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It’s Good to Talk By Heather Howarth BT says it’s good to talk. We say it is even better to Talk. So says the advertising speech of the carphone warehouse. They are onto a winner in catching our eyes and ears and convincing us to buy their mobile phone talk time (packages) as 70% of our waking hours are spent in communication. 33% of this time is devoted to talking. This element of our time becomes very important, for talk brings people together in a relationship. The avenue of speech goes beyond just the exchange of words or information. Through talk we can express our feelings, convey our emotions, clarify our thinking, reinforce our ideas, and make contact with others. It is a pleasant way of passing time, getting to know one another, releasing tension, and expressing opinions. The most basic function of speaking, then, is not the giving of information, but the establishing of a relationship with others. The quality of this relationship will depend a great deal on the ability of each person to express himself verbally. John Powell, in his book Why I am Afraid to Tell You Who I Am, describes 5 levels on which we can communicate, and an understanding of these levels is essential. Level 5: Small Talk. At this level shallow conversation takes place, such as “How are you?” “What have you been doing?” “How are things going?” Such conversation borders on the meaningless, but it can sometimes be better than embarrassed silence. Level 4: Factual Conversation. At this level, information is shared, but there are no personal comments along with it. You tell what has happened but do not reveal how you feel about it. Level 3: Ideas and Opinions. Real intimacy begins here, for on this level you risk exposing your own thoughts, feelings and opinions. Level 2: Feelings and Emotions. Communication on this level describes what is going on inside of you – how you feel about your partner or a situation. You verbalise feelings or frustration, anger, resentment or happiness. Level 1: Deep Insight. Rare insightful moments will occur when you are perfectly in tune with one another in understanding, depth and emotional satisfaction. Usually a deep experience or something deeply personal is related. Communication about such experiences often makes a deep impression on both parties and enriches the relationship. In a society when the family is so fractured perhaps we should not be surprised at how important the mobile phone has become. Everyone needs to communicate and dialling a number is a frequent way of contacting a listening ear and an opportunity to go beyond the level of “small talk” to that of “deep insight”. Yet it is the inability to take time and really listen, not only to hear, what is being said which is a major cause of family break down and the break up of friendships. Perhaps the Carphone Warehouse “Talk Talk” advertising campaign is only half right. To really communicate successfully it should state, “It’s good to talk, but to listen and talk is even better”. Effective Speaking Rules.
Rules for Effective Listening.
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Relating in the Work Place By Dr Jennifer Knight who has worked in a US State Parliament for six years. There is no disputing it, women are nurturers. Mostly we are the ones who accompany children on their first day to school, take the cat to the vet, dispense hugs, encouragement, put plasters on scraped knees and broken hearts, listen to spelling lists and piano scales, cook for sick neighbours, extended family members and friends. It is just something we do. It is all part and parcel of how we relate. As significant numbers of women move into the world of work we are bringing with us our particular way of relating. We now not only nurture our families, both immediate and extended, our friends and our children's friends, we now nurture those we work with, particularly those we supervise. We ensure the birthdays of colleagues are celebrated. We liven up staff meetings with home baked muffins. We cover for a work colleague when she has to take the day off because her youngster has the 'flu. As the distinctly female mode of relating slowly infiltrates the corporate world, it is making the work place a softer, more caring and humane place to be. When women go to work, we take with us all those attributes that come from being nurturers, one of which is our ability to talk. Let's face it. Most of us talk a lot. We talk to our partners when they are tired; we talk to our children when they would rather be watching television; we talk to our neighbours, whether they are over the back fence, across the road or just next door. At work that which we do so well has been given a fancy name. Women in the work place no longer chat, talk, or gossip. We now 'network'. Books have been written and seminars conducted to ensure this art is fully utilized. Probably because we talk so much, women have also been the peace-makers. We would much rather talk a problem through than have it fought out in either the lounge room or the courtroom. These skills are now called ‘negotiation’; executives are to be trained in 'Alternative Dispute Resolution' techniques. Once again, that which we do naturally is being recognized as strength, a resource to be recognized, tapped and utilized. Women have always looked out for others. Within the world of work this is now formally known as 'mentoring'. I am fortunate to have two female mentors. I regularly have lunch with both of these women. We chat about all sorts of non-work related things, look at each other's holiday photos and swap recipes. But these women also give me professional help. They let me know if they see job advertisements they think I may be interested in; they are happy to read my CV whenever it is updated; they provide encouragement and affirmation. They can do these things because they understand my work environment in a way non-work related friends do not. If the way women relate has impacted upon the work place, what about the influence women who are Christians have at work. Christians—be they men or women—have a responsibility to relate caringly and lovingly to their work colleagues. Admittedly it is not always easy to do so when there are tight deadlines, limited resources and cranky work colleagues resentful of female supervisors. But it is our responsibility nonetheless. Like so many, I had been told that if I lived a different lifestyle, my work mates would be so intrigued they would ask what made my life unique and that would be the ideal entree for one-to-one evangelism. I am not sure where I have gone wrong but, after ten years in the work place I have yet to be asked why I don't drink alcohol or eat meat. That could be because so many of my colleagues neither smoke, drink alcohol nor eat meat. Today the questions which serve as an introduction to Christianity take on a different form and often times I have been caught off guard and failed to recognize them for what they actually