102: How to Disagree Politely and Avoid a Fight

You're listening to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, business life coach, Andrea Liebross. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week, I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly, gain confidence, make your time productive, turn every obstacle into an opportunity, and finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career, and best of all, live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's Time to Level Up. Let's do this.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I am excited to be here with you today in the middle of November at a time when we are approaching the holiday season. If you're a business owner, it's usually a pretty busy time of year as you're wrapping up this year and planning for next year.

Which reminds me, now is a great time to do a strategy and planning VIP day. So if you haven't done one of those, if you haven't given yourself some guidance and support with some one-on-one time with me to create your business plan, one that works for your business, one that you're actually going to use as a guide for next year, it is a great time to do that. Who wants to do that stuff alone?

Plus, if you do it alone, I would bet you money that it's something that you really won't be able to work off of. It'll just be a document, not really a living document that gives you direction. I think what makes my style of business planning with my clients unique is that we incorporate both the vision of where they want to go and the traction, what they need to do in order to get there.

Alight, here we go. Today though, we are going to talk about something that I would guess everybody pretty much has experienced or will be experiencing in the next six to eight weeks. That is being with people that they may disagree with. Now, we may live with people that we often disagree with. Because disagreeing is part of our human experience. We may work with people that we disagree with. But what I want to talk about today is how do you disagree without it becoming a fight, without there being extreme animosity that you carry with you. How do you disagree without fighting?

Why is it so challenging to get along with people? Why is that? Well, I think there are a couple of reasons. Number one is stress. We all live with a baseline amount of stress. I think at times we all have more stress than the baseline. When we have that heightened level of stress, it becomes harder to get along with people.

I think number two, togetherness, when we're together with another person for an extended period of time and depending on who that person is, the extended period of time might look different. You're used to being with certain people for extended periods of time, you're not used to being with certain people for extended periods of time, and that timeframe, that togetherness timeframe can feel different when you have different levels of stress to begin with.

Stress and togetherness make it challenging to get along with people. Also uncertainty, when we don't know exactly what is going to happen, that can also make it difficult to get along with people. Then I think the most relevant prevalence is the fact that oftentimes we have different agendas. Either they are external, declared agendas or internal agendas. Those are reasons that we sometimes feel it is challenging to get along with people.

But here is the real reason. The real reason that it's difficult to get along with other people and we have disagreements is that we all have human brains. We have patterns of thinking. Each of us has different patterns of thinking. My brain has a pattern of thinking that's definitely different from my husband's pattern of thinking. My pattern of thinking is different sometimes than my coaches. I welcome that. I want a different pattern of thinking in that respect. That's what makes coaching so valuable. But we as humans have different patterns of thinking.

I think there are two points here that I want to make about these different patterns of thinking. We can look up in Webster's Dictionary, what does the word pattern mean? But because they're patterns, we resist changes, we resist state changes, physical state changes and emotional state changes because we like patterns. Patterns are safe to us. They are actually easy to work with. They're efficient. Remember the motivational triad. We like things to be safe, easy, and efficient. We like patterns. They're safe, easy, and efficient.

But when we create some change in our physical or emotional state, we break the pattern. Think about this. When we are in a group of people, and we're all sitting down in an audience, and the person announces over the loudspeaker, “Listen, I want everybody to get up, walk around, and talk to someone they don't know.” Your gut reaction I'm going to guess is, “Really? I was just getting comfortable in my seat.”

But that request is a request to change your state, to change your physical state. It requires a lot of decisions. It requires you to decide who you are going to go chat with. What are you going to say? That takes mental energy. These decisions require mental energy. When we change our physical state, it requires mental energy. Think about this too, when we're in a group and we all are standing up, and then they say, “Okay, it's time to take your seats.” “Really, we've got to sit down for an hour and listen to whoever? I was enjoying talking to Susie.”

Again, they're asking you to change from physically standing to sitting. That is a change in state. When I am on the couch reading or watching TV and I see my husband get up, I’d say, “Oh, wait, before you come back, will you bring me a glass of water?” It's because I asked him not because I'm not capable of getting a glass of water, but because it requires a physical state change and my brain wants to resist it. It doesn't want to do it.

