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July 10, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:02
323 Conflict Resolution Part 1 - Values
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It is 1.30. I'm heading back for my meeting downtown.
And I thought it might be worth satisfying the genius listenership with a few semi-random takes on relationships and solving conflicts therein.
Now, I'm not talking about your relationship with your state, your mother, your father, your hand puppet, any of the other assorted toys that you may have littered around your house.
I am talking about mostly romantic relationships.
This could also be friend relationships as well, but we're just talking about voluntarily chosen relationships, right?
In other words, not sibling or parent or estate or church or any of these kinds of things, but the actual relationships that you have in your life that are voluntary and chosen.
How do you go about solving problems within those relationships, right?
Because life is a big series of problem-solving situations, right?
I mean, Everything in life is problematic and challenging and exciting from that standpoint.
And so it is, I think, fairly important to approach things from a sort of standard of expectation that problems are going to exist, right?
So when I was younger and just starting out into the magic land of software project management, I would assume that the specs would hold and that the project plan would be adherable to, I guess you could say, And that problems would not really occur.
Now, reality, as it tends to do, wipes that illusion off the face of the earth with no small degree of aggression.
And so what happened then was now I go into projects saying, well, there are going to be at least two or three disasters in this project.
And if there are only two or three disasters in this project, that's good.
That's positive. If there are ten disasters, that's bad.
If there are no disasters, I'm dreaming.
Or I'm not aware of the disasters that should occur, which is, you know, not good, right?
You want to be aware of the disasters that are possible so that you can keep your eye on them.
It's the devils you can't see that get you, right?
So now I don't really worry so much about disasters in projects.
They're sort of natural.
So the first thing that I would suggest is that You recognize the inevitability of conflict within human relationships.
By conflict, I simply mean disagreement.
And this is a simple fact of human relationships.
Nothing you can do to get rid of it completely.
Conflict is inevitable within human relationships, which does not equal fighting, does not equal screaming, does not equal name-calling, does not equal all of this, as we're trying to model on the board, right?
So on the board, we're putting a fair amount of intellectual effort and maturity out to...
Help people to understand, both in action and in content, that disagreement can be enormously productive, that disagreement is the basis of growth within both the individual personality and the collective social world.
So I would say that you really do have to work pretty hard to understand that conflict is inevitable and healthy and required and valuable and essential.
In so many particular ways that you really don't want to sort of go around thinking that that's not going to be the case, because that will be enormously frustrating and bothersome to you, and you don't really want to be in that kind of situation in a sort of perpetual kind of way.
You're just fighting gravity all the time.
You're irritated that you weigh something at any time, right?
That's not really where you want to be.
It's just going to be non-stop frustration.
In general, the acceptance of reality is what sets us free.
Life to be commanded must be obeyed, like all the good scientific stuff that we've been talking about for the last several thousand podcasts.
Conflict is inevitable. I would not have an ideal within life that says, oh my heavens, we're disagreeing, that's bad.
The only reason that we believe that disagreements are bad is because when we're growing up, and in school, and in university, and oftentimes in our work environment, Disagreement equals abuse.
It's bad to disagree with me, says the person who is abusive.
Here comes the rain again.
Here we go. Maybe I'll put this on pause.
Am I going to try and compete with this?
No, I'm not going to try and compete with it.
What a day. Wow.
Ooh, we have lightning and thunder.
You say lightning, and I say thunder.
How come it feels so good?
I used to love Phil Collins.
I don't really listen to him anymore, but I used to love to do, you know, us shiny scalps, we have to stick together.
I'm sure it will pass.
So, what's new with you?
What's going on?
What's going on? Okay, here we go.
Les Mis from the top. I'm sure this wall will pass us by.
Song of the day. If you want to get a nice atheist song in your head, which has also got some fantastic blues harmonica, try out Missionary Man.
By the Eurythmics, which is a great song to try out in karaoke, if you get the chance.
But I would give that a shot. It's a great song.
And Annie Lennox, a fantastic singer, incredibly passionate and powerful, and with an extraordinary ability to scat, right?
