4 Quick Ways to Be Less Demanding and More Awesome
by Travis Hellstrom
Being too demanding of ourselves and others can be a real downer.
You know the person:
- Every time you talk with them you feel a little stressed out afterward.
- They don't inspire you as much as they make you feel like you now have a bunch of stuff to do after talking to them.
- Your heartbeat rises a little when they call on the phone.
- You want to avoid the meeting that you have set up with them.
- Even just being around them is a little stressful. Not a lot, just a little.
Unfortunately we can be those people with others without even knowing it.
If somebody is delaying your meeting with them, or hasn't returned your calls recently, or seems a little on edge when you talk, it's possible that this could be the culprit.
Becoming Less Demanding
Here a 4 quick ways to be less demanding:
1. Don't Start the Conversation With a List
If you start out a conversation with a list of things you want the other person to do, that's a one-way street. "Okay, so I want you to do this, this and this. Okay? Great!" It might feel great for you, but that pretty much sucks on the other end.
2. Seek First to Understand
This is a timeless lesson from Covey's 7 Habits. When we approach a conversation truly wanting to understand the other person they will notice. It's actually pretty rare in this day and age to find someone who really listens. Be that person.
3. Focus on the Other Person
Throughout the conversation think about what will make the other person happy. What are they telling you that they want?
Repeat back to them what you think they're saying would make their life happier, more easy, more enjoyable. If it's possible for you to assist, suggest ways that you might be able to help them get those things.
4. Have Fun
Ideally we hang out with people that inspire us and that we have fun being around. Certainly that's why other people would want to be around us.
If it's not very fun for either person, then something really needs to change. Laugh. Go outside. Change it up. Play. Walk. Hike. Go somewhere nice for lunch. Enjoy each other's company. Call just to say hey.
Some Benefits
Doing these things is not only a gift to the other person it's also a gift to us. Here are some of the obvious benefits:
- Unplanned conversations can be fun, hilarious and surprising
- Truly listening to another person is very rewarding, allows us to reflect and open up, and makes us happier
- Helping another person feels great and returns to us many times over
- Who doesn't like having fun? Just having fun is fun!
You, Yourself and You
These are also gifts we can give ourselves more directly and even alone.
We can make less lists for ourselves and enjoy life more moment to moment, take time to meditate and listen to ourselves more deeply, focus on our dreams and allow ourselves time to reflect on what really matters to us, and we can go out to lunch, watch comedies, play outside with our pets, walk and hike alone or enjoy our own company.
I know that sounds kind of funny, but it's true.
When is the last time you enjoyed your own company?
Don't try all of these suggestions at once, just try one the next time you talk with someone. Or take today (Thanksgiving) to write to someone with these things in mind.
Have fun!
Keep Your Accounts on Your Thumbnail
by Travis Hellstrom
My good Peace Corps friend and advisor Judy shared a book with my in preparation for our Living Simply month coming this January for Advance Humanity. It's called Living a Simple Life and I've really enjoyed it.
It's written by a woman who took a step back from her fast-paced life (even her hobbies and free time were fast-paced if that tells you something) and tries to make her life with her husband more meaningful and less full of stuff.
I'm halfway through the book and one the things that's struck me is this notion of having 4 or 5 major priorities in your life. It reminds me of Henry David Thoreau's quote in Walden,
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.
In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
A simple life can be a life's work and I don't know anyone who wouldn't say, "Sure, I'd enjoy a little more simplicity in my life." Everything we are bombarded by on a daily basis begs us to take on just one more thing, just this one more. I hope that my writing can be a haven from that bombardment.
As I collaborate with others to continue to build Advance Humanity into a successful movement of everyday humanitarians worldwide, I'll also continue writing here to explore the personal side of trying to keep a simple life amidst such complexity.
Here are my ideal accounts on my thumbnail:
- Being a good man and husband
- Staying healthy and fit
- Being a writer
- Being a humanitarian
"The rule is to carry as little as possible." - Henry David Thoreau
Writing
by Travis Hellstrom
I began writing online in 2005 using blogger.
It was a wonderful experience and made a big impact on my life.
Writing online helped me explore my thoughts and experiences in a way I hadn't before. It also taught me that I enjoyed creating things online and sharing them with people. That is still true today.
Advance Humanity
I named my first blog Advance Humanity because, as I wrote in an article in 2005, it helped "define my principles, my values and in someway it helps define me." It's fun and admittedly a little embarrassing to look back at those articles from 8 years ago and remember where I was when I was writing them.
At the time I was in college trying to wrap my mind around my future. Medical school loomed ahead and a perfectly made path stretched out before me. Even though I was president of the pre-med honors society at the time and had done well enough on the entrance exams to be accepted into medical school, it was a path I chose not to take. I chose Peace Corps and, in some ways Advance Humanity, instead.
Growing
I wrote something in that entry that still strikes a chord with me,
"Stephen King used to have a desk in the center of his study so that he could go in and write for hours at a time. The huge problem with that, which he wrote about in his book On Writing, is that he was using life as a support system for writing. It’s the other way around, he said. Writing is a support system for life. Life is the goal, the adventure and the journey. Medical school isn’t, writing, music, none of that stuff is. I am living to live, to experience life fully in my own way, to grow in my own wisdom, and to learn to love better."
I like that.
I am still growing and I still enjoy writing.
I look forward to sharing that for a long time to come.
Incidentally, Advance Humanity is still growing as well.
I'll write more about that next time.
