Please, continue to share and enjoy the posts this blog has to offer! Please, continue to share and enjoy the posts this blog has to offer!
Please, continue to share and enjoy the posts this blog has to offer!
It's my intention that it exists as a living library, not only of my story, but the stories of everyone who posts comments and starts dialogues based on the content.
Somewhere in one of the gazillions of self-help books I read (back in the day), was the concept of:
Address the Situation, and not the Person.
Elvis likes it.
On the one hand, it's kind of silly, right??
How can you not address the person... you kinda have to, in order to work things out!
But on the other hand, I love the idea that it's a situation that two parties aregoing through.
It leaves room for both parties come out the other side of it, together. Rather than one party fighting to somehow change the other.
There's a difference between Addressing A Situation the other personis aware of, and Addressing A Situation they are not.
Aware: two parties are actively in conflict
Unaware: one party is irritated/agitated/threatened by another, who is apparently not aware of their behavior.
Fun Fact: The majority of people who are acting with jerk-like behavior are not aware of it.
I'll give you an example of times I was unaware of my jerk-like behavior, and how two different people handled communicating that to me.
I've always had high standards, but when I was a younger coach, I was a little too iron-fisty about it.
One skater came up to me after a practice and said:
Hey, I get the whole tough love thing you're doing.But sometimes, you forget the love.
This skater hardly knew me at the time, but we remain very close friends to this day.
Yes, I was hurt by what she said. But I wasn't mad at her. I was mad at me.
She let me know in a way that was not threatening that I needed to reflect on my behavior.
And that, despite it, the door was open for us to be friends.
And I couldn't respect her more for that.
There was another skater who handled letting me know in... one of the most disrespectful ways possible:
She posted an open letter to me on the league message board, reaming me for...whatevershe was mad about.
There were false accusations, and an obvious incitement, inviting others to share their feelings about.... whatever it was about.
It obviously wasn't a very memorable topic. But I do remember exactly how I felt.
Yeah, this pretty much sums it up.
When you've been completely disrespected, how can you react any other way?
I did decide to choose the high road, though.
How?
Well, I had to take some time to process her attack, as I saw it.
Then I had to Address The Situation.
Because we were both now very much aware of the Conflict between us.
I set up a meeting with her, and tried to work it out, but all I could really do was cry.
I'll never forget her reaction. Baffled, she said:
You know, I really didn't expect this. I thought you were going to fight.
I had to explain to her, I don't get off on fighting. I prefer to get along.
Now all I could be was hurt, my genuine feeling.
I think she saw me differently after that, because we've been good friends without a fight between us since.
But, if I had come out fighting... instead of allowing myself to be genuine and vulnerable....
I'll break down some practical tools/steps to conflict resolution, but before I do... I would ask you to consider the contrast between these two approaches.
The difference between Confronting a Person and Addressing a Situation...
And have a shiny-happy-feel-good-terrific-RAD day!
Skipping all the pleasantries and getting right to the advice on The Process Of Conflict Resolution.
Oh yeah, it's a process.
The first part of the process is Addressing Yourself. The second part, in the next blog, will be Addressing The Situation.
Addressing Your Self Advice:
1) Acknowledge Your Feelings
Every living being gets pissed off. Even plants!
And that's ok.
Staying pissed off all the time is unhealthy.
But, if you try to ignore your feelings, it you try to "just let it go," it never really does go away does it?
I don't get pissed off about things that don't matter to me. So when I'm mad, I let myself be mad. But I put a time limit on it. Depending on how mad I am.
Like, if it's something small, I can be mad for an hour. If it's big, maybe a day. That's just pure madness time.
Just to let myself feel what I have to feel.
2) Cool The Fuck Down
If I immediately addressed every time something pissed me off, with no working to take the edge off it first...
Well, I'd be 22 all over again.
Something needs to be done, once the anger's allowed to surface, to clear it out of your system.
There's lots of ways to take the edge off, productively:
~Go for a run, skate, bike or swim
~Dump it all out on a piece of paper
~Take a shower
~Clean the house
~Dance to ridiculously loud music
You might notice I did not suggest "Call a friend," or "Go out for a drink."
For many, this might be the first thing thing they would do. For me, that usually proved to be unwise...
I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions on that one, though.
3) Reflect, Reflect, Reflect
Think about your desired outcome:
Is it to hurt the person you're mad at?
Is it to keep the anger mill going forever?
Is it to upset everyone else around you?
Or do you just want everything to be cooled down and normalized again?
In order to achieve "cool again" it helps to recognize the more vulnerable reasons why you're upset.
For example:
I used to take it personally when skaters would ask me a million questions about every new decision at league meetings.
And by personally: I mean I would get furious.
So I had to cool off and ask myself:
Why do I get so defensive when people ask questions??
While I was furious, I couldn't really address it.
But when I cooled off, and got to a more vulnerable place I realized: I think they're saying I'm a bad leader who makes bad decisions.
The truth was: nobody was saying that.
They're just intelligent women. And smart people ask questions.
Sometimes, when you get pissed off, the problem is not really the other person. It's an insecurity you have that needs to come out and be dealt with.
So reflection, before action or debate, is what I recommend.
What I don't recommend is arguing yourself into a fit of tears at league meeting. Not that I ever did that...
Oh, wait... yeah... I totally did do that once.
OK, twice.
So... that's a lot to take in, I know. I've had years to reflect on this and I'm not trying to dump it all into one blog post.
But the first step of every journey is looking inward, in my opinion.
Especially when it involves other Alpha Women!
Have a well-balanced-inwardly-and-outwardly-totally-kick-ass-crazy-radder-than-RAD day!
