Monday, December 24, 2018

Creating Community, Part 5: Dealing With Negativity

Hundreds more articles like this can be found



Papa Tony: So far in this series, I am posting a lot of idealistic jibber-jabber, seemingly in a perfect world. Well, let’s balance that out with some real-world negative possibilities:

Your Actions Are Threatening Somebody Else’s Sense Of Entitled Leadership.

I can guarantee that this will happen. It’s the human condition. Here is what we do about it:

First of all, respect and love the folks who are shooting poison darts from the underbrush, even if they make your back teeth hurt when they are around you. Adding Drama to Drama doesn’t help anybody, and makes the folks in our constituencies head for the exits in dismay. They won’t be back. Trust me.

By loving the ones who are trying to cut us off at the knees, a funny thing happens… The folks who watch silently from the distance are forming opinions of everybody involved. Word DOES get around. If one person’s side of a disagreement is classy, patient and unattached to being RIGHT all of the time, and if the other side is a bunch of angry, irrational screechmonkeys, then 90% of folks choose the sweetheart, every single time. I have endless amounts of actual, documented evidence that this is true.


The Three Devastating Sentences

Let’s say that I get a long, emailed hate-o-gram, telling me what a horrid piece of shit I am, in pages and pages of single-spaced bullet points. It happens. I’M pretty darned clear that my actions are not causing an actual problem. So, I use three devastating sentences, and then move on:

• I am sorry that you feel that way.

• Thank you for your truth.

• If you ever want to be friends, the door is always open.

So, what makes these sentences so “devastating”? 

Well, to start, I am taking ownership of the conversation. I am not buying into their framing of this disagreement as a Fight To The Death. I don’t even get into the fight. They have NO way of responding to my message without looking like an asshole, unless they drop the shields and get over themselves. This has to be done from a humble, authentic stance, not as a cruel twist of the knife.

Rise above the Drama. Your constituency is counting upon you to survive shit like this. It comes with the territory of being a Public Figure, but you don’t have to give your power away. That’s a one-way trip to hell.

Venting, But SAFELY

No matter how saintly and perfect that you may want to be, day after day, there will be times where somebody succeeds in getting under your skin. It happens.

They will be unfair, they may slander your excellent good name, and they will have successfully discovered your baser insecurities, and are dancing on them in hobnailed boots.

That’s their idea of fun, while you are doing your damnedest, and don’t deserve ANY of it. I get that.

So, DON’T COMPLAIN PUBLICLY. This feeds right into other people’s pleasurable need for Drama. A few indiscreet, public words can ricochet wildly, and turn something awful into something soul-killing. Too many idealistic folks have been lost to us that way.

Instead, make an agreement with your MOST loved and trusted friends that what you say will go no further. One or two, at most. If you have a friend or mentor in a different city’s Tribe, that’s an IDEAL sounding-board for you. Somebody who doesn't have a dog in this fight.
It’s Too Easy to Be Codependent

There are multiple traps for folks who obsess over doing the righteous and high-minded thing. We want to do a superb job, and we also seem to be much more committed than others.

The OBVIOUS (and codependent) conclusion to make is that “If anybody is going to do a great job, then I guess that it will have to be ME!” This is a trap that we set for ourselves. Suffering and pitying ourselves is OPTIONAL. It’s not inevitable.
Commitment Junkies

This is very much part of the same family of issues: We say “Yes!” to requests, and the more that we do that, the fewer of our own needs are handled. We drop ourselves to the bottom of the list.

The cure for all of this is to see these behaviors as FOIBLES, to be laughed at in a gentle way, to be acknowledged. Then, then get back on track by asking for help.

I can tell you right now - a suffering or wounded leader is not really leading. I cover a lot more in the next article on this topic.

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