Now, more than ever, we need unity. We’ve become polarized in a division of us versus them, yet it’s such a falsehood that once you see it, you can’t help but start creating peace together.
When I was a child, I remember them calling me stubborn, and knowing enough to be ashamed of the label. “Good luck, she’s stubborn,” they’d say.
In my post-therapy years, I know many different ways to label the same behaviour. What looks like stubbornness to the undiscerning and weary viewpoint is tenacity, confidence, perseverance, strength, and esteem to the enlightened one – enlightened because that burden of shame has been lifted.
By Any Other Name
Consider that stubborn behaviour. You wouldn’t put so much resistance into it if you didn’t have the inner resources, including the will and the backbone. You wouldn’t persist if you didn’t believe it would be worth the effort, and that it’s a matter of time until you overcome.
I take pride in my stubbornness. Where’s the shame?
Children are supposed to be seen and not heard, do what they are told, and obey their parents. Not me. I violated the contract, and the parents who signed up under that belief system were highly irate. I knew the terms and conditions, and that was fine with me.
Send me to my room; I’ll read in peace and quiet all afternoon.
Withhold my allowance; I have savings.
Cut me out of the will; I made my own nest egg.
They couldn’t ground me because, unlike my siblings, I had no friends. All the activities I did weren’t of my choosing, and I would have happily not gone. I asked not to go, but I was denied.
We all wish to belong and be accepted by the family we are born into, but it doesn’t work out that way for everyone. I’ve heard some parents say that they love their children but can’t stand the person. I understand that feeling. Distance is my solution.
Finally, I feel a feeling of family I’d always longed to experience. I get to be the cook at the hunting camp, as I’d applied for years ago, only to lose out on the job at least a few times that I know of. The family hunting camp is the family hunting camp again, welcoming back people who have used the phrase, “I prefer bow season.”
It will be peace and quiet for the first time in years.
Dream A Little Dream
I had a dream decades ago that seemed so close to being able to touch it. There clearly was a role to fill, and I wanted the job.
Looking back, I realize that I could never have imagined all the forces that prevented and obstructed that dream, but they were there all the same.
I stubbornly exposed and confronted them, sometimes with shock, and sometimes with a system. Dreams are hard work, but they can come true.
My father described my dream-making behaviour as volatile: “I don’t think you should be together; you fight too much.”
What was actually happening was a long-term negotiation. When someone did something the other person did not expect was within their character, lines were drawn and sides were taken.
My father would call that quitting grounds and continue his journey to find the perfect match, where no one fights. In one of those relationships, he would hold his discontent for as long as possible until everyone called them The Bickertons.
Instead, we kept the lines of communication open if we needed much distance and time to reflect on what the other person was attempting to communicate. Each of us understood that there’s a chasm between what you want to express and being able to do it accurately and precisely.
He has the advantage of vocabulary and speed, while I have the advantage of delivery and humour. He can spin a story that compels people to listen, while I publish weekly obscure meditations and receive silence.
Over time, thorns are rubbed off.
Some couples may naturally arrive at this level of peace and understanding. For us, it took twenty years, much distance, and more silence than you’d imagine. To each their own pace, but understand the journey you’ve picked and the outcome at the end of it.
In Perfect Harmony
The behaviour traits that matter are as follows: Do they listen, and do they show that they heard you by acting differently? As we discussed on our first date, if I have to yell it at you repeatedly, the problem isn’t that you haven’t heard me.
Some people cannot listen, and others have no desire to change. Know the difference, and make that your criterion for moving on. Some people are caged by conditions you’d never guess.
Peace is made, not kept. If you are keeping the peace, you are doing yourself disrespect and harm. Speak up and claim the respect you deserve, and that’s how you teach people how to treat you. Settle for nothing but harmony.
I once used the word “harmony” in a presentation to a few bigwigs. One of them interrupted me, “If you use the word harmony, you might lose some people.”
I’d just lost him, though it took me years to learn this red flag of attributing to other people what you feel yourself.
Harmony means without conflict. Complete alignment. Leading because you know they are right behind you and not because you’ve whipped them into shape, and you must keep glancing over your shoulder to check. It means shoulder to shoulder, and they are just outside of your periphery, and you don’t have to take your eye off the ball to eliminate your anxiety that they might not really be there. It’s deep trust in support going the way you are going.
It means the next time someone behaves in a surprising way, there can be a vulnerable conversation about what’s unconscious and automatic about it, and how to confront and contort those forces.
Deep trust in support.