When you think about emotional state changes, when we're feeling overwhelmed, when we're having a “bad” day, you want to stay in that place of having a bad day, you don't want to change states. It's a lot of work to get yourself out of overwhelm. It's safe sometimes in overwhelm. I think, do a little check on yourself. If you are one of what I call my passive listeners, you're a listener, you listen all the time, but you've never really done the coaching work, the work worth doing, you've never engaged in it actively, why? Because you know it's going to take energy and it's going to change your emotional state, and our brain wants to stay in the place where it's happy.

You don't want state changes. When you're happy, and something happens that changes your emotional state, you get mad. I was having such a great day and you ruined it. We want to stay in the mental state we're in. A lot of times, we take out our mental or physical state changes on someone else. Specially the emotional state changes. We take those out on other people. That's number one where the real reason we have disagreements is because we have human brains, and human brains like patterns. When we disrupt the pattern because of a state change, we don't like it.

Here's the second reason. Victims need villains. When we feel helpless and powerless, it feels scary. We need to find a source of that fear or a source of the pain. We like that source to be the villain. We like the villain to be a person because then we can blame and judge them. Our brain is constantly on the lookout for villains. We're constantly on the lookout for someone who is causing whatever we're experiencing.

Knowing that that is what's really going on, knowing if someone changes my emotional state, we might say, “You created my bad mood. I'm feeling like a victim. I am blaming you,” making you the villain, but knowing that there are villains out there actually helps me, a lot of times, have more compassion for them. Knowing that there are villains out there helps me have more compassion for them.

That person who is experiencing the pain or feeling helpless is looking for the villain. The villains, I want you to know also, cannot be circumstances. COVID is not a villain. An injury is not a villain. Rain is not a villain. It's your thoughts about circumstances. Just like that person over there is really not what caused your bad mood. It's your thought about what they said. Those are the reasons why we think that sometimes it is challenging to get along with people. Those are the real reasons. It's because they are pattern disruptors.

What do we do about this? I am going to give you four strategies today to help overcome disagreements without creating a fight. As you're sitting down at Thanksgiving next week, and you disagree with someone, or you just don't even like how the day is going, sometimes it's not even about disagreement, it's just “Ugh, this isn't turning out like I wanted it to,” and you're looking to blame someone, I want you to think about how you could deploy one of these four strategies.

Number one is stay in your own business. There are three kinds of business by the way, there's my business, there's your business, and there's God's business. Other people, like I just mentioned, cannot make you feel bad or good. It is your thoughts. Here's an example. A lot of times I'll get on a Zoom call and someone might put in the comments, “Oh, you look so pretty in that pink sweater.”

Now, I am flattered by that. I love that. But I could be offended if I were super feminist and I might write back, “Why are you so focused on looks?” That same comment, like you look super pretty in the pink sweater, I could interpret as amazing, great, or I could interpret or think about it as an insult or an offensive thing to me. Insults are not insults though until we make them insults. It is not the words that that person says. We hurt ourselves with our own thoughts.

If I'm feeling hurt or insulted, I often check in with myself, “What did I think or create for myself?” I created this feeling or this thought that was an insult which is now creating the feeling of not feeling so great. Part one of stay in your own business is that other people cannot make you feel good or bad. It's your thoughts.

Part two, what other people think of me is none of my business. When someone says, “You're not listening to me,” and I feel offended by that, “Of course I'm listening to you,” that's just my thoughts. I should not be feeling offended. I'm just having a thought about what they're saying. They're saying you're not listening to me. I'm having a thought about it. What's a way to approach that? Stay out of what other people think of you.

In that case, you might want to say, “Tell me more. I'm so sorry you're feeling that way.” I can choose compassion but I don't have to choose to change the way I'm doing anything. I don't have to choose to change anything. I can just choose compassion like, “Oh, tell me more. I am sorry you're feeling that way.” What other people think of me is none of my business.

