The other day I caught the end of one of my favorite movies “White Men Can’t Jump”. One of the scenes I missed this time around popped into my head and I think it’s a great message.

Woody Harrelsons character ‘Billy’ is in bed with his girlfriend played by Rosie Perez. She wakes him up in the middle of the night and tells him she’s thirsty. So being a man and wanting to solve her problem he rolls out of bed, trudges over to the sink and gets her a glass of water, simple enough right.

Well being a female this doesn’t make her happy. (Of course LOL) She says she read something in a womens’ magazine and then tells him “If I’m thirsty, I don’t want you to bring me a glass of water. I want you to sympathize. I want you to say: “Gloria, I too know what it feels like to be thirsty. I, too, have had a dry mouth.” I want you to connect with me through understanding the concept of drymouthedness.”

Here’s a link to the actual voice clip it’s the second one down.

Sometimes we get caught up in the positive motivational stuff and in helping others. We become almost robots willing to eagerly help others or parrots spouting off quotes from others and we often forget about the connection. Now I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be willing to help others out but sometimes when someone says something they don’t always want you to solve it for them, they just make a statement and you can vibe and connect with them.

Sometimes we give out advice when it’s not asked for and people hate this. Oh, I’m very much guilty here myself. Most of the time all thats needed is to form the connection with them by understanding what they feel as we’ve been there before ourselves.

This goes for real life and online interactions as well. I notice a lot of times when asking a question on a forum the simple act of just typing it out will often give me the answer to my own question.

It’s like the whole social media thing with Twitter, Facebook etc. If someone posts something that’s on their mind they don’t always want your link to the solution but maybe a connection then later on they may be interested in your solution. This is marketing and not selling. We set up these sites, web pages etc. and have them there with information for free or paid so when someone is actively seeking a solution they can find the information they need.

So all in all what I’m saying in 400+ words is just because someone says they’re thirsty it doesn’t always mean they want you to bring them a glass of water.

-Cuzin Tim