When we don’t do what we are told, precisely because we are being told.
Someone grabs you, but instead of pulling or pushing them you take the unusual approach of supporting their grasp. You position yourself to stand next to them, almost as if you want to see the world the way they see it,.. and then you slam them to mat. I recall practicing Kotegaeshi in Aikido many times over. There is much blending with your partner in Aikido – you manoeuvre yourself into a position that is right for you, but also right for your partner – you avoid confrontation. We can learn a lot from such an oblique, and non confrontational approach in other areas of our lives.
Just a few minutes ago I responded to a LinkedIn post when a colleague asked how to disagree without being disagreeable. I suggested that when a person holds a different view from us we approach the situation with humility, with curiosity, and with an inquiring mind. We get attached to our own viewpoint, but if we think of ourselves as being attached to the truth then we can accept that our own viewpoint might be incorrect (or have been previously correct but now need updating). When we adopt this mindset we see our ‘opponent’ as a partner, and we can invite them on a journey to find the truth, by asking them to help us test our own viewpoint. People react differently when you ask them for help.
In a recent podcast Adam Grant put forward the idea that we might ask a person to ‘dance.’ (Not literally.) When we dance, he says, we do a few moves that they like, and they do a few moves that we like, and the whole interaction is one of collaboration rather than confrontation.
Nir Eyal observes how we sometimes end up confronting ourselves.
When a mother tells a child to put on a coat on a cold day, the child may dig their heels in and do the very opposite. I still act like this now, and I’m a grown up (sort of)! Referred to as reactance, it’s our tendency to resist when we feel someone is compromising our personal freedoms.
“Wear a mask, douchebag!” Even without the invective, ordering someone to behave in a certain way will commonly have the opposite effect. Would you take someone’s advice if they gave YOU an order? I suffer from reactance so much that if someone ordered me to eat ice cream, while I was eating it (and I LOVE ice cream), I might even spit it out. Reactance is why reverse psychology sometimes works.
In Nir Eyals’ post on Medium he suggest we might be reacting to ourselves, and that when tell ourselves to do something we may be setting ourselves up to fail. His suggestion is to reframe the order as an invitation to get excited. Instead of telling ourselves to do it, we tell ourselves we get to do it.
I’m a big fan of reframing, as Nir Eyal advocates. Our words should serve, not sabotage, and especially not self-sabotage – there are enough obstacles to navigate in life without creating our own. But if reframing doesn’t work for you there are other ways to be kind to yourself. You might become attached to the truth rather than your notions, you might become your own dance partner, or you might blend with yourself, consider the world from viewpoint of the worthy adversary that is also you, and then you might gently slam yourself down into the mat… before offering yourself some ice cream.
