Bringing Peace To Violence

Aqueela Sherrils is identified in the movie “Thrive” (available on DVD only) as the “coarchitect of the truce between the Crips and the Bloods in Los Angeles in 1992.” I didn’t know there had been a truce or even if it’s still holding, but I was happy to hear that there had been one. Any reduction in violence in this world is good for all of us.

This truce didn’t occur because Sherrils and others taught the combatants the 7 steps for resolving conflict. The truce occurred because there was a transformation in thinking. Until the parties to a conflict are willing to say, “enough,” no resolution will occur regardless of how versed people are in the 7 (or 3 or 10 or 17) steps.

In the movie, Sherrils is quoted as saying that conflict is healthy. It’s the way we allow for differences to emerge and it’s our differences that create the opportunity to learn from one another. No differences, no learning. No learning, no survival of the species.

Sherrils goes on to note, however, that “Unresolved conflict leads to violence.”

Some of us have our own variation of the Crips and Bloods battle. Usually it doesn’t escalate to physical violence. Usually it‘s a subtle kind of violence that people do to one another day in and day out.

It may be the violence that leads to families that are little more than armed camps, with the members of the various “camps” barely speaking to one another.

It may be the violence between parents and children who no longer listen to one another.

It may be the violence that leads to a loss of vitality when one fears honestly expressing oneself. 

It may be the violence of the workplace in which a boss, coworker or employee demoralizes those with whom he/she works.

But whether conflict leads to the violence of a quick death or the violence of the slow death of a relationship, no system for resolving conflict will make a difference unless there’s a transformation in thinking. Without a transformation, we are doomed to repeat the cycle of violence endlessly.

Here are some ideas about the kind of thinking that will make a difference:

1.   The internal monologue in our heads that tells us “this is the way the world is” will, for the most part, not help us to improve our relationships. That voice is designed to help us survive, not thrive. Survival too often means “keep doing what we’re doing” because what we’ve been doing has led to our survival. That voice comes from our past. That voice does not help us to solve new problems in the present or create a new future free from the constraints of the past. That internal voice can only tell us how problems were solved in the past which is fine if we live in the past. You may notice that we don’t (except in our memories).

2.   Responsibility for the success of relationships isn’t 50/50. It’s  100%/0. Have you noticed that you’re the common denominator in all of your relationships both when those relationships are working and when they are not?

3.   Listen without arguing to the feedback you get and especially the feedback you disagree with. What you’re being told is your access to great relationships. The feedback you hear may be a blind spot for you that may save your relationships if not your life. Blind spots cause accidents. Eliminating blind spots improves our vision.

4.   Give up believing that you are justified in being angry. Make up reasons (which is what justification actually is) to be loving instead.

5.   Continually forgive. Not condone, just forgive. Stop drinking arsenic and expecting the other person to die.

None of us are to blame for our way of thinking. Indeed, for the most part, our way of thinking isn’t actually our way of thinking. It’s how our ancestors thought. For example, if you are a man, you inherited certain ways of thinking that are common to men. If you’re a woman, you inherited thoughts that women generally think. These thoughts are evolving, but they are still inherited and aren’t original to us.

If we are to thrive, we have to invent new ways of thinking. When our way of thinking doesn’t work for us, we need to thank our ancestors for their help, but let them know, gently, that we plan to choose a way of thinking that brings peace to violence.

What You See Is What You Get. But You May Be Blind And Not Know It

Happy New Year (okay, so I’m closer to the Chinese New Year than the Western one, but the sentiments are the same).

How many times have you heard, “Perception is reality?” or that “What you see is what you get?” These statements have profound implications. What I think is there may not be. What I’m sure is not there, may be. I can’t be sure that my view of reality has any reality to it. This includes my view of other people as well as my view of myself.

If one of your resolutions is to have better relationships in 2012, consider that conflicts exist because we don’t see what other people plainly see or, conversely, we see what other people are sure isn’t there.

I submit the following as evidence:

You may have heard of the experiment in which six people, three wearing white shirts and three wearing black, are videotaped for one-minute tossing a basketball back and forth. Later, a group of people watch a recording of this action and are instructed to count the number of tosses made by people in the white shirts.

Afterwards, the observers are asked two questions:

1.      1. How many tosses were made by the white team and

2.       2. Did you see the gorilla?

Say what?

In fact, after 35 seconds of the one-minute recording have passed, a person in a gorilla suit walks into the circle of players, thumps his/her chest for nine seconds and then leaves.

