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?