You can be RIGHT... or you can be HAPPY.
Today’s Communication Trick is about the latter. It’s called coming off your position. Next time you notice a burr or difficulty in communicating with someone, odds are you are being RIGHT about something - occupying a Position and holding it as if it were Right and True.
Could be you’re right.
Maybe not.
The only thing you can be certain of, is that it serves no purpose to be right about it in this conversation. They are not being convinced and if you are just stubborn, or bludgeon them and dominate them with your point of view all you accomplish is hidden resentment, resignation, rebellion and disconnection.
You may be being right about What They Want, or What They Really Mean, or The Right Way To Do This, or What They Should Say, or any number of other things.
Stop that. All you are doing is being closed to the conversation moving and flowing and becoming something else.
Make a mental note of what you are being right about, and then let it go. That doesn’t mean you are wrong, they are right or anything at all. It just means that being RIGHT isn’t helping you.
Coming off your position is the best way to discover the other person in the conflict. It also inspires the other person to perhaps (definitely not always) come off a position themselves.
You can be right or you can be happy. Or you can be right or you can have connection. You get to choose. But if you’d like to have connection, try coming off your position.
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