The Foggy Grounds of Connection

Hello dear, how are you doing?

Do you have all you need to read a thoughtful consideration of a topic I find lately swirling in my head?

The world often feels like a hazy landscape, shrouded in a thick fog of uncertainty. This fog seeps into our interactions, making it challenging to initiate conversations and forge meaningful connections. We stumble through social situations, unsure of how to navigate the unclear terrain, hesitant to reach out and bridge the distance between ourselves and others.

Sound familiar? You're not alone (surprise :D). And if it does not, let’s celebrate and please, extend your hand to others you find wandering endlessly in the fog.

I do identify as an introvert who’s having quite a challenge in initiating connections. What is quite funny is, if you look through my work resume, you might be a bit, well, surprised to see I’ve actually worked in the world of sales, management, and coaching. The thing is, in particular types of settings where I either feel confident or pushed to bridge the distance, I can do it really, really well and build the trust and rapport pretty quickly.

Put me into a room full of people I do not know, coaching conference, and I’ll be lost until someone finds me. Even when I had psychotherapy session before where we literally did set an action for me to initiate conversation, we talked it through and through and I felt ready, oh how I felt ready. Well, you can guess the rest of the story :D Me awkwardly standing at the table during the coffee break, unable to make it, not frozen to the place, but unable to make the move. Put me into a room with triathlon club members I am in, feels much better, those are folks I swim with nearly every second day, and I still in many cases won’t be the first one to speak and initiate conversation. What about you? What do you feel in similar situations? Like a fish in the water or rather as a fish trying to fly through the air (and yes, yes yes, I know there are flying fish :D) ? What do you do to initiate the connection? Who could help you in that?

This difficulty in connecting stems, apart of other things, from a variety of personas in us, in our own saboteurs. According to Shirzad Chamine, we all have Judge and then some mix of the following companions: Avoider, Pleaser, Controller, Hyper-Achiever, Hyper-Rational, Hyper-Vigilant, Restless, Stickler and Victim . In some of us, they lead us to overthink our words, second-guess ourselves and be afraid of saying the wrong thing. This internal struggle can paralyse us, preventing us from taking the first step towards connection.

Feels heavy, does it not? Hey, you know what? The challenges of connecting on foggy grounds also present an opportunity for growth. How do you ensure we do not get lost in the fog all alone? Either we have so strong beacon of light that breaks it, or we simply hold hands. Most of us have at least that one person who we can call a really good friend, we can fall back to our family or, as crazy as it sounds, we can ask or pay someone to help us out. Even a single human being holding our hand helps us to be able to embrace the uncertainty and start walking the path of learning to navigate the unknown with courage and compassion. Just imagine, the ever growing line of people in your life, holding hands, venturing into the fog, finding the lost and lonely souls and giving them a hand.

“One of the most surprising findings in the literature has been that these acts benefit the giver as much as, if not more than, the receiver,” said Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard Chan School. (source)

In the words of the poet John Donne, "No man is an island." And I would add, in a fog, you do not know if you’ve reached an island or a continent. You do not know whether you’ll have another opportunity, if you do not grab a hand of the person you’ve found because of “reasons”, how long will you keep walking in circles until you find another?

So, recognise when your saboteurs are speaking to you, let them talk, they are important, but then do not feel compelled to act in that way, look on it from a different angle and for the “**** sake, just go and try” :-). By learning to catch our saboteurs and repeat over and over and over and over again, you’ll train the muscles of your Sage and eventually, achieve your goals.

Aaaand yeah now I get to eat my soup as we say and do that as well. My fellow saboteurs Judge, High-Achiever, Judge, Pleaser and Victim, meet Sage :).

What are you, dear reader, doing to initiate new connections? What helped you to learn that? Would you have a suggestion, an advice or rather a fitting question to ask ? Let’s walk together.

Be well dear reader, your fellow human Ondra ;)