One of the most challenging aspects of negotiating interpersonal relationships is deciding who the idiot is.

What I mean by that is, very often when we encounter a distasteful encounter or an argument with another individual, whether it’s at work, with family members, or among friends, we often automatically assume it’s the other person with the problem and if they just saw things our way, everything would be just fine. Walking away from the encounter we often lambast the other individual, telling our sob story to anybody who’ll listen, hoping for them to soothe our upset and join us in our tirade against that person (”How could they say such a thing?”) or in the pity party we throw for ourselves (”Can you believe I had to deal with him/her?”).

Two Sides to Every Idiot

Unfortunately, when we peel back the self-obsessed layer of unreality that prevents us from seeing the world as it truly is (and this can only be done through thoughtful introspection, meditation, or consultation with friends and allies who have attained a certain level of peace and serenity in their own lives), we realize that in most cases, if we’ve experienced an argument or a negative encounter with a perceived “idiot,” there are usually two idiots involved in the altercation and one of them, sadly, is us.

And that generally includes instances in which we are the “victims” of apparent unprovoked verbal attacks. An example: the other day at work I was visiting with a customer who seems to be struggling in his business. When I noticed that he wasn’t generating much revenue with one of our top-selling products, I inquired as to why he thought he wasn’t able to move it. He gave his reasons, to which I indicated that I was surprised, considering the product in question is one of our bestsellers and the best-selling product in its category nationwide, according to an independent data-gathering service (similar to the television ratings service AC Nielsen).

When I tried to show him this data, he accused me of attempting to purposely deceive him, as this data reflected national sales, not sales numbers specific to his region or state. While he may have had a point that the data wasn’t 100% reflective of his particular neck of the woods, in no way was I trying to deceive him. And yet he persisted with that accusation, growing visibly upset and further attacking my integrity, along with the integrity of my company. He then listed a litany of complaints about my company that he has accumulated over the years (pre-dating my tenure with the company). Oddly enough, after teeing off on me and my company for about five minutes, something suddenly switched, and he attempted to jump back to what we were discussing before this topic came up, a behavior that struck me as rather bi-polar (according to my two-bit personal psycho-analysis, of course).

I was reasonably satisfied with my response to his tirade in the sense that I didn’t take his attack personally or say anything to specifically defend against any of his charges. But I wasn’t 100% successful in keeping my mouth entirely shut, however, as I found myself attempting to reassure him that I wasn’t trying to purposely deceive him and that I was just presenting data like I do with all of my sales calls. Walking away from the situation, I was angry and somewhat embarrassed (as a few of the employees in the account witnessed this haranguing). Bottom line, I had a sinking feeling that I could have done something slightly different that would have kept my side of the street completely clean.

A Revolutionary Technique for Dealing With Ornery Folks

Seeing that it is my objective to overcome defensiveness in its myriad forms, I realized that saying anything at all in respone to this guy during this particular encounter was a form of defensiveness and therefore a losing proposition. What I realized was that the best way to deal with people like him is to simply say nothing at all.

Stand there. Take it all. Don’t move a muscle. Don’t crack a smirk. And most importantly, don’t take anything that is said about you personally.

So what is really happening when you are able to practice this advanced technique in overcoming defensiveness? By remaining silent, you are able to:

1) Maintain your cool. Very rarely is it neccessary to react to the insanity of others. There is little reason to compromise our own serenity in the cause defending against a baseless, misdirected, and unconscious attack.

2) Provide breathing space in the form of silence between you and the person freaking out. Silence on one side allows the person engaging in the verbal tirade to eventually hear themselves sounding crazy. The sooner they realize that they have gone temporarily insane, the sooner they will return to sanity. Silence on your part hastens the onset of reality as it encourages the other person to listen to themselves.