Scatting is a very difficult thing to do, if you can even hear me.
Scatting is a difficult thing to do, and she does it magnificently.
I think we're a little better now.
Okay. Sorry.
Obviously Mother Nature doesn't want me to talk about conflict resolution.
So let's continue. I think we're in the clear now.
So as far as this conflict resolution goes, the first thing is to recognize that it's inevitable and not to dread it and rather to embrace it.
It's like death.
You can spend your whole life dreading death, but it's going to happen whether you dread it or not, so why not enjoy the time that you have by living as richly and humanely as possible and let death take care of itself when it decides to come along.
But conflict is an inevitable thing.
We have to embrace it and prepare for it and strategize around it, right?
Because it is inevitable. And so you can't be shocked and appalled every time it comes.
I mean, you can, but sort of what's the point, right?
So the first thing that I would say is essential for conflict resolution is a similarity of values.
Now, I don't think that...
It's impossible for everyone to have the same values, right?
You want to have the same basics, like don't punch people who disagree with you, But not everyone is going to have the same values.
That's completely impossible, implausible, unthinkable.
And so that's another thing.
Don't have expectations that people are going to mirror you in terms of values.
Because that's also narcissistic, right?
If you think that everyone should mirror you in terms of values, the implicit premise there is that your value configuration is the best.
And everybody who deviates from that is bad.
And that's sort of narcissistic.
And also not sort of recognizing the fundamental differences between people.
Now, again, by value differences, I'm not talking violence versus peace.
I'm talking about classical versus jazz and emotional expression versus what's generally called gravitas or whatever it is, however it is that you want to, these sort of non-amoral aspects of life of which the vast majority of life falls into that category.
So that's sort of an issue that you want to have, I think, somewhat straightened away within your own mind and that you can learn from other people's differences of opinion.
So when I would ramble about the stage, Christina would say, yeah, yeah, but it all comes back to the family.
And if I'd have said, no, no, no, it all comes back to politics, then I would have had fewer podcasts and we wouldn't have gotten to the really interesting stuff that people like about what we're doing here, which is talking about relationships.
So you have to have a similarity of values.
You have to have personal responsibility.
You have to have, and I know that this sounds ridiculous, but it's pretty fundamental and I think very important.
You have to have a basic commitment to being nice.
I'm going to fight my way through the rain.
Like, see, whenever you get this kind of static from other people, the important thing is to just keep raising your voice until it goes away.
That is what I really mean when I talk about dealing with these kinds of issues.
Actually, this would be loud even with my headset.
I can't imagine that. Maybe we'll just consider this a dry run.
Maybe I won't even publish this.
We'll see how it sounds. All right, so I deigned to pause that one.
Things are a little bit better now. So, the first thing that you need is to have a basic...
The basic value is respect for other human beings.
And this doesn't mean that you respect people who abuse you, and it doesn't mean...
But you respect the people that you're having conversations with.
And the moment that you stop respecting them, in my humble opinion, stop having conversations with them.
That would be a pretty fundamental and, I think, relatively important approach to life.
If you find yourself in yelling matches with people, these aren't people that you want in your life.
And it doesn't mean that it's all their fault and so on, but obviously that is a relationship that's not working.
We can say that there's lots of subtleties about relationships, but relationships where there's name calling, where there's considerable degrees of fairly constant or long-lived frustration, where there's name calling, of course physical abuse or anything like that is completely off the page.
Once you've descended to contempt and name calling and so on, even prior to sort of physical abuse, The relationship is done.
It's absolutely completely and totally done.
Which is why you don't want to.
Once you cross that line, you don't get to come back.
You don't get to come back and heal your relationship.
It's an important thing to understand.
Once you bring out the threat to leave someone, it doesn't go away again.
Once you call someone a bitch or an asshole or a jerk or a Or selfish, or greedy, or uncaring, or callous, or cold, or mean, or vicious, or scary.
Once you pull those words out, they don't go anywhere, my friends.
They don't go back. That sword never goes back into its scabbard.
You pull that sword out, and you use it.
