How to Talk with Anyone about Anything Workbook: A Guide to Practicing Safe Conversations

Introduction

How to Talk with Anyone about Anything introduced you to the concept of relational competency (RC), which we defined as the ability to interact successfully with others by engaging and connecting beyond our differences. Sounds relatively simple, right? And something we should strive for (or we may already feel we are quite competent enough). It’s the beyond our differences part of the definition that often becomes problematic. It’s easier to interact with others who are like-minded—same moral values, faith, nationality, gender, race, eating habits, political affiliation, marital status, and so on.

Our world is made up of groups formed because they found common ground. Parents of adults with high-functioning autism. Low-carb support groups. SpongeBob SquarePants meme Facebook groups. The Luxuriant, Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. If you can imagine it, it’s there. And even those groups break down into smaller groups with additional delineations. The bubble gets smaller as we look for replicas of ourselves, so they don’t challenge who we are.

Differences can be scary. They tap into the unknown, upset the status quo, and threaten our existence. Differences, however, are the defining feature of nature. There is no sameness in the universe, only similarity. Only differences exist. Sameness would, in fact, leave any living thing vulnerable to extinction. Every thing is made up of a polarity, two things that are different—like the sperm and egg that produced you. We and everything else arise from interactions between two things that are different. Differences protect us and invite psychological, emotional, biological, and spiritual growth.

As humans, we have a choice: to polarize around difference or to accept difference and use the tension between to generate enormous creativity. We can avoid or shut out disagreement and become isolated, or we can tap into curiosity and embrace empathy. Tension around differences can also inform us about ourselves, because often, tension has a story in here rather than over there.

This workbook will give you skills and strategies to help you move into curiosity and empathy when you disagree with someone. It will also help you unravel the layers under conflict to discover your inner narratives and triggers that contribute to relational tension.

From Me to You to We

Many of our interactions are transactional. We make deals. I win and you lose. This is based on our culture of individualism. We enter any relationship with an egocentric attitude: What can this person offer me? How can they make me feel better about myself? How can I get them to see how great I really am? How can I convince them of my rightness? These inner narratives contribute to what we all desire: to be seen, heard, and valued as we truly are—the authentic self. Not being seen, heard, and valued triggers the painful sensation of anxiety, the fear that I don’t exist or I am not good enough; our defenses are activated, and we become polarized. But the overfocus on individualism, while necessary to break from our feudal history, has caused the loneliness, conflict, and polarization that are plaguing our world today.

Here’s the catch. To be seen, we must first see. To be heard, we must first hear. To be valued, we must first value. When we encounter another—whether it’s at the supermarket, at work, at home—we need to shift our attitudes toward the other: What can I learn here? What don’t I know? Listening to truly understand those around you, being curious about them, and responding with awe, draws others to you. When another person feels seen, heard, and valued, they feel physically and emotionally safe. Defenses drop. Then they see you as a friend rather than foe.

Putting our thoughts and feelings aside momentarily is not easy. But developing relational competency provides the opportunity to develop healthy relationships. And on this journey toward relational competency, an amazing response occurs. We are joyfully relaxed, fully alive, and, above all, connected. We then have a greater capacity to love. It starts with I, moves to you, and then becomes we as we travel a spiral path with a greater propensity to care for others and for the whole of humanity.

The Four Pillars of Safe Conversations

Relational competency is the capacity to create and maintain consistent and positive connections with another person. It is a pathway that involves four practices:

1. A structured dialogue: Learning a new way to talk and listen to one another—individually or in a group setting—despite our differences. This is more like a foundation rather than a pillar. Without this, the house is unsteady and the architect wonders what went wrong. With this, the architect joyfully lives inside, connected to the outside world.

2. Empathy with everyone: Practicing and growing our ability to empathize. While we are empathic at birth, our early experiences tend to truncate the ability to feel for another. But we can regain this important capacity through simple practices. Empathy can be learned.

3. The Zero Negativity commitment: Avoiding negativity at all times involves eliminating put-downs, name-calling, eye rolls, and any other form of shame, blame, or criticism of anyone with whom you communicate each day.

4. The practice of affirmations: Affirmation is the acknowledgment of the intrinsic value of another person, not because they did something for us, but because they exist. To affirm another person is to accept them unconditionally and to celebrate that person’s authentic self. The practice of affirmations helps sustain connecting, full aliveness, relaxed joyfulness, and wonder in all relationships.

Within these pillars are sub-learnings, such as cultivating curiosity, increasing our awareness of our defense patterns, and understanding how conflict is an opportunity for growth. All these practices are universal for everyone everywhere—working, learning, worshiping, and living. Once we practice and master these relational skills, we become a social being influencer, which is much better than a social media influencer. Social being influencers seek engagement with others rather than fame and fortune based on capitalistic tendencies. Social being influencers see everyone as fragile yet an awesome piece of the amazing whole. Social being influencers do not leave trails of wounding footprints when walking away from others but create connections when walking toward and with them. These meaningful connections define our purpose.

Getting Started

This workbook is organized into eight sessions to cultivate our ability to master the four pillars. Most sessions include the following in some variety:

• Review: for in-depth learnings, review the material in How to Talk with Anyone about Anything

• Introduction: an overview of the section’s learnings

• Read: passages to read to deepen your understanding

• Write: written exercises to develop the skills and provide insights

• Dialogue: dialogue practices to hone the skills

• Practice: an exercise to practice the skills discussed

• Me-2-We Journal: prompts for writing in a journal

• Daily Do: daily practices

To become relationally competent, we recommend you spend at least one week on each section before you move on to another practice. But you will be the best judge of whether you need more or less time. Complete each session in the order that it is written and don’t skip a week, so you can maintain your momentum and integrate the skills you are practicing.

Session 8 takes these skills and applies them into four areas of your life: working, learning, worshiping, and living (that is, your everyday life).

The Concept of Stretching

Homeostasis is a process built into living things to maintain an inner equilibrium. It’s a self-regulating system that offsets any change to keep internal states stable and balanced and is nature’s elegant design to keep us alive. Change, therefore, can be a warning sign to our basic instincts. The problem with homeostasis, however, is that it does not distinguish between a good change and a bad one. It’s why we recommend repeating behaviors for at least sixty days for a new behavior to become habitual.

This work requires us to change in ways that might be uncomfortable. It requires us to stretch beyond our comfort level and move into new behaviors. While we might meet resistance along the way, with consistent practice, new behaviors will ultimately become a part of our makeup. However, we don’t want to stretch to the extent where we will quit. It’s the Goldilocks of the relational journey: not too soft (easy) where nothing discernible happens, not too hard (impossible) where you break down and sabotage your relationships, but just right (doable but stretches us a bit). The healthy medium is stretching into new behaviors that are small, achievable, and sustainable that strengthen our relational muscle.

At times, an inner voice might warn you. It might tell you something like, Stop! This is ridiculous! or Why should I do all the work? or I’m too tired for this fluff! That is normal, and if you feel this way along this journey, you might say, "I recognize you. Thank you