Where will it lead?

I recently listened to "Where Will It Lead?", a great talk given a few years ago at BYU by Elder Dallin H. Oaks, Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and former President of BYU.

In this talk, he discusses how small decisions "can result in huge differences in position later down the road of life." I'll share my thoughts on the subject in a minute, but first an example that illustrates the long-term importance of some seemingly small differences in present choices:

Here is a hypothetical. You are home with your children. A person you don’t want to talk to is calling on the phone or coming to the door. You are tempted to have the children tell them you are not home. “Where will it lead?” If you do this, you are showing your children that you will lie to gain an advantage, and you are teaching them how to do the same. You are weakening their faith that they can trust you to tell the truth. You are also casting doubt on the validity of the commandment not to lie and on the prophets who taught that commandment. You are even diminishing faith in the existence of the God whose commandment it is. Where will this lead? It will set in motion a succession of consequences that can be severely destructive of efforts to achieve eternal blessings.

My thought when first listening to this talk was to think about how this applies in relationships. For example - in dating, playing the game might help others be more attracted to you. However, building a relationship by playing a game could also lead to one sided relationships, being fake, and insecurity in the relationship.


In another example - avoiding conflict or hard conversations in a relationship (any relationship, not just romantic ones) could lead to hidden resentment, future conflict, and missing out on the increased intimacy comes from hard conversations and resolving conflict.

Finally, one more thought I had is that when someone else is doing something that isn't good for your relationship with them, even if you "see where it will lead," it might be best to choose how you respond to that instead of confronting about them - sometimes getting offended or taking things personally leads to the bad result, and not the action itself. Other times, of course, it's best to talk to them about whatever is bother you, but in a way that don't blame them or try to make them feel guilty, as that may lead to them feeling attacked and getting defensive.

Thoughts about this? I feel like there are some good principles here that I'm not articulating very well. What does this make you think of, relationship-wise or not?

Playing the Game

When talking with friends about dating, there's a lot of talk about "the game" - the struggle to appear less interested than you are in an effort to make the other person more interested. There are plenty of books out there that talk about this, and it seems that everyone who is interested in someone thinks about it. And now there is a study to support all. Here's the abstract:

This research qualifies a social psychological truism: that people like others who like them (the reciprocity principle). College women viewed the Facebook profiles of four male students who had previously seen their profiles. They were told that the men (a) liked them a lot, (b) liked them only an average amount, or (c) liked them either a lot or an average amount (uncertain condition). Comparison of the first two conditions yielded results consistent with the reciprocity principle. Participants were more attracted to men who liked them a lot than to men who liked them an average amount. Results for the uncertain condition, however, were consistent with research on the pleasures of uncertainty. Participants in the uncertain condition were most attracted to the men-even more attracted than were participants who were told that the men liked them a lot. Uncertain participants reported thinking about the men the most, and this increased their attraction toward the men.     (source) (via MR)

 So what's a guy (or girl) to do then? Playing the game feels lame and fake. It's also hard to strike a balance between being nice and acting not interested.

I think that the key is confidence. If you're confident with who you are and about where you're at in life, you can be interested without coming across as overbearing, you won't seem as "needy," and relationships won't be as high-pressure, as you're not using your love life as a measuring stick of your self worth.

I guess one other takeaway from the study is that if you're not going to play the game (or just aren't very good at it), let the other person know that you're interested, so they see you as someone in category A instead of B.

Other thoughts about how to apply (or get around) the findings of the study without being fake / manipulative?

Geneology, I am doing it...

A recent study showed that "thinking about our ancestors boosts our performance on intelligence tests."

An initial study involved 80 undergrads spending five minutes thinking about either their fifteenth century ancestors, their great-grandparents or a recent shopping trip. Afterwards, those students in the two ancestor conditions were more confident about their likely performance in future exams, an effect that seemed to be mediated by their feeling more in control of their lives.

Three further studies showed that thinking or writing about their recent or distant ancestors led students to actually perform better on a range of intelligence tests, including verbal and spatial tasks (in one test, students who thought about their distant ancestors scored an average of 14 out of 16, compared with an average of 10 out of 16 among controls). The ancestor benefit was mediated partly by students attempting more answers . . . .

These benefits weren't displayed by students in control conditions that involved writing about themselves or about close friends. Moreover, the ancestor effect exerted its benefit even when students were asked to think about negative aspects of their ancestors.

Full story here.

Quality quotes - challenges

"Everyone has their own challenges--some of them are chosen, some of them are not, and some are sort of hand-picked at first but then end up being entirely nonreturnable once in their hand."

This is a from a friend's blog (which is always a great read and a pretty accurate reflection of life in law school). So true. One thing I've been learning the last few years is that we can learn and grow from all of our challenges, no matter which of the above three types they are.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you an bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twister by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to be broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
ANd risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
ANd lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

Compliments

I was thinking more about our need to be heard, recognized, and acknowledged, specifically, about how I can better hear, recognize, and acknowledge those around me. I realized that giving someone a compliment is probably the easiest way to do recognize them and help them feel acknowledged and appreciated. I always knew that compliments were important, but had never really thought about how a compliment is really just acknowledging someone else or something that he / she does.

