The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved (16 page)

You may very quickly find that both your inner and outer dialogue are littered with judgments. When I first tried this exercise, I was astounded and humbled by how many judgments enter into my heart and mind in the course of a single day. If this is what you discover, it may be helpful to break the day down into hours, repeating the mantra each and every hour: “For the next hour I will not judge anything that occurs.”

The ability to suspend judgment is an essential characteristic if we wish to explore the very depths of intimacy. The path that leads to intimacy is blocked to those who are unwilling or unable to practice nonjudgment.

C
RITICISM AND
C
ORRECTION

M

y eldest brother, Mark, is a national executive with a supermarket chain in Australia. Many years ago, he was managing a large store in the Melbourne area; one day, he was showing me around and we were discussing business models that are based on enormous volume and tiny profit margins. As we wandered through the store we came across a teenager who was stocking the shelves. I noticed my brother look and then look again, and then he turned to me and said, “Excuse me a minute, Matthew. Could you wait at the end of the aisle for me?”

As I walked away, I heard my brother masterfully tell the young man that he wasn’t packing the shelf properly. And then he got down on his hands and knees in the aisle, unpacked that portion of the shelf, and demonstrated how to do it properly. All the while, he was saying things like “You’re not in trouble”; “I’m not mad at you”; “Someone had to show me how to do this once.” Then Mark had the boy pack the other half of the space as he had just taught. Before he moved on, my brother asked the teenager how he was doing at school, which team he thought would win the football championship this year, and how his family was doing.

I learned a powerful lesson that day. Mark is a master with people; his patience is rare and extremely valuable. And his correction wasn’t judgmental and didn’t come across as critical. He didn’t just walk past and say, “That looks like crap!” or “Are you stupid? You’re doing that wrong!” That would have been destructive; Mark chose to build his employee up rather than tearing him down. He had to tear part of his employee’s work down, but he didn’t have to tear the person down.

There is a difference between correction and criticism.

Mark chose to correct his employee in a way that was instructional, practical, and devoid of ego. When the manager of a multimillion-dollar store is on his hands and knees in the middle of aisle nine, it’s not about ego. Mark reminded the young man that we all have to be taught things at some point. He sent me to wait at a distance because “you should never correct an employee in front of other people,” he told me later. “Why?” I asked. “It dents their pride, and pride is blinding. Once you have them thinking about their pride, their response is going to be pride-driven.”

The real genius was that Mark didn’t allow the correction to be a conversation unto itself. He used it to connect personally with one of his employees by progressing from the correction into a brief personal chat.

I have seen my brother exercise this same patience with some of my younger brothers as well as with his own children. It is something I have been trying long and hard to reproduce in my own life. The art of correcting people without producing a battle of egos is a valuable tool in relationships.

T
HE
V
ENOM OF
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OSSIP

O

ne of the most negative manifestations of the second level of intimacy is gossip. Gossip is defined as a trifling, an often groundless rumor, usually of a personal, sensational, or intimate nature, or just plain idle talk that casts aspersions upon the character of another person.

We all engage in gossip. Some of us gossip more than others, but the truth is we have all delighted in gossip at one time or another. It brings us a certain adolescent gladness to be in the know. Our egos are inflated and our pride elevated when we are able to tell someone something we know that they don’t know, but want to know.

Gossip may begin with facts, but usually is carried away very quickly by speculation into the realm of imagination. Through our speculations—or, even worse, our deceit—we can effortlessly cause enormous harm to other people.

Gossipmongers are cowards and are never true friends. A true friend is interested in helping other people become the-best-versions-of-themselves, but gossip doesn’t help anyone become a-better-version-of-himself. Far from it; gossip reduces the character of those who spread it, damages the character of those who listen to it, and often does irreparable damage to the reputation of the person being gossiped about.

Never speak in such a way as to induce your listener to think less of any person. Only open your mouth when it will help people to think better of others. Speak only when your words will help someone become the-best-version-of-themselves. Otherwise remain silent and recollected.

Each of these four maxims requires enormous restraint and discipline. But if you allow them to guide your speech and social interactions, all men and women of goodwill will hold you in the highest esteem.

Nobody likes being talked about behind her back. This is universally true, and yet we are all exposed to situations every day where people are speaking disparagingly about others. If we are to maintain our dignity and defend our integrity, we must learn to handle these social situations with grace and poise. Conversations that have deteriorated into gossip will not naturally return to more elevated subjects. Like water, conversations will run downhill unless we make conscious effort to see that they move in the direction of everyone’s best interest (that is, in the direction of our essential purpose).

If someone was being beaten up, I hope you wouldn’t stand by and just watch. Perhaps if you were small and weak in comparison to the attacker, you would not be able to physically do anything. But you would at least feel outraged and be able to call for help. Yet every day we stand by while people beat up on people verbally. We stand by and do nothing; perhaps worse still, we don’t even feel outraged.

All that is necessary for gossip to triumph is for good men and women to say nothing.

Consider the following ways of defusing a situation of gossip-mongering.

Our first attempt to move a conversation away from gossip may be simply to say, “Perhaps we don’t have all the facts.” If that doesn’t shift the conversation in a more positive direction, you may try saying, “Perhaps we should discuss this next time we are with Mike so that he has an opportunity to tell us what actually happened.” And if this does not work, you may say, “I have done many things in my life that I wish I had not; perhaps Mike just had a weak moment,” or “Maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt; I know that if it was me, I sure would like to be given the benefit of the doubt.” If all these attempts fail and you know the subject of the gossip, it always helps to remind people, “I will never forget how Mike picked my kids up from practice every week for months, and took them to dinner, when my wife was sick. I will always be grateful to him for that.”

