When it comes to communication, sometimes we miss the message. When I was 23, I went on the Sponge Bob Square Pants 4-D ride at Canada’s Wonderland – it was a big moment. How does this 40 something year old know the exact year he rode it? I went opening year. To know the opening year, am I that big a Sponge Bob fan? Nope. Did I love the ride that much? Not even close. Wikipedia is full of useless information. Before this ride I’d never watched Sponge Bob because I was too old for cartoons… or because it wasn’t Disney; one of those is true. That ride was my introduction to the pineapple under the sea and it turned out I was allergic. Being a 4-D ride the chairs moved and after riding roller coasters all morning and being fine, I was now suddenly very sick. I figured it was because I was dehydrated, but no. I later realized, I can’t handle shaky seats. My body was trying to tell me something and I didn’t get the message: “If you shake me, I’m going to throw up.” That’s a pretty clear message, and I missed it. In my brain, I was thinking, “If I can handle roller coasters, I can handle a kids’ ride.” Nope. I was very wrong. Even now, my body loves a good drop like on a big roller coaster, but shaking and any spinning makes me dangerous for anyone in the potential “splash” zone. Sadly, it took a number of very sick experiences for me to figure this out. Sometimes, messages don’t get through no matter how clear they are. (Is this what God is thinking about us not realizing how badly we’re destroying the planet with garbage? Did WALL-E teach us nothing? Yes, I watched that cartoon because it’s Disney and it doesn’t melt your brain like Bob the Sponge.)
In our world of over communication, it’s amazing how many messages get missed – even important ones. Unfortunately, sometimes our brain can’t grasp anymore information because that part of it is exhausted. Like any muscle, our ability to listen is limited – some more than others. I’m sure the ladies can think of someone with limited listening abilities. When it comes to communication, I find guys to be like sprinters. We go hard and we don’t go long. Women tend to be more like marathon runners; they can just go and go and when guys are toast, their wives are just finishing their warm up and getting ready for the main event: (disappointed wife) “Are you done already?” Yes, I’m talking about communication and not…you know… but God is consistent with how he’s made us. Women often think guys are terrible listeners, but we’re actually better than them… for short bursts – like a sprinter. That being said, if we’ve listened a lot at work that short burst becomes even shorter at home. Ask my wife. A guy’s brain is designed to focus on one thing and then move to another whereas a woman’s brain is designed to handle multiple things going on at once, which makes them naturally better at communicating longer and watching a brood of children. As a guy, I’ll make sure one child is safe… maybe. I might get distracted or the game I choose isn’t the safest: “But the kids love it when I do this with them.” At the same time, which gender do you think will naturally be quicker to get stressed out or overwhelmed doing too much? Women. Men tend to be better in emergency situations because we can focus for a burst and not think about less important things unlike women who have a harder time prioritizing what to focus on because they have so many things going on in their heads: “I need to pick up (blank), call (blank), clean (blank), remind (blank) and…” Our differences can balance us or drive us crazy.
Regardless of whether you’re more a listening sprinter or marathonist, we all have a certain social stamina. This means we can only handle so much social interaction before we’re done with people. Just like running, the more we practice, the longer we can go… to a point. Everyone will have a maximum for how much socializing they can handle and different situations will be more wearing than others. For instance, when I first started as a youth pastor, running a Friday night event would exhaust me, and Saturday would be a recovery day. After a couple months, however, I was barely fazed by a Friday night. The next challenge was running weekend retreats. The first couple I ran exhausted me for days after until a couple years in and once again, I was barely fazed… minus the lack of sleep. When you’re in leadership a certain pressure is put on you that can be wearing. What’s interesting, is at this point in my life, when I’m in leadership, I have higher social stamina than if I’m at an event and supposed to just mingle – that kills me. That’s, of course, why I bring games with me places… or I did before I had kids and became busy keeping them from destroying the place – not my favourite game.
I first got a glimpse of social stamina when I was in my early twenties. When my sister was in her early twenties, she moved to Toronto because she got a job there as a teacher. Two years later she got a new position in Hamilton, which meant she moved back home to my parents – like a winner (writes the guy who didn’t leave until he was 36). Before she left for Toronto, she was always out socializing and running events like an extreme socialite would, but now she was coming home from her day at school and hiding in her room. It was a complete flip and I didn’t understand. Did something happen to her in Toronto? Yes, she got a job that was socially exhausting. She was no longer the student with lots of social energy left after school. She was teacher who was burnt out after a day of talking (and entertaining) students and coworkers. To add to this exhaustion, she no longer lived by herself; she now had family around who’d asked her questions about her day unless she was hiding in her room. As time passed, her stamina improved and she got out more after work and she became better at handling not having her own place.
Most people are big on the whole introvert versus extrovert idea, but I’m more about social stamina. Even the biggest introvert needs to be interacting with people. We’re created to need human interaction. We need each other. No one person can do everything. Even if they had the abilities to do everything, they wouldn’t have the time. We need people and by interacting with others we can increase our ability to put up with them. (Was that too negative a way of saying that?) We can be worn out in different ways like by our role (e.g. leader, worker, mingler, etc), the number of people around (e.g. I prefer groups of three), the kinds of people (e.g. family versus strangers), how stimulating the environment is (e.g. music, noise, and screens can cause sensory overload), the activity associated to the event (e.g. dinner, playing games, just mingling, etc), how good the people are (good people are easier to handle), or how tired we already are mentally and physically. Being tired can give us the idea that we’re too worn out to socialize, but that’s not necessarily the case. Being tired in one of the ways (i.e. socially, mentally, and physically) might make us feel too tired to do the other two, but that’s not true. For instance, when my brother first started as an accountant, he was too mentally tired to want to work out, but as he pushed himself (and had me begging him to join me), he learned his body was grateful to be used psychically after a long mentally challenging day. I know I ran into the same problem when I started as a therapist. It was hard to get out for a jog because my head was tired, but when I started making it part of my routine, my body was grateful to be used and my brain found it healing. Sometimes the best thing for us is the hardest to do. This same thing can happen to people who work physical jobs: (worker) “I’m too tired to think or socialize now.” (me) “Nope, that’s your brain lying to you.” By pushing yourself to use your brain in a different way, it’ll thank you.
This idea of social stamina connects to the previous lessons on how people can be hiders. They can lie and say they’re shy or too tired to interact with people, but that’s all an excuse not to push themselves to do something uncomfortable. If someone’s social stamina is so low they claim they can’t talk to others, they actually need to start talking to others all the more in order to grow their pathetically small social stamina.
If you consider social stamina on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being no social stamina and 10 being the most you can personally have, we have the power to grow it. Sure, my brother’s 10 is about my 7 because I’ve always been more drawn to people, and my 10 is like a 2 compared to some women (I don’t get how social some people can be), but we all should be growing and/or maintaining a healthy level of social stamina. Why? Because it’s healthy.
And how do you grow your social stamina? By interacting with people. Just like growing a muscle, you have to do more than what’s easy. We also need to be careful not to waste our socializing on social media, which is second rate socializing.
This week may you consider what healthy social stamina looks like for you.
Rev Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)