If you have only one, then you have enough. Quality trumps quantity in relationships.
For You and Me
If you don’t have one, start with the Universe. It’s ready, willing, and able to co-create with you—in fact, it already is—so you might want to start working on your relationship skills with that one.
When I say, “God,” I am referring to the one I know is listening, the ultimate King, Power, Universe, Mother Nature, and Collective. I am spiritual, but not religious.
Whatever I call it, maybe it’s all simply for me, and that loving, powerful force I feel is the hand of my late grandfather, whom I never met. Maybe the other one, who now spiritually says, “Let me.” Perhaps it’s my grandmother who has passed, cradling me with her energy as she did when I was a baby, limited in my available defences. I am surrounded by loving angels lighting my way with protection.
In their company, finding the higher road becomes much easier.
What if it’s the bully who made my working life miserable, who died in a car crash, whose soul is now trying to earn her way into heaven? Maybe it’s the uncle who abused me, trying to atone for his wrongdoings? What if it’s my late mother who did the best she could and wished she could have done better? I am guarded by guilty parties willing to right their upsetting ways.
In their company, I want to be the example I am expected to set.
It’s likely to be a matter of hard work, and I’m willing to build the muscle, put in the hours, and be open to the lessons of failure.
In the mirror, I don’t want to be the weak link or the one who disappoints the team. I want to know I did the right thing, even if the reaction is mixed.
The Art of Peacemaking
To do the right thing is not to go forward with resentment and bury that emotion, try to forget that experience, or justify another’s motivation. It is to accept and surrender when you have no other choice, negotiate when you do, and own your end of the bargain.
In all relationships, we need to own the energy we bring into them and our expectations of what we want to get out of them. I hear dog owners command their dogs as if the dog has no soul of its own or that there is a hierarchy of importance. As a cat owner, I know my cat has her own spiritual quest, and who am I to say who gets to dominate? How would you characterize your relationship with the Universe? Do you expect nothing? Everything?
Our minds are meaning makers. We seek to find meaning, or proof for the meaning we are told exists. Without the experience of finding the meaning in an uncomfortable or undesired experience, you seek an explanation.
With enough explanations, you open the door to experience. Seek positive explanations, looking for why things work out rather than why things don’t, because your story will perpetuate. You will always find what you seek, so seek the upside, the light, the higher road.
With experience, you no longer need an explanation. It just is, for you cannot imagine turning back towards negativity and darkness, loneliness and ruin, destruction and harshness.
The more ways you have to explain why things always work out in your favour, the more times they will. Load the dice in your favour before rolling them. When the stakes are high, use every trick in the book and leave nothing to chance.
Giving Love
I’d used the word “negotiation” to describe the back and forth that was required to resolve conflict in our relationship. In truth, no one was trying to win, information wasn’t being deliberately withheld for advantage, and neither party was invested in a specific outcome. In negotiation school, those three things are indeed at work, no matter how egalitarian each party behaves.
Businesses want something out of it, whereas an attitude of, “It would be nice, but otherwise, I am happy being single.” The business isn’t prepared to freely walk away; the person who sees past history as an investment is also burdened in their analysis and approach.
I don’t know what you call that way of behaving – of being interested but not tied, of being open and not exposed, of being collaborative and not competitive. If you know, please let me know what neat, nice word string would apply here, because I’m all about brevity when possible.
When I was young, I wished for things, only to get them and realize they didn’t solve the problem I thought they would. From the frying pan into the fire. I leapt, and leapt, exchanging one set of bad circumstances for a different set that would invariably be worse. And I was highly educated in the science of decision-making! Today, I know that statistical know-how is giving armour to opinions, whether we intend it or not.
Have you ever followed a well-considered analysis only to find that the dice of the outcome rolled differently than you thought they would? In your relationship negotiations, I’d advise you to stick to your morals and always take the high road, not the easy, lazy one.
May you find the patience to do so, and the pages to guide your journey.
Defining the Job
Meritocracy is when the best person for the job is the one doing it. You think the hard part is picking the right person, instead of according to bias we know we have or don’t. The hardest part is naming the job.
In my career, I’ve read, written, and applied to more job descriptions than anyone outside of Human Resources. Not one was precise or accurate, and they weren’t wrong either.
In my vehicle life, I have a two-wheel-drive grocery-getter. It has a lift assist, but no four-wheel drive. Grocery shopping can work around the weather, but doctors’ appointments do not.
Knowing that upcoming requirements might mean hitting the road in a snowstorm, I researched an upgrade. The people in the passenger seats also researched it, and they beat me to it.