Once you start into those particular kinds of conversations, your relationship is totally done.
It's a very important thing to understand.
That's why you don't That's why you don't do that.
That's why you don't ever call someone that you love a name.
You don't. You absolutely don't.
And so if you're going to bring that sword out, recognize that you're just stabbing the heart of the relationship and it's done.
I have no problem with people who want to call other people names.
The problem I have is when they want to keep on having some kind of relationship with that person that is double plus ungood and impossible.
You can't trust somebody. Let's say that you're some woman I'm going out with.
I call you a bitch.
You're just a mean bitch.
Let's go camping, right?
I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
Like, if you use name-calling in relationship, one of two things is occurring.
Either you genuinely believe that that person, I genuinely believe that you're a mean bitch.
In which case, why would I spend any time with you?
If I genuinely do believe that you're a mean bitch, then I shouldn't logically want to spend any time with you.
I'm not saying when you do that it's kind of bitchy or it's kind of mean or whatever, right?
I'm not sort of specifying it within a particular context, within a particular...
And I wouldn't use that phrase either.
I would say the only thing that would be honest would be it hurts me when this happens, right?
I mean, I can't say that the other person's being bitchy, right?
That's going, as we talked about in the show yesterday, call and show, that is going from a fact to a story, right?
That's not a valid thing to do, right?
You hurt me as a fact...
You're a bitch is a story, right?
It's made up, right?
It's not verifiable, right?
So one of two things is going to happen if I call you a bitch.
Either I'm right, in which case the relationship is over because no self-respecting human being is going to stick around somebody who's a bitch.
Or, B, I don't think you're a bitch, but I just want to hurt you.
This goes back to the gentleman's email about his mother and also about his girlfriend.
If I call you a bitch...
And I don't really think that you're a bitch, then I can still hang out with you because you're not really a bitch.
But I can't hang out with you because I've tried to hurt you.
Or rather, you shouldn't hang out with me because I don't believe that you're a bitch, but I called you one as a form of bullying or dominance or hostility or something like that.
So that is definitely not where you need to be in a relationship.
So either you call someone a bitch, either you have to stop seeing them if it's true, or if it's false, they have to stop seeing you.
Because you should not, you should never, ever, ever, ever expose yourself to any kind of verbal abuse.
And if you do end up in that situation, you should get out of it as quickly as humanly possible.
So let's just say that the commitment to be nice is pretty central.
And if you're not around someone that you can be nice with, you need to let them go.
They need to let you go because you guys are just doing enormous amounts of damage to each other.
So, the first thing that you need is a commitment to be nice.
Now, a commitment to be nice, what that does is it breeds trust.
So, if I get into a conflict with you, and I'm respectful, and I'm solicitous, but firm, if I cave, that doesn't breed trust, because it means that the person unconsciously is going to wait for the passive-aggressive whiplash.
If you disagree with everyone, you're going to end up strangling them in their beds, because that's the only way you're going to end up being able to search your own identity.
In the face of you continually washing it away based on conformity.
So if I'm firm about my own self-interest and my own particular perceptions, then you are going to be able to trust me and trust is very efficient in relationships, right?
Credibility is efficiency.
And so the way that you deal, in my humble opinion, the way one way to approach conflict in relationships is you don't talk about the other person's motives.
And you don't accept the other person's motives, conscious motives, as explanation, right?
This is sort of a very fundamental, sort of two sides of the same coin kind of principle.
Motives mean nothing. Motives mean nothing in relationships.
Because everybody in the world can say, but I love you, but I want nothing but the best for you.
That stuff is a dime a dozen.
And every single human being on the planet who wants to manipulate another person is going to say that, right?
So that means absolutely nothing in relationships.
And what matters is what happens and how you feel.
So, when you're in a conflict with somebody in a sort of interpersonal way, what I would suggest focusing on is what happens and how you feel.
Oh, what does that look like?
Well, I have had a conflict with a salesperson, and this salesperson keeps interrupting me when I'm doing a demo.
Oh, talk about this. Oh, do this.
