Setting The Tone: How We Define Our Households
We often talk about attitude, but usually, it is in a very personal sense: how does my attitude affect me? Typically concerned with ourselves first, we are often only looking and thinking of attitude through the prism of our own experience. We need to look more broadly at the attitude and think about it as setting the tone for our lives. It sets the tone not just for our experience but it can contribute to the experience and results of our whole family and/or extended community. It sets the tone for our household, for our relationships, for our work, and for even our daily interactions with strangers.
It is an intriguing paradox in our social thinking that we consider our feelings to be organic and spontaneous, and yet we consider our mental attitude to be extremely malleable and able to be controlled through sheer willpower. The mantra we tell our kids all the time, “Change your attitude!” The unspoken expectation is that their attitude should be more positive and proactive; more in line with what we would like our attitudes to be. And why do we demand this mental effort to create a more positive mental outlook? Why do we attempt to find a “silver lining” in a situation or “look at things in a positive light?” These clichés point to our unstated (and agreed upon) recognition that our attitudes and the tone we set can tangibly influence a situation.
Reacting To Tone
People will react, on a subconscious level, to all manner of cues and prompts. One could express the “tone” of a situation or relationship as something that is almost “in the air.” We can describe it and experience it but we may not be able to fully define its origins. But you set the tone. We all do. We are in charge of these things; though the general tone of a situation may seem organic, it is actually an aggregate result of dozens of small choices and actions from the various individuals involved. Providing a title or adopting a role (mother, husband, supervisor, expert, etc.) does not guarantee results that you want. A tone of your environment will be set and, unless you work at it, there is no automatic guarantee that it will be the tone that you desire. Having a position will not naturally confer the outcomes we seek. We must work at setting the tone within that role, relationship, or situation.
Who’s The Leader?
Desire more respect and harmony in your home? Change the tone of your house. Tone spills out over everything. I had a friend recently describe the marked difference between two days in his house: “When I am providing a good example of behavior to my kids, being patient with them, communicating clearly with them, their own degree of interaction between each other becomes much more positive. When I’m snapping and jumping on them for every little thing, their relationships deteriorate and they just fight among themselves all day.” A great example of setting the tone in your own house.
Examples and actions trump all the well-wishing clichés and platitudes, and our actions follow our decisions. We should consciously desire, and decide, to be the ones to set the tone in our households.
Outside The Home
What about the tone of your workplace? Do you wish people paid more attention to what you said? Do you wish you were taken more seriously and seen as competent? Change the tone in your speech and how you present yourself. Do the leg-work in preparation to feel more confident. Gain knowledge in order to discover wisdom so that you can offer sound advice when called upon. Change the attitude in which you approach your work or the work of others. The tone we set in all these situations is a choice, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.
What about friendships and relationships? If you want more respect in your interactions or relationships, create it with the new tone you set. The head dog of the pack does not have to go around assuring himself that he is the head dog; it a matter of instinct-it influences all that he does and how the other members of the pack react to him. The cues and indications that you portray will immediately be recognized and processed by those around you. If you portray a requirement for respect or seriousness, people will start approaching you that way.
Approach To Life
Attitude and tone are integral to pursuing a life well lived because a life well-lived is one lived within a community. We are in love with the idea of the free, autonomous individual moving through life and exerting his will upon the world, regardless of others (because freedom is the god our society serves). Such a person has a clinical name: sociopath. We are creatures of the group: family, friends, work, church, hobbies. For the majority of us, the majority of our time is spent in group activities.
Even the writing of this post has been done amidst a group (my household). During this writing session, the tone of the group has fluctuated with my own attitude as I think about several frustrating situations during the past week. And the tone of my household changed immediately as I barked at my kids for being “too loud” (aka too much like kids). They are now chagrined and upset, picking up on the negative tone I am setting.
Choosing A Path
The great thing about the tone of the situations we experience: it is a matter of choice. The tone can be changed. As with so many things in a life well-lived, setting the tone is a gift we give ourselves. And it doesn’t take massive preparation to get started. It is simply a matter of being aware of how our personal attitudes and actions are affecting those around us. Changing the tone in a given situation or relationship will not happen overnight, but with conscious attention and diligence it will be influenced, and fruit for our efforts will start to appear.
You set the tone.
In your family.
In your house.
In your relationships.
In your work.
In your interactions.
It is both a responsibility and a blessing that we can have such influence in our lives and the lives of others. We do not have the option to blame others or to shrug off our responsibility for determining the tone that is being set. The blessing is that we do not have to rely on others or external forces to immediately begin working toward the tone that we would like to see happen in our situations and relationships. It is up to us. Thank goodness.
Moving forward
In what areas in your life do you seek to set the tone?
How have you worked to positively influence the tone of a relationship or situation?
Originally published at https://fjwriting.com on April 19, 2018.
