I'm Right, You're Wrong, Case Closed

My wife and I were arguing about who works harder and is busier. What began as a disagreement about who should walk the dog became a general “discussion” of who did more.

I had just finished writing an article about bullying and I suddenly realized that I was bullying my wife. I didn’t think of myself as a bully. I was simply being “assertive.” Then I realized how right I had to be in the argument and how similar I was to the bullies I was writing about.

I never thought of myself as a bully. I had always distanced myself by feeling superior to the school yard bullies I read about or the abusive bosses colleagues told me about or the stories I had heard from the battered wives at a woman’s shelter I had visited.

Coincidentally, on the same day, I heard an interview with Ken Ballen, the author of a book with the attention getting title, “Terrorists In Love.” The subtitle is “The Real Lives Of Islamic Radicals.” Ballen is a former Federal prosecutor, who spent five years trying to figure out what motivates Islamic extremists.

Ballen was asked whether, after spending so much time with these extremists, there was ever a point where their ideas made sense.

He responded that, within their belief system, what they are doing makes sense to them. He added, “They don’t see themselves as evil at all. They see themselves as saintly, not evil and they feel like they’re doing the right thing.”

Ballen’s comment impacted me personally.

I don’t think of myself as saintly (well, maybe I do) and I certainly don’t think of myself as evil (at least to myself). But for sure, when I have a conflict, I just know that I’m right.

Does this remind you of some of the “terrorists” in your life? Someone who is obstinate, opinionated, inflexible, insensitive and apparently determined to remain that way because they are in the right, “saintly, not evil.”

Could this be you, me and everyone else we know?

Just when I think I can blame someone else for not seeing what’s right, true and just, along comes someone like Ballen to remind me that, to the “bullies” in my life, I’m the bully. They must look at me and wonder, “How can he be so wrong?”

Ballen maintains that a completely militaristic response to ideas and beliefs will not defeat them. He asserts that they’ll simply continue to push harder for those ideas and beliefs.

Again, this fits with my experience. The harder I try to convince my wife (or anyone) that I’m right, the more resistant she becomes. No one wants to be a push over.

Tim Flannery, the author of “Here On Earth“ noted that, “We have trod the face of the Moon, touched the nethermost pit of the sea, and can link minds instantaneously across vast distances. But for all that, it’s what we believe that will determines our fate.”

So I suggest that an examination of our beliefs is in order. In a conflict, I guarantee that the root of the conflict is a belief that you’re right and the other person is wrong.

If you have this belief, consider the possibility that you’re wrong about that.

Of course, I may be wrong about that as well. To believe otherwise is to be a bully. 

Nothing Changes Until We Do

“The fly in your eye is keeping you from seeing the fly in your eye”

         from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Think of a change you want to make in your life. Now consider five action steps to make that change.

See. I knew you didn’t need any advice. Neither do most people.

For example, if you don’t know how to lose weight, stop smoking, make more money and/or have more intimate relationships, you certainly know where to go to get the information (just for fun, I Googled “make more money” and got 304 million potential searches).

Yes, it’s often difficult to know what advice to believe, but the real difficulty arises in that word “believe.”

Breakthroughs into new ways of acting occur in one of two ways: Either we have to see what we haven’t seen before or we have to stop seeing what we think is there. Doing either of those requires taking a hard look at what we believe to be true.

A friend told me the other day of a Nobel prize winning physicist who, when asked why he won the prize when so many others were working towards the same breakthrough responded, “They believed their assumptions.” In other words, they wouldn’t stop seeing what they thought was there.

The classic example that we’re all familiar with occurred when it was observed that the earth revolved around the sun. This flew in the face of the previous observation that the sun revolved around the earth. The earth, of course, had always revolved around the sun. This fact wasn’t immediately accepted because people had spent centuries believing the opposite. In other words, they were seeing what wasn’t there and had a difficult time seeing otherwise.

The observation of gravity by Isaac Newton is another example. Gravity obviously existed before Newton “discovered” it. But it took awhile to see what had always been there.

I use the word “observation” rather than “discovery” because the history of human progress is nothing more than finally seeing what has always been there.

This has profound ramifications for why we don’t change when we say we want to. No matter how many times I may coach someone that there is nothing to fear when delivering a presentation, it makes no difference if the person believes there’s plenty to fear. In other words, they continue to be fearful because they see something that isn’t there or don’t see something that is.

I know that resolving conflict is easy: Simply give up being right and making others wrong. Refusing to do so is the source of all wars, violence and unhappy relationships.

But knowing this makes no difference when we are sure that we’re right and the other person is wrong. In other words, when we are committed to seeing what isn’t there.

