We are the ones who kill our communication.

It is not the other person who makes us passive-aggressive. It is not the fault of our co-worker who made us retaliate in kind. It is not our partner’s fault that we have lost ourselves amid aggression.

Aggression is an inside job.

I’m not sure why, but when we don’t like what we hear from the other person, we feel as if we are threatened. We feel if we are not aggressive we will not get our point across. And worse, we believe that we are weak if we use any other means of communicating other than the one we have gotten used to.

I am slowly learning that I don’t have to be aggressive to communicate well with others.

Empathy is glorious. Compassion and mindfulness have a better taste than trying to find faults in the other person’s opinion.

Exercising empathy is the antidote to selfishness, to pettiness and to not taking things personally.

Blame is a form of aggression towards the person you are talking to but mostly it is aggression towards yourself.

Nothing is more dis-empowering than not being responsible.

Before you dive into battle and essentially give your control to the other person, pause. Think for a moment. Take a deep breath.

Your perception is not a reality. What you are perceiving is not what the one you are talking to is perceiving.

We are strung together by our beliefs, by our experiences, and by our character. We think the other person should think and feel like us.

Which is faulty thinking.

The more you practice aggressive communication, the less you listen and the less you learn from the other person.

And when you are eager to speak, you never listen.

Put the tenor of the fight back where it belongs.

Conversations are not about “winning.” Actually arguing with others is boring. Conversations are about learning.

So, recognize when to fold your arguments. Ask yourself,

“Will this thing that I am fighting about matter after a year or even 6 months?”

In the long run, the things that we fight about and spend so much energy are not important at all.

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To your inspirations,

Banchi