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Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

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Zooming In: To get a closer look at life

#110: Communication is an act of trust

Communication training is now a cottage industry. We’re no longer limited to places like Toastmasters that promote public speaking through practice. We now have many nuanced options; we can learn how to become an impressive Tedx speaker or get voice training from the guy who coached Bradley Cooper for his singing role. I’m sure we can all benefit from these skills. After all, most of us speak to communicate for a majority of our lives.

I’ve communicated across contexts and cultures and I imagine like everyone reading this, I have been successful at times and failed miserably at others. I’ve been called both charismatic and a wallflower. I’ve wanted to step onstage and also hide. I’ve been complimented on my strong voice and I’ve also noticed a tendency to suppress/muffle it when I feel unsafe. I’ve felt a hoarseness and physical constriction of a sore throat just by not speaking up in my normal volume and timbre. The kicker is that all this happened within the same year without me changing anything about myself. I had different experiences in different spaces populated by different sub-cultures and norms. 

My personal experiences point to a missing piece in all this talk about communicating well. My ability to communicate fully without holding back in content or tone was impacted by my emotional state and the receptiveness of others. Here are the combinations of inputs I experienced and the resulting outcomes:

  • I was in my element in front of a receptive audience: things went swimmingly.
  • I had my internal reserves and faced a difficult audience: I spoke well enough and powered through. This powering through felt like a one-sided attempt at communicating and didn’t feel good inside. After many iterations of this, I started feeling a burnout and lack of psychological safety.
  • I was navigating a difficult life event (I’ll call it event 1) and was faced with uncaring and combative listeners: I found it much harder to get the words out and just wanted to be invisible so I could recover.
  • I was navigating an even more difficult life event  (event 1 above + event 2 shortly after) and found a kind space and an audience primed for listening: I found my voice and confidence again.

I’ve given myself fully to a space, a team and a message with courage even when I felt an internal trembling. I noted that the trembling would disappear as soon as I found my voice. And it was often in response to the faces that looked back with an openness and a commitment to listen and engage. I’ve held back when I felt unsafe. No one was coming after my life but I couldn’t help but turn inwards.

So, yeah, I’m sure all these communication tools will help me speak better, hold an audience’s attention, command a physical space, and deliver a powerful message to change minds and hearts. But what I fundamentally crave is spaces of trust where I don’t always have to be perfect and self-assured to share the messages I need to share.

Not everyone has the time or money to get these communication trainings but we all have the ability to deepen our listening. Because naturally powerful speaking, that we all are capable of, is because of other people’s ability to listen and not the other way around.

So I’d like to offer this framing to capture the underlying dynamic we miss― communicating well is an outcome of trust. Trust that you will listen and create a safe space for me to find my voice rather than squashing me at the first wobble.

“Giving does not only precede receiving; it is the reason for it. It is in giving that we receive.”― Israelmore Ayivor, Ghanian youth leader, author and speaker

A couple of practices that have taught me how to listen better. Listening better will be a lifelong practice but I’m learning. 

  • Non Violent Communication (NVC): Developed by clinical psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, NVC is a communication approach based on principles of nonviolence. It is a method designed to increase empathy and improve quality of life. It is not a technique to end disagreements.
  • Theory U: Developed by Otto Scharmer and his colleagues at MIT, Theory U is an awareness-based method for changing systems. It’s designed to break through unproductive patterns of behavior that prevent from empathizing with other perspectives, which often lock us into ineffective decision making. One of the tools they offer is a listening assessment.
  • My meditation practice: Even though I am learning and applying these new tools as best as I can, the dots connected when I sat in silence.

#106: In Service (India Diaries)

A friend’s dad is visiting Seattle from India and asked me if I was “in service”. By this he meant if I had a job. This is the vernacular of my parents’ youth. When I was growing up, people were either in service (i.e. worked for someone else) or had their own business. The various professions rolled up to these two broad classifications. I didn’t really ruminate on this as a child but I do remember absorbing the term “in service” with a sense that there was subservience and potentially powerlessness associated with this choice. If someone had asked the little me to pick between these two binaries of “in service” vs. “in business”, I certainly would have picked the latter.

The question from my friend’s father made me realize that I don’t have the subtle negative association to being “in service” anymore. In fact, I silently answered in the affirmative. Because I am in service of a vision and it doesn’t matter to my self-esteem whether I have to start my company, work for another organization, or learn new skills to be in service. The line of work then becomes a purely practical matter and not the main thing. 

I don’t often encounter this phrase when I go back to India now; we seem to use a more globally enmeshed way of speaking in our cities. Although I still hear a version, both in India and the States, when we refer to people serving in the armed forces or government service (so and so is in public service, or is a servicewoman). These are professions where we still acknowledge the potential for impact on other lives.

Nonetheless, there is potential for impact embedded in every single profession. How can there not be? Our work is what we do daily for decades. But potential just means possibility, and not certainty, until it’s catalyzed by a personal and resonant aspiration for impact. When that happens, we are service.

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” ― Winston Churchill, British statesman and Prime Minister

#104: Touch (India Diaries)

My primary sources of touch when I’m in the States are my husband and cat. I instinctively hug people but there aren’t as many opportunities to hug during workdays. When I see my friends, the main moments of touch are hellos and goodbyes. If someone I know is having a hard time, then I may touch their upper back as a mark of support and, if we are close, linger my hand there so they feel connected and safe. I do this because in my darkest moments, simple and genuine touch helps me metabolize difficult emotion like nothing else.

