Video Transcript: Decision Requires Discipline

Welcome to Session 9.  Session 9 is about decisions.  Decision Requires Discipline.  And if you're on page 13, you're on the right page.  We're going to take this first slide and put it up.  And let's take a look at what we have here. 

Reduce Escalation Encounters.  And this you'll find in the middle of your page.  And, again, I want to spend a few minutes describing how you would introduce this to your class and to those that you will be teaching and training to better manage their anger.

Choose to not be a prisoner of your past.  Ask yourself what actions or habits of mine were useful ones, but are no longer applicable.  Everyone has the potential to influence outcomes and discipline yourself to decide to create an atmosphere where change brings new possibilities into reality. 

A question might be, “What do I do, or not do to make this happen, or not happen?” Now is the time to discover that success comes with commitment. 

So that paragraph can be stated just as you heard it, or it can be changed in a way that puts you in alignment with your conversation and the language that you want to use to make that work for you.  

You decide to make a conscious choice to behave in a different way that reduces any proclivity leaning toward poor judgment. 

So as I'm reading this, and I'm reading this deliberately, I want you to be looking at it.  And I want you to hear how you might use or adjust the words so that it becomes something that we call ownership; you have the ownership of what you're saying, and saying it so that there's a sequence to it, that's useful and helpful to you and it's helpful to those you're training. 

By replacing reactive behavior with proactive observational behavior, you dramatically increase behavioral tendencies contributing to your wellbeing. 

Now, there’s a fellow by the name of Abraham Maslow, that described how we do not know that we do not know something until we know that we do not know.  And when I say you decide to make a conscious choice to behave in a different way that reduces any proclivity leaning toward poor judgment, if we don't know that we are performing poorly, we will not make a change in our judgment.  We just won't do it.  But on the other hand, if we're aware of what we're doing, and we recognize that it's not something that we want to do, we move from not knowing that we don't know something, to knowing that we don't know something.  And that's a real value. 

And when we're looking at this, we're trying to describe it for others, you will surprise yourself and those around you with your ability to reduce escalation encounters.  So certain things no longer hook you, and neither do the trigger words, or observable actions of others raise anger levels.

If you're aware of the anger or the frustration that somebody is experiencing and you want to help them with that, you have to first of all, help them understand that they have this challenge. Now, if we go back to one of the previous sessions, and we talked about how we managed, George, if you recall, we said that we kept the tone of our voice very calm.  And we said “George, George, George,” and finally George would say “WHAT?”  And we would say, “George, we need to talk not like this. Let's take a break.”

And if George continues to escalate, and he continues to be loud, you say, “George, that's not like you.”  And George might say, “What do you mean, it's not like me?  I'm like this all the time.”  Now this is important.  The next thing you would say would be, “That's true.  And it's not like you.”

And the reason you would say, “That's true,” is because in this moment, he is screaming and shouting.  But the next statement, “that's true,” when he said, “What do you mean? I'm like this all the time,” and the response is, “That's true. That's the way you're behaving all the time.  But that's not like you,” that's separating him from himself.  It is separating his behavior from himself.  

If, if George, God forbid, was in a horrible accident and lost his arm, would George be a lesser person?  I think you'd have to answer that no.  George would be the same person with one less arm.  But George is not his arm.  

And if we think about how this person is created by God, and this person has habitually now come to a place where they have a hard time managing their anger and the only way that that will change for them is for you to help them see that if you and this person are in this relationship, and you're trying to restore this relationship to something healthy, then what you would be doing when you say, “That's not like you,” you're surprising George, because he has just said, “What do you mean, I'm like this all the time?”  And you precursored what you said with “That's true. And it's not like you.” What you're helping him do is go from this emotional component of who he is to a logical component to who he is.

And by helping him through that challenge, what you're doing is you're helping him because you're going to surprise yourself and those around you with your ability to reduce escalation encounters.  So he won't necessarily know why you, staying calm, and using the same voice and the same volume in your voice to make a very specific statement to him, he may not know what's happened, but what has happened is you've helped him make a mental shift.  And the mental shift has come because you did not buy in to his anger. 

I'll give you a simple little example of that from my own experience. And it's a way for you to make decisions which are based on discipline.

We were building a house.  And when I went out to talk to the contractor, the gentleman who was building the house, I would ask him questions.  And I've already told you in one of the other sessions that I'm not very mechanical.  So I ask real naive questions when it comes to construction or when it comes to home building, house building, structure building.  And when I would ask him a question, he would immediately be offensive.  And the reason he was offensive was he thought that I was questioning his skills and his ability.