are. Rather than ask why 1 don't eat meat, 1 have been asked about the spiritual development of a colleague's two-year-old daughter. Having very bitter childhood memories of institutionalized religion she didn’t want me to suggest the child be taken to the local Sunday School. On more than one occasion, a work mate has sought counsel on a very sticky moral dilemma involving financial arrangements and members of Parliament. Then what do you do when the Cabinet Minister you work for instructs you to write three politically correct abortion speeches to be read out in the House in less than 18 hours time. The questions and issues begin to sound like the television show 'Hypothetical', but this is real life and colleagues are grappling with real issues and looking for relevant answers which they can live with. There are no black and white answers to these situations. In some ways, 1 would rather be asked why I don't drink alcohol! As Christian women we bring an added dimension to those attributes that come readily to women. It is our responsibility, for example, to conduct negotiations, whether they are formal or informal, in ways that are fair and just. In networking we have a chance to encourage and accept unreservedly. Mentoring younger women provides a natural opportunity to talk on spiritual matters. The way women relate in the work place is different to men. It is not necessarily better or worse, just different. The way Christians relate in the work place should be different (and better) to the ways of their secular colleagues. Female strengths added to Christian values make a powerful combination; Christian women in the work place have an opportunity to relate in ways that are genuinely supportive and unconditionally caring. Our potential to impact to work place is great. Adapted from the Association of Adventist Women's Newsletter. April 1995.
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Friendships are Vital to Health
Women respond to stress differently than men
do. Fortunately, we also have a better way to cope with it, that
is by talking with each other. But they may do even more. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning finding that has turned five decades of stress research—most of it on men - upside down. "Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, PhD, now an assistant professor of bio-behavioural health at Pennsylvania State University in State College and one of the study's authors. It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased by sabre-toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a
larger behavioural repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In
fact," says Dr Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin
is released as part of the stress response in a woman, it
buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend
children and gather with other women instead." It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr Klein, "that friends are helping us live longer." In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6- month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9- year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%. Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had. the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged. and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having a close friend or confidante was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight! And that's not all: when the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairment or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.
Yet if friends counter the stress that seems
to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us
healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to
find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles
researcher Ruth Ellen Josselson, PhD, co-author of Best Friends:
The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships
(Three Rivers Press, 1998). 'Every time we get overly busy with
work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships
with other women," explains Dr Josselson. " We push them right
to the back burner. That's really a mistake, because women are
such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another.
And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the
special kind of talk that women do when they're with other
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Let's Talk About It Who are we? Let's talk about it! Are we just a bunch of living cells controlled by our DNA, or are we more than that? Do we like Barbie, have a makers mark stamped on us? Were we as a woman, made to function in certain ways? I suppose you could say that it is who we are in the stages of life that often defines what we are:- baby, school girl, daughter, wage earner, mother, old age pensioner etc. But surely we are more than just that? Well there is one thing about us that is very obvious, there is nobody that has an exact double, twin or not, you and I are unique. In our uniqueness, as females, we do have many things in common that define our womanhood. There is one such facet which we will now explore, our ability to talk, gossip, that is, verbally communicate. Perhaps we should start with a basic question. Is it by accident that we women have the need to exchange in a verbal format, our thoughts? A good place to find an answer is in the book of 'beginnings' otherwise known in English as Genesis, the very first book of the Bible. In this books third chapter and verse 20, womanhood is epitomised in the creating and naming of the first woman, 'Eve'. The mother of all living. It is in this title for womanhood that Michelle Guiness in her book, Woman - The Full Story, published by Zondervan, explores and comes up with some remarkable insights. She says that, 'Mother of all Living' "is not an adequate translation of Eve's name". She may well be the means whereby man manages to procreate, but she is a great deal more than a walking reproductive system. In the Hebrew Scriptures the verb chavah is consistently tranlated 'to declare'. In other words the name given to woman has a verbal implication. It actually means 'spoken word of life'. Woman not only gives, she also speaks life to the man, and therefore to all of humanity she is created a communicator, instinctively relational. Generations later women are a living proof that God created them with the ability to communicate verbally. Men average 12000 words a day and women 25,000 words a day. Every time we talk on our mobile, chat over the garden fence, nag the spouse, catch up with workmates during the break, giggle and shout at playtime or do baby talk, we prove who God created us to be, natural communicators. Every time we open our mouth we are demonstrating that being a woman is not an evolutionary accident, but that we are created to be unique individuals with the joint ability to talk. No wonder we need a website to express our thoughts and words!
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