In my childhood home, there was an upstairs hallway that had three bedrooms, a bathroom, a small closet, and a larger closet. “Upstairs” is a bit of a misnomer as when you entered the house, you either went downstairs (9 steps) or upstairs (2 steps).
The small closet had a bunch of knick-knacky things and a bottle of 3-in-1 oil. It was like Frank’s Hot Sauce - “I put that $#!t on everything”. Something not working? 3-in-1. Noisy? 3-in-1. Trouble moving it? 3-in-1. Like WD-40 but for in the house.
While packing for our recent move, I found a super old bottle of 3-in-1 that had masking tape over the spout instead of the lid. It had been sitting in a container labeled “misc” for years and years. While there was lots of nostalgia, I had trouble remembering when the last time was that I actually used it. So I threw it out.
Fast forward to the other night. While we are slowly settling into our new place, my brain is still trying to understand and accept the different sense stimuli - mainly noises, smells, and which direction ACTUALLY is my room. One of those “get used to” things is the main bathroom door. It squeaks like f#!k. None of the other doors do, just that one. I had mostly grown accustomed to it, and was trying to fall asleep. For whatever reason the bathroom was in high demand that night. Just when I was about to drift off, somebody would enter or exit the bathroom. Squeak. Squeeaak. Squeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaak.
Argh.
I eventually fell asleep. When I woke up, I was all like “Why the hell don’t I oil it?” I was most definitely not going to use WD-40 as that smell, contained indoors, would drive me crazy and then I remembered - THREE-IN-ONE!!
I went to my storage box in the storage room (we have a storage room - such delight!!) but alas, I remembered/discovered that I threw the old one out RIGHT BEFORE I needed it (reinforcing my belief as to why I will never throw out that box-of-cables-that-will-one-day-be-useful). I immediately went to Amazon to buy some and then paused - support local, am I really going to get a delivery guy to bring me a small can of oil, etc. etc. I emptied my cart and logged it as “I must pick some up soon”.
Later on that day I was doing errands (finally returning “Night Circus” to the library which was like 10 weeks overdue but no late charges - what a enthralling book), I drove by Home Hardware and I remembered! I pulled over, went inside, and as much as I wanted to buy the large tin, I bought the small one. I need kudos.
I spent 9 minutes and the door was utterly silent. So good. I slept like a peaceful, satiated, healthy adult last night.
This post is starting to sound like modern-day online recipes - I don’t need the backstory, just gimme the recipe.
“The squeaky wheel gets the grease”. That saying, or some iteration of it, is super common both personally and in business. Meaning, if you want attention, you need to make some noise. In a perfect world, through regular communication, proactive dialogue, and regular “maintenance” that may not be necessary. However, in our (social) media bombarded society, this isn’t the case. Relationships and interactions suffer because of it.
Attention is just another way of saying “to be heard or seen”.
“Am I worthwhile?”
“Do I have value?”
“Are my thoughts and feelings valid?”
“Am I acknowledged as a person?”
“Am I loved?”
People that complain repeatedly about the same thing, all the time, drive me nuts. I think I have room for when it’s clearly due to dementia, mental health challenges or other, identifiable reasons. However, when I know they have the answer to their problem/situation/thing and they keep on complaining about it, it drives me away instead of drawing me closer.
The flip-side, of course, is that I feel that way with my therapist sometimes. I feel like I’m complaining/sharing the same thing over and over and over and I should know better. Fortunate for me, she knows her stuff and gently (usually - lol) corrects my underlying assumptions and normalizes my feelings, acknowledges what I said, has my back, and provides suggestions on processing what I’m going through.
While it’s not necessarily a 1:1 comparison as she gets paid to help me, it provides me some clues for when I have that “argh” with other people. What are they trying to say? What is the underlying issue?
Now what if I change how I listen and instead of getting irritated about hearing about the same thing one more time (while nodding my head and drifting off), I ask questions, acknowledge what they’re saying, and invite them to take it a different direction?
3-in-1
Attention - give it.
Acknowledge - what was said.
Ask - good questions.