Living life with grace & harmony

 

Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
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Christian Counselor

Naturopathic Physician

Political Philosopher & Author

 

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1414 NE 109th Ave.

Portland, Oregon

(503) 255-9500
naturedox@qwest.net
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Positive Communication Strategies
By: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND

 

Give Respect: Communicate in ways that show respect for the other person's worth as a human being.  We are all children of God, we each have a unique eternal spirit; and are inherently loved as special and necessary.  God hates our sin, rebellion, and alienation, but He loves the essence of our being and longs for us to return to right relationship.  We are called to love our fellow man as God loves us.  Compassion and forgiveness release our hearts to love again.  

 

Appreciate: Say, “thank you” and give sincere praise often.  The weight of life opposing us is great, and we need the encouragement of edification, compliments, and appreciation to inspire hope and faith.  The desire for appreciation reflects God’s heart and is the foundation of our desire to receive it from each other.  Appreciation is the reward for having made a positive difference in establishing righteousness and goodness is the world.  The human heart highly values appreciation.

 

Be Transparent: Be honest and open about your feelings, needs, perspectives, reasons, and points of reactivity.  In a marriage relationship, the implicit context should be transparency and vulnerability.  Do not use personal revelations as ammunition to express frustration, prove unfairness, or validate victimization.  These unguarded postures prosper in the space of trust and the expectation of being treated with love and respect.  Use revelation of flaws as a call for sympathy, and a request for assistance in transformation, overcoming, and developing new habits.

 

Mutually Sacrifice: Mutually give, sacrifice, and meet needs.  If your mate really loves something, then give it to him/her.  The non-negotiable, deeply desired needs must be satisfied if they are Godly drives.  The sacrifice associated with meeting his her/highest needs should be a joyous experience of giving.  The basic issues of life such as spending time, listening attentively, sharing experiences are the foundations of a life together that satisfies the heart.  A romantic threshold of satisfied-needs triggers a desire for closeness, forgiveness, and intimate physical contact.

 

Use Manners: Be tactful, considerate, and courteous.  These behaviors and relational postures are all within the family of “speaking the truth with love”.  Love produces the feelings of pleasure, bonded connectedness, and trust.  Enroll the other person in adopting new standards and self-change, rather than intimidate them with the pressures of painful negative emotions such as anger and fear.  

 

Use Humor: Recognize the value of humor and seriousness.  Avoid destructive teasing that imprints a person with negative character traits; he may be unable to resist the self-image and thus act out that belief about himself.  Humor should be used to illuminate erroneous thinking, speech, and action in a pleasant confrontation.  It should bring mild discomfort, but communication of the confrontation’s message should encourage and stimulate change.  Humor places tragedy, boredom, and difficult circumstances in a perspective that pleasantly compares our expectation and experience with truth and facts.  Humor should mobilize us to action by showing the absurdity of believing and acting on error.  Good-hearted confrontational humor looks more at the foolishness of the belief or action than the foolishness of the person.

Proper Seriousness and sobriety acknowledges the gravity of life where real life consequences include pain, disappointment, sorrow, and loss.  We live in a world not of our own making, and our feelings give meaning and gravity to the experiences of life.  God has established rules that govern the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and behavioral world.  Pain is the signal God had given us that appears as a natural consequence of violating those rules and running against their boundaries.  The experience of pain gives edges to the domain of our freedom and choices, and brings sobriety to life as we are forcefully reminded that we must bow to its rules.

 

Let Peace and Love be your Guides: Let Godliness, peace, and love be your guide.  When in doubt about how to respond in a situation, choose the options that most closely reflect these life-qualities.  Look at the long-term cost versus benefit of any venture before committing to a choice, path, or goal.  The Holy Spirit speaks into our hearts and gives us leading and direction, but we must ultimately chose and make those inner urgings real.

 

Learn from Life: Learn as much as possible from every life situation.  Bad circumstances can have good lessons embedded within them if you wait, look, and reframe the bad situations into an opportunity to develop a better and more Godly character.  The purpose of this life journey is ultimately about relationship with God.  The experience of life is its own reward, and ultimately that relationship is the only reward.  But, within that relationship between self and life/God, there are experiences which produce pleasure and pain.  The painful experiences guide us away from some element of a wrongly lived life.  But, the wrong may not be about my error, it can be a commission or omission on any level: self, others, society, past generations, or spiritual powers.  (John 9:2  And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.) The challenge of life is to live it as well/Godly as possible, and the reward will be the long term level of pleasure of position and circumstances while living in the relationship with God.

 

 

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