There are many people afraid to call someone and ask for a date, a job, a sale, etc. That fear is a product of seeing something that isn’t there or not seeing something that is.

The other day, I asked a friend who is in the pool remodeling business why he was so successful. He said he makes dozens of cold calls per day. I asked if he was afraid to do so. “Why should I be?” he said. “I’m not getting any business from them now. The worst that can happen is that they’ll say no and I still won’t have any business from them.’

My friend was seeing what was there, not what wasn’t.

Consider the possibility that if you’re not getting what you want it’s because some blind spot is keeping you from seeing the obvious. This is why we all need people in our lives who will tell us the truth about reality. Or at least a different version of the truth than the one we are believing.

Then the really hard part occurs: We have to give up our belief so that we can see what’s always been there. If we don’t do that, we are doomed to keep repeating the same behavior over and over and over again, looking for something that isn’t there or believing that something is there that isn’t.

Conflict Resolution Training: Willful Blindness and Bullying

I write and speak about conflict resolution and I’m sometimes asked about handling bullying behavior. Bullying, of course, has been a major topic of conversation for quite some time and the recent crimes at Penn State represent a particularly tragic example of the willful blindness that allows bullying behavior to continue.

Consider the case of Steve Raucci (pronounced “Rossi”).

Raucci was head of maintenance for the Schenectady, New York public schools, a job he held for 23 years right up until the time he was arrested and ultimately convicted of arson, planting bombs and vandalizing the homes of people that he and his friends had problems with. In June of 2010, Raucci was convicted and is currently serving a sentence of 23 years to life.

With the exception of the arson, bombings and vandalizing Raucci was considered a model boss (irony!), beloved by the Schenectady school Board. After all, unlike the teacher’s union, some parents and, occasionally, the voters, the Board never had to deal with complaints from anyone on the maintenance staff. For 23 years.

There had been rumors and complaints of Raucci’s bullying of his staff. But these were discounted as merely the ramblings of disgruntled employees who, in any case, had been transferred to other school districts. After all, the much trusted Steve Raucci had transferred them and certainly the beloved Raucci had good reasons for doing so. Obviously, the disgruntled employees simply refused to take responsibility for their poor performance.

Willful blindness occurs in families as well. I remember reading about a man whose daughter had been expelled from high school for bullying. Rather than support the school, the father, an attorney, sued the school district. Bullying was, evidently, an inherited trait in that family.

My wife, Carol, has many stories of the “beloved” football coach at the high school where she taught before I knew her who made it a practice to put his hands on the body of any female teacher who wasn’t fast enough to run away. When Carol complained to the Principal, he asked what she had done to provoke the coach.

Plainly put, bullying exists because those who run organizations (and families) tolerate it. They tolerate it because the bully is “too important” to be let go or the bully “makes my problems go away” (as one marketing executive told me) or because those who complain are often labeled “whiners” and ignored (or sued in the case of the attorney and his daughter).

An organization (or family) takes its cue from those in authority as to what is permitted. The “I didn’t know” defense cuts it for only so long. As with Steve Raucchi (and Penn State), someone will complain, an incident will be observed, a rumor will emerge.

That’s why it’s important to listen to all complaints without dismissing them. Every complaint contains the seed of an unmet need. The complaining individual always has a reason for doing so and it’s important to listen to those reasons to determine if action is called for. Yes, some people complain just to complain. Smoke doesn’t always lead to fire, but there is certainly no fire without smoke.

Like so much else in life, blindness to bullying occurs willfully. We choose to be blind. Or we choose to take action. We have that choice and, beyond that, the responsibility.

If you’d like to hear the Steve Raucci story, you can do so at  
 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/419/petty-tyrant

Conflict Resolution Training: Innocent Until Proven Guilty And Maybe Not Even Then

"The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that it's difficult to

determine whether or not they are genuine."

       Abraham Lincoln (provided to me by Michael Nees)

“Believe half of what you see son and none of what you hear”

          “I heard it through the Grapevine”

I’m not sure where Michael Nees got that Lincoln quote. Perhaps I should Google "Lincoln" on the Internet.

The key to resolving conflict is to give up being right and making others wrong.

Here’s a test to determine your conflict resolution skills: The next time someone provides you with a piece of gossip, ask yourself whether you believe it or not. The less you believe the gossip, the better your conflict resolution skills.

Even when you observe the behavior yourself, be careful about judging the other person. The juiciest payoff for a human being is to be right and make others wrong.  

Another way of thinking about this is to live by the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. I suggest that many conflicts would be resolved if we lived by the rule that others are innocent until proven guilty and, even when we are sure of guilt, to check our premises before acting.

I was reminded of this when I was recently called to jury duty. Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience. 

