How to Quit Being a Nice-aholic

Hey, everybody. Welcome to my weekly house call. Now, this week's house call is kind of about me and things I've had to work on to be happier. And I hope maybe you can learn from them too. Now, many of you asked me how I gave up being a niceaholic, which I talked about in a previous blog. Now, if you've been following my writing, you know that I had a bad habit of not saying everything that I felt or. Or what I experienced in some really important relationships. And then I suffered the consequences. I would not really get into conflicts, but I would be disappointed with people. And then I would complain to my friends or my coach about it while not saying what I really wanted. And then I got increasingly unhappy about it. I used to have a weird experience of feeling right or justified about complaining. It really took me so far from dealing with the real situation that was in front of me. That's until I learned about what I could do about it. Now, there were discrete action steps that my coach taught me that enabled me to just take a deep breath, to get clear about what I wanted and tell the truth in a clear, honest way. And that enabled me to become able to talk to somebody with whom I was having some conflict with without creating more problems. See, I was confident, conflict avoidant externally, but I was sort of suffering internally from the conflict. And I learned how to be fully expressed and change all of that. You see, the concept of balancing grace and wisdom, as she put it, was really new to me. In my family of origin, there were only really two choices. Blow up, which my stepfather used to do, or stuff it down, which I learned from my mother. And neither was the healthy choice for me and wasn't working in my life. So what is grace? Well, it means communicating in a way that the other person would really want to listen and they would really want to hear what you have to say. It meant doing the mental, physical, and the emotional preparation for the conversation so that I was calm and cool and I could say what I was experiencing without blaming the other person or. Or without exaggerating what actually happened, which I often did. It also meant to be open to the fact that I may not understand everything about the other person's perspective and that I needed to ask for their perspective and then listen to what they had to say. You see, my coach taught me to say back what I was actually hearing from them, to confirm what I understood and then give them a feeling of being understood. So it really means you have to listen and get them and then feed it back to them. And it sounds kind of corny, but it actually works. The next piece after grace was wisdom. Now, what wisdom means was that I had to say the whole truth of what I thought. And that was really hard for me because either I was afraid of hurting someone or afraid they would be upset with me. So I was kind of thinking I was controlling the situation, not making them feel bad, but I was actually trying to manage them. I was used to sort of talking around things, not being direct and and so staying it really straight took a little practice. And I still have the practice of thinking through these difficult conversations before I have them to make sure they go well and that I say everything I need to say. It actually turns out it's a lot easier when the conversation is framed positively and I set up an advance, and then I'm under the assumption that I'm going to learn something too. It's not just about expressing what I feel. Here's the basic steps that I follow when I design any hard conversation. First, get permission. You don't just want to jump into the conversation. This is really part of grace. You have to ask the person, is this a good time? And then actually listen to what they say. Give them the freedom to choose if and when they want to have this talk with you. That already sets them up to want to talk, or at least to be open to hearing what you have to say. And if they're not, then you shouldn't speak and you're going to be protected from another blow up. Also, I want you to explain the situation in the context of what you're trying to achieve in the conversation. This is also part of grace is setting up why you want to have the conversation and what your goals are, what you want to get to at the end. And if you don't have something positive to say here, you probably aren't ready. The next thing you do after setting up whether it's okay to have the conversation is apologize for your part in it. Your role. Another way to really put your listener at ease is to own your side of the street. First, it's pretty disarming. The next thing you do is describe your concerns. Here's where the wisdom part kicks in. When you start with grace and the other person wants to listen to your perspective, it's much easier now. Sometimes it's okay. If you need to take notes, that's okay. I usually don't. But you can use phrases like this is what it seemed like to me or in my experience, or I could be wrong, but what I remember you saying was X instead of you did this and you did that right? Next, ask for their perspective. Listen. But really listen. Hear the grace comes back in again. Maybe you're misremembering or you don't understand what they did or why they did what they did. Here's where you can just directly ask how do you remember it? What am I not understanding? What do you think happened and why? Next, decide on the promises for the future. Now here's where the wisdom kicks in again. A lot of people get so relieved simply to have said what's on their mind that they forget about the power of structure and accountability. The people in the conversation have to ask themselves how are we going to prevent this from happening again? And then agree to certain commitments going forward. It's simple, but it's not easy all the time to do it. But it does work and with practice you'll get it right now if you focus on learning this skill, you're going to be able to have fabulous relationships and fabulous health and that's going to be awesome for you. All the handheld group coaches teach this model step by step and they can actually help you work through your most difficult conversations. If you're interested in wanting to get this kind of support, you can get a free 30 minute consultation on how the handle method works and find out if this coaching program is right for you. So now I want to hear from you. Have you struggled with difficult conversations? What's worked for you? What hasn't? And share your thoughts on our Facebook page. And if you like this video, share it with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter and submit your questions to drhyman.com so maybe next week I'll make a house call to you sa.