Oh, do that. Oh, do the other.
And also... This salesperson keeps asking me to work on his sales stuff, keeps asking me to work on his sales issues, and yet I'm not getting paid any commission.
I get paid for commission on stuff that I close, and I never need his help at all, because I can do the A to Z, but he doesn't know technical, he's not that great with word processors, and he doesn't know how to work the system.
Other than that, he's great. So what he does is he says, listen, I'd really appreciate it if you could put this demo database for me, if you could help me reformat this Word document, if you could grab me these sample reports, and if you could come and do a sales demo with me.
And my position is, I don't get paid for that.
So I'll do it this time, but you better start finding alternatives because I'm not getting paid for this.
You get all the commission. And he's like, oh yeah, I talked about it with so-and-so, and they're working on a new scheme.
It's like, great, then I will absolutely look for that new scheme.
Ooh, very cool. It's like the end of the song, Leave on Time by Queen.
It's got a fantastic, they recorded it in Switzerland, I think, a fantastic thunderclap at the end of that song, which was recorded live, actually.
Very cool. Although, not quite the same vocal quality here compared to old FM. But anyway, that's Freddie Mercury, for those of you who think that's something to do with radio.
Anyway, so with this situation, I don't care about his motives.
Well, my motive is to do the best for the company and through that you will get more bonus and stuff like that.
I don't care about his motives because I can't evaluate his motives.
We're not psychic. We don't know what the other person's motives are.
And of course, nine times out of ten, the other person doesn't know their own motives either.
They might have some story about what their motives are, but they don't really know what their motives are.
So the only thing that I can say is, you are asking me to do a job for you.
Which is going to benefit you at my expense, like literally and materially.
And that's because I'm better at this than you are.
So I'm taking my highest skill set, applying it to your lowest skill set in order to make you more money at the expense of my sales.
And you keep interrupting me in demos, which is really annoying.
So what I do when I sit down with this gentleman to talk about these things is I say, look, You and I are heading for a real collision, in my opinion.
We certainly are from my standpoint, right?
And the collision is this. First of all, I don't really like you interrupting me during demos, right?
If you feel that my demo should be better in some manner, talk to me about it beforehand.
Don't keep interrupting me during the demo.
It's really annoying. It's hard for me to keep track.
I've got this down to a fine art.
I do close lots of deals, so don't do that anymore.
But, you know, because it upsets me and it frustrates me.
And I don't enjoy it.
So that's sort of the one thing.
Now, he can say all of these things.
Oh, I'm just trying to help.
I just want to point you out.
I know the client history, this, that, or the other.
And I say, too, and he did say all of that.
And I said, well, that's fine, but it irritates me.
And so you can keep using, it's called the broken record.
People just don't listen. They want to explain away everything that you're saying.
Oh, there's no reason to be upset.
I'm just trying to do this. I'm just trying to do that.
And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Say yes, but it bugs me.
I don't like it. And I want you to stop doing it.
Well, but, but, but, but, but, right?
It's like, I understand that.
And let me make it to you more clearly, right?
Since this isn't working, right?
Where I say, this troubles me, and I don't like it when you do this.
Which is truth, right? That's honesty.
Why do I not want him to do it?
Because I don't like it. And why do I not like it?
Well, for obvious reasons.
It's condescending, and it's also kind of like, if he was that good at demoing, what the hell am I doing there, right?
It's like asking someone to come and sing a song for you, Because you can't sing, and then interrupting them to say, no, sing it like this, and then singing it badly, right?
It's sort of annoying, right?
Why would you even bother? So, he comes up with all this kind of stuff, and all I'm doing is being honest.
I want you to stop doing it because it bothers me, right?
Now, even if you're my boss, I still want you to stop doing it, but I won't just say, because it bothers me, and say, harm sales, and this, that, and the other.
Now, I tried with this gentleman to get him to understand it a couple of times, and But he kept giving me excuses and explanations.
And then I said to him, okay, well, obviously, it bothering me, you think that it's wrong, that it bothers me, that it shouldn't bother me, and this and that.