I wasn’t selected for the jury, but I did get to hear the judge describe the case, which involved possible child molestation. The accused, a man of about 50, was alleged to have taken pictures of his 12-year old stepdaughter. There was an intimation that he was accused of more than just taking pictures.

Later, I repeated what I had heard about the case to friends, many of whom questioned whether they would have been able to serve impartially on the jury. They had children of their own and were outraged by the crime. Several had been molested themselves as children and still carried the scars.

I said that I would have absolutely no trouble serving impartially, that the accused was, without question, innocent until proven guilty. I came to this conclusion because of another time I had been called to serve on a jury and had likewise been excused.

In that case, we were told that the man on trial was accused of hitting a car in which two children and their mother had been riding. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the man had run from the scene and, it was alleged, he had been smoking marijuana. As I heard the details of the case, I wondered why a jury trial was necessary. Why waste taxpayer time and money on adjudicating something for which this man was so obviously guilty?

Two weeks after I had been excused, I was reading a newspaper and I saw a story about the trial. 

After deliberating for only 20 minutes, the jury found the defendant not guilty. In fact, when several of the jurors were interviewed, they questioned why there had  even been a trial since the man being accused was so plainly innocent. Obviously, my perception of the facts and the actual facts were not the same.

Presume innocence. We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. Start reversing that if you want t Presume innocence. We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and  resolve a conflict.  

Since we don’t have other jurors to give us their perspective of the “evidence,” we need to be doubly careful that what we are seeing is “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

If You Build It, He Will Come

I'm sure you've seen or, certainly, know of the movie, "Field Of Dreams" with its famous tag line that I've used as the title of this article.

The film is often referred to as the cinematic version of the best selling book and DVD program, "The Secret" with its emphasis on focusing intently on what we want in our lives and the power of our beliefs.

I was reminded of the power of our beliefs in an unexpected place the other day. I was listening to the National Public Radio program "Car Talk" which, as you probably know, is a show where people call in to get car advice from the hosts, two brothers named Tom and Ray Magliozzi who often refer to themselves as "The Tappet Brothers."

A caller asked which additive, when put in the gas tank, works best at improving gas mileage. Without hesitation, Tom and Ray said that none of them actually work. But, they then added, paradoxically, that putting the additive in your gas tank usually does improve gas mileage for a time.

I thought I was in the midst of the Zen Koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping." How can an additive both work and not work?

Tom and Ray explained that, while the additive doesn't work, we are so desirous of making it work that, without necessarily realizing it, we drive more carefully. We slow down. We make fewer jack rabbit starts. We turn the motor off instead of letting it idle. In other words, we want to believe that it works and we act to confirm our belief

The reason the additive eventually fails is because we revert to our old driving habits.

Now back to "Field Of Dreams." People who are disappointed that their dreams remain unfulfilled even though they meditated, visualized and prayed, may be focusing more attention on "He will come" than on "If you build it."

Without actually altering driving habits, the additive wouldn't reduce gas mileage at all. Without actually fighting to get up that hill, "The Little Engine That Could" never could have made it no matter how much thinking went into it. Without actually building the base ball field, the players would have no place to show up no matter how much Ray Kinsella (the protagonist played by Kevin Costner) may have wished for it.

Consider the movie: Ray devoted a considerable amount of time to plowing up an entire field of corn worth (at the time of the 1989 film), $2,200 per acre, installing lights for night games and creating the base ball infield and outfield. He researched the life of Terence Mann, a writer Ray admired in the 1960s. Ray drove from Dyersville, Iowa where the ball field is located to Boston where Ray finds Terence Mann to Chisholm, Minnesota to find Doc Graham (a character whom Ray thinks is supposed to return with him to Dyersville) and back home to Iowa. This is a distance of 3,107 miles that would have taken 52 hours in driving time alone (thank you Rand McNally mileage calculator), not including the time spent in the destination cities.

Malcolm Gladwell might have included Ray Kinisella in his book "Outliers." In that book, Gladwell writes about people who have become successful pursuing their dreams (lawyers, doctors, The Beatles and Bill Gates among others) and he notes that there was one thing they all had in common.  According to Gladwell, every one of these people worked for at least 10,000 hours (about three year's worth of 10-hour days, 7 days a week) to achieve their success.

There's something to notice about "The Little Engine That Could," "The Secret" the "Car Talk" show I referenced and "Field Of Dreams." As much as we would like to "wish" our desires into existence, it takes concentrated action (not just concentrated thinking) to make them happen (according to "The Secret" website, the secret "has been passed down through the ages," so, obviously, it took untold effort to get it to us).