3) Practice compassion for that person’s lapse in sanity. This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of practicing silence in the face of a verbal tirade. It helps if we begin to understand that childish behavior and verbal tantrums are very often simply signals that a person is out of balance in some area of their life. So if we’re able to be silent and simply be there, present for this fellow human being experiencing a state of pain, we can suddenly transcend the rather primitive coping mechanism of protecting ourselves, our ego, and our serenity, and instead embrace the truly divine work of helping a fellow being realize that they are out of balance.

Indeed we cannot solve another individual’s lack of balance, but we can help guide the way by maintaining our own. If we can practice compassionate silence in the face of an insane tirade without hurling ourselves out of balance, we begin to realize that the best way to deal with an “idiot,” is to start with ourselves.

Image by Lynne Lancaster

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Overcoming Defensiveness

Overcoming Defensiveness Part II: The Hidden Cost of Unnecessary Struggle

Defensiveness, and its cohort, Unnecessary Struggle, reside in the core of the pain and undesired outcomes many of us face every day. Often we feel that defensiveness and struggle are necessary elements of self-preservation, particularly in the realm of personal relationships. The prevailing idea is: If we don’t defend ourselves against a perceived threat, we will lose power in the relationship and set an unhealthy precedent that will only magnify and do us further harm over time. What we often don’t see in the moment of responding to perceived attacks and the corresponding ensuing conflict, is that participating in the conflict itself by way of “defending” ourselves usually results in only making the situation worse.

A word of distinction here - I’m not talking about defending ourselves against a physical threat or against a situation that will truly do us mortal harm. I am talking about the more mundane moments of conflict that we experience on a day-to-day basis, usually involving our spouses, significant others, co-workers, fellow commuters, and other acquaintances or strangers who may get under our skin from time to time.

What are the “hidden costs” of struggle? This is the phenomenon of destroying ourselves or our objectives in the interest of protecting our values, our sense of self, or more accurately, our ego itself. To illustrate this point, I’ll use an example from politics…

Losing a Battle That Was Already Won

I woke up this morning to read a rather shocking statistic: according to a recent (3/13-14/08) Zogby poll, Americans prefer John McCain over either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton if the election were to be held today. This is shocking to me based on the widespread dissatisfaction the American electorate has for George W. Bush, and by extension, the policies of the Republican Party, the overall lack of support for the war in Iraq, the impending American economic crisis, the overwhelming turnout we’ve seen for the Democratic candidates during the primaries, and the clear message we’re hearing from many voters (Democrats and Republicans alike) that a huge factor in the upcoming election is the desire for change.

Now, I have a problem with polls in general, as we’ve seen in recent years how they can be an unreliable predictor of contest outcomes. Recently we saw this phenomenon in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, in which Senator Obama held a high single-digit to low double-digit lead over Clinton in all of the polling but went on to lose the primary later that night. In my earlier post in which I predict a Landslide victory for Democrats in November based on primary voter turnout numbers, I discuss my concerns with polls in a little more detail. I highlight how polls often ignore an entire demographic of the population who don’t maintain a home landline, as current established polls don’t reach potential voters by way of cell phones, which more and more are becoming the primary means of communications for many Americans, young people in particular.

On the contrary, I argue that a more accurate measure of the will of the electorate are primary results, actual voting contests, which require to supports to do more than simply answer hypothetical questions on the phone. They actually have to get dressed, leave their homes, and cast an actual ballot in an actual election. In this type of “poll,” the results our astounding, with the major Democratic candidates receiving about 26,804,737 votes to 15,505,780 votes for the major Republican candidates. In other words, 63% of the people who came out to vote in the primaries voted for Democrats, compared to 37% for Republicans.

Lest I digress, let’s put those concerns aside for a moment and assume this poll is an accurate snapshot of the will of the American people. In this case, the message is clear: “something” has caused likely voters to turn away from the Democratic candidates still vying for the nomination, despite indications that up until this point, it was practically inevitable that the Democrats would build on their success in the 2006 midterm elections and assume control of the White House.

So What is This “Something?”

