Darryl Davis and Amanda Peterson discuss how to be direct with people you care about without hurting them. They cover asking permission before sharing hard truths and staying kind even when feelings are messy.
For those of us that are learning how to be more direct because there's an intimacy, there's a directness, there's a trustworthiness, there's an honesty there and there's an economy there because it saves time and trouble. What are the things that we can do to practice that and to embody more of that directness and honesty and fierce directness. Not being savage or brutal, but being direct in the way that you, I think, have a strong understanding of.
The source of directness for me, without question, started in my childhood because of the pain of not being able to be direct. My mom was so perceptive about everyone but herself and could see other people's tone of voice, but not her own. And so not being direct equals suffering. And especially not being direct with some kind of open heartedness equals suffering. So in a certain way, there's no credit deserving, it's all gain. It's like the payoff is that you get to be direct. And when you start to see that you've suffered because you haven't been able to be direct or another person doesn't feel like they can be direct with you because you defend and you can see that that defending or that not being direct really hurts. That's sort of the first big step. It's a huge step. So you look for like right now you can look for the one area in your life where it's not easy for me to be direct with somebody important or I don't like it when people are direct with me in this certain place. And then you basically look back at your life and you say, what has that netted me? Have I really gained? And it's pretty obvious if you ask that question, you don't really gain inside, you lose. So seeing that's again the first step, the second step is you really naturally have a desire to want to be more direct. And so you start telling your friends or your lover or somebody in your family, here's the places where I'm not easily direct and will you challenge me more in that area? So you invite them to challenge you and you ask, are you interested in the same thing?
That seems critical, right? It's like, hey, how are we going to play here? Are you really interested? That seems to be critical because it really takes two.
It takes two. It definitely takes two. And it is like a new board game. Like you're saying, what are the ground rules? And if and when the person and you both say I'm in, then sort of establish a third ground rule which is let's be as kind as possible because we're not going to be able to handle being direct if it's feeling more like we're tearing each other up.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And once you have those few steps, then it becomes a bit like a slow growing snowball.
Say more. Go back to the kindness for a second. And what does kindness look like in directness?
So I'll break that down in steps, please. The first thing is you never assume, even if you have an agreement with this new ground rule, that you could just do it at will. Each time you want to share, you ask for permission. Every single time you ask for permission. And when we miss that step, which we will many times, we go back hopefully and apologize. Listen, I know I didn't ask you that time. So part of the kindness is always asking for permission.
It's so respectful.
So respectful. And you're asking for the other to do the same with you too, because a lot of people feel like, well, I can handle it, go ahead, you can just kind of give it to me whatever you want. But I haven't met many people that actually really like to be dumped on or like to be critiqued with impatience or aggression. I'd even been known to do that a few times myself. So then once that permission is granted and given, there's a vow, essentially like the Buddhist vowed for wanting to be harmless, where you might not be able to rise all the way to kindness, but at least you say, and you might even verbalize, or at least you think, I want to be at least harmless. At least I want to be harmless. So it's sort of like the beginning of kindness, but it's not so grandiose as to say, I'm just going to be wonderfully kind. So you do that. Now right along with that, let's say you're in a relationship and you're not even able to be fully harmless and you're feeling a little bit irritated. Then when you ask for permission, you say, listen, it's. That's something I'd really like to be able to share with you, but I'm a little bit irritated. So you acknowledge your present state and then you ask for permission and say, can you handle me being. Maybe I'll try not to be irritated or impatient, but can you handle that? So it's kind of you're asking for permission, but you're qualifying it, saying, and I'm not even going to come from a completely pure place. So that's part of kindness too.
