s what they were told was the right thing to do, and they did it, we could find ourselves in a never-ending battle of conflicting opinions, driven by that same need for validation. In essence, we would be reacting to their violation of our personal responsibility for self, not necessarily to what they are telling us to do. And, if we react to them doing that, we too would be violating our responsibility to ourselves. Why? Because we have reacted to what they are saying, rather than recognizing that we are being reminded to make—and take responsibility for—our own choices, our own bodies, our own lives.

Reacting reminds us that taking responsibility for ourselves is the key to living a healthy, self-respecting, empowered life. After all, we are responsible for our own bodies. If someone else tells us to do something and we do it, and then suffer harm, will they take responsibility for that? They can’t. Will we take responsibility for having surrendered self-responsibility? Will we respond with curiosity about why we have reacted to them and what it means about us?

Only we can take responsibility for the choices we make—knowingly or otherwise. Ideally, those choices are based on knowledge of how our body works and what it needs, what choices, beliefs and actions support our growth, and what’s important for our well-being. Wise, self-honouring choices evolve out of our own research into health, nutrition and the power of the mind, beyond any imposed directives that seek to use, abuse or exploit us.

We are also reminded to make and sustain healthy boundaries. With the free-for-all interactivity of social media, the pervasive radiation from wireless devices, and the endless bombardment of information from all quarters, personal boundaries have broken down. We have become enmeshed, often subsumed by the collective narrative, rather than proactively embracing our unique identity. It is only by reclaiming ourselves through thoughts, words and actions demonstrating healthy self-worth that we can reprogram our own minds and take full, loving ownership of self.

Discovering the truth of me vs the lies learned from others

When we do that, it doesn’t matter if we are in the minority, not heard or side-lined in favour of the in crowd. It doesn’t matter if others reject our input or don’t see the value of exploring their own inner wisdom. It is enough to know that we know who we are and have faith in ourselves, even if they don’t. It is enough to be true to ourselves, while constantly striving to know more, grow more and show ourselves what we are truly capable of.

It is the conversations we have with ourselves, inside our own heads, that shape our external interactions. The more we honour our inner wisdom, take ownership of self and tell ourselves the deeper truth, the more we attract like-minded self-seekers.

Self-awareness is its own reward, enabling us to see where we have come from, where we want to go, and how to get there. And the more we hear the echo of our honest hearts, the deeper we can go in our conversations, writing the next chapter in the bestselling story of our lives.