Love & Respect Beyond the Comfort Zone
November 7, 2024 at 4:21 pm,
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What gets you out of feeling miserable after a big failure, betrayal, or loss?
For me, it always comes back to practicing love and respect. I am not so perfect at it, so I mean "practicing" like trying to improve and "practicing" like a standard of behavior.Especially with the people I totally disagree with. Like when you know you are so right that any reasonable human being should see it automatically.
At one time, you might've even started calling those human beings stupid, crazy, or immoral because they don't accept as fact what you accept as fact. I hope you're not doing that anymore, because you deserve to treat yourself with more dignity.
I learned in management that two persons can have the same basic needs and concerns, but they come at it from totally different angles and use completely different words to describe it.
That's true diversity. It's the magic of being a member of the human race.
But we can only enjoy it when we can make ourselves patient and tolerant enough to communicate respectfully when we disagree. To work through apparent differences to the values, needs and concerns we do share.
Especially when you know someone is dead wrong. Try to keep the big picture in mind. I believe in a picture bigger than gargling loudly in pride about how right I am.
Of course, it's not your fault if your first reaction is to destroy those who don't accept as truth what you know is truth.
We are all being trained to react that way by people who make money from getting us hooked on that reaction ... It's a dopamine addiction, essentially. The chemical is being administered by relentless digital mendacity.
How's it work?
In 24/7 feeds, we are disrespected into ignoring human complexity, via writing tricks that season handpicked facts with "omitting parts of the story or context", "setting up false dichotomies", "excluding the middle" and serve it all fried up with emotionally charged words. Yummy.
I know all the persuasion games. I've been a marketing copywriter for 16 years. Journalists learn the same tricks and they're paid to use them constantly.
"Smart people believe this," they say. It's Marketing 101. Making you fear being left out of the in-crowd. This one even has an acronym: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). It's among the top 3 most common marketing tactics. Check out the ads you see everywhere.
The journalists take it even further, though, don't they?
"Join the smarty party and you get a license to despise everyone else."
Kind of like a teenage clique, isn't it? Not really a call to our "higher nature".
Frankly, not a single one of us gets to be a superior being. Our human nature doesn't permit it: The line between being RIGHT and being SELF-RIGHTEOUS is not perceived well enough in our primate brains.
Because we're this way, you've probably noticed that we have to learn to love each other instead. Love each other in a world where it's hard to love each other. That's what makes our love worth something.
When we begin with the premise of others' inferiority to us, we can't disagree respectfully and we can't answer their questions in a way that gives them confidence in us.
Then you don't reach anybody. You don't help anybody. People aren't willing to support you when you don't give them what they need.
But there's something required of you and me to even get us to the front door of other peoples' minds .... You'll discover that humans will go mighty far for you with just a little R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
May I humbly offer you a way that makes your listeners more receptive to your criticism? A way that can lead to finding common ground and cooperation — rather than increased conflict?
This is brought to you by a philosopher named Dennett. I found this summary of his idea on reddit.
Put it into practice and see what happens in a month.
Unless the mob is in reality banging on your door with machetes, pitchforks and firearms .... Unless that's really your situation, you just might find something more interesting out there.
What did I find beyond the Comfort Zone ...
The other side of dishing out the criticism is being able to answer criticism with the respect that makes people feel good about you, and gives them confidence to work with you. It can even make them feel proud to be associated with you.I made this to help you find those people ... and to help others become those people. From what I'm told, it's helped out around 2,000 professionals so far.
I want it to help you, too. Especially now. Here's link I made to offer you a 20% discount on everything till the end of the month. Click here ☟