"You're Not Hearing Me."

Is this phrase getting in the way of your progress? 
It occasionally gets in the way of ours. In fact, “You’re not hearing me” is the phrase that finally kicked off our blog posting.
 
We’d repeatedly talked about blogging, but it just wasn’t happening. Why? Because any time I’d talk about my starting the blog, Mr. Parker would have objections and parameters. It turns out, the real challenge was twofold: 1) I wasn’t understanding what his points really were; 2) He wasn’t understanding what I wanted to blog about.
 
We finally sat down and calmly, academically, discussed it. What we really discussed was, “I don’t think you’re hearing me. Why not?” It came down to this: We often tell each other things while the other one is sitting at the computer. Sitting at the computer means split focus. And split focus is really no focus. Also, while we always assume we understand what the other one wants, we don’t confirm it and proceed with a misunderstanding.
 
The solution was sitting down, away from our computers, and discussing the blog. And something interesting happened. To make sure we were each “hearing” the other, we played back to each other what the other one had said. It sounds so simple. It’s also so easy to not take the time. But we took the time, and were able to come to an accord on how to move forward. And it happened in short order. Surprise bonus feature? We felt closer as a couple. 
 
Hope that helps.
 
-Honey Parker

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