While all compliments are great, those that are specific help others feel especially recognized and appreciated. Saying "you're always so helpful" is nice, but saying "it was great how you ______" or "I love how you ________," referring to specific instances, helps even more.

And now that I this out, those compliments sound contrived. I guess that's because they are.

Heard, Recognized, Acknowledged.

There is something inside of each of us that longs to be heard, recognized, and acknowledged. Whenever I feel that others don't know what's going on in my life but am not really ready to talk about it with anyone in particular, I get this sudden desire to go update my facebook status. Or change my profile picture to match my mood. Or tweet something that hints about how I'm feeling. Or blog. I think that the desire to be heard, recognized, and acknowledged is what drives use of all that social networking stuff.

Feeling heard, recognized, and acknowledged is also important in relationships. And I would add feeling appreciated. When I do something nice for someone I care about, I don't expect them to reciprocate or change how they act towards me or owe me or anything. But I love it when they recognize what I did and I can see that it made them happy. It's even better when they still acknowledge and appreciate what I did a few days later.

Finally, I've always thought that mutual respect is important in relationships. Thinking about all the rest of this, I realized that if you respect someone you will recognize them, listen to them, and acknowledge them. So, to improve your relationships, make an effort to hear, recognize, acknowledge, and appreciate those around you. And if you feel that someone else doesn't hear, recognize, or acknowledge you, well, that's good to recognize. Maybe when you talk to them about why things aren't quite working in your relationship, you describe why with greater specificity.

Asking for Advice

Three insights (from MR) about advice - 

 "You don't know what a person really thinks until you hear his or her advice.  Along these lines, if you really want to know what a person thinks, ask for advice and he or she will open up. "

"The advice-giving mode mobilizes insights which otherwise remain dormant, perhaps for fear of falsification or ridicule or of actually influencing people. "

Interesting. And I can see the truth in both of these quotes. I often hesitate to give advice because I don't want others to feel like I'm trying to control them or influence their life. If others ask me for advice, however, I'm much more likely to give it. It's also much easier to give advice if asked a good, specific question. Here's another quote that reflects the fear I had about giving advice:

Often we do not trust people until we hear their advice.  We suspect in any case that they wish to control us, and until we know what they have in mind, we remain wary.  Sometimes it is necessary to give advice -- even pointless advice -- to establish trust.

Really interesting. I've never thought about the relationship between giving and receiving advice and how much we trust someone. Also, as a side note, it seems to me that guys give advice more than girls want to hear it. At least that seems to be the stereotype.

What do you think about giving advice to establish trust? How can you do that without coming across and controlling?

Helping other communicate

Recently I wrote about communicating in relationships. Since then, I've thought about how you can help others open up and communicate their feelings with you. As I was brainstorming, I realized that I already wrote about this back in September. As always, feel free to comment.

The value of communication in relationships

On Christmas Eve we watched the old Christmas classic White Christmas. It's a quality flick, especially if you fast forward through the boring songs and only listen to the good ones. There are also lots of examples of the value of communication in relationships hidden throughout the movie

If you haven't seen it in a while, you might not remember these scenes. But the principles are always applicable. Betty and Bob's relationship (it sounds like those names are made up, and I guess they are. They just weren't too creative when writing the script I guess) almost went down the tubes (with Bob having no idea why) because Betty didn't communicate.

So what can we learn about communication from this movie?

1. Don't listen to gossip. And if you hear some, don't rely on it to form your opinions of others. You wouldn't want someone to do that to you.
   
2. If you hear/suspect/see something negative about someone you care about, before changing how you act towards them, talk about it. Maybe that thing isn't true. Or maybe they aren't aware about how it comes across to others. Or maybe they just need to see their actions from another perspective. At the very least, they would know why you started acting differently.
3. Give others the benefit of the doubt. We all make mistakes. You have. They have. Once again, you may just be  misinterpreting things.
4. Recognize the value of communication. Recognizing that the only thing that you could lose when communicating openly, honestly, and sincerely is your pride. Sure, it might confirm that your suspicions about the other person are true, but that gives you valuable information about them and also lets them know how their behavior affects you. Another barrier to communicating is just that it's hard. That's ok. All you need to do to start is...  
   
5. Make an effort to communicate. When I started writing this post, I was going to say that Betty was a terrible communicator. Then I realized that really she isn't a terrible communicator, she just didn't even try to communicate. Sure, her actions communicated "I'm not interested in you," but really that wasn't they issue at all. The message she sent wasn't consistent with her thoughts, probably because she didn't...
6.  Remember that other people can't read your mind. This one is super important. Because it's true. If you just start acting differently, they probably won't know why. It won't change anything, and expecting them to know why you're upset certainly won't help the situation.

This is just a quick summary, and I know there are a number of other points that could be added to the list. What would you add? I also know (from personal experience) that applying these principles is much harder than listing them. Do any of these stand out or remind you of any life experiences? Comment away!