Positive Visualization: The emotional you.

In difficult conversations, it's not unusual to be filled or flooded with negative emotions:
dread, fear, confusion, sadness, powerlessness, inadequacy, etc.

In this positive visualization approach, it's a chance to identify feelings you'd prefer to have:
calm, confidence, adequacy, strength, presence, patience, etc.

If you couple these positive emotions with your positive physical visualization and a breathing exercise you can begin to create a positive self-fulfilling prophecy.

Another tip: when you think about a past or future challenging conversation tune-in to your positive visualization and take a few slow, deep breaths (slow exhale).

Positive visualization: The physical you.

The physical you in a tough communication situation will have...
relaxed muscles, regular and deep breathing, slow heart-rate, normal skin tempturature, etc.
Develop your own physical self-visualization based on this model.

Next: The emotional you.

Visualization plus relaxation.

This visualization, or pre-visualization works well to help foster a positive self-fulfilling prophecy.

In other words, through this process we replace what might be a negative visualization of difficult conversations and a negative self-fulfilling prophecy with a positive one.

Coupling this pre-vis. activity with a relaxation technique such as deep, abdominal breathing can increase its effectiveness.

Visualization.

Your self-description, or visualization might include:
I'm calm and confident, not defensive.
I'm able to acknowledge my partner's point of view.
I can ask for a "time-out" as needed.

Keeping our balance.

In regard to my last post:
A good first step is to decide how we feel and what we do when responding (not reacting) to our partner in a tough discussion.
Write a brief description of this and keep it in mind when contemplating your future conversations.

Balance and the Communication Tightrope

Obviously, walking a tightrope requires balance.
Balance requires the ability to maintain calm, presence of mind and a low center of gravity.

Communicating about a difficult topic with our partner will challenge our
ability to maintain these same elements of balance. Unbalanced, we risk a
drop into defensiveness and other unproductive moves.

So, how to maintain calm, presence and centeredness becomes the important question.
How do you keep balanced in a tough situation, or conversation?