But the fact is that it does bother me, and you telling me that it doesn't bother me doesn't change what happens, right?
It doesn't change what happens for me.
Otherwise, you know, any kind of philosophy or therapy would simply be rephrasing be happy over again, perhaps in an acapella format with a vague jazz beat, but...
There would be no need for philosophy or psychology or any kind of self-growth or anything like that, because if saying something just made it true, then you'd just say to people, be happy, and they would just be happy, and that would be it, right?
So, in the same way that that would be ridiculous, it would be like a doctor saying, well, just be healthy.
Oh, I'm cured!
It's a little more complicated than that.
In the same way, saying to someone, don't feel upset, is exactly the same as saying, just be happy, right?
I mean, it's an idiot thing to say, frankly, if you don't mind me saying so.
But, um... So I said, okay, well, obviously I'm not able to get through to you that you shouldn't do it because I don't like it.
So that's fine, I understand that.
Let me give you another way of looking at it.
I'm not going to do it if you don't stop interrupting me.
So if you're not going to change your behavior because I don't like what you're doing, then I can give you another reason to change your behavior, which is that I'm not going to come and demo if you keep interrupting me.
Now, that, of course, got his attention quite a bit because he needs me to damn well to close his deal so that he can make his commission.
And there's no need to get angry.
There's no need to yell at the guy because I don't care about him as an individual.
I wanted to stop doing things that are irritating to me because I don't like being irritated.
Now, in this particular situation, you wouldn't necessarily do this with a loved one.
With a loved one, you would probably work a little bit more into that saying to me that I shouldn't be upset by something that you're doing is not productive.
Right? Because it's not a universal principle, and I don't mean to get all philosophical on your hiney, but if somebody says to you, you should just change your behavior to conform and there's no reason for you to be upset, right?
Then the principle is that other people should just change their behavior to conform with expectations, right?
That's the principle that's being applied to you.
You shouldn't be upset, blah, blah, blah.
But if everybody should change, so I've said this before to people, so if I should change just to meet your expectations...
Then why shouldn't you change just to meet my expectations?
My expectations is that you should not interrupt me while I'm doing my demos So if I'm supposed to change just sort of at the snap of the fingers to get rid of my upset about that, why don't you just change your behavior?
Because it's a whole lot easier if we should just change to conform to each other's expectations.
It's a whole lot easier to change behavior than it is to change feelings, right?
You can't change feelings.
Anybody who's tried to will themselves out of getting angry realizes this.
You can take 10 breaths.
You cannot say the things that are flying through your head, but there's no switch that you can turn off your feelings, right?
Unless you're a sociopath, in which case you're a whole lot worse off than those who are trying to manage your feelings.
So, if conformity to other people's expectations is the ideal and I should just not be upset, then why don't you just stop interrupting me and, you know, that would be an easier way to solve the problem, right?
And then people will say, well, you shouldn't be upset.
There's no reason to be upset. Well, we haven't established that, right?
And I said, no problem.
If you feel that there's no reason for me to be upset, then what I'll try, if you don't mind, right?
Just to find out. Because if you're trying to help me and you're doing a better job helping me with my demo by interrupting me with every thought that comes into your head, like, you know, five times a minute, then let me try the same thing with you, right?
So when you're up there doing your PowerPoint presentation, let me try interrupting you, say, five times a minute and heading you off in all these different directions.
And that should be a fine thing for me to do, too, right?
Now, of course, he didn't like that very much.
And so, you just kind of reverse it, right?
Reverse it, keep working from the argument for morality in whatever form you like.
You know, I could ask him then, would that upset you?
And then, if he's really, you know, crazy, then he'll say, no.
In which case, the next meeting that we have, I'll interrupt him five times a minute, throw him off his train of thought, and keep confusing him as he goes along, and then I'm going to say, well, how did that make you feel?
And if he says, I loved it, it was great, That I'm just not going to go on any meetings with the guy because he's obviously insane, right?
It's really annoying to be interrupted when you're trying to build a case, right?
The guy who's in a podcast, I guess I can't complain about it too much because I'm in my car and so on.
