 So the other day I met this girl and we were talking about dating and she said She's still too young to worry about getting into anything serious just yet. So I asked her oh around what age do you? You know start looking for something serious and she kind of got upset with me and then for the next five minutes She told me what a terrible person I was that I shouldn't be judging women like this and Telling them that they hit the wall when they're 30 and they can never meet anyone when they're 35 and and I kept trying to explain that. Oh, I was asking a question. I wasn't making a statement So at some point it was clear the conversation was not going anywhere else So I just said I'm sorry to have offended you. I gotta go So this all this animosity This anger in this conflict just kind of came out of nothing because she was responding to something that I didn't say And this is something I see happening a lot Like constantly and in my lifetime. I've seen it get harder and harder to avoid arguments with people So let me give you a super common example one person will say Everybody deserves respect and the other person says Respect needs to be earned not given and then they get an argument over who's right? No So who's right? Problem is both people are right or maybe that's not a problem Maybe that's not a problem. The problem is the people are fighting over something where they probably agree Because they're talking about two different things now. They're both using the word respect because when you communicate with someone it's tedious and unrealistic to explain every word of every statement and then explain your explanations and clarify and you know go through all This make sure no one could possibly misinterpret. It's just too tedious to do that So we rely on each other to understand what we're saying So let's look at their statements and presume that both people are making sense What are they trying to say? Everybody deserves respect. Well, are they saying that everybody Deserves your trust you should trust anyone with your baby If someone drives up in a car and says hey, I'm a total stranger get in my car. Let's go somewhere Should you give them the respect of trusting them and getting them? No, that's not what they're talking about They're talking about basic human respect You shouldn't go around treating people like slaves. You shouldn't shove dog poo in people's faces You shouldn't kick them down the stairs basic human respect You should give people a little bit of kindness a bit of patience give them a little bit of benefit of doubt Give people basic human respect. I think people can generally agree on that Okay, now what's the other person saying? Respect needs to be earned not given well Do you need to earn the right to not have poo shoved in your face? No, it doesn't really make sense That's not the kind of respect they're talking about. They're talking about a level of respect that requires trust so a stranger comes up to Your child and says hey get in my car. Let's go somewhere. No, you're not gonna trust them with that You you would trust someone that who's earned that trust a Trusted friend. Yeah, you can get in their car. This is a trusted friend. No problem You can give them that level of respect because they've earned it Right, so both people are making are making perfect sense And there's no reason for them to be in this argument because when they're talking about respect the one person saying everybody deserves basic human respect and the other person is saying You have to earn trust trust isn't just given But because they're using the same word it's easy to misinterpret, so let's presume that both people are being insane idiots Everybody deserves basic or everybody deserves respect. Oh, so you should just trust anyone with your baby If someone just comes up to you and says hey, loan me a hundred dollars. I'll pay you back tomorrow You should just trust them with that So And the other person says well respect needs to be earned. Oh, so I need to earn The the respect of I say trust respect needs to be earned So I need to earn the respect of people not not pushing me down the stairs or stabbing me in the face I need to earn that See it's very easy to Misinterpret what people are saying Because you can interpret what someone is saying a hundred different ways based on your presumptions about the person And about what they're saying if you go around presuming that everyone's being a jerk then all you're gonna hear is people being jerks So 50% of communication maybe not 50% but half-ish of communication is the responsibility of the person talking and The other half of the responsibility responsibility belongs to the person listening So you have to say something that's understandable, and then the person listening has to try to understand it and too often One of those jobs is not being done. Usually it's the person listening and Not trying to understand they're dropping the ball on that Now I've been thinking about this a lot because it's I've definitely Done this myself. I'm not just sitting here telling everyone you're doing terrible No, this is something that I've done, too. I want to try to do it less I want to try to do a better job of understanding and And even when someone gets irritated I don't want to I don't want to just write them off So let me give you an example of the other day after I'd been thinking about this I was having a conversation with someone where I said something that immediately set them off and You know two weeks ago, I would have been like forget it But I was like no, no Let me let me try to explain in a way that this person is going to hear and they're gonna understand and I did and It turns out we actually agreed on the thing That we were about to get in an argument over and then we had an interesting conversation And that was very encouraging Now With the first example with this girl who was upset with me for asking a question I don't know that anything I could have said Would have gotten through to her would have made her listen However, I do know that even though I was standing there saying the words explaining to her That I was asking a question not making a statement I'd already presumed in my head that she wasn't going to listen and maybe By presuming she wasn't going to listen. I Was somehow conveying to her that she wasn't going to listen basically inviting her to misinterpret me