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Getting What You Don't Want!
Q: What do the Iranian people and the American people have in common?A: Until November, 2008, the answer was: they elected their current President because he pandered to and manipulated their fears. The current embarrassment in Teheran was running the dismal second that he deserved, behind a man with reasonable plans for national and international relations. So what happened? How did he lose? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surged in the polls and eventually won 62% of the run-off election’s votes in 2005 AFTER US President George W. Bush aka Mr. Utterly Clueless issued a series of threats against Iran. Fortunately, the American voters put someone in office in November 2008 who has a brain in his head – quite a good one, in fact. We won’t be giving that lunatic another easy victory. So what does the Iranian presidential election have to do with life coaching? Do you think that George “Duh?” Bush is the only moron around who engages in actions that get him exactly the opposite result that he wants? Oh, honey. Think about what comes out of YOUR mouth on a daily basis.
* The client in his corporate brilliance who gets so carried away with showing
everyone how brilliant he is, that he ends up being despised by the people he is
trying so hard to win over and impress.
· The extremely left-brained smartass with contempt for those she considers “morons, idiots, fools, cretins,” is overheard describing those who have a faith/spiritual tradition in the above terms – and wonders why half his colleagues turn down every idea and proposal he floats. [Is the joy she gets from smarter-than-thou contempt more important to her than the career success she flushed down the cosmic sink? Long term?]
· The husband who continually sabotages his wife’s diet, because he is afraid that if she gets thin and sexy, she will automatically start cheating on him. He forgets that getting healthy will make her happy, and knowing that he is sabotaging her happiness is going to drive her out the door, sooner or later.
Threatening people – making them afraid – is the most sure-fire way to ensure that you get the opposite of what you want.
· Reminding people of the natural consequences of their choices is an important part of parenting, partnering and living. The difference between information and a threat is frequently tone of voice. Take a deep breath before you talk. In my case, three breaths.
· If you want someone to do something, continuing to urge them to do something, with great emotional intensity [telling them all the logical reasons why they should do something is still emotional if the tone is intense, yes, dear], is a sure-fire way to ensure that they will do the opposite. People aren’t just contrary. They don’t just hate being told what to do. They don’t just hate feeling that they knuckled under to you. What is really going on is that their self-image as someone who makes up their own mind, after thinking about it themselves, is under more-or-less-severe attack. And they will act like they are being attacked. People who are making decisions from fear are not making decisions that are in their long-term best interests.
The Myers-Briggs T-types, who are most comfortable when they are in their logical left brains, thinking and analyzing, think that they are immune from the dangers of fear-based decisions. No. All human beings have the same brain physiology, which means that our amygdalas and limbic system make most of our choices. When we are threatened (by nuclear armageddon or just a threat to our self-image in a business meeting or an in-law’s opinion of our parenting), our amygdala/limbic system shuts down the connection to our pre-frontal cortex. We stop asking for input from the part of our brain that slows down our normal emotional response to things, the part of our brain that asks the boring questions like “Are you SURE that’s what he really meant by that? Is there any other possible interpretation to this situation? Do I have all the facts?”
Both left-brained and right-brained, logical and intuitive-preferences, we all suffer this shut-down when we perceive a threat. And then we open our mouths. With disastrous results. We attack, in an attempt to defend ourselves from attack.
So, this is an exercise I do with my clients. In addition to a number of techniques that allow them to recognize when the amygdala has highjacked their entire mind – the subject of other posts, and my new book Take Back Your Lost Heart – I also work with them to remember NOT to follow the Golden Rule. Dude?? You ask. No, seriously. Start by thinking about this person as they are. Don’t do unto them as YOU want to be treated; do unto them as they prefer to be treated. Who are they really? Do they care about their home? Their standing in the community? To be admired as smart? To be seen as good and kind? Remind yourself of who they really are. Then ask yourself: how is this person likely to interpret your actions and your words and your tone of voice. Not how would you. Not how would a hypothetical perfect person [which resembles your vision of yourself, eh?] would respond. For some people, just saying it once, calmly and not bringing it up again is the best procedure. Other people respond well to lots of data. Other people need graphics, diagrams and a take-away sheet. Other people prefer to believe that it was really their idea, that they convinced you of. We’re all different. Can you learn to do this on the fly, in the midst of a conversation? Yes. With practice. You won’t be good at it overnight, no, but you will be reasonably good at it eventually. With careful practice, anyone can be reasonably good at anything. After all, I learned to dance, to train rabbits to use a litterbox and to create a website. And consider the right path to my eventual goal before I grabbed people by the lapels and "hammered some sense into them." If I can learn, we all can.