Looking at this situation through the lens of defensiveness, this “something” is the self-destructive sniping that has gone on between Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They have spent more time and energy tearing each other apart, rather than focusing on the greater challenge - John McCain - and the true prize at stake, which is the fate of the country, not necessarily their rear end behind the desk in the Oval Office. Instead of simply making a case for themselves and allowing the voters to decide, they have attempted to discredit their immediate rival in a misguided attempt to make themselves appear “less unappealing.” The emotional response to this strategy on the part of swing voters, or the “Golden Middle” both sides must win over in order to succeed in November: disgust and repudiation. The result: a migration towards John McCain, a candidate who is currently making a case for himself, rather than defending himself.

The Law of Unattraction

To think about this on more personal terms, how many times have you been in the presence of a married couple or pair of friends or co-workers who are in the midst of a heated exchange of “tit for tat,” in which you urged them to just shut up and get on with it? How unattractive are two people engaged in verbal sparring? Doesn’t verbal conflict bring out the worst in people? And don’t forget my Immutable Axiom of Presidential Voting Patterns: People vote for candidates who appear likeable and/or familiar. Right now the Democratic candidates are doing an excellent job of making themselves appear unlikeable.

And in terms of personal relationships, haven’t we heard the phrase, “Would you rather be right or happy?” Wouldn’t many of like to ask this question to Barack or Hillary? “Would you rather be right or be the President? Because at this rate, neither of you will be President, without an ounce of personal power to stand up to the Republican election machine come November.” Republicans may not know how to run a government, but they’re pretty skilled at winning elections.

In their efforts to discredit one another, the Democrats are doing the unthinkable: making John McCain appear pretty attractive in comparison. And if you believe that getting a Democratic candidate elected is the only way to put an end to the insanity in Iraq, turn around our economy, overhaul our healthcare system, and restore integrity to our national identity, than what’s at stake here, amidst petty personal attacks between candidates whose policies are virtually indistinguishable, couldn’t be more significant. What is revealed is hubris in its most primal sense, in which one’s pride is unbecoming, disempowering, and self-defeating.

The Nader Factor: The Sequel

Some pundits blame this shift over to McCain on the emergence of Ralph Nader as the periennial “spoiler,” as the Zogby poll put support for the former consumer advocate at 6%, ostensibly drawing his support from Democrats who would have otherwise voted for Obama or Clinton. My Monkey loves this idea…of blaming others for our own inadequacies. The reason McCain leads the polls isn’t because Nader is poised to ruin things once again for the Democrats, it’s because the Democrats are currently proving themselves to be unattractive candidates.

The point that Nader is trying to make by running is not to win the election. Obviously that’s impossible. The point he’s trying to make is that the American Presidential election is not a “true or false” question, but in fact a multiple choice question. In essence, he’s challenging the notion of duality, of white & black, right & wrong, left & right, and red & blue, that forms the basis of the current political paradigm. Nader sees the world in shades of gray. While it seems as though he might spoil the race again and help put another Republican into office, what he’s actually doing is placing a call for the Democrats to follow their higher selves in this campaign. He wouldn’t need to put a bid in, and he certainly wouldn’t receive very much support if only the Democrats were better candidates. He’s only there to challenge the sniping, the partisanship, and the self-defeating mechanisms that are inherent in the structure in our two-party system, the result of which being a flawed Republic, a failing health care system, a stagnant economy, and a dishonest Middle East policy.

Bringing It Home: The World Is My Mirror

I am learning a lot by watching the Democrats self-destruct. While there’s still time to avert this pattern before November, the lesson is clear to me. What manifests in the external world is merely a reflection, or a mirror, of what occurs within ourselves. If we want to avert disaster in the upcoming election, it would behoove us to look inward and discover how we might be behaving defensive, argumentative, and sniping, especially in terms of our personal relationships, in which the stakes are the highest.

Defensiveness is unattractive, repellant in nature. It wards off the things we desire and ultimately destroys us. In order to achieve change, we must BE the change we wish to see.