100% of the observers correctly counted the number of passes. 50% of the people did not see the gorilla.

Another famous experiment is one in which Stanford University psychologist David Rosenhan had eight volunteers go to psychiatric hospitals on the east and west coasts and claim to be hearing voices for a brief period of time (by that definition, we all should be admitted. If you doubt it, just stop reading and listen to your internal monologue including the monologue that asks “What voice?”). All eight were admitted to the hospitals. One was diagnosed as manic-depressive while seven were diagnosed as schizophrenic. They ended up staying in the hospitals for an average of nineteen days (the range was from seven to fifty-two days).

Nurses generally reported that these patients seemed perfectly fine, but none of the hospital psychiatrists or staff agreed. All were eventually released with a diagnosis of schizophrenia “in remission”

When the results of the experiment were released, Rosenhan was contacted by a psychiatric hospital to explain that they would never be fooled as others had been. Rosenhan told these hospital administrators that, over the next three months, he would send them fake patients to see if they would be caught.

Three months later, 193 patients had been admitted by the hospital. 41 were classified as imposters.

In fact, Rosenhan had not sent a single fake patient to the hospital.

You may ask, “So what? How does this help me in my life?”

Simple. When a conflict festers, we of course believe we are right and “they” are wrong. Belief in the “rightness” of our position is the basis for all conflict.

If you have any interest at all in resolving those conflicts, you should at least consider that the gorilla that the other person is insisting is in the room pounding it’s chest just might be there but you are so focused on being right that you just don’t see it. Perhaps you’re not seeing that you really don’t listen, that your point of view is not the truth but only a point of view or that your opinion is not a fact.

So for this year and beyond, in order to improve our relationships, we all must be skeptical of our own certainties about ourselves and other people.    

Transcending "Groundhog Day"

“Groundhog Day” is a great film because it captures so well the dilemma of being a human being and also offers a way to transcend that dilemma.

You know the story. A pompous weatherman from Pittsburgh (Phil Connors) gets stuck in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania because of a snowstorm. He is also stuck in February 2^nd, Groundhog Day, waking up each day to the same day, over and over and over again until, finally, he wakes up to a new day.

In essence, this is our fate. We know what tomorrow will be like and, with some variation, it will be just like today. Few of us will wake up in the morning and completely alter the circumstances of our lives. The circumstances may alter without our active intervention, but we’re not likely to quit our jobs, end our relationships, leave our children behind and run off to Bali or wherever we have dreamed of being. Some people do but they are usually running from the law.

In fact, a change in our circumstances may cause us to yearn for “Groundhog Day.” For example, people who have lost jobs or homes probably wish to get their old life back. The uncertainty of this economy may have you wishing for your own “Groundhog Day.”

Even as the day changes to February 3^rd, nothing really alters for Phil Connors either. In fact, at the end of the movie as he is walking with the woman he loves he says, “Let’s live here forever.” But if he does, he will meet the same people, he will eventually hear Sonny and Cher singing, “I’ve got You Babe,” the song he woke up to every morning when it was always February 2^nd and he will likely return to his job predicting the weather. Even if he returns to Pittsburgh, he will mostly interact with the same people he did when he left for Punxsutawney.

So why is Phil Connors happy? You could say, as he does, that it’s simply change that has made him happier. But a little reflection proves the fallacy of that reasoning. For awhile, a new car, job or relationship makes us happy. But eventually the car, relationship and job become “Groundhog Day.”

I suggest that what alters Phil’s world is that he sees something that had been a blind spot for him. He sees that it really makes no difference if he has to repeat the same day over and over and over again. In essence, that’s all of our fates. Rather, he decides that while he can’t alter his circumstances, he can alter his attitude and that transforms everything.

 

Ultimately, this is how conflicts get resolved, relationships heal and we become happy. If our circumstances never change but our point of view about those circumstances changes, then life alters.

Paradoxically, altering our point of view requires that we see what has always been there. We will see what has always been there if we give up our commitment to being right about our opinions, judgments and assessments. We might, for example, see that our opinion of those family members we are dreading to see during the holidays bear no relationship to the reality of who they really are.

As Rabbi Alan Lew writes in his book, “One God Clapping,” “We don’t realize how much our subjectivity is involved in shaping reality. When we do become aware of this, the world seems remarkably malleable.” 

Little Boy and His Dog

Little Boy and His Dog
Not really a strategy for handling conflict. But if you're ever upset, watch this to calm down and bring back your smile.

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