When you choose compassion, the third part of this, I want you to choose compassion instead of self righteousness. I don't have to defend myself and say, “Of course, I was listening to you. This is just how I do it. My way is better than your way. My way is better or more true. I don't have to go there,” this isn't necessarily the case. We all have agency. We all have the ability to choose what we want to think and being mad at someone doesn't help. It does not get them to change.

If I said to someone, if I said to my husband, “You're not listening to me,” and I got mad at him, that's really not going to make him change. I want you to shift to compassion and curiosity versus self righteousness. Compassion and curiosity, “Tell me more. I'm sorry, you're feeling that way.” Compassion and curiosity, they are way more powerful. Stay in your own business. It's none of your business what someone else thinks about you.

Only offer to help someone after you clean up your own emotions. Here's what I mean by that. When our child, for example, or our co-worker is disappointed or disgruntled, if I'm disappointed that they're disappointed, or if I'm disgruntled that they're disgruntled, I am not in a position to help them. When we're worried that someone else is worried, then we cannot help them from our highest level.

We really need to clean up our own emotions, this is staying in my business, clean up our own emotions, we need to get to the emotions or feelings that we want to feel before we can help someone else. Going back to your child or your co-worker, maybe your child or your co-worker needs at this point to be disappointed, or wants to be disappointed. What if it's actually good that they're disappointed, because they're going to get better at problem solving? They're going to get better at figuring out how to navigate in this world. It is not my job to get them out of disappointment, and I can't even help them unless I clean up my own emotions. I can't be compassionate or curious until I clean up my own emotions. Only offer help after you've cleaned up your own emotions.

Here's the next piece. The second strategy that you can use when you're having a disagreement that you don't want to turn into a fight is overriding mirroring neurons when necessary. Here's what I mean by this. Usually upset makes more upset, happy makes more happy. If he is stressed, then I get stressed. We like to jump in the pool with the person or jump on the ship with them. I usually call it jumping in the pool.

Think about a friend when they're lamenting over something that happened, we like to lament with them. We like to jump in the pool. We actually take on their mood, we take on their stress. But I want you to think about this. What if you don't have to solve or take on any stress? What if you don't have to be angry about someone being angry? What if you get to choose what you want to be even when that other person is experiencing their own emotion? We don't have to mirror their emotion.

That's what we like to do because it actually feels safe to jump in the pool with them. It's tricky staying on the edge because you feel like you might get pushed in. But we really do get to choose what we want to feel. How you need to do this is you need to slow down. Slow down your reaction to really help you choose how to respond intentionally. Literally, I think you need to take a pause and override those mirroring neurons. I think Brene Brown calls them mirroring neurons. Override the mirroring neurons when necessary.

What if I don't have to solve or take on any of their stress? What if I don't have to be angry about them being angry? What if my family member, and this happens with kids a lot, what if they're miserable on the trip to see grandma? I don't have to be miserable too. What if someone is thrilled that we're having salmon instead of turkey on Thanksgiving and I'm disappointed that we're having salmon instead of Turkey? I don't have to take on their thrill. I don't have to be happy about it. But that requires me to literally pause and override the mirroring neurons. That was the number two way to create or manage a disagreement without fighting.

Here's the third and final reason, I think I said four but I think I really have three. The third is to process your primary emotions. You might have heard me talk about in past episodes clean pain versus dirty pain. There are emotions that are clean, disappointment and worry, they are clean and healthy. But when we resist them, those emotions intensify and they turn into anger, which is a secondary emotion, or anxiety which is a secondary emotion.

It's okay if you have an angry person on your hands if you don't think it's threatening and don't get angry if they're angry, then there's no problem. It's okay that they're feeling that way. But I first have to process my primary emotions in order to show up with compassion and curiosity. There's no comparative suffering here. A lot of people have it worse than me, if that's not allowing you to process the emotion.

What I'm saying here is that a lot of time we squash our primary emotions, we don't allow them to come out and then they turn into secondary emotions, and that is when the argument happens. Think about it. If you are disappointed, that's a primary emotion, that's okay. But if you get to anger, that's a secondary emotion, and that's when you're more likely to have a fight. If you're worried about something, that's okay too. That's clean. But if it turns into true anxiety, then you're more likely to have a strong disagreement. You've got to process those primary emotions, keep them at bay, so they don't turn into secondary emotions and they don't become more fight prone.