I guess that means this whole thing is just an inside job. Sorry, Ralph.

RELATED POSTS: Obama VP to Clinton’s Prez?: Brilliant, Beguiling, Bufdoonish, and Overcoming Defensiveness.

An Inside Job

Photo by: Stephanie L.

The other day I received an email from an elderly in-law that tripped the wire surrounding the Monkey’s Defensiveness Perimeter. In the email he informed me that his lifelong friend had recently died, and oh by the way, that he was disappointed to learn that I never found the time to drop off some product samples from my day job that I had promised to give his friend. The two facts were completed unrelated. His friend died (he was in his 80’s). I didn’t give him some samples of a product I sell. Yet, the wording of the email made my Monkey think that he was trying to correlate those two facts, that somehow my not dropping off the product contributed to his friends’ demise.

I mean, he would never ordinarily decide to write me with news like this about any of his other friends…we don’t really have that kind of relationship. It was clear to the Monkey and me that he was pulling a massive guilt trip on us, which left us for the moment, speechless. Or writeless. Meaning, I didn’t respond to the email. I let it sit a while.

Which was a miracle. How many times have you responded to an email with defensive-fueled fury, only to wish later that you could hit a “recall” button at the top of your screen, hurling the missive backwards through the universe of electrons, safely returning home to your inbox?

I told my wife the story, and how I felt peeved that he was pulling a guilt trip on me, and that me and the Monkey didn’t like how that felt. She explained that he was feeling horrible about the loss of his friend, angry perhaps, and probably wasn’t in the best state of mind when he wrote that email to me. She told me that he is also very proud of me, proud of my military background, and was probably frankly pretty surprised that I never got around to dropping these samples off at his friends’ house, what considering I’m so organized and all.

What I haven’t mentioned yet is that it could be argued that these samples also have a slight medicinal quality to them (they are based on green tea) and he probably reasoned that if I could get these samples to his friend, they may have helped him live a little longer. So in a way, he might have decided that my failure to give him this product helped speed his friend along towards the beyond.

I firmly believe that the samples wouldn’t have extended his life. He was an old man, very sick to boot. The samples in question aren’t medicine. They are sodas, enhanced with green tea. They may have made his remaining weeks more tasty, but they wouldn’t have saved his life.

I knew this and the Monkey knew this and we wanted to tell him that we knew this, and while you’re at it, “Don’t make me feel guilty about your friend dying, I have enough to worry about in my own life without taking on the karma of people I’ve never met!”

But we didn’t. Thank God. Thank my wife, really. She told me to sit down and connect to how I felt. Not about how the Monkey felt, but how I felt. How I felt about learning that the friend of someone I care about died. How I felt about not following through on the request of an 84 year old man to do something nice for his friend. Period.

So I opened up Entourage, started a new message and tried to write. Dear Papa. Damn was it hard to overcome the Monkey’s will to defend himself on this one. I mean, he just installed a new alarm system. The Monkey needed some protection!

So I had to make a choice.

To defend the Monkey’s precious ego, or to reach out to someone with love and compassion.

Isn’t that the essential choice in nearly all of our waking hours?

But was the Monkey pushing me on this one. I stared at the half-composed email. Got angry. More defensive. How dare you call me out for not showing up? How dare you make me feel bad? How dare you insinuate that I could manage my time a little better?

But I won the good fight this time. Quiet the Monkey, I repeated to myself, over and over again. Quiet the Monkey. Quiet the Monkey. Quiet the Monkey. In time, he found a little patch of gray matter in the outskirts of my mind, curled up into a ball, and fell fast asleep, resting up for the next big fight.

With the Monkey catching some Z’s, I turned back to my email and simply told him that I was sorry for his loss and that I was sorry I couldn’t find the time to drop the stuff off. That simple. I hit send and was off to the next thing. Satisfied for the moment.

A few days later I got a two word reply: “I understand.”

And may your friend rest in peace…