But you just keep working that sort of aspect of things, right?
Everything should be reversible. Everyone is going to appeal to you to obey...
There are particular preferences based on some sort of good, right?
Like, oh, I'm just trying to help and it will help if you just let me do it.
It's like, okay, so basically, if I want to help you, if I don't think you're doing a great job in your presentations, then rather than talk to you beforehand, I'm going to just interrupt you all the way through yours.
And of course, then people don't like that.
And then you say, well, see, that's how I feel.
You know, after a certain amount of conversation back and forth, then you are able usually to get to the other person to at least stop doing what you don't want them to do, right?
That's certainly a possibility, right?
And you ask the argument for morality plus the firmness of, well, if you keep doing, like, I don't like it, and if you don't care about that, then that's fine.
I just won't come and do. Like, if you're not going to care about my preferences, but this is another argument for morality.
So I said to this guy, you know, I don't want you to interrupt me.
And... Then if he says, well, no, I'm going to ignore your preferences and just tell you that you shouldn't want it, then of course the principle is that you can just ignore other people's preferences and tell them what they should prefer.
Well, that's fine. So if you want me to fly out with you to Halifax to do a demo, then I'm going to say no because I don't want to fly to Halifax.
So if you can just override other people's preferences with your own, And ignore their preferences, that's fine, but then we've solved the issue too, right?
Like, if you don't listen to the fact that it bothers me and you don't care about my preferences, that's fine, because we've solved the issue as well, because now I don't have to care about your preferences to come and show the software when you need to close a deal, right?
So, all of these things are all perfectly reversible and perfectly healthy, and this can be a very productive way.
Like, this guy and I don't have a bad working relationship because I've managed to sort of help him to understand that That this is not a productive thing to just sort of try and ride roughshod over other people and keep interrupting them when you wouldn't want to be interrupted and so on.
I'm trying to sort of backwards teach him a little bit of empathy, which might, who knows, might help him.
I probably wouldn't even work that hard with it, but he's got kids, right?
So I want to plant the seeds where I can as far as that goes.
So from that standpoint, that's another way that you can do it.
When it comes to the financial stuff, right, that's even easier, right?
Because he wants me to help him finish his RFPs and present to clients and talk to the technical team and blah, blah, blah, right?
I said, well, you want me to do this because it helps you close the deal and make commission, right?
And he's like, oh, I don't care that much about commission.
I just want to help the company. I'm like, oh, okay, great.
Well, then if you don't care about the commission, I'll take the commission.
I'll be more than happy to do the work for you.
No, no, no, no. I mean, the commission is owed to me, right?
It's like, well, fine. Then your motive is that you want to do work that leads you towards commission.
I fully understand and respect that.
But can you understand that when I'm working on your deals, I'm not working on my deals, so you're asking me to do something that you're not willing to do.
I don't ask you to come and help me on my deals, and so when you say that you want me to help you because you want to close a deal and get commission, well, the exact opposite motive is there for me.
I don't want to help you, not because I'm a mean guy or anything like that, but because I'm kind of doing the same thing that you're doing, which is trying to focus on the deals that I can close that's going to get me commission.
So I had this conversation with him, and we agreed that we were going to find a way...
To split commissions or to, you know, everything that gets sold in Canada.
We both get commissions equal to if we'd sold it individually.
And I said, that would be perfectly fine with me.
Of course, we need to keep track of it and see who was closing more, because if you end up closing nine-tenths of the deals, then it's not fair for me to get the equal commission to you, right?
So, I mean, and if you don't need me, right?
So, of course, that's planting the seeds for what is actually going to happen, which is the reverse, right?
So, that's something to get people to understand.
So, universalize and reverse is generally the way that I try and work with conflict resolution because if you can get people to understand your position rather than just kind of shout you down in one way or another or say, well, my motives are what's important, right?
Because this guy said, well, you know, we have to work as a team.
I'm like, yeah, I mean, okay, let's say that that's a value, right?
If we have to work as a team, then surely we should share in the rewards, right?
