August 28, 2007This Week in the World - a flair for the dramatic
She could push my buttons like no one else. Yet I went relatively untriggered during a four day visit last week.
I gained the awareness I needed to bridge our communication while preparing for my most recent teleseminar, How to Talk to Your Communication Opposite. (Check back for the CD to become available.)
She didn’t change – I did. I listened with the awareness that she has a different communication style from mine. She’s more dramatic and figurative than I am. I decided to put my logic aside and to stop taking her so literally.
It was the best visit I remember ever. I look forward to the next.
Learn about how it all unfolded in my article: The Logician and the Dramatist: Learning How Not to React
I invite you to read that article and comment here.
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What a fun story. Had I but known, I’d have had some great fun with this at the San Francisco seminar I attended a few years back.
Is Helen by any chance from the South? We southerners love to engage in overblown hyperbole. It adds a lot of flavor to some rather funny stories.
I’m really happy you found a way to enjoy Helen!
Comment by Ron Pulliam — August 28, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
My name really is Helen, and I’m not the Helen in the story! In fact, I’m more the Meryl communication style. I have a friend who is a “drama queen”, and I used to react by becoming less and less responsive, until I realized she had just as much right to her communication style as I had to mine. Reminding myself of that lets me enjoy my friend’s company, much like your experience with “Helen”, Meryl. As my mother used to tell me, it would be a boring old world if we were all the same!
Helen Wilkie
http://howtowriteabusinessletter.blogspot.com
Comment by Helen Wilkie — August 29, 2007 @ 11:07 am
Yes, yes Ron, Helen is from the south. I moved to Nashville from Minneapolis when I was 11 and didn’t know what hit me. Now, some decades later, I’m starting to decipher it all.
Helen, I will say that it’s on my list to tell the stories of how I adapt to people who are more literal than I am. I’ve found them challenging over the years as well!
Thanks for your posts!
Meryl
Comment by merylrunion — August 30, 2007 @ 3:46 pm