Consider how a small fire can set a forest ablaze. The tongue is also a fire. It is so easy to injure a person’s reputation in a way that he or she may never be able to recover from. I have been the subject of much gossip and many rumors, some of them malicious. Gossip can hurt us in a way that is impossible to describe; it causes people who may never have met us to judge us and it robs us of an opportunity to make a first impression, because people have had their first impression formed by the gossip they were exposed to.

How do you feel when people speak about you behind your back?

Overcoming gossip in our lives is no easy feat. It can be quite surprising to realize how often we speak about others or partake in a conversation where other people are gossiping. We are then faced with the challenge of learning the social art of avoiding occasions of gossip. And gossip is surprisingly difficult to avoid even when you are making a concerted effort to do so.

Perhaps the great spiritual leaders of the past can help us with this predicament. One of the great spiritual disciplines, which exists in almost all the major traditional and nontraditional religions and spiritualities, is fasting. Fasting is usually associated with food and is performed to free us from cravings and from slavery to the body. Fasting brings clarity to the mind and spirit and allows us to see more clearly who we are and who we are capable of being.

In the previous section we discussed fasting from judgment, and prior to that we discussed fasting from complaining, although we did not discuss them in these terms. Fasting is a traditional spiritual practice usually relating to food, but in essence it can be applied to anything. Perhaps you would like to try this exercise: For the next week, fast from speaking about other people. Fast from gossip. Don’t listen to gossip, don’t create gossip, and in the coming weeks, months, and years, develop a reputation that gossip is unacceptable in your company.

Some things we fast from temporarily. Other things we fast from in order to form a better habit in our lives. In the case of judgment and gossip, it would be our hope never to return to these destructive ways of thinking and speaking.

If everything should be embraced or rejected according to how it impacts our essential purpose and the purpose of the people around us, then before we ever open our mouths we should ask ourselves: Is what I am about to say going to help anyone become the-best-version-of-himself or herself?

Those of us who are serious about becoming the-best-version-of-ourselves don’t have time for gossip. It is the fruit of idleness, and at best a waste of time.

U
NDERPAID AND
U
NDERAPPRECIATED

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eople almost universally believe that they are underpaid and underappreciated. One of the most powerful ways to use our gift of speech is to offer honest words of appreciation to the people we love, and to the people who help us in large and small ways as we journey through life.

Who doesn’t like feeling appreciated? Appreciation seems to make all our hard work and effort seem worth it. Appreciation gives people wings to fly. Nothing encourages and empowers people to go the extra mile like appreciation.

In part one of this book, we discussed the powerful impact appreciation can have on you personally and on the way you see the world and your life. Now let us reflect further on the powerful impact appreciation can have on other people.

In your personal relationships, appreciation is just one way of letting people know that you are grateful for all the ways they enrich your life, and that you care. After all, when you do things for others and they don’t in any way express their appreciation, you conclude from their inaction that they are ungrateful and that they don’t care.

Let’s explore some simple everyday examples.

“Thanks for doing the ironing; there’s nothing like putting on one of your freshly ironed shirts.”

“I really appreciated you taking the children to school this morning; that extra twenty minutes was just what I needed to get organized for the day.”

“Thanks for taking me out for dinner tonight. I had a rough day and I really didn’t feel like cooking.”

“I love it when you call me in the middle of the day, just to see how my day is going.”

“Thanks for listening tonight, I needed to talk through that stuff.”

“I was thinking today, I’d be lost without you, and I am so grateful for all the ways you look out for me.”

“Thank you for not saying anything this afternoon. I know you had warned me about that and I really appreciate that you bit your tongue and didn’t say, ‘I told you so,’ when you had every reason to.”

“I really appreciated the way you gently challenged me to work out today even though I didn’t feel like it. I felt so much better about myself when I was done working out.”

The spoken word is powerful, and so is the written word. Sometimes our written appreciation can have an enormous impact on the people we love. Did you ever write your parents a letter telling them how much you appreciated all they have done for you? When was the last time you wrote your spouse a love letter?

At every moment a relationship is being driven by positive energy or negative energy. Expressing our appreciation is one way we can inject a very positive energy into our relationships.

The same truth also has powerful applications in the workplace, where appreciation is more valuable than gold, especially if you are managing other people. It stands to reason that employees who feel appreciated are going to be more dedicated to their work than employees who don’t feel appreciated. “Underpaid and underappreciated” is a common cry in the workplace, and while we may have little control over the pay scale, appreciation is free.

Even if you are a manager, you probably only have one opportunity a year to give your employees a raise. In many cases, when you do give people a raise, they think you are only compensating them for underpaying them up to that point. On the other hand, you can express your appreciation often. And numerous studies show that there is now a trend away from financial compensation as the main driver in career and job selection. More and more, people are looking for situations where they feel they are making a contribution, situations where they feel their input will be appreciated. In many cases, people are willing to take home a smaller paycheck in exchange. So, as I was saying, appreciation is more valuable than gold—literally. I am not, of course, suggesting that we pay people less because we appreciate them. But in a corporate climate where one of the great challenges is to attract and keep great people, we should not overlook the charismatic power of appreciation. Similarly, as we seek to attract and retain customers, beyond a good product or service nothing is more powerful than convincing customers that they are genuinely appreciated.