September 30, 2008This Week in the World ~ Clean out your verbal and emotional closets

Filed under: This Week in the World by merylrunion |

I couldn’t stand it any longer – I have way too much stuff and I had to get rid of some. The time had come to clean my closets.

I started by pulling out a thing or two here and there. That wasn’t getting me the purge I needed, so I change my approach. I pulled everything out and only “invited” what I really wanted back in. As a result, about half of my things are about to go to charity. I love the new found room in my closets.

Do the same thing with your emotional and communication choices. Throw out all your habitual responses, and only allow the ones that serve you back in.

I did this many years ago. I decided that my use of sarcasm, victim language and self-depreciation had to go, along with the emotions that fueled them. With those habitual responses out of the way, my communication and emotional “closets” were pretty empty. I didn’t know what to “wear.” Gradually I built an emotional and communication “wardrobe” I like.

What communication and emotional responses should you purge? And if you do, what would you replace them with? If you couldn’t, say, strike out in anger, what would you do instead? If you couldn’t, say, take a comment personally, what would you do instead? It’s a great exercise that could transform the way you operate.