Valentine's Day Advent: Day 3
In which I exhort you to do something that might not come naturally
When I figured this skill out, I was blown away. Because I didn’t think it was possible.
(And reminder: This is the last of three free Advent Calendar posts. Become a paid subscriber to move seamlessly into the fourth post tomorrow and beyond, all of which will be paywalled.)
Open the door
(Click on the graphic below)
This skill is so valuable. In every setting. For every type of caregiver. Parents. Therapists. Teachers. Aides for the elderly. Nannies. Spouses. Valentines.
Everyone, really.
Because when people act out — when they do something you’re tempted to take personally — chances are very good that they are not telling you anything very interesting about you. What they’re telling you is all about them. Which can be super interesting! And surprising, because they’re probably totally unaware that their behavior has revealed truths about themselves they might want to keep hidden. Or don’t even know about themselves.
Which gives you a great deal of power.
Which you can use for the good.
By recognizing how bad your relational partner must feel when they, say, call you a slob. Or how honest your students are being about how much they hate the book you’ve assigned. Or how desperate to belong people who exclude you must feel.
Uhhh! It’s hard not to take all this personally. But you can do it: Focus on the data. Use the power the data has given you to try to understand the people whose behavior you’re tempted to think is all about you. When it’s, I repeat, all about them. Understanding, even if only provisional, changes everything.
Practice
Interestingly, the way to practice the skill of Not Taking It Personally is to root yourself in your Garden and look over your Garden Wall. At the Garden(s) of your relational partner(s).
With curiosity.
What is going on over there? What is their behavior teaching you about them?
When your partner, say, calls you a slob, what do they need? (They might need you to agree that you do have slobby tendencies and will work on them.) But, in addition, they might be teaching you that they feel overwhelmed by a sense of encroaching chaos, which they simply cannot abide. Not because of you directly, but because they learned long ago that chaos is dangerous and dysregulating.
When your students rebel against the book you’ve assigned them to read, what do they need? Well, they might need to hear that you love that book. But they also need you to accept that they don’t. And run with it. “What do you hate about it?” you can ask. I guarantee you the resulting conversation will be rollicking.
When two people whisper to each other while looking at you, what are they teaching you? For one thing, they’re rude. For another, they’re regressed to an earlier stage of development. Like, middle school. Maybe more interestingly, they’re probably teaching you how fundamentally insecure they are. They’d rather use a convenient third person (you, but it probably doesn’t matter who) to reinforce their bonds to each other. Which protects them (in their minds) from the very bullying behavior they’re enacting on you. Ew.
Got an example that bamboozles you? Leave a comment and I can work on it. You’d be doing me a great favor, as I love unpacking bamboozling examples of bad behavior.
Oh dear! This is the last free post of the Valentine’s Day Advent Calendar. If you want to receive tomorrow’s post seamlessly in your inbox, please upgrade your subscription. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you very much!
And share this post with your Valentine! Or your students! Or your rude co-workers! Subscribe for a month for less than a third of the cost of a bar of wild chocolate from Caputo’s or for a year for half the cost of the Wild Chocolate Trio Gift Box. What a deal!