When I was in India, I touched humans a lot more. There were more loved ones to touch, more ways in which I could touch them, and it was ok to stay in physical contact a bit longer. I touched my mom, brother, sister-in-law, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends. I could hug and kiss them freely, touch their face with love, massage their scalp, put lotion on my mom’s feet, hold my aunt’s hand as long as we both wanted, and sleep with my mom in the same bed. I felt hydrated and nourished by so much loving touch. 

Touch is our very first sense to develop in utero, with development starting at around 8-weeks, before the senses of smell, taste, sight and hearing. Skin is our largest organ, at 22 square feet for an average adult. We can see, hear and smell from afar but taste and touch are the two senses that invite closeness. And how we touch, like other expressions of care, is personal but also very cultural. For instance, it’s a common sight in India to see men from a specific social strata walking down the street holding hands or with an arm wrapped around another’s shoulder. I didn’t see these behaviors in the more educated or affluent Indian men. It’s also a common sight to see groups of children in their uniforms after school holding hands, doing shenanigans, laughing and joking freely on their way home.

I have not experienced this level of physical closeness in the west. Despite the many well-researched and documented benefits of touch, our general lack of touch makes me wonder if we have oversexualized the act of touching another human? What would happen if we had the freedom to express love in platonic relationships through consensual physical touch? How would it change lives?*

“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.”― Mother Teresa, Albanian-Indian Catholic nun

*Touch has been shown to have physiological, psychological and social benefits. Supportive touch releases feel good hormones and chemicals in the brain (oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine and serotonin), lowers the stress hormone (cortisol), and increases the production of white blood cells in the body. These biological reactions combined help lower the heart rate and blood pressure, lessen depression and anxiety, boost the immune system and even relieve pain.  

#103: To be proximal and yet love (India Diaries)

I started getting hives out of the blue a few years ago. It wasn’t clear what I was reacting to so the doctor recommended a food allergy test. The cause ended up being something else but the food test stayed with me. It’s not a yes/no result and there are gradients of reactions one can have―from itching, nasal congestion, and hives to anaphylaxis, which is the most severe reaction and is life threatening. I’m vegetarian and it was interesting that I had zero reactivity to meats and seafood, even the most inflammatory ones like shellfish. I was sensitive to things like beans (which is common) and basil (felt random and unexpected).

As I dug into the results, I realized that I was reacting mainly to foods I ate the most. Some foods might have been unsuited to my digestive system anyway but the frequency of consumption led to outsized reactions. Did I need a small pause? This is actually the wisdom behind detoxification diets. We limit exposure to inflammatory foods and then start adding them back bit by bit to see how the body does. A severe reaction means permanent avoidance, a minor discomfort means the need to be mindful while eating.

I wonder if this logic holds for the people in our life. Just like I wasn’t allergic to what I didn’t eat, I don’t have reactions to those I don’t engage with. I react only when there is interaction and, more importantly, relationship. The people I live with or interact with the most are likely the ones that trigger me the most, and I have an outsized ability to irritate them back. Our body carries the imprint of past interactions and reactions. If we’ve reacted in the past, we’re more likely to react again.

Our psyche stays on guard just the way our white blood cells do. Whether we realize it or not, our minds automatically filter current experiences as they are unfolding using the lens of our past, predict what will happen and behave accordingly. And like our overactive immune systems that might see basil as a threat, our mental predictions aren’t always accurate. We’re often unable to see what’s actually going on in our closest relationships and frequent interactions.

Could a relational detox help? Where we pay attention to who triggers us, whom we trigger, and then most importantly, cultivate the skill to see below our mutual masks of irritation to the underlying vulnerability in ourselves and others. Where we actively work on not getting triggered so kind and clear communication can flow.

Those we share the most time, space and life with are the ones we exchange our deepest imperfections with. A loving relationship with them needs a non-judgmental open heart and compassionate will. To be proximal and yet love is an unending practice.

“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…

We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.”
― Tara Brach: psychologist, author and Buddhist meditation teacher

#102: Daily caregiving (India Diaries)

Continuing my India observations…

Another contrast between my life in the States and India is the daily collection of people that come in and out of my mother’s home. The cleaning lady, the cooking lady, the elderly vegetable hawker who calls her cellphone everyday like clockwork to pester her to buy something from him, even if a few potatoes. And his son, who runs up the five flights of steps to deliver them, who once requested I charge his phone for a few hours. This seeming entourage of help is common in India and not just a luxury for the wealthy. Our ad hoc infrastructure has developed over time in such a way that contemporary professional life is powered by this collective of daily care givers. People couldn’t work the long hours with the insane commute times if they didn’t have someone helping with cooking and cleaning. Most Indians I know also live in multigenerational families with more people, so there is more daily cooking and cleaning to do compared to the States.

I can slice this infrastructural and socio-economic dynamic in many ways but my point here is this: An offshoot of many different people coming in and out of one’s home is the human connection and engagement it creates for anyone who is at home, including the elderly.

In India, caregiving isn’t just reserved for when people face difficulties of old age. When the same people come into our homes daily over the years, bit by bit, we get to know about them and their families. We share food, tea, and old winter blankets. The stuff we’ve outgrown or don’t have room for doesn’t go to unseen people; the people who care for us get first dibs and we can see the impact of our generosity, which trains us to be more generous. There’s an oiling of the machinery with conversation, food, laughter, tears and some reprimand. People who rarely leave home end up staying mentally and physically engaged, even when alone.

The comparatively smaller daily care footprint of nuclear families in the west, supported by an array of gadgets, makes life practically and emotionally simpler. And it has the potential to distance us from interactions and slowly train us out of caring for more types of people; that is, the everyday interactions that help us become more humane.

“Humans interacting with humans in a human way”
― My friend Avishkar’s pithy summary of psychological safety, a concept developed by Prof. Amy Edmondson.