Zip It

Psst. I’ve got a secret for you: You don’t have to say everything you think.

In my opinion, the single best strategy you can employ to have more harmonious, enjoyable relationships is to zip it.

Zip. It.

Now, I want to be careful not to imply that you should never speak your mind. Au contraire. Speaking your mind is imperative in any healthy relationship. What I am saying is that when emotions are high and you’re about to speak…don’t. Zip it, at least for the moment.

What can happen in that moment? Well, first and foremost, you can create a bit of space. And in that space you have options.

You could take a breath, ideally a deep belly breath. That breath will activate your parasympathetic nervous system and interrupt the chemical cascade of emotion flowing through your bloodstream making you temporarily insane. In that moment, you just might be able to access clear thinking.

You could ask yourself: “Will what I’m about to say be helpful right now?” I used this question just yesterday as I longed to remind my husband that we would not be in the nasty situation we were in had he not waited until the last minute to take care of something there was ample time to do. Even though I knew it was factually accurate, I decided against twisting the knife. Our day was challenging enough without me sprinkling in my version of “I told you so.”

Another option? You can make whatever it is that you’re experiencing not a big deal in your mind. Release the judgment that it should be any different. When you accept that the situation is what it is, there’s no reason to zip it because there’s just nothing there anymore longing to spill out of your mouth.

Ultimately, you can decide if whatever you were going to say is important enough to actually say or not. If it is, you’ll have much better results when you’re able to have the conversation more neutrally and with kinder words.

Taking a moment, creating that space is well worth the effort. You get to avoid creating wreckage. Those words you can never take back. The escalation that damages all parties involved. The sting that lingers in the recipient of your emotional reaction; sometimes for minutes, sometimes forever.

To foster this new behavior, I invite you to join me in what I call the “Zip It Project.” I assigned it to a client two weeks ago and she came to her session today with the following report:

“We (husband and kids) were preparing to leave for a camping trip for the holiday weekend and it was taking forever. Because of the Zip It Project, I intentionally kept my comments to myself. By telling myself to zip it, it was like I dis-empowered that part of me. I didn’t get annoyed inside of me, so I didn’t make comments that would annoy my husband. Since he wasn’t annoyed,  he didn’t say things to annoy me back. That whole cycle was short-circuited. We had the BEST camping trip ever.”

She said she thought this assignment was about being kinder and making life better for her husband, which of course it was. What she didn’t see coming was that it made HER life better: “I was less annoyed inside of me. I didn’t realize how much negativity I was putting out into the world and how that, in itself, was irritating me and keeping me in a constant state of frustration.”

I saw cause to assign the Zip It Project to another client just a few hours ago. He and his wife have been creating a lot of unnecessary wreckage and if there’s something he can do, he’s willing to try. In fact, he loves a challenge and got excited just thinking how difficult this will be for him. My kind of client.

What about you? Are you ready to Zip It?

Join us, will you?