Boundaries Begin With Dignity, Not The Other Way Around
When was the last time you found yourself trying to point out the harm that someone else caused, only to have them respond with denial, indifference, or gaslighting? How about the last time you found yourself subject to someone else’s overblown reaction, blamed for something you honestly didn’t do, or distrusted based on a misunderstanding of your intent? If we look deep enough into these situations, we can see that what we all long for is dignity. Dignity as honored not
Blame Locates a Doorway that Curiosity Opens
What can we do as a community, as a team, or as a couple when we find ourselves polarized in a state of deep disagreement, stuck in the blame game and unable to move forward together? That is a question I attempted to answer in 10 Tips for Navigating Deep Disagreement. Here, we take a deeper look at how the emotion of curiosity plays a critical role in transforming any conflict into a growth opportunity. We need not look far to see
Ego is Not the Problem
The term ego often gets used as a negative label to refer to a supposedly unhealthy aspect of our identity that causes us to have selfish impulses. There’s this idea that if only we were willing to “let go of our ego”, we would stop acting in harmful ways. While this way of thinking about the problem has an element of partial truth to it and might seem accurate at first glance, the truth is that it’s a vast oversimplification.
Discipline and Desire: Unexpected Doorways to Happiness
It has been over two months since I published any new writing on this blog. I started to feel really bad about this about a month ago, as I had previously made a goal for myself to write something every 2-3 weeks. The days kept passing and I just didn’t feel like it. On three different occasions, I sat down and started to write about something that I knew I had previously felt inspired to share, only to find that
10 Tips For Navigating Deep Disagreement
Our inability to resolve deep disagreements has become a major crisis of our times. Ideological division that blocks effective public discourse has arguably become a bigger problem than the loss of personal freedom, inequality, climate change, or COVID-19 because it is preventing us from having effective conversations to address these other issues in a well-coordinated manner. A deep disagreement is a disagreement resulting from epistemic differences which cannot be resolved by rational means alone. In my coaching practice, I have
Compassionate Repair Process
Have you ever had an argument with your significant other where you found yourselves going in circles, stuck in blame and defensiveness and getting absolutely nowhere? Did it astonish you just how incapable your partner seemed to be at understanding how they hurt you, given how simple it should have been to get it? Did you feel blamed for something that seemed to be a misunderstanding, yet no amount of clarification would get them to withdraw their accusation? Have you
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