Conscious Communication to Establish the Relationships you want

How easy is it for you to be transparent with a friend or family member? I will say, there are always going to be some people that are easier to communicate with than others. However, it is key that you learn how to consciously communicate with every personality type if you are going to continue boldly on your own health and happiness journey. 

As a recovering people pleaser, I am way guilty of not communicating well which secretly kept me stuck in a place I didn’t want to be in. When in reality, the thing I was missing was the skill of communicating with the people in my life. 

Now, this is on me. When it comes to communication, your quickest route to success is putting your focus and attention on HOW you communicate. Not on how the other person responds to it, that is not your responsibility. 

Let me jump in deep with you and give an example. I had the desire to stop drinking alcohol for a long time. But my lack of communicating that was one reason I continued drinking longer than I should have. I wasn’t trusting myself and my ability to go without. I used alcohol to numb myself, which then left me with zero brakes around it (everyone has a different relationship with alcohol and this is mine). 

I was not sturdy and firm in my own foundation of how I wanted my life to look. Being alone was something I couldn’t do because it put me in a place of having to face whatever would want to come to the surface. I had zero tools for facing the challenging things on my own. I was doing the bare minimum to meet my own needs. Designing a solid foundation for what I ate, my mindset, and my habits seemed hard and I would hide from it. I was someone who was reaching for validation externally because I wasn’t confident enough to claim my own worth. I felt broken and assumed “this was just life for me”. 

For years, I allowed myself to stay stuck in toxic cycles and negative thought patterns. Life just seemed hard and the easiest thing was to find a way to distract myself or numb myself. For me, it took a massive life altering health challenge to finally get my sh*t together. I don’t want that for you. I want to help you start slowly peeling back the layers and taking small baby steps towards the life you truly desire. 

You could be feeling similar to the way I felt, it could be more extreme, it could be less. The fact is, taking a good hard look at how you are honoring your own health and happiness is crucial. It may need many small baby steps towards change, or it may be one small tweak. No matter where you’re at on your health and happiness journey, taking a brave leap or making a small change is the way you begin to live with more ease and maintain it. 

Getting myself to a place where I was eating in a way that allowed me to FEEL my best, rewiring my brain to a more positive mindset, and establishing solid habits gave me more strength in facing all other areas of my life in a way that felt best for me. Getting sturdy in my beliefs and my approach to life took a lot of time. It took miscommunications and hard conversations before I could get my footing. I slowly began learning the lessons of how I wanted to communicate in a way that helped me stay true to what I wanted AND was respectful to the other person. 

Here are some things that I learned when it comes to communicating with others:

• Respect your own needs. If you need to say no to something, if you need to not talk about certain things, if you need space, you have to communicate that. As long as you are communicating from a place that explains your needs. You don’t need to go into a lot of detail either (I have a hard time with not feeling the need to over explain everything.) “Thank you for inviting me, but that won’t work for me today.” “Thank you for thinking of me but my plate is as full as I would like right now.” “That’s something I don’t have the capacity to talk about right now, can we change topics?”

• Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and approaches. Just as much as you want respect for how you’re living, you have to be willing to give the same respect. I have a friend that has a very different belief than I do on a specific topic. When she found out this difference, she asked to talk about it. I made the clear communication that I would be willing to discuss it with her openly as long as both of us had mutual respect that our opinions are different on the topic. Our relationship was not harmed in the process. 

• Someone that deserves space in your life is one that respects your communication. As you make the bold move to start communicating more, you will quickly see the people that deserve space in your life and the ones who may have more limited space. You do not have to continue communicating the same things over and over again. If someone is not willing to accept your communication and respect it, remember, that is on them. The people that deserve space are the ones who listen in a way to understand and are there to support you in what you are communicating. 

• Don’t force yourself to stay in the hot seat of defending yourself. It doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out discussion. If you feel like someone is challenging you or questioning you, and it's no longer a positive conversation, you can end the conversation. If someone is having a hard time understanding or accepting your stance and the conversation is starting to be overwhelming or giving you anxiety, out of respect for the relationship, end the conversation. Voice needing to take a break on talking about it. Voice being done talking about it. Take the narrative that you are going to agree to disagree. 

• You are not responsible for someone else’s reaction. Unfortunately, there are going to be people that have a hard time with communication. If you communicate a boundary, and the other person responds poorly, that is on them. If your belief, approach, opinion is respectfully communicated and they question you, challenge you, act irritated or mad, that is on them. It is on them to figure out how to accept and respect this and it is not your responsibility to hold their hand through it. It may be hard if you are a recovering people pleaser like me, but you are allowed to detach from that. 

• Just because your way of living looks different, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. If you are starting to question your stance on something merely because of the reaction you think you will get from someone, bring awareness to that. Are you feeling nerves because you feel like they may judge you? Do you dread the potential questions or challenges? Do you feel like if you communicate something it will be respected? If still is a yes, read the bullet points above this as many times as you need. 
  

After learning to communicate better and bringing more attention to what I need for my health and happiness, things started falling into place with much more ease. I started getting the sense again that alcohol wasn’t for me. I enjoyed having a glass of wine when we had friends over or when I went out to meet people. However, my body was rejecting it. I could tell that it was no longer serving me. 

And to be honest, it felt strange. I fought through some inner battles. I didn’t want to make people uncomfortable if they wanted a drink but I didn’t. I didn’t want to have to explain why I wasn’t drinking. I didn’t want to be challenged or questioned. Which now seems silly to even have those thoughts or fears but they were there. 

I felt a little shaky when telling people that I wasn’t going to get a drink or ordering a mocktail instead. I had to learn to get firm in my stance because I knew I was honoring myself. Thankfully for me, after spending more time consciously communicating, and surrounding myself with the right community, it was fully supported. People listened to learn why I made a choice. People celebrated my step for meeting my needs. People fully accept me for exactly who I am and striving to be. 

It can be uncomfortable to express your needs, to stand firm in your decisions. But what feels worse is when you continue to sacrifice those for the sake of others. The people in your lives who are truly there to support you will listen to your communication and respect it. 

So ask yourself:

-How have I struggled in the past with communication?

-Where can I be communicating my needs better?

-Where have I been making sacrifices with my own health and happiness because I wasn’t communicating?

-If I chose to communicate with (enter name) about (enter situation), what relief could I feel? How could that actually better the relationship?

Being brave enough to communicate will be a massive stride in your journey to your healthiest and happiest self. Take a breath and be bold. Continue practicing communication and you will flex the muscle you need to respect yourself and your relationships.