People argue for the sake of an argument, some do it to keep the other person occupied and some do it just coz they are committed to be proven correct. The one thing that happens in all these various ways of arguments is you discharge a lot of your precious energy, mind-space and valuable time and most often with no good returns for you. So, why do we do it in the first place?
Do we all agree that life is nothing but lot of moments stitched together & in these moments, we are left to make choices that go to create the experience of how we live. A brief study done by me before I wrote this blog brought to my attention that a person makes anything close to 6000 choices in a day. So, when you are trusted with a responsibility of making so many choices, every day of your life, then let us reduce that number as much as possible and change some more choices into habits.
Arguments are not just a result of our choice, it is initiated more often by people around so you can go to blame the other for pulling you in a situation that you did not ask for. You surely can do it but it does not help you in any way. It is important to understand your gains & losses from time spent on something, independent of who initiated the argument.
It just comes down to you making a simple process driven thought to any conversation that you get into and you can start with choosing to do it, one day at a time and soon you will see that it will become your habit.
Step 1 – Acknowledge the fact that conversations have the tendency of turning into arguments. Most often, you don’t get into a convo to argue. It happens to happen
Step 2 – Know the difference between a conversation & an argument. It is just not the tonality, it is also what is being said or heard that helps you make out the difference
Step 3 – Keep the blame game aside. One of the biggest reason for people not welcoming change easily is because they do not think they need to change. So, if you begin with thinking that it is not you who is arguing, you would not be able to stop the flow.
Step 4 – Evaluate your gain or loss that you will get out of engaging in the argument. Unless you do not clearly & tangibly know what your gain or loss is from something, you will not know how much of you must you invest in it. This is not a mammoth of a task, it would take not more than 10 seconds of human brain to get this cleared out as you are in the middle of something. so do it.
Step 5 – Whatever be the outcome, you can always walk-away from the argument saving your time, energy and sometimes even dignity. You might be thinking right now, that if I walk away at that point then I will have to take up a huge loss, then why should I? It is a valid thought. I am not saying that you must walk away from taking a decision. A decision can be taken later too. There is no decision in the world that has to happen in that very minute. This approach has always helped me in such situations off late “I hear you, point well take but I would rather decide on this once our thoughts have cooled off. So let me call you later in the day.”
Arguments are two or many people, voicing out their own views / perspectives, with an intense need to be agreed upon, it is not even about being right or wrong. In an argument no one is getting into a research to check for the right answer, everyone involved is just sharing their opinions. After having lived 52 years of my life, one of the biggest lessons I carry with me is, you don’t have to give weightage to other people’s opinion.
So, any decisions to be taken, important choices to be made, it should not be done so between an on-going argument. Bottom line, you walking away from an argument, making the other person believe that you heard them is always a win for you.
Do not go with my words here, you have to experience it to believe it and once you do, I bet you that you would bite into this concept and never let go of it.If ever you want to discuss (not argue) on this, ping me and let us block our calendars for a call. Write to [email protected] or [email protected]
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