Dial It Back: Developing Non-Judgement and Resisting Group Think

Every Saturday night a group of folks gather (via Zoom these days) to hone their spiritual, social and emotional intelligence. It’s challenging curriculum because it asks the participant to...participate. Lately we have spent time focusing on restraint. We’ve asked folks to up their active listening skills, learn how to validate better and more often, consider their internal boundaries, love each other harder and stronger.

Seems like faithful people can do all of this - right? Aren’t these great expressions of the principle of love one another? We think so. But what we have observed about ourselves and others over the years is that principles do not automatically translate into practices. This is why we are spending time focusing on developing skill sets to support our principles of lavish loving.

One of the many tools we use at NSC is the enneagram. If you do not know what that is - no worries, for the sake of this blog that does not matter. What does matter is some of the theory found and taught in that material. In the article on restraint, the author says that “we lie to ourselves a lot.”; the enneagram doesn’t call it lying - but it does kind of agree with this notion that we have these stories we tell ourselves that we unfortunately come to believe.

This causes us to develop a bit of blindness to aspects of ourselves that do not fit the story we have gotten used to telling about ourselves. This also occurs based on groups you belong to. We get accustomed to adopting the same views as the groups we associate with - and this is a problem. Think politics. Think religious affiliations. Think team sports.

Our work in developing the superpower of restraint is to resist group think and unconditional loyalty. We need to have contradictory philosophies that we wrestle with because the world is full of paradox and legitimate contradictions. How do we do this? Well, we need to practice nonjudgmental observation. Try to search out and find common ground with folks who are not naturally in your tribe; be willing to acknowledge the faults of your favorites.

Here’s an example. A political rival (who we do not know at all personally) is accused of sexual improprieties and we say, “Makes sense. What a slimeball. I always believe the woman.” A political ally (who we do not know at all personally) is accused of sexual improprieties and we say, “Fake news. Who paid her off? I heard she was a slut. There is just no way this happened. This person is too decent for that!” This is groupthink. We need to stay out of the herd! We need to do better than this; sit out of the arguments that are driven by our opinions and bias and second-hand knowledge. And...the best thing each of us can do is to wrestle with becoming the kind of people who in no way participate in sexism, sexual impropriety, sexual aggression or assault. This is where our energy is best spent. This is showing restraint and gaining wisdom.

Dial It Back: Social Intelligence

Restraint is a superpower when it helps us dial back our tendency to correct people when they are wrong or show off what we know. This is a tough one, because being smart is a high value commodity in the world and many of us have sacrificed much to earn our expertise in one area of life or another. But in this article, the author talks about social intelligence - understanding that nobody really wants to know how smart we are; they just want to know how we can “play a role in their life that benefits them.” Callous? Maybe. But isn’t it also true?

My friend Jean had a very intelligent father. He was also extremely curious - which is the trait I most admire and remember about him. He LOVED to tell stories, but he also LOVED to inquire about the life of others - hence, his repertoire of great stories! He was interested in everything and everyone. His face lit up when he saw someone new walk into a room. He just had this way of making others feel valued and special. In hindsight, I realize that he had the gift of restraint. It showed up in his capacity for listening.

How could you dial it back in terms of talking? How could you up your listening?

PS Maybe you are the introverted type and can give yourself credit for not being a chatting Cathy like me. But...what if you dialed back your silence and stepped up your active listening?

Dial It Back: Recognizing Triggers

When triggered, I can be reactive. This has had its benefits, and its costs. One time when I was very very young I came upon a group of senior high school athletes in an isolated corridor of our school teasing a special needs student. They circled her, threw pennies at her feet and demanded she “dance for her money.” They laughed and clapped and she thought they were playing WITH her. They were not. I marched into the center of that circle and boy howdy, those boys must have thought their mothers and grandmothers and every strong woman who had ever given them what for had entered my seventh grade body. I gave them a talking to; forced them to get on the floor and pick up those damn pennies and apologize to my new friend. I have a vague memory of finger pointing, clear and direct shaming, and issuing threats that bore no meaning but evidently sounded convincing. That was reactive. I think it was a good thing because it turned out alright, but I wonder: should I have perhaps run for adult backup?

My reactivity has also been costly. I have said things I should not have meant nor spoken. I have been impulsive when restraint was called for. I have made bad situations worse. One tool that I have adopted to help me with my reactivity comes from the SMART Recovery worksheets. It’s called the cost-Benefit Analysis (Appendix B: Figure 3.4. Worksheets, SMART Recovery Handbook). One great thing about any habit that we form is that it is usually predictable. And if it is predictable, it means we can study it and learn how to do differently.

Example: I am triggered when I believe that a vulnerable person is being taken advantage of in some way. I react by trying to interrupt the injustice, call out the injustice, or bring justice into the situation. Yesterday, someone aggressively cut in front of someone in a pharmacy drive through pick-up line. I wanted to make that person get out of line and go to the back of the line. But my previous work on reactivity and my CBA (cost-benefit analysis) allowed me to use restraint.

Scenario: To react or NOT react

Answer the following questions:

What are the benefits of me reacting?

What are the costs of me reacting?

What are the benefits of me NOT reacting?

What are the costs of me NOT reacting?

After I answer these questions, I go back and consider short term and long term benefits and consequences. I notice that with some pondering, there are many times when restraint would be better than reacting. In this case, using my automatic CBA habit I have acquired, I chose to use restraint. This gave me time to come up with the following insights: Maybe the line breaker was in a crisis situation and they needed to butt in and is actually the most vulnerable person in this story; this was not my issue - nor my business; making a stink about this might interrupt grace in action; maybe this person is not well mentally and would get aggressive with me if I got all feisty with him; in the end - what is the real cost here to one line butt? Do you own cost analysis about your relationship with not practicing restraint - see what you discover!

Dial It Back: Restraint

My friend Linda sent me an article called “7 Psychological Superpowers Few People Have (That You Can Use to Set Yourself Apart)” which I love. I love it because the title is long enough to be a paragraph. I love the content. In fact, I love it so much I want to blog about practically every single sentence and since I am quarantined, I ask myself: “Why not?” So here goes…

In the opening paragraphs, this article claims that one superpower that many of us refrain from accessing is: RESTRAINT. He makes quite a case for finding and exercising it.

When I practice restraint as a superpower, several wonderful things happen:

* I am curbing my urges and compulsions.

* I am pausing to prepare.

* I am doing less, which frees me to choose to do better.

Although it never occurred to me before, it seems so true: “Success, happiness, or whatever word you use to articulate what you want, often involves what you don’t do.”

The pandemic, at whatever stage it is in when you read this, provided participants a chance to do less. At various times I found this to be a blessing, frustrating, anxiety inducing, depressing, binding and freeing.

It forced me to curb some of my urges; I learned that much of what felt like an obligation pre-quarantine was truly non-essential. Much of what was initially disquieting has turned into deep silence and joy. Restraint was hard and good.

How might restraint serve you? What has a lack of restraint cost you in the past? Tomorrow, I will present a little exercise that might help you process these questions. In the meantime, think about it and see what you come up with!