disagreement

MoK: Absorbing Shots

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

Today for the March of Kindness we’ll focus on negativity. Negativity itself is not a problem, it is a critical aspect of life. You truly cannot have up without down, nor happy without sad, so we don’t want negativity to completely disappear, but we also don’t want to entertain it for longer than is necessary.

Negative things are really nothing more than signals. Your freedom lies in how you respond to the negativity in others, and when doing this it might be best to think of something like tennis or ping pong as a metaphor.

If people express their negativity toward you it can be responded to in one of two ways. If you choose to meet the negativity in a hard, reflective way, that is like hitting a shot back. Someone insults you, so you insult them back. By meeting their shot with a shot of your own, you join them in the exchange of negativity. This will continue until one of the egos involved feels it has “won.”

If the person is responding to previous points they feel you (or people like you) have scored against them, they will keep hitting negative serves to you until they feel they’ve scored an equal the number of points. This is actually a healthy process that keeps relationships internally balanced so that resentments do not build.

The only way to shorten a game of negativity is to not hit a shot back. If you intentionally miss a shot fired at you, or if you strike it back weakly, this means the person has won their point and has less of a reason to continue throwing more negativity your direction. Again, once they feel they have won that game it will naturally end.

So how do we absorb a shot? It’s really quite easy: instead of responding with a hard argument back, we can instead offer the softness of kindness. But what does this look like in practice?

Say we’re in a class at school and someone tries to bring us down with a negative comment, we can simply respond with a compliment back. So rather than participating in the game of negativity exchange, you can toss the ball back with no intention of scoring a counterpoint. Eventually the person gets tired of you not playing and they stop serving to you.

In an office, if someone is being negative about something, you can choose to kindly find a way to agree with them rather than argue back. It can feel very counter-intuitive to not offer your best argument in return, but you can do that if you remember that real winning is when you dissolve the disagreement rather than beat another person.

Today in the March of Kindness our jobs are easy. We each make the world a lot better by finding at least three chances for us to offer kindness were you could easily offer disagreement. All you’re trying to do is find people who want to have a game of negativity but then you let them win. They challenge you for a seat on the bus and you offer it to them. They want that parking stall, it’s theirs. They want to dislike you or your friends, let them. Easy.

Do you see how generous that is? You’re offering to lose. That is so kind. That is what we do for very little kids. We understand they’re growing, so we let them beat us in games by intentionally avoiding our own best game. In those cases we’re more interested in the development of the person than we are in personally winning. We just forget that once we’re adults, but the effect is exactly the same.

Participate in the March of Kindness. Make someone else feel like a winner and you will have made the world a better place. Because there are no losers with kindness.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.

The Politics of Love

Scott McPherson1 Comment

54 Relax and Succeed - I am only one but I am oneBecause I faced the very serious reality of death at five years old I had shortly thereafter wondered–if you could die at five what was the point of being alive at all? I was already wondering this in the hospital, which was perfect because my brain injury was so massive that the doctors and nurses spoke to each other as though I wasn’t there at all. That level of candour taught me a lot about people and gossip, but most importantly it taught me about happiness and its sources.

Maybe people bought new clothes they thought they looked good in, or maybe they went on a vacation to relax. Maybe they started exercising to feel physically better, or maybe they bought a puppy to keep them company. Maybe they had sex with a co-worker, or maybe they told a lie to make sure someone else didn’t have sex with a co-worker. Eventually it occurred to me that people were on a spectrum with suffering at one end and love at the other. And everything that everyone did was all a part of their effort to either move toward love and belonging, or away from suffering and separation.

There are a lot of ways to reduce suffering and increase happiness but individual people tend to pick their own familiar routes. As a society it is also important that we value our happiness as a group. In school when they taught us about Gross Domestic Product, I made a teacher angry by asking what meaning that had? What if we made 10 times as much money but we were all unhappy? What if this abstract number grew, but so did the suicide rate? What I learned through asking all of those questions—and years of questions afterwards—was that a lot of teachers don’t like questions.

54 Relax and Succeed - Be selective in your battlesI recently heard a radio story about an election and a split government. 50% of the votes went to one extreme and 50% to the other. Both sides felt like the country had lost. Both sides described the situation as unfortunate and impossible. Can you see how they have been infected with limited thinking? Why can it only be one way or another?

Why is winning only defined by you getting your way? Why can’t winning be about creating the greatest amount of happiness for the largest number of people? Why can’t each side say, “Okay, let’s lay out what we each want and see if there’s any overlap. If there is, we can do those things right away. Then we can look for things we’re willing to negotiate on, which allows each of our constituencies to be represented to an equal degree.” In short, what if we respected the fact that the “other side” will certainly have at least a few good ideas?

No matter what issue you’re looking at, if someone thinks the other side can’t possibly have anything useful to say then they are truly and fully brainwashed. It is the height of an ego’s arrogance to think that anything that we believe is always right and anything someone else believes is always wrong.

54 Relax and Succeed - Shrinking heartsWe all have to stop wanting to win. We have to stop wanting more. We have to forgo power and wealth and status, and we have to start making the sort of decisions that lead to everyone experiencing more love and joy in their lives. We have to forget our beliefs and turn to love. We must trust love. To be loving is our purest self.

If we want the world to change we have to change how we do things. It is no surprise to anyone that worldwide most political work from all sides is juvenile and dishonest. It’s time we set a new agenda—each of us in our own lives and collectively as a society. We have to begin by nurturing a culture of patience, respect and compassion because that is the only way we will experience a culture that is patient, respectful and compassionate.

Stop complaining about the people you disagree with because those complaints are your reality. Instead, use that energy to see what you agree with and do that. Because then that cooperation and support will be your reality. And living that life will affect the world just as positively as it will affect you.

Enjoy your day.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is a writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations around the world.