It’s Not About The Nail

Hey team. All right, so here we are, and I’m going to do something a little bit different. We’re here for a Wednesday Workshop, and this Wednesday Workshop is on communication. Some of you may have seen this before, and some of you may have not. I will give a few comments at the end, but I just wanted to do something a little bit fun, a little bit different than what we’ve ever done before. This is kind of a test run, so let me know how you think, what you think. All right, I’ll talk to you a little bit. Here we go. Are you ready? I hope so.

[Video Begins]

Woman Talking: “It’s just, that there’s all this pressure, and sometimes it feels like it’s right up on me. I can just feel it, literally feel it in my head, and it’s relentless. I don’t know if it’s going to stop. That’s the thing that scares me the most, is that I don’t know if it’s ever going to stop.”

Man Talking: “Yeah, but you do have a nail in your head.”

“It is not about the nail.”

“Are you sure? Because I mean, I’ll bet if we got that out of there…”

“Stop trying to fix it.”

“No, I’m not trying to fix it. I’m just pointing out that maybe the nail is causing…”

“You always do this. You always try to fix things when what I really need is for you to just listen.”

“See, I don’t think that is what you need. I think what you need is to get the nail.”

“You’re not even listening now.”

“Okay, fine. I will listen. Fine.”

“It’s just, sometimes it’s like there’s this achy… I don’t know what it is, and I’m not sleeping very well at all, and all my sweaters are snagged. I mean, all of them.”

“That sounds really hard.”

“It is. Thank you. Ow.”

“Oh, come on! If you would just…”

[Video Ends]

All right, team. So I don’t know what you thought about that. It’s not about the nail. Well, in a couple of months, 29 years of marriage. I can honestly say she’s right. It’s not about the nail. Communication is so, so important. A big piece of communication is how we listen. Do you listen to what is truly being said and from the heart of the person it’s coming from? Or are you waiting to interrupt them so that you can say what’s on your mind?

That’s a big piece, and sometimes, for some of us like me, it takes a long time. I spent a lot of time in my life and in my marriage not listening very well. And I spent a lot of time trying to fix it because I thought I had the best idea or the right idea or just an idea. And I didn’t do very much listening. I made a lot of mistakes, burned a lot of bridges relationship-wise. In my older age, I’m getting a little bit smarter, a little bit better at listening, or at least I’m trying to, and I’m making some progress. The people I associate with have been telling me that I’ve been doing a lot better job of it, and I probably have a lot more to do.

As you go from this Wednesday Workshop and you start thinking about how well are you listening, are you hearing the sender’s message, or are you just waiting to interrupt so that you can tell them what you think? A huge difference there, a big important difference.

All right, Wednesday Workshop is over. Remember to be valuable because nothing less will do, and I will talk to you guys next week. Bye. See.