Author: By Heather Campbell
The opportunities we have at our finger tips to communicate at all times are overwhelming. We send texts, emails and direct messages on our phones. We “like” what others are doing on our computers. We post our latest and greatest achievements on multiple sites. Some of us are WhatsAppers and TikTokkers. When we’re really feeling crazy, we might use our phone as an actual phone and try to call people to have a conversation. And if you’re old school, maybe you even have a landline. All of us have multiple ways we can communicate 24-7. So many ways to try to interact with family, friends and strangers.
And one result is that we also have multiple ways to feel completely ignored.
We’ve all had the situation when others haven’t responded to our texts, emails, or picked up the phone in a timeline we expected. When that happens, it creates a horrible silence. A deafening silence.
What do we infuse into that stifling quiet? Negativity. We fill in the unanswered with answers of our own, and they are almost always pessimistic. Gloomy. Sometimes even fatalistic. We go to the worst case scenarios in our mind when we aren’t given immediate responses.
Why? It’s human nature. First, there’s that whole worrying about sabertooth tigers thing that we’ve never quite outgrown. We worry about potential bad stuff that could be out there because it’s been known to kill us. So, we seemingly smartly go to the idea that if we stay very vigilant about what might be lurking out there, maybe we can avoid it. The unknown is to be feared. Silence is a lot of unknown.
The next challenge we can add onto our evolutionary flight or flight proclivity, is another taxing human condition, negativity bias. It is our tendency to retain negative information significantly more than the positive. This starts early in our lives. Research has shown babies as young as three months old holding onto negative stimulations when assessing relationships with others. Since we hold onto the bad rather than remembering the good, when we have silence and need to fill it, we go to what we remember most – the dismal and devastating. It’s genetic.
So, if we’re hardwired to be scared of the quiet, and there’s a good chance we’re going to fill that silence with thoughts that are bad, what do we do? The good news is, you’ve already started to change the scenario! You’re becoming aware of the potential negative situation, which means you can do something about it. Becoming cognizant of the problem is the first piece in the puzzle to changing your response. Recognizing, “Oh, I’m about to fill this silence with negativity,” is the first step to changing things.
What’s next? When the silence starts and you feel the horrible assumptions creeping in, ask yourself “what do I really know?” Here’s an example:
I recently woke up at my normal time, 530am EST, and of course, looked at my phone. My oldest had called three times from the West Coast at 130am my time. Three times. No message. I could hear my heart beating in the silence.
I picked up my husband’s phone and there was one call at 130. Picked up my other child’s phone and there was another. Again, no messages.
So here I stood, 3,000 miles away from my child, who had called us five times at 130 in the morning. I knew I probably wouldn’t hear from them again for at least another six hours with the time change and their sleeping habits. My mind was racing. Car crash? Hospital?
I took a breath and asked myself, what do I actually know? And the answer was, my child was trying to get a hold of us. That’s all I knew. Of course I wanted to think the worst, but it could actually be exciting news that they wanted to share. Maybe they got a really good grade, and wanted to celebrate it. Maybe they won the lottery (doubtful). All I knew was my child was trying to get a hold of me.
So, I texted them saying, “Hi. Looks like you wanted to talk. Please try again as soon as you can, and if you don’t get a hold of me, leave a message about why you called. Love you.” And then I walked the dog, did some exercises, and tried to meditate. I did anything I could to not stare at my phone or fall into the worrying rabbithole. Hours later when we did get to talk, my kid explained they had been trying to work through an issue, and not being able to get a hold of me because of the time change made them even more upset, so then they kept trying in frustration. Finally, they realized they could reach out to an adult in their life who lived on the West Coast, and they solved the problem and went to bed.
No car crash. No hospital.
So in the moments of silence when you feel the worst entering your mind, ask yourself, what do you really know? Not what you are assuming is going on, but actually know.
Next, take a breath. We’ve all done this naturally; now it’s time to do it on purpose. Deep breathing changes the chemical makeup of our bodies. It reverses the effects of the stress hormone and can lessen anxiety and depression. So in the moments where silence is leading you down the “they think I suck path” or the “are they dead path” (yes, that is what I first thought at 530am. I’m human!), take a deep breath in and a deep breath out. A great technique to use is called Box Breathing. You’ll literally think of your breath as moving around a box:
- Slowly count to four as you breathe in through your nose.
- Hold the breath while counting to four.
- Exhale through your nose for four counts.
- Again, hold your breath and count to four.
- Repeat for three to four rounds.
And finally, if you get to a point where you’re done with the silence, and need to take action to get clarification, come in with a positive presumptive close. Assume the best, and reach out with that assumption. Did you email someone and they haven’t responded? Try again starting with, “I am guessing you’ve been busy. Totally get that. Bringing my email back to the top of your inbox in the hopes we can . . .” Have you called and they haven’t called back? Try a text that gives grace: “Hoping you’re well. Guessing you’re busy. Trying to talk with you soon. Let me know when we might be able to do that.”
We think we’ve made communication easier with all the tools now at our disposal, and in many ways we have. But we’ve also created a proliferation of inputs that don’t always drive the outputs we want, and instead create silence. We have to remember we are human, and have tendencies that come into play when we’re not communicated to in the way we’re hoping, and those tendencies don’t help us. What happens next in the communication is ours to control, and being aware of that fact can change everything. I hope you give yourself a break when you go down that negative path from silence, and remember that you’re doing it because you’re human. It’s going to happen. But you have ways to stop it from ruining your day or taking over. You are in control, so take control!
In moments of possible negative silence:
- Ask yourself, “What do I really know?”
- Take a breath.
- And if you get to the point where you want to get clarification or want to take more action, use a positive presumptive approach to ask for clarification without assuming the worst.
I can’t hear what you’re thinking right now after you read this, but I’m going to assume the best.
Bio
Heather Campbell’s purpose in life is to help people be seen, heard, and celebrated. As a writer, CEO, motivational public speaker, and engaging strategic expert, she’s worked to achieve this goal by opening people up to possibilities, framing pathways for achievement, and igniting actions.
Heather’s goal in writing her book was to entertain and inspire people, and she’s doing exactly that: “In ‘Good is Amazing,’ Heather Campbell’s relatable storytelling, humor, and insight guide readers to an alternative to societal achievement. Instead, Campbell invites us to stop striving and notice when we are content, celebrating our enoughness and engendering a deeper sense of fulfillment in our lives.” – Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Life
As CEO & Co-founder of Ready Set Recover, Heather empowers people to get ready for and recover from surgery in a better way by focusing on all of the non clinical aspects of surgery that no one talks about and in doing so, helps not only patients, but also surgeons, hospitals and insurance. Prior to being an entrepreneur, she was an intrapreneur, holding senior leadership roles in media companies such as VP Synergy and Brand integration at ESPN and VP of Alchemy at Audacy. Creating and supporting community has also been a staple in her life. She’s the recipient of the “Going the Extra Mile” Volunteer Award from Big Brothers Big Sisters, and while Chair of the School and Education Committee in District 2 of NYC, she helped found a public middle school. Heather competed for and won a full merit scholarship for her MBA at NYU, and has her BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (Go, Badgers!). After almost thirty years in NYC, she now lives in the Berkshires with her husband, her two children, and their dog, Tobin.
Contact:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-a-campbell/
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