You may have heard the story of the man who couldn't understand why he never won the lottery. After all, he had meditated for an hour every day, visualizing what he would do with the money once he won. Then someone pointed out to him that no matter how much he visualized, he would still have to buy a ticket. 

No matter how much visualizing one may do, "You can't win if you don't play."

As we all know, visualization without action is an hallucination.

The “Secret” To Long Term Relationships

Did you see the recent HBO documentary about former Beatle George Harrison called “Living In The Material World?” The documentary was directed by Martin Scorcese and produced by Olivia Harrison, George’s widow to whom he had been married for 23 years.

In the documentary, Olivia is asked, “What is the secret to a long marriage?” After a short pause, she smiled slightly and said, “Don’t get divorced.”

I’ve been married for 38 years and I can tell you that is the best advice anyone can give to those who are wondering how to maintain a long term relationship.

As you know, any relationship of any duration will have ups, downs and in betweens. Like a roller coaster ride, the difference between those who stay together and those who don’t is that those who stay together have decided to not get off the ride while the ride is in progress.

I also ask you to consider that we choose our lives and then forget that we were the ones doing the choosing. Instead, we blame the person we’re in relationship with for the condition of our lives. Then we end the relationship and enter a new relationship in which we recreate the conditions of the old relationship.

The only way we could create a new relationship is if we were new. After all, we’re the only common denominator in all of our relationships. Just as we continue to believe that money will buy happiness, we are sure that some other grass is always greener.

As my friend Sherri Bresn noted in a recent email, “We build our lives around patterns of feelings, beliefs and behaviors. We then repeat those behaviors over and over because then we do not have to think so much about what we are doing... habits die hard.”

A friend of mine is considering divorce because his wife doesn’t like to do the things he likes to do. Of course, the things he likes to do (rock climbing, hiking and biking), he likes to do alone. His main complaint is that his wife won’t do the things with him that he likes to do alone.

It was easy for me to see the paradox in my friend’s behavior, but it’s not so easy to see my own blind spots. That’s why it’s important to listen to the feedback we receive and especially to the feedback about ourselves that we disagree with.

None of this is to suggest that one should stay in a relationship no matter what. I simply intend to point out that our perception of a relationship depends on our point of view about that relationship. Sometimes, we think our point of view is the truth.

Points of view can change. Relationships end when points of view are mistaken for the truth.

The “secret” to a long term relationship is to give up being right and making the other person wrong for being exactly as you want him/her to be.

Where Do We Find The Strength To Be Miserable?

Film critic Roger Ebert, writing in his Chicago Sun Times blog on November 12^th, 2010, noted that he knows people who have volunteered to answer Alcoholics Anonymous phone numbers in Chicago. Ebert wrote that one person “after doing this for a time, wondered where people found the strength to keep on drinking despite the misery it was causing them.”

Strength??? How odd…until I thought about it. Then I wondered where any of us find the strength to maintain our misery.

I remember spending years being angry at my mother. Until I made peace with her, I didn’t realize how much strength it took to maintain that anger.

I had a friend who called his ex wife to apologize after years of not speaking. To his surprise, she was not happy to hear the apology. “I was prepared to hate you for the rest of my life,” she said. “What am I going to do now?”

Where did she find the strength to maintain her anger for all those years?

I’ve worked with many people who commit to changing a behavior that has frustrated them for years. Six months later, some of these same people have reverted to their old behavior, preferring instead to return to their misery.

Have you ever made a “commitment” to change and then failed to keep that commitment? How many say they’d like to be more patient and then blow up at the slightest delay? How many want to be more thankful but continue to complain? Who among us say they want to be a better listener, a better parent, a better anything and then…nothing changes?

Where do we find the strength to keep our misery in place?

We find the strength because, through repetition, we’ve become addicted to our misery. Or, put another way, feelings are produced when chemicals (neurotransmitters) are released in our bodies. When we try to change a behavior, what we’re really doing is trying to alter our body chemistry. When those chemicals we’ve been used to aren’t released, we miss them. That’s why people who change sometimes say, “I don’t feel right” or “I don’t feel like myself.” It’s the chemical “hit” that we’re missing, not the cigarette or the drink or the food or the anger or any other emotion.

This is really what my friend’s ex wife meant when she asked, “What do I do know?” In other words, what will replace my usual chemical addiction?

Perhaps you don’t think of these as addictions. But what else to call a behavior that we change for awhile and, then, revert to the way we always have done things in spite of our “misery?” The classic definition of insanity.

The difference between those who stop smoking, lose weight, begin an exercise program or change anger into compassion and those who don’t is the difference between those who are willing to put up with the discomfort of not getting their accustomed chemical hit.

Patience is not only a virtue. It’s the pathway to permanent change.