Sometimes we’re not heard quite the way we think we are…

Something made me laugh today.

I’d just walked into the lounge feeling really pleased with something I’d achieved, so I said out loud…

“Excellent!”

A second later, Alexa cheerfully replied, “OK,” and promptly switched all the lights on.

There was a brief pause, a few raised eyebrows… and then we all burst out laughing.

Clearly Alexa either wasn’t listening properly, was trying to multitask, or had completely misunderstood what I’d said.

But afterwards, it got me thinking.

We’re probably more like Alexa than we’d care to admit.

Someone says something and we don’t just hear the words. Our brain interprets them.

As an example… think about somebody saying to you, “Can I have a word?”

For one person, that’s simply a question.

For someone else, their stomach drops and their immediate thought is, “What have I done wrong?”  (I know I’ve done that.)

They are the same words…. but a completely different story.

And that’s the interesting bit.

Because our interpretation doesn’t appear from nowhere. Our brains use what they already know… previous experiences, things we’ve been told, beliefs we’ve formed and patterns we’ve repeated … to make sense of what’s happening now.

Most of the time we don’t even realise it’s happening.

It’s one of the reasons we can find ourselves overthinking a conversation hours later, worrying what somebody thinks of us, holding back from an opportunity because we’re convinced we’re not ready, or lying awake replaying something that happened during the day.

The thought feels true, so we respond as though it is true.

And this is something I’m fascinated by in the work I do.

Rather than simply trying to push a thought away or tell ourselves to “think positively”, sometimes it’s much more useful to become curious about why our mind went there in the first place.

What has it learned?

What is it trying to protect us from?

And is that interpretation still useful today?

Because sometimes the story we’re responding to isn’t actually what’s happening now. It’s an old interpretation being applied to a new situation.

Alexa switched the lights on because she’d apparently heard something I hadn’t said.

Perhaps our own minds deserve the occasional…

“Hang on a minute. Is that really what happened?”

So here’s something to notice this week.

If you catch yourself assuming what somebody meant, worrying what someone thinks of you or replaying a conversation, pause before accepting your first interpretation as fact.

Shirley x