Final Thoughts: Communication

This month was intriguing for me and the teleclass illuminating. The essence of the month was separating your observations (the facts of a situation) from your evaluations (your opinion and feelings of a situation). So, I spent much of the month investigating my reasons behind negative evaluations (making negative assumptions or jumping to negative conclusions) and was intrigued by a piece I found that discussed the reason as low self esteem in the area of the negative evaluations. So, if you have low self-esteem in your parenting, you could easily jump to a negative assumption about an innocent comment your mother made (when she was genuinely curious if you had enough sleep). If you have low self-esteem in your cooking, you might make an assumption about a face your husband made after taking a bite (when he was just concentrating to remember what he wanted to tell you earlier today.)
I did find that I do have low self-esteem in the areas of my negative evaluations. That knowledge has helped me tremendously curb my negativity and spend my energy building my self-esteem!
On the call, we discussed another reason we might make negative evaluations, when our basic needs aren’t being met. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, are overworked, not eating well, etc., it is much harder to stay in a positive state.
Marya also came up with a great third reason. You can read it here.