Now, a lot of times, people don't process the primary emotions, they start to do what I call comparative suffering. If you do comparative suffering, like “I shouldn't be feeling this way,” or “I know this shouldn't be a big deal,” it actually makes that emotion fester and it turns into a secondary emotion. Then you're not allowing that clean pain and it turns to dirty pain. Dirty pain breeds arguments. You need to get good at processing your primary emotions so that they don't turn into secondary and they don't trigger you to create an argument.

Here's the final, maybe fourth thing, to know or fourth strategy. We are made to have primary emotions. We are made for pressure-filled events, we’re made to withstand disappointment. We are made to withstand overwhelm. We know how to handle this. Especially you know how to handle it, if you're here listening to this, you want to learn even more about it.

Over the next eight weeks, you've got a lot of opportunity to practice disagreeing about something without creating a fight. If you are also someone who doesn't like it when someone else is stressed, or someone else is disappointed, like my husband is stressed, how can I help him? What if you just allow him to be stressed? Stress isn't a problem until we escalate it into anxiety or stuck stress. What if you just allow your husband to be stressed and you stay in your own business, not in his? What if you just have compassion and curiosity versus trying to fix it?

If someone tells you you're not a good listener, and you don't understand, what if you thought “Great, this is interesting feedback. Maybe he's right. Maybe I'm not a good listener. Maybe I am a complainer,” it doesn't mean that I'm not a great, amazing, and valuable person, but feedback can be a gift. I don't have to jump right into being self righteous or defending myself. I can just accept it. Maybe that's a gift.

You are in charge of how you feel. You are in charge if a disagreement becomes a fight, it is not that external other person. It's all on you, my friends, all in you. I encourage you over the next month and a half to take the opportunities to practice disagreeing without fighting, to rely on the fact that you know that humans like patterns, that we resist state changes, changes in our physical state, like standing versus sitting, changes in our emotional state, they're having a bad day, or I'm having a great day and you ruined it or you caused it, we don't like that.

We also know that victims need villains. If we're feeling like a victim, we're looking for the villain, if we think someone else is feeling like a victim, they're looking for a villain too, and they might make it us. We know that that's why this is happening. Then I want you to deploy some of your strategies to just stay in a disagreement versus a fight. Stay in your own business.

Other people can't make you feel good or bad. What other people think of you is none of your business. Choose compassion and curiosity versus self righteousness. Offer only to help them after you've cleaned up your own emotions. Override your mirroring neurons. Pause, literally, and choose who you want to be in this situation. If you're the one that is feeling like you're about to create the fight, pause and process your primary emotions before they become secondary, when they're more fight prone.

Okay, my friends, that is what I have for you today. This kind of thing is what we do, talk about, and perfect inside Committed to Growth, my life coaching program. If you are listening to this and you're like, “Man, this is good stuff,” then you really should consider moving from just being a passive listener to an active learner and coming to join us. Enrollment is open throughout the month and you need to enroll by the last Thursday of the month in order to join us the following month.

If you're listening to this in real time, you need to enroll by Thursday, November, Thanksgiving. You need to enroll by Thanksgiving weekend, my friends, if you want to join us in December. December is a time when we need the most life coaching perhaps because it is full of stress and overwhelm. But also excitement for what's about to come. It's a great time, my friends, to level up. We have so much opportunity. Take it and run with it. I'd love to help you. If you don't have a coach, I would be honored to be your coach. Have a great week. See you next time.

Thanks for listening to the Time to Level Up Podcast with me, your host, Andrea Liebross. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, I encourage you to take a screenshot and share it with them. Okay. Now, what about you? You've listened to the podcast, and if you now know that you're ready to upgrade your life, upgrade your business, upgrade you, then stop being only a listener and start being a liver living that upgraded life. Head over to my website and schedule a call. Right there on that call, we'll start changing the way you think and act so that you can have the freedom to achieve the impossible in life and business, and have the resources to do it. You deserve an upgrade. Let's do it.