Oh no, not you again!

Have you ever experienced this: you’re feeling fine.  All’s right in your world.  And your phone rings.  And you look at it and you see THAT name.  You know the one.  THEM.  And everything changes in that moment doesn’t it?  Thoughts flood into your mind, most of them negative.  Perhaps even putting yourself down, or putting the caller down.  And instead of feeling fine, you’re now feeling annoyed, or frustrated, or anxious.  And what do you do?  Do you answer the phone, or do you not?  In this case, you do.  And how do you sound?  Perhaps you’re putting on your telephone voice?  Go on admit it, you’ve got one!  Many of us have.  That voice we save for special occasions!  No matter whether you try and sound differently to how you’re feeling or whether you’re more authentic than that, our caller will know.  How?  They’ll hear it.  The words you use, the way you sound and even your body language – yes, people can HEAR body language over the phone!  It’s because posture is part of our body language and if we’ve tensed up because of our caller, that will affect how we sound.  So our body language changes our voice and our breathing – we usually start breathing from higher in the chest which tends to make our voices go a little higher than normal. 

So all of that might have happened in a moment! But, and this is where it gets interesting, how we sound and what we’re saying becomes a trigger for our caller in the same way that their name on our phone was a trigger for us.  So it’s perfectly possible that they are now going through the same thing we did.  They’ll be thinking whatever they’re thinking and feeling however they’re feeling and that, in turn, will affect the words they use and how they sound to us.  So if we’ve been a little short with them, or used our telephone voice, they could react in all sorts of different ways.  They might be a bit aggressive, they might be apologetic.  Anything really.  But what is true is that we’ve both directly influenced each other’s behaviour.  And sometimes we can blame the other person for being difficult simply because that’s how they behave every time we talk to them.  But in fact, we’ve caused it!  So today, I’m going to invite you to respond differently the next time you face a difficult encounter, whether it’s on the phone or face to face.  See if you can directly influence the outcome in a positive way.

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples. -Mother Teresa