Change Your Tactics
Changing of tactics requires several key life skills:
Identify your goal.
Ask yourself what tactics you employ to gain that goal.
Ask yourself how you respond when that goal is frustrated or thwarted by other people or by exasperating circumstances. This will lend insight into your typical tactics.
Reflect on how your tactics affect those closest to you. In this step you are not examining the worthiness of your goal but rather the effectiveness of your tactics on others.
Develop increased self-control. The ability to identify hurtful tactics and change them for the sake of your goal and the benefit of a particular relationship requires self-discipline.
Ask others how they perceive your tactics. Honest examination and the insight and support of others can make valuable tactical changes possible.
Changing how you communicate your goal and how you handle the frustrations when your goal is blocked can make an important difference in the quality of your relationships.
Good Luck!
Communication is purposeful; meaning when someone is angry or aggressive in tone and body posture, he or she is trying to communicate meaning and accomplish something. The aggressive person is trying to get something to occur by being aggressive.
It can be exceedingly helpful to ascertain the goal of the communication. What are you hoping for? What are you trying to get at, explain, control or influence with the aggressive style? This may give us clues about the goal.
The goal for the man described above was understandable. He wanted his wife to listen to him and understand him. He wanted a peaceful day, cooperative children, a clean house and several other quite standard, even reasonable desires.
In many cases a reasonable goal is being communicated. I might love the goal but hate the tactics.
It’s not the goal of the man or the goal of his communication – rather it is the way he is trying to get what he wants that becomes problematic. His tactics are ineffective and very likely counter-productive.
If we continue to use problematic – that is to say – less than productive tactics, the goal is pushed further away.
The very opposite of what was desired now begins to occur.
A man came into my office some years back and his abrasive interactions with his wife in my presence caused me to ponder the reasons behind aggressive and painfully degrading verbal comments.
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