An Unnecessary Display of Force
For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.
When we feel most out of control we are, at the same time, most likely to exert control in some other area through an unnecessary display of force.
When we throw a tantrum over something unrelated to the core issue we rarely use the appropriate amount of force. Houses should be cleaned periodically in order to maintain a healthy level of mental and emotional balance (the level of cleanliness needed is negotiated between the people who live in the house). But, we don't address a lack of cleanliness with a tantrum or outburst when our core issue is cleanliness. We simply have a respectful, adult conversation about cleanliness. When the core issue is something else (such as grief), we unleash an ungodly amount of frustration over cleanliness simply because our body needs to unleash SOMETHING. It'll take anything at all.
This is what I mean by, "...an unnecessary display of force."
Self-critique session:
I think, again, I was overcomplicating things (and still sounding like a jerk). I believe the essence of this post is: We should build some “mindfulness” time into our lives that forces us to assess what is really going on. When we do this, we can not only choose when to have crucial conversations but we can appropriately match the level of intensity to the type of conversation we’re having. If all we’re upset about is cleaning, then that should be a low intensity conversation even if we’re quite frustrated. The reason being, it’s just not a life or death issue.
If, however, we need to talk about something quite serious, we treat it seriously. We plan a time to sit down where both parties can be prepared and free of distractions. We increase the intensity- but we don’t yell to increase the intensity, we focus.
Picking the right moment to have a hard talk, and striving for the right “tone” goes a long way.
