Actions Speak Louder than Words

The title is very familiar and something we will often say sarcastically when someone has not met our needs.

In any relationships what we say and how we say it is very important and a lot of our dissatisfaction occurs when others have not said what we think they ’should’ have said.

When stating ‘you don’t say you love me’ the response is usually ‘but you know I do’. Well how do others know we love them? How do we show we care? How often do we say ‘I love you’. How often do we state appreciation of what someone has done for us.   The October Talkeeze Newsletter was about ‘Gratitude’ and how by showing gratitude we can bring joy to others.

In any relationship, but more particularly when it is long term, there is a greater expectation for others to ‘know’ what we want or need.  Conflict can arise when we assume the other person has done something deliberately to upset/annoy us: we will often say or think “They did that to annoy me, they know I don’t like that”.  But did they really do it deliberately?
So many conflicts are caused by us jumping to conclusions driven by the ’stories’ that sit on our shoulders.  Next time you catch yourself with that thought really examine it and actually assess how you are feeling and what your needs might be at that point in time.  In this way,  by focusing on your own needs and feelings , you can remove the desire to ‘kick out’ against someone else because of an assumption that might well be incorrect.

So do ‘Actions Speak Louder Than Words’?  Maybe we need a bit of both with clear requests of our needs.

This entry was posted on 03/12/2007 at 05:49 pm and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.