Getting clear and current

A rule of thumb to work through misunderstandings and mistakes

I thought I’d share a story and a rule for dynamic and intimate relationships from my past leadership training.

It’s a concept that when described to you will make complete sense and will empower you to create more dynamic relationships with anyone (including your own audience).

It’s called Getting Clear and Getting Current.

When I used to get coached all the time, this was something my coaches would say to me. “Get clear and current!” It was a motto and a medicine.

That’s because over time, in all our relationships, things happen and build up over time. They affect our perception of one another, and we start to see each other in a negative light of the shadow.

Or in my case… the monster.

But there’s something we can do to remediate the situation, but only if we’re willing to do the hard work to repair the dynamism.

What it means to get clear

There was a sub-chapter in Romancing the Shadow by Connie Zweig that illustrates this idea perfectly.

It’s called Talking French and Turkish.

Here’s what I mean.

When we have a conversation with anyone, there’s a conversation we have verbally and non-verbally. French is a verbal conversation, and Turkish is nonverbal. Oftentimes, we can think we’re talking French to someone who understands it, but in fact, all they hear is Turkish.

Here’s an example.

One time I had a client so excited to sign up for my Outcome Of One™ brand coaching program. Everything started off really great, but about the second week into coaching when I was giving her feedback in French, all she heard was Turkish.

To her, something about my nonverbal language sent off Turkish messages to her: I was insensitive, pushing her to go too fast, and not thinking about where she was coming from. To me, I was challenging her to take on more exercises and encouraging her to reach out for help through Telegram chat in French. But all she heard was Turkish that day.

The third week went by like this, and the fourth week. After a month of conversations, she no longer wanted to continue. I was surprised since she seemed to be taking to the program well enough, so I asked her what was going on.

Then she unleashed paragraphs of messages about the truth of all her thoughts and projections about me.

From what I knew, we had agreed to a coaching agreement in French. But to her, she only could understand me through Turkish. At the end of the day, we weren’t talking to one another and missed out on fundamental communication and trust.

I’m telling you, I wish she had expressed those feelings on day one because then we could have gotten clear from the get-go. But since we didn’t and she bottled it up, her feelings built one on top of another until she felt like she couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to avoid talking altogether with me. There wasn’t much else I could do.

This is the process of getting clear—messy as it was. Even if it’s not reciprocated, it’s about having the courage to say what’s bothering you and taking responsibility for what you might have done to add to your own pain or someone else’s.

But what about getting current?

What it means to get current

I honestly never thought I would hear from this client again.

But I was wrong.

A few months later, she texted me apologizing for her behavior.

She deeply regretted how she behaved and how that contributed to making it impossible to coach her. She explained how she was reliving her past trauma and that I had done nothing wrong. And she even thanked me for helping her through her branding problems since she was in a better place because of it all.

Then she asked if we could meet.

I had to think for a second. In my mind, I was clear with her. I’m glad she processed her pain and was in a better place personally and professionally, and I felt honored she felt the need to apologize.

But I had no desire to meet.

In my heart, the process of getting current with her and not knowing where it would lead was unnecessary.

There’s a list of things she could have done or asked for. She could either decide to say the same apology on a conference call, ask if she could do something for me, ask me to do something for her, or she’d ask to do coaching again.

And none of those were things I felt were a good use of her time or mine.

This is because she’d have to get current with me.

Getting current is the process you take to make sure a relationship is in good standing to know where the two of you go from here on out.

That can look like a lot of things.

It might mean the other person gets clear as well. It could be an apology or an action taken to alleviate the pain and encourage forgiveness. And it could be a series of actions to start to repair that trust so the dynamic feeling between the two of you is restored.

Becoming current requires the hard work of both parties surrendering to what you’ll need to do to return to goodness no matter the relationship you’re in, be it a family member, a friend, a colleague, or another creator, or even your relationship to things that hold energy like money, the media, church, or anything else.

When I look back on that time about getting current with my client, there wasn’t anything owed. I didn’t want anything from her nor for either of us to feel any obligation towards each other. And I wanted us to both move forward and feel free to be happy and live our lives.

If fate brings us back together in the future, I’ll welcome her and hope to hear she’s done well for herself.

A form of intimacy that isn’t faked

You see, when we get into relationships, no matter who it is, we will always go through a process of speaking French and hearing Turkish. There will be plenty of misunderstandings along the way. But if you lean in with courage and commitment, you can achieve clarity and a current feeling of dynamism in them.

Can you imagine if all our relationships were held with that kind of regard? How much safer and kinder they’d be? What if we could have these kinds of relationships with creators or people where our relationship has been historically one-sided?

I think of being an audience member and I find this idea a bit radical. How much would creators feel closer to their audiences? How much would their audience feel close to them?

And that’s something I want to explore with you.

It may be too late for some, and they’ll unsubscribe in silence. I bid them adieu, no hard feelings.

But for the real ones… the ones who don’t mind a mistake here or there. The ones who don’t mind that I just disappear because they have compassion for our species and that life happens… I appreciate you. Something about you inspires me.

And I hope that God blesses me with the kind of creativity that inspires you and helps you open your eyes to the world with wonder, awe, gratitude, and praise that everything is still going round (even if life is crazy right now).

If you wish to stay clear and current about the topics I write about, consider following me on Medium and joining me in 🌴 The Brainforest.