Lay Down Your Arms
I love how a meme tells a story. If you know me at all, you know that I love to communicate with memes of all kinds! Behind the humor often lies a picture of our lives. Sometimes it is personal. This one hits home for me. It tells a story of progress from fighter to collaborator.
This is my story. What is your story?
We all developed a belief system that started very early. We learned from our family and friends how to handle conflict. We also learned how to get what we need. And for some, we learned from an early age how to respond to an enemy. These intuitive responses are still at work in our relationships today.
Here is a great challenge. Whether you stop now and write a list or just close your eyes for a minute and see the list in your mind. Who were the last 10 people you interacted with? Texts, calls, emails, office or home interactions (kids, spouse, boss) ordering coffee, elevator passenger and my personal favorite, traffic interactions. For each one of these, especially the traffic interactions, think about the feeling of that interaction. Was there tension? Did you see those people as partners, enemies, an obstacle to getting what you need or maybe someone who’s presence was unimportant?
We all have different personalities that combine with our development to form our posture towards others. On the Enneagram, I am a 2 but lean heavy towards 1. This means that my greatest motivation is to help others. This is in my DNA so deep that it is exhausting. But I do also lean towards the perfectionist number 1. Combine this with how I grew up and you get a serious chaos that would give you a headache! I would always try to connect and help. I wanted to create a great experience in every interactions. My propensity to go on the defense is high because of the perfectionist in me. So if I didn’t feel safe immediately, I would abandon all efforts to help and go on the defensive. My pattern looked like this;
TRY TO HELP- SENSE TENSION-DEPLOY DEFENSE-ISOLATION
Occasionally, someone would create a safe and comfortable experience for me. These people instantly had my friendship and allegiance. Over time as an adult, I learned skills in building bridges to others earlier. This allowed me to reduce conflicts and create more allies. I have had some great mentors and confrontations that have taught me the value of further developing these skills. In time, my positive experiences have created in me a hunger to deepen these connections made through collaboration.
How has your journey formed your belief system about others? How has your personality advised your experiences? Thinking about those last 10 interactions, how would you rate your connection with those people? A much bigger question, how would those people rate their connection with you? Would you be willing to ask them?
My hope for you is that this dialogue will stimulate a deeper pursuit of your own narrative, what is driving your actions and reactions. How can you improve your default to create a collaborative system that drives you forward, leading to amazing possibilities in success for you and those you are partnering with to do great things!
