I Feel (insert emotion) When (insert behavior) Because (insert consequence)

Sounds easy, right?

Hoo Boy!  It's not. (Hoo Boy? There I go, dating myself back to the early days of Mad Magazine...)

What am I talking about? Why, 'I' Messages, of course. It sounds easy-- to phrase my desire to another person using only the word 'I', never the word 'you'. It is NOT easy to me-- it doesn't roll off the tongue. It isn't the first thing I think of. I ain't no good at it.

Let me try an example. Let's say I have a 10 year old daughter who wants a toy that I don't want her to have. We're at the toy store and after we leave, I notice she has the toy-- she has shoplifted it. 

How do I bring up the subject to her? Of course I'm angry, ashamed and disappointed-- these are not behaviors I'm proud of seeing my daughter display.

Well, using 'I' messages lets her get the message without feeling subjugated-- when I use the word 'you' when describing a behavior that needs to be discontinued, it feels like a dart in the gut to the receiver of my thought. An 'I' message, however, tells the listener how I feel watching them-- it makes no judgement calls or sheds no harsh light on their sensitive feelings.

An 'I' message to the above situation might sound like this:

"I feel sad when I see shoplifting going on because I know the shoplifter will go to jail."

As a parent, though, I might be more likely to snap at her with a comment like:

"You don't steal! Stealing is bad. Bad people steal and bad people go to jail. Do you want to go to jail?"

I'm certain the 'I' message was the softer delivery. But now that I think about it, I would want my daughter to remember this lesson-- so I might opt for the more stinging message carried in the 'you' message.

But in most cases I'll be talking to another adult, not my 10 year old daughter. In cases where I am talking to an equal, I use a Simple Rule:

Convey the statement in a way that would feel okay to me if I were hearing it describing my own behavior.

In other words... BE NICE.

Is that so tough? If somebody cuts in front of me in line, which will work better: Snarling at them to leave, or guilting them into doing the right thing? Which would work better if I were the one doing the cutting?

An old fable has the Sun and the Wind gambling on who can take an old man's coat off. The Wind blew and blew, but the old man held on tightly to his coat. Then the Sun began to warm, and the old man stripped off the coat to keep cool.

Sub Moral: BE NICE.

Grand Moral: 'I' MESSAGES =  BEING NICE

But you knew that, didn't you? Didn't you? You'd have to be dumb not to know that. You'd have to be a real moron not to figure it out. I mean, how friggin' stupid would you be if you were oblivious to this piece of sophomoric knowledge?

OOPS... those are 'YOU' messages!

See? I TOLD you 'I' messages were hard for me.

I feel (STUPID) when (I MAKE THAT MISTAKE REPEATEDLY) because (I THINK PEOPLE WON'T RESPECT ME).

Ahhhh... now we're getting somewhere.