4 ms·

What's clear and direct about this guy is that he's using the excuse "clear and direct" to simply be able to say all the negative things he's previously been af

What's clear and direct about this guy is that he's using the excuse "clear and direct" to simply be able to say all the negative things he's previously been afraid of saying. The problem with that is if you offer no solutions, positive encouragement, or proposals on what is better, people quickly tire of hearing the negative honesty part of your mind. And they start to learn that it's because your speech reflects a negative person underneath. I think he has another couple of years "experiments" needed on his personality.

watwut 6y ago
Three out of four examples were positive? > I told an ex-girlfriend that I loved her and I was offering her a long-term relationship. I told my daughter who is getting shot with rubber bullets that I am terrified and that I am proud of her. I told a project at work that I wasn’t impressed by their goals. > Last night I told someone I could be interested in a variety of relationships with them. They told me they weren’t interested in romance but they were interested in friendship. We had a nice talk and teed up another talk.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  It wasn't clear to me from the writing which were his before/after phases, which mostly sounded like what I commented on. But I read between the lines that his "negative-only" traits have probably bled through to his experiment.
praptak 6y ago
While that might be true, the article explicitly states it doesn't give one a license to say whatever you want to whoever you want.
- omgJustTest 6y ago
  The license to say anything exists for all people to use as they see fit. There is an emphasis on what "license he has" in your comment. He has all the same ones anyone else does. Emphasizing the minor point misses the major, that in order to become more functionally happy, you need to have a mental model and understanding of how a person will take your input. Also people may do as many did, nothing.
BeetleB 6y ago
What stood out for me is the focus on speaking vs listening. I read a bunch of good books on communication and what stood out was that effective communication is mostly about strategies to get the other person to open up, while also sharing your perspective. It's about realizing that the other person may get defensive and insulted about things where you meant no insult. Accept that as the normal state of affairs, even with reasonable people, and then move on to dealing with that. Accept that most people, much/most of the time are poor communicators/listeners, and set up your framework appropriately. There's little point in becoming very good at communicating your perspective if you don't account for the fact that misconstruing what you say is virtually the norm. Don't account for it by repeating something verbatim (the worst) or by finding N different ways to say the same thing. Solving it is by getting the other person to open up about what they are hearing. Everyone says "listening is more important", but that's a bit inaccurate. You can't listen if the other person doesn't talk to you (as Martin experienced). Effective listening is actually about getting the other person to open up and communicate with you - I prefer to call it Active Listening. Certainly, how you say things matter, but it's perhaps 20-30% of effective communication. One book put it clearly: Stage 1: You worry too much about how people will respond to what you are saying, and you take ownership of their negative responses. Stage 2: You stop worrying about it. You realize that as long as your intent was fine, and your communication was not misleading/unclear, you are not responsible for the other person's feelings. You free yourself of that baggage, and speak without worry. Stage 3: Even though you are not responsible for other people's feelings/responses, you have empathy for them and decide to help them out and find ways to find ways to have them open up to you (without feeling manipulated, etc). At this stage, you don't care when someone insults you or shouts at you for something innocent you said, but you don't drop the conversation either. Many people get to Stage 2 and stick to it. It's a better place to be than Stage 1, but you have a higher chance of people perceiving you as uncaring, rude, etc. Those who want to get better at communicating try to get to Stage 3.
- yomly 6y ago
  can you recommend some books you read?
  - 6y ago

watwut 6y ago

Three out of four examples were positive? > I told an ex-girlfriend that I loved her and I was offering her a long-term relationship. I told my daughter who is getting shot with rubber bullets that I am terrified and that I am proud of her. I told a project at work that I wasn’t impressed by their goals. > Last night I told someone I could be interested in a variety of relationships with them. They told me they weren’t interested in romance but they were interested in friendship. We had a nice talk and teed up another talk.

supernova87a 6y ago
It wasn't clear to me from the writing which were his before/after phases, which mostly sounded like what I commented on. But I read between the lines that his "negative-only" traits have probably bled through to his experiment.

praptak 6y ago

While that might be true, the article explicitly states it doesn't give one a license to say whatever you want to whoever you want.

omgJustTest 6y ago
The license to say anything exists for all people to use as they see fit. There is an emphasis on what "license he has" in your comment. He has all the same ones anyone else does. Emphasizing the minor point misses the major, that in order to become more functionally happy, you need to have a mental model and understanding of how a person will take your input. Also people may do as many did, nothing.

BeetleB 6y ago

What stood out for me is the focus on speaking vs listening. I read a bunch of good books on communication and what stood out was that effective communication is mostly about strategies to get the other person to open up, while also sharing your perspective. It's about realizing that the other person may get defensive and insulted about things where you meant no insult. Accept that as the normal state of affairs, even with reasonable people, and then move on to dealing with that. Accept that most people, much/most of the time are poor communicators/listeners, and set up your framework appropriately. There's little point in becoming very good at communicating your perspective if you don't account for the fact that misconstruing what you say is virtually the norm. Don't account for it by repeating something verbatim (the worst) or by finding N different ways to say the same thing. Solving it is by getting the other person to open up about what they are hearing. Everyone says "listening is more important", but that's a bit inaccurate. You can't listen if the other person doesn't talk to you (as Martin experienced). Effective listening is actually about getting the other person to open up and communicate with you - I prefer to call it Active Listening. Certainly, how you say things matter, but it's perhaps 20-30% of effective communication. One book put it clearly: Stage 1: You worry too much about how people will respond to what you are saying, and you take ownership of their negative responses. Stage 2: You stop worrying about it. You realize that as long as your intent was fine, and your communication was not misleading/unclear, you are not responsible for the other person's feelings. You free yourself of that baggage, and speak without worry. Stage 3: Even though you are not responsible for other people's feelings/responses, you have empathy for them and decide to help them out and find ways to find ways to have them open up to you (without feeling manipulated, etc). At this stage, you don't care when someone insults you or shouts at you for something innocent you said, but you don't drop the conversation either. Many people get to Stage 2 and stick to it. It's a better place to be than Stage 1, but you have a higher chance of people perceiving you as uncaring, rude, etc. Those who want to get better at communicating try to get to Stage 3.

yomly 6y ago
can you recommend some books you read?
- 6y ago