It's not a team if I do all the work and you get paid.
I'm not saying that's what's happening, but that would not be an example of teamwork, right?
Kind of exploitive, right?
I'm sure you would understand that. In the same way that if you did all the work for one of my deals and I took all the commission, you'd feel that's kind of exploitive, right?
You wouldn't feel that that's too fair. Well, it's the same kind of thing for me, right?
So we do have a certain amount of conflict because he's kind of helpless and needs me for a whole bunch of stuff and I don't need him for anything and he's getting more commission because he's the one who actually has Canada as a territory, blah, blah, blah.
There's all this nonsense. What do you care about my sort of ins and outs of works travails?
This all has something to do with why I'm going interviews, of course.
But the sort of basic issue is that When it comes to conflict resolution, you wanted to get people to understand your feelings.
If you can get people to empathize with you, you're nine-tenths of the way there.
So one of the issues that I had, as I mentioned before, with Christina when we were first married, which we'll talk about a little bit more tomorrow night, is that I said, or I would say, that you did something that hurt me.
I didn't like what you did.
And she said, oh, the last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt you.
Well, her intentions don't matter.
Right? What matters is what happened and how I felt and how she felt, right?
That's important as well. The fact that she didn't want to hurt me is important, but it doesn't prove that she didn't want to hurt me.
I mean, sort of fundamentally deep down, when we make choices that cause pain to those we love, or claim to love, then I think it's fair to say that something needs to be re-examined, right?
So if the doctor says, I want to heal you, my intention is to heal you, or a chiropractor says, my intention is to make your back feel better, and you go for your chiropractic treatment, and your back feels like shit, and you're in agony, then the fact that he wanted to make you better is sort of understood, but sort of irrelevant, right?
The question is not...
What are people's intentions?
The question is, what happened?
And how did it make you feel?
Well, you did something to my back and now my back feels like crap and your intentions don't really count.
Like, of course, you didn't want to hurt me.
I mean, I didn't go to a doctor assuming that you were a sadist and I didn't marry a woman assuming she wanted to hurt me.
But the fact of the matter is, you did X and I got hurt.
Now, you also have to be aware that you don't know for sure that you got hurt because so-and-so did X, right?
So, For example, I watched a film called Forces of Nature where there was a sort of mother-child reconciliation at the end that made me very emotional and very sad.
It was sort of many years ago.
Christine and I were first married and I was very upset.
And so what happened was I cried and so on.
And I wouldn't sort of phone these guys, the makers of the movie, in Affleck and I think it was Sandra Bullock.
I wouldn't phone them and say, you guys hurt me.
You guys did mean things to me, right?
That wouldn't really make any sense.
They're not trying to hurt me. I just got hurt because of my own sort of family history and things that were evoked from within the movie, right?
That sort of... So, just that you're hurt doesn't mean that the other person is doing something to hurt you in any way, shape or form.
It could be around history and you have to be aware of that.
You did this and I was hurt, right?
Not, I got hurt because you did this.
That has yet to be established.
But you did this and then I was hurt.
That is a statement of honesty and a statement of integrity That can't be opposed, right?
If someone says, you bastard to me, and I say, you said this to me, and it made me angry, right?
Only a crazy person is going to say, well, I never said it, right?
If you can get involved, just don't talk to people like that, right?
They're just really destructive.
So the person can say, yes, I said that, and then you got angry.
Those two things are facts, right?
Nobody can tell you that you didn't get angry, right?
I mean, hopefully you're not lying about it, trying to manipulate them, but if you say to someone, you said X and I got angry, Those two things are facts, and nobody can tell you that that's not the case.
Now, you need to be curious about what's going on and what's happening, but you need to stick with the facts of what happened.
It's that Joe Friday from Homicide thing, just the facts.
Let's start with the facts. Once you're grounded in the facts, you can go a heck of a lot further towards resolving conflict.
So, helping people to understand your position, helping people to understand that your motives and their motives account for nothing, and also that you need to stick just with the facts can be a long way towards Dealing with conflict resolution, and we will talk more about this this afternoon.
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