If I asked you to act surprised right now, what would you do? Most of us would inhale sharply, pulling our head and shoulders back, and hold our breath. And that’s the problem. When we’re surprised, we trip the sympathetic nervous system activating our fight or flight response. Instead of being responsive we become reactive, and we simply don’t communicate well.
But you can’t help being surprised, right?
If you’re my husband, probably not. I have this really sadistic sense of humor and enjoy jumping out and scaring him whenever possible.
But outside of evil spouses, spiders and mice, I think a lot of our surprise is self-created.
It’s due, I think, to our expectations. We often create, ahead of time, a mental image about how things will be, or worse -how things should be- and then when life doesn’t conform to the fantasy we’ve created we end up surprised.
One way of dealing with surprise is to label- the more we know ahead of time, the less surprised, right? This happens whenever I trot out the cats and dogs analogy in one of my workshops. People immediately want to label themselves or others “cat” or “dog” and I can see why. It gives us a sense of control if we know what to expect. The problem is that people don’t stay in the neat little boxes we create- including ourselves.
No, the only way to reduce our surprise is to be present, -truly present- in the moment and adapt our behavior to the situation we’re facing. We can label behavior to assist us in knowing what might be helpful in various interactions, but labeling people just allows us to drop our awareness- if we label someone, we can stop thinking.
Nonverbal intelligence is what allows us to remain present. We’re rarely caught off guard because we don’t hold preconceived ideas of how people will or should act. Instead, we watch carefully and adjust so good communication can happen. When we reduce our surprise, we remain rational and calm, two ingredients essential for any successful exchange.
