Secret # 5: Claiming Our Experiences
For the fifth month in a row, I am talking about simple and powerful strategies in order to live a life of awareness and of elevated fulfillment. As I have mentioned before, the amazing thing is their simplicity and that anyone can start using them right away, without having to achieve or learn anything in addition. The secret number five speaks of the way we claim our own experiences as our own and why it matters. Have you ever listened to someone talk about their own great revelations, but listening to them makes you feel like a kid stuck in school, and all you want is to get out of the situation? I know I certainly have. It happens, when otherwise wise and educated people, start using “you should,” “you have to” and “you must do X.”
None of us want to be told what to do, even if it is the best advice in the world. Sadly, it is their own passion for something that makes people talk that way. Usually it is combined with a desire to help others. Unfortunately the well meant credo falls on deaf ears and the mission to help is lost.
That is one side of the story. The other side of it is that the person sharing also gets little satisfaction out of it if done that way. As long as we use impersonal words instead of speaking about our own experience by using “I,” we will not feel like we are actually sharing our own truth. It is so wonderful to tell it like it is: “I was having a hard time, and then I decided to get help…”
Using “I” statements is a very powerful experience for the speaker. It is about owning our own experiences, our own point of view, and our own life. No one else is in it, it is us ourselves. It comes with a sense of commitment, a kind of truth that we all love to hear. It even takes courage. So, if we listen to someone share their own experience and what it did for them and how it was for them, we as listeners are free to hear the wisdom in it, hear the passion, the results and most of all, hear if it is something we would like to experience as well.
It intrigues us; we want some of it, if we resonate with it. We have not been told what would be best for us; we have recognized it to be right for us. We will be able to have our very own experience with it. The person sharing comes across as very authentic and knowledgeable. They don’t claim any universal truths, when sharing in I-statements. They appear stronger and more credible if they claim it as their own experience only.
There is, undoubtedly, something very attractive and amazing about people feeling comfortable with sharing their own experiences as their own, without the need of making us believe it is anything different as that: One individual’s experience in this world. After all, isn’t that what Reality TV shows are after, the “authentic” experience of one person? It is obviously truly attractive.
For this month, I invite you to observe the difference for yourself, whether you are listening or sharing “I” versus “You” statements. Learn more about it on www.MarvelsandStars.com. Let me know, how it goes: office@starrcoaching.com.
Category: Life Style
