EP 13: Why Net Neutral Should be the New Normal
If you're smart and work hard, but just aren't where or who you want to be, welcome to your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right? And choice. Let's get to it.
Alyssa Dver:
I was introduced to a term called “net neutral”. Net neutral. I was like, what is that? And the gentleman explaining to me so that most of the time something like 75-80% of communication is misconstrued because we think that it is something more than it is, in other words, somebody says something, and we think that it's aimed at us or otherwise intentionally designed to harm or do something to us. And most of the time people say and do things that are just thoughtless, mindless, have nothing to do with us. So net neutral.
You know, I challenge you to think about, was there an email recently? Or did somebody say something or not say something? And you went into that place, you're like, whoa, what did they mean? What did they mean? Why didn't they say that? Why did they say that you ruminate and pick it apart and overthink it? I do it all the time myself, right. And at the same time, I think if you sit back and think about how many emails or comments you've made recently, that you didn't really give a lot of thought about, that you didn't really think about how it would land with somebody else. Did it, would it offend them or upset them or not motivate them or whatever? You don't. You don't give it too much thought we can't we move too fast. We communicate too much. How many times have you given a presentation, or even contributed to a meeting and then gone back and be like, oh, my God, I can't believe I said that, or didn't say that. And yet, how many times if somebody said something or not said something that you didn't even notice, right? Like I mean, we can't even count those because we go into these places. And we have these communication interchanges. And sometimes we totally overthink, and sometimes we just let it pass through us. The good news is that term net neutral is telling me that most of the time people aren't paying attention. And I say that's the good news.
So let me give you an example, a real example of something that happened recently because I think it's, it really illustrates what I'm talking about. So, I have a good friend, her name is Amy. And Amy was really upset because she was trying to get the attention of another friend, Mary, making up these names, of course. And Mary wasn't responding to emails or text that Amy was sending. And we're trying to get Mary's attention for something. And Amy was feeling really, really rejected. Maybe Mary doesn't like me anymore. She's mad at me, it got so bad that Amy said to me, she must be really pissed off at me. And then started to create a story about why Mary was so mad at Amy. I didn't do this thing and she must be really pissed off at me, which is why she's not communicating. And I don't know what to do. And so, Amy went so far to say to me, I'm going to apologize to Mary and tell her I really didn't mean it. And I was like, timeout, timeout, Timeout. Timeout. Do you know, if Mary is really mad at you, or she just really busy? Well, Amy says, she usually responds to me really fast, and we're really good friends. And she would never do this. She must be really mad at me. Again, Amy, do you know for a fact that Mary's mad at you? Or maybe she's just really busy? I don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna do. So luckily, because I know, Mary as well. I reached out to Mary, and I was like, Is everything okay? And sure enough, Mary came back and said, Actually, no, she's dealing with some very significant family challenges. And she really is only able to answer things that are absolutely critical because she's overwhelmed between that and work. She's a very big job, very big, important job. And so, the things that we were asking that Amy and I were asking for her just weren't on top of the list of her priorities and she just didn't have the time and emotional ability to get back to us. So, when I told this to Amy, she was very relieved. Oh, good. Mary is not pissed at me. I said no, Mary's not pissed at us. But you know what, she probably could use our help.
So, in that simple story, which I have a feeling is as kind of general as I paint it in intentionally so that I didn't want to give away private information of either to friends, I think you can relate that these kinds of things happen all the time, you know, lack of communication or miscommunication. And then we assume things that get us into trouble. And in fact, not only get us into trouble, emotionally, we feel terrible, and frustrated, and sad, and all these emotions that are not very productive. But when that we don't communicate well back to that person or other people because we're so consumed in our own self-belief, if you will, Mary's mad at me. I'm a terrible person, I didn't do something that I should have. That's why she's not answering me. Instead of thinking, maybe Mary needs my help which is why she's not answering me. Women, yeah, we do this a lot. We create these excuses, or these reasons why people are treating us the way they are treating us or not treating us the way we want them to treat us. It's not to say that men don't do that, of course, they do that we do it to what they do to each other they do to women and it's all part of the communication challenge that I mentioned. But instead of putting the burden on somebody else to communicate better, instead of assuming a lot, maybe we can back off and remember, net neutral, most of the time, it's unintentional, it's thoughtless, they don't mean to do something, or they don't think to do something. Maybe that's just the way it is. It's nothing to do with what we did or didn't do ourselves.