But like a used car salesman who dazzles you with the electronics, yet doesn’t point out that there is no lift gate assist, once you have it, you realize you will have a slushy mess in between you and your groceries all winter long. It will steer for you, but not open the door.
If a job description could be like that one defining sentence, instead of a long list of chores or attributes, then the perfect match would be obvious to all.
In business, we’d hire the right person for the job, instead of the one that fills the quotas, the one that’s related to you-know-who, or the one who’s easy on the eyes. In addition to those three reasons, I’ve also been hired because someone wanted to tell his buddies that he “had a Black Belt on the payroll.”
I’ve also been paid extremely well to stay home and stay out of it. “We’ll let you know when we need you.”
Sticking with Merit
Some people never want help, especially from certain people. Sometimes, willingness to do the work is all that is required to get the job. When it’s a “good” job, other people are willing, too, and someone gets to choose.
Sometimes the chooser is also the person who had the need, but not always. A few times in my career, I was hired by someone and then rarely saw them again, but I met my manager on my first day.
After being tricked twice, I realized that they do this when they know the manager will send all candidates running. The last time it happened to me, the seven people before me had been fired almost immediately.
Imagine leaving a steady job to take hers and then having it ripped out from under you. Whatever happened to her in life to cause her to do that needs therapy, and I couldn’t understand why HR wasn’t marching her ass to one on a daily basis.
When people decide, complicated things happen, and then we tie money, power, safety, reputation, and even love to these decisions and expect that we are rational people doing justifiable things.
That’s where things go wrong—looking for approval or applause.
With all the decisions that are required to be based on merit and not cognitive bias, it’s a random, chaotic world out there, and from what I know as a Black Belt, the only way to get it to settle down and under control is to take your hands off, stop messing with things, and let it be.
Have you ever seen anyone in power willing to put it down? I know of the heiress who surrendered her fortune. I know of spiritual, religious figures, and even royalty. But politicians?
Principles of Unity
One of them was caught saying his own gun buyback program was insufficient, and he still has his job. Freeland couldn’t back Trudeau’s spending plan, but doesn’t say a word when Carney’s is worse.
In a career of data-based decisions as its mantra, I’ve only ever seen one made that way. The movie Moneyball exposed the gist of it, but it still remains a rare thing to do. Ray Dalio is making a dedicated effort and is happy to share with you the Principles of how to do it.
The pudding is there with the proof. Will a government party adopt this approach, and if they did, would the people understand what they are voting for?
Right now, you vote for your community. The winner goes to Ottawa and joins the other winners aligned under the same leader. The leader with the most winners decides how to staff all the leadership jobs from his pool of winners.
No one in his pool of winners ever worked in finance? That guy will suffice because fundamentally, it’s about managing experts, and those experts are there no matter what party wins. Or is it?
I remember once having more experience than my superior, who was telling me to do something. However, I knew he was unaware of a risk in that order, and I felt compelled to point it out. I worried that later he might say, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Well, not so much say, as scream.
Later, my manager reprimanded me: “Never voice your opinion unless directly asked.” Do they tell the boys that?
Lots of them seem to voice their opinion as if it’s a fact. They don’t wait. They arm themselves with data, charts, and PowerPoint decks, ready to push their opinion on anyone in the way.
Original Saintliness
I remembered that order, even when I was working for an organization that expected and functioned as I did originally. Culture matters – find one that matches your personality.
I’ve been reprimanded so many times that I don’t remember exactly what to do when I disagree with authority. Smiling and backing away slowly is what works for me today. If there is no authority, expect differently, for I’ve been called a Piranha, a dragon, and a hunter.
Meritocracy is a huge idea in the sky, like going to Mars, but for human nature, not human exploration. I’ve written systematic approaches to conquering bias in several different subjects.
I would love it if we had a meritocracy, but instead, I march toward this vision with ideas like Practical Wisdom, Solving Problems, and What Could Be.
The biggest hurdle is that no one thinks it happens to them and that whatever they do is working for them—until it doesn’t, and resilience is required. That’s where I greet you, and I’m happy to help. Please let me know if I did or am only helping myself. At least I am helping myself, to happiness.
That’s a phrase I love: Help yourself to happiness. I overheard this response to criticism. Someone was saying, “You know, it would really be better if…” and they said, “Help yourself to happiness.” If that’s what would make you happy, you do the work.
Do the work, and know what work is worth all that effort, for time passes anyway; you might as well be happy.
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