What I Was Reading Into the Silence

I sent out a service proposal on a Tuesday morning. Nothing the first week. Nothing the second.

After ten days, I had my conclusion ready. Nobody's interested.

That wasn't it. The answer came later, and it was a good one.

Doubt always works after hours.  Photo : Cristine Enero, Unsplash

The silence wasn't saying anything

In emotional intelligence, this is called emotional self-awareness. Recognizing what you feel, naming it, and understanding where it comes from before letting it draw a conclusion on your behalf.

Because the silence wasn't saying anything at all. I was the one filling it in.

I filled it with what I learned over twenty-two years in an environment where a fast reply meant you had been read, and a long delay meant something. That reflex served me well there. It works against me here.

A fast reply is my preference. It is not a measure of interest.

What it changes in practice

The more my business grows, the more I write to different people. Organizations with decision cycles that aren't mine. People who get forty emails before mine. People for whom answering quickly has never been a priority, and whose work is excellent anyway.

What matters to me doesn't matter to everyone. That says nothing about the value of what I'm offering, and it says nothing about the quality of their work either.

Now I do one simple thing. When the doubt rises, I name it out loud. Right now, I'm telling myself a story.

It sounds like nothing. It changes everything, because a named emotion stops steering.

Once it stops steering, you take the road back.  Photo : Tegan Mierle, Unsplash

We are emotional beings

Nobody decides to doubt. It rises on its own, often in the evening, often in front of an inbox with nothing new to offer. That's human. The point isn't to stop feeling it. The point is to stop letting it rewrite our proposal.

Why it matters

In the EQ-i 2.0 profile debriefs I lead, emotional self-awareness comes up again and again as the entry point. As long as an emotion goes unnamed, it decides. Once named, it informs.

The same holds true in teams. A lot of tension we attribute to a skills gap is really a difference in pace and priorities that nobody took the time to name. Different ways of processing information, different needs around timing and clarity. None of that is a flaw.

What if the next silence you receive were neither a yes nor a no, but simply somebody else's calendar?

Tell me in the comments what this brings up for you. And if you want to know where you stand with this skill, the EQ-i 2.0 profile is available individually or as a team.

Rachel

What if silence weren't a verdict on what you're offering?