CC#06 Master My Story.

How to stay in dialogue, when you are angry, scared and hurt.

HE MADE ME MAD, some people tend to react more explosively and you your self sometime take verbal blow without battling the eyes and sometime go ballistic when someone even look at sideways. You make you made and scared. And when the emotions runs high either they master you or you master them.

Maria felt humiliated and angry because she thought Louise downplay her. She donesn’t want to appear oversenstive to most of the time she said nothing. But manage to assert herself occasionally getting in sarcastic jabs.

EMOTIONS. The worst in dialogue fall into the Maria trap, she is unaware that she is making a dangerous assumption. In her mind she is justified and accurate. Her emotions are acting on her. The worst in the dialogue fall hostage of their emotions and they don’t even know it. The good realise if they don’t control emotions the matter will get worse, so they fake it, choke down the reaction and get back to dialouge. But when they hit ruff spot it comes out of hiding in sarcastic comment or tightening jaw. The best act on thier emotions. They influence their emotions by thinking out loud.

STORIES CREATE FEELING. When face exact same situation ten people act 10 different ways. Just after we observe and before we feel something, we tell ourselves a story. We make meaning to what we observed. We guess the motive that is driving the behaviour. Why they are doing it. We also add judgement. It is good or bad. And based on the story our body reacts. We can make different emotions by telling different stories. We now have a point of leverage.

OUR STORIES. Maria thinks WHY does Louis take over. He doesn’t trust my ability to communicate, HOW should I judge. he thinks that because I am a women. He thinks I am incompetent this is bad. And than What I suppose to do. If I say somthing he will think I am winner so better keep shut up.

As we come up with our own meaning, its not long our body respond with strong feeling. After all our emotions are directly connected to our judgement of right| wrong, good| bad. Kind| selfish. Fair| unfair.

Storytelling typically happens blindly fast. We tell story first, wether you always become angry when someone laugh at you. Maria could tell Louis is afraid. If you want to change the result change the story, even in the middle of fray.

SKILL FOR MASTERING STORY. The best in dialouge first slow down and then take charge of the story.

RETRACE you path, [ACT] Am I in some form of silence or voilence, [FEEL] what emotionsa are encouraging me, [STORY] what stories are creating these emotions, [FACT] what evidence do I have to support this story.

Notice your bechaviour, when you are slipping in silence or volience, it is a good cue to stop. And honest look what am I doing. Instead of justifying my behaviour.

Get in touch of your feeling, most people are emotionally illiterate, they use word such as bad, when they were embarrassed and surprised. Knowing what you are feeling will help you to take more accurate look on what is going on and why.

Analyze your story. Is it the right feeling? Means is it the right story? Afteall our stories are our own invention. don’t confuse story as fact. The feel like fact.

Get back to fact. Can you see and hear this thing you are calling fact? Was it an actual behaviour? You can separate the fact from the story by focusing on behaviour. You can watch hot words he made a sarcastic comment

WATCH THREE CLEVER STORIES, either our stories are accurate and leading in the right direction or quiet inaccurate and justify our current behaviour. Making us feel about ourself. They are Clever because they allow us to feel good about behaving badly.

Victim story [ its not my fault ], it makes us out as innocent sufferer. The theme is other person is bad, wrong, dumb and I am good, right and brilliant. Other people do bad or stupid things and we suffer as result. Vitctimzation is not clear-cut. When we tell a victim story we intentionally ignore the role we played in the problem. It judiciously avoid whatever you have done. You complain about your boss and omit the info that you left him high and dry on a important project. Victim story tell nothing but your noble motives. He doesn’t appreciate person with super attention to detail. This little detail turns you from victim to martyr. [bonus]

Villian story [ it’s all your fault ], by turning normal, decent people into the villains, we impute bad behaviour, the tell everyone about the evil of other party, as if we are doing the world huge favor. When we see our spouse upset that we didn’t keep her promise we see her as inflexible and stubborn. Labeling is common device in villain story, they don’t just help us to blame other but set up to do whatever we want. Look who we are dealing with. watch for double standard. when you see these stories and catch them for what they are, we see tarible double standard we use when we are out of emotions. We we make mistake we tell the victim story when other do the same mistake we tell villane story, in which we invent terrible motives and exaggerate flaws of other.

Helpless stories. [there is nothing else I can do] while victim and villain story look back, helpless story look forward to tell why we can’t do anything to change the situtaion. If tell the boss, he would be defensive, after all control freak like doesn’t accept behaviour.

Why we tell clever stories, there are four main reason

• sometime they match the reality - other person was trying to harm us, it is not common but it can happen.
• clever stories get us of the hook. They conviently excuse us from the responsiblity. In reality we are partially responsible. Other person isn’t bad and wrong and we are not right and good, the truth is somewhere in b/w. But once make other wrong and ourself right we are off the hook, we can now even demonized them.
  • keep us from acknowledging our own sell outs. We usually don’t begin telling clever stories that justify our action until we have done something we feel need to justify, we sell out when we consciously act against what we know is right. After sell out we only have 2 options own or justify. Did you convience yourself of other driver selfishness and then not let him in. Ofcourse not you had no reason to think he is selfish until you needed an excuse for your own selfish behaviour.

TELL THE REST OF THE STORIES. When you recognize you are telling the clever stories stop and then do what it takes to tell useful story. Clever story has one characteristic in common they are incomplete.

It’s done by victim in actor, villain in human, helpless into the able. When you feel like you are talking to yourself as innocent victim, ask AM i pretending to note notice my role in the problem. Instead of being victim your were an actor maybe your contribution was merely a thoughtless omission. By asking what role you played you notice your selective perception and become aware how you minimized your mistake while exaggerating others.

When you find vilifying or labeling others ask, why would a reasonable, rationale, decent person do what this person is doing. As we ask this question our emotion soften and empathy replaces the judgement. other maybe wrong but the purpose of humazing question is to deal with our own emotions and stories.

When you feel helpless you can tell complete story by returning to original motive. What do I really want? For me? For others? For relationship?
Then kill the fool choice by asking what would I do right now if I wanted these result. And you are forced to keep yourself accountable.