Now, maybe you've had a situation like this, where you're just asking an innocent question, and the other person (says), “Well, what do you mean, what are you saying?  Do you think I don't know what I'm doing?”  I mean, that's what their tone of voice implies; that you're saying that they don't know something that they know they know. 

Well, I noticed this.  And here was the adjustment in my behavior toward this person.  And this happened over time.  It doesn't happen in an instant.  It happens over time.  But here's what happened. 

When I noticed and recognized that every time I asked him a question, he would become upset, I decided to change my behavior.  So the next time I went out, and he came storming out of the construction, knowing that I would have some questions, I started with this.  “I really appreciate you and your patience because when I asked you naive questions, you still give me great answers.  I wish I knew more about this, but I don't.”  

So I am, in that moment, setting a stage for how this is going to happen.  And he can make a different decision about how he plans to speak to me when I ask my question.  We would just start out very simply, I would say, “You know, I really am naive when it comes to construction. And I know this is going to sound like a silly question to you, but I know you're going to have the right answer.”

That's being sincere and genuine and honest and open about what I know about what I'm about to ask.  I didn't ask it to question his authority or judgment, or his expertise.  I asked it because I wanted to know.  And when he finished, I finished my part of that interaction with, “I appreciate you so much for your patience with me.”

Now, if you think back to the impatience he was demonstrating when I was first asking him questions, you would say, well, he wasn't being patient. You're right, he wasn't.  But you give him a truth in advance.  If you help this person recognize that patience is within them, and you pre-call it to their attention, they will become more patient because they'll make a choice to be more patient.  They will decide, they will discipline themselves.  

So I'm giving you just a Reader's Digest version of this encounter that happened over four months, five months, because it took some time to build this home that my wife and I eventually moved into and lived in for a very long time.  But let me share with you what happened. 

During the course of that construction, he came to coming out of that building, and saying, “Do you have any questions for me today,” with an earnestness and sincerity and a genuineness that was adapted because of the truth in advance, “Thank you for your patience with me,” regardless of how patient he had been.  I pre-called the patience I expected.

Now, some people would say, “well, that's manipulation.”  The answer is no it's not.  Manipulation has a single focus.  I don't care what happens to you; I only care what happens to me.

Persuasion has a multi focus.  Persuasion says there's a benefit to you. You may not see it now, but it's there.  And persuasion says that I want to help you see the benefit without saying it out loud.  “Thank you, for your patience with me,” was the persuasive language that helped this person make a transition from being ready to be aggressive to prove his expertise to proving his expertise by asking if I had any questions he could answer.  So he went from trying to avoid me to seeking me out.  That's the emphasis I want to place here. 

When we look at how we manage moments and situations, we have more control over that than we can give ourselves credit for.  And if we're paying attention, things will change for us because it changes for them.  And we can reduce this escalation. 

I want to go back and have you look at this slide again, and see if we can't help you see something that might be useful to you.  Let me just get this right up here.  (It doesn’t want to go. Hold on.  Here we go.  I 'll put up here.  And let's look at this, if I can get it up here.)

So Reduce Escalation Encounters.  Sort through your current behaviors and write them down for your eyes only.  

Choose behaviors to develop, put them in your prayer life asking for guidance.  I prayed when he would give me these aggressive answers to my questions, until I realized that he was aggressive because he thought I was questioning his skills.

Act more positive than negative.  So ACT yourself into the right thinking.  It's next to impossible to think yourself in the right acting.  But remember, even in the word ‘impossible’, I'm possible.  So I looked for a way that was better than the one I had been using.  

And better understand yourself by expanding awareness.  Work at it until it's natural.  And that experience taught me a lot about how I would handle and manage people who became concerned or anxious when I asked them questions because sometimes questions are uncomfortable for people.  And yet, if you learn how to ask better questions, the outcome is that the quality of the answer improves.

So be less controlling and more capable of managing moments because control belongs to God. 

And you deal with your own fears and assumptions. So that means that if you're dealing with your own fears and assumptions, you have to be fearless.  And fearlessness is how you manage these situations.  You are fearless, your confidence level rises to the occasion, and you're not being anything other than the best person you can be in that situation by holding this up, this person up to the best behavior they can exhibit toward you.  And bringing that all together is what makes that a benefit all around.  