So, two things I want you to think about next time you get that moment of, something's wrong, I didn't do something, or I suck, or they don't like me, right? That ultimate fear of rejection that triggers a confidence crisis that we think they're not answering me because I did something wrong, they don't like being there's two things that you can do to, to probably 10 things you can do, but there's two obvious things you can do. Take a break, I'll tell you what those are in just a minute.
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Okay, so I said there's two things that we can do first thing is obviously not jump to conclusion and reach back out to that person. Not in an accusatory way, hey, you haven't answered me what's up? You know, how many times have you gotten an email, I get them all the time people like putting this on top, your inbox, reality is I get about 1000 emails a day. So, unless it's really burning, or something I need done. Guess what your emails not getting answered, putting on top of the inbox doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to answer it. However, sometimes I want to get somebody's attention and they haven't answered me. I know that they're busy. But I do worry sometimes that they're not getting the message that it's in their spam folder. Right? Or that they've asked for something for me, and I got it right to them because they were on a time crunch and then I don't hear from them. And the question becomes, you know, do you have what you need? Or is there something else that you need, right? So again, making it more about the assumption that they're not getting back to you because they can't. Not because they don't want to. And trying to ask what I can do to make it easier to close this issue to communicate better. Alright, so taking the responsibility to do that, that's number one. Don't jump to conclusions that they're blowing you off because they want to. The second thing we can do, and I know you're going to think that I'm making more work for you, but it's not the case is try and be a better communicator yourself.
Now, why do this, why be more thoughtful? Why put more effort into thinking when I send something out, or I communicate verbally, that you actually think about how the other person is going to take it, that you think about how they're going to feel as a result of whatever you're saying or writing. That is a big responsibility that is a big effort, that may be a very big burden to ask, particularly with everything else you have going on with your life, I'll tell you why to do it, not only will it save the aggravation that somebody may feel that you've dissed them, create a whole other situation like the story I told you before, a lot of waste of time and energy trying to second guess what's going on. But you set that role model, you set the example, for that other person. You set in their mind, maybe it's very indirectly, but it does sink in, that this is what good communication looks like. And you express in a way that says, I actually care what I'm telling you what I'm writing to you, so that we minimize the chance for miscommunication. So that if you have a question about this, please let me know.
Again, if you think about the way all the brain science stuff works, I teach this in and out, you're probably sick of hearing it if you've listened to other podcasts and otherwise, is that fear of failure, or regret or rejection is what's gonna trigger a lack of confidence. So, if you go to send something before you send it, you say, if I were reading this from the other side, is there any chances this person is going to feel like I've accused them of failing, that I'm telling them that they're going to regret something they did or didn't do? Or am I going to somehow imply that I'm not going to like them, or other people might not like them. Because if you do that, you throw them into a confidence crisis. And that confidence crisis causes more pain for everybody, they're going to start to assume things, they're going to start to react to things, they're going to get defensive, and it's going to cost you more effort than it's worth.
So, spending an extra moment, and really thinking about how and what you're saying or typing, and how it's going to land in the target person's head, will actually save you a lot of aggravation, a lot of time, a lot of pain. My friends, the world would be so much more confident. If we took a little bit more time, just a little bit, maybe 30 seconds more to think about how our words, written or verbal, land in somebody's head. Maybe we can be that 20 or 30% that actually communicates clearly, profoundly, mindfully, and not cause the turmoil that miscommunication can often cause.
I love to hear your own stories. Always, please share if you are so generous to do that with me and others because the more, we know that net neutral is actually net normal, it actually helps build our confidence too. So, before we completely wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other episodes can be found on the website www.AmericanConfidenceInsitute.com/Podcast. I also want to remind you once again, that the best way to get confidence for yourself is to give it to others and you can do it so easily just by liking and sharing this episode on your favorite social media channels. You can even give me some confidence fuel by sending in any comments about the topics are covered, or ones you'd like me to consider for the future. So, for now, this is Alyssa Dver, thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
This podcast was produced by mindful media. All rights reserved by elicited here on the American Confidence Institute. Music written and performed by Jeff Weinstein.