So when we're looking at how we do this, we look at this little summary here, anger management is a decision.  I decided to change my approach to asking this person questions.  I decided to say to him first, “I'm naive. I know very little about this. So please forgive my naiveté with the questions that I ask.”  And by being able to do that, if you decide to use the tools being discussed to develop and maintain your ability to teach as well as practice this subject, it becomes a worthwhile endeavor. 

Anger is an emotion.  Remember, it's there built into us as a safety, as something that's useful to us and helpful to us.  So it's not going to go away. But how we manage that emotion becomes helpful.  It's 5000 years older than the logical side of who we are.  And we want to be able to manage that emotion as well as we possibly can.  It's part of what is referred to sometimes in neuroscience as the reptilian part of our brain because emotion was there before words.  Emotion was there before logic.  And we have to manage that more effectively.

Have the courage to decide when the occasion arrives, examine information known to you and consider information from others before deciding.  If what you decided works, keep doing it; if not, make a new decision.  And the new decision I made, the discipline I made to myself was to recognize that this person was feeling discomfort.  And if you're in a relationship, and you're trying to create comfort, it creates more benefit to all those around. 

This gentleman became a friend and has been a friend to this day.  And I've never talked to them about what or how that happened.  I simply recognized that I could manage that moment more effectively if I was treating this person with all the dignity and all the respect I could, and give him the respect that he wasn't giving himself until he could figure out that he was worth giving himself the respect that he deserved.  And he came to that conclusion by the outcome by the fact that he came to me at another time and handled that situation completely different.

That doesn't come overnight.  As I said, this was a process that happened over a period of time, because the practice it requires that the other person is equally as important to them as the practice you offer yourself when you practice these techniques, these tools, these ways to say things in a way that transform your interaction with other people.

I would simply remind you of this.  Decisions are always being made.  When you get up in the morning, you make decisions.  Throughout the day, you're making decisions, you make thousands of decisions in a single day; thousands of decisions because of the thousands of thoughts that run through your mind.  What's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad, this will be helpful, this will not be helpful.  

So if we take that decision making process and we start saying to ourselves, how can I make better decisions so that I can put into this environment that I'm in a more loving spirit, more genuineness, more sincerity so that the decisions that I'm making are focusing on helping the other person gets what they need.  Because if you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want.

And that's what makes relationships what they are.  You can never be that other person; they can never be you.  But what can happen for both of you is both of you can become more, because two is better than one.  And we know that from experience.  We know that we need each other.

I've said before that I think that Aristotle being a brilliant man made a mistake when he said we need to be independent of each other.  I think independence is fine, but not of each other. Because we need to depend on each other, we need to build relationships and be in relationship with others.  Because loneliness is a horrible place to be.  And loneliness is that person that has not accepted that God loves them very much and is there for them and supports them and encourages them through Holy Spirit.  But there are people that don't do that.

And there are some good, solid Christian people who have horrible tempers, and explode and come unglued, and don't know how to manage that because they they've missed that emotional connection that they need to make.  But I believe it's changeable.  It's changeable if you make better decisions.  And you do that through disciplining yourself, to make decisions and disciplining yourself to go seek the information you need to continuously grow and stretch where you are so that you become all that you can become.  

All your gifts and talents, all of your strengths, all of all of the things that belong in your life are there because you're making a contribution to the whole.  You're serving your community by serving yourself well.  Remember what we said, integrity is being honest enough with yourself to be honest with others.  And if we're loving our neighbor as our self, it requires us to have the kind of authenticity and self-esteem we need to continue on this desire to go forward and continue to grow forever.  And we grow lifelong when we learn lifelong, and that's where our benefit comes.

As I said in the last session, I'll repeat it here.  I'm very excited about Session 10 that's coming up because I think you're going to see this in a diagram that will help you really transform how you approach this issue and other issues you will face in your life.  It's one of the foundational pieces I put in my programs and it's there for you in this program because it's so valuable.  And some of you will look at this and not see as much in it with the first derivation of it.  But I believe if you look at it, and discipline yourself to go back to it, you'll recognize that you'll make better decisions and those decisions will lead to better outcomes. 

So you have nothing to fear but fear itself.  That was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt back in the 40s.  He was the president; he served longer than any other president.  And I think they changed the rules or the law with regard to how long you can serve as president after his term as president.  And he led us through a very horrible time in our culture.  And one of the statements that he made, one of the more powerful things that he said in all of his administration was, “You have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”  And we define that in one of the other sessions as False Evidence Appearing Real (F-E-A-R).

I'll see you next time.  Thank you.