Exercise Verbal Aikido to keep your COOL!

Aikido is a form of martial arts focused on protecting both the attacker and the defender. To perhaps oversimplify: if they’re pushing, pull; if they’re pulling, push.  Push back and you’re creating conflict!

The first technique of verbal aikido is Selective Agreement—look for something you can agree with in what the person is saying.  Too often we’re looking for how we can correct them or disagree with them.  Your fallback phrase?  “You may be right, and…”

The best way to respond to sarcasm is to use Limited Response . Respond only to the words or subject of the remark not the emotion or tone behind it.  Say the words in your head without the tone and respond to them.  That way you don’t get hooked!  And a third technique?  Be the Goat! Practice these and you’ll be better able to coexist with life’s difficult people—stay COOL when things heat UP!

When things heat up, ask yourself, ‘What’s my intent?’

Before you lose it, stop and ask yourself, “What’s my Intent?”  It’s our purpose—
what we want to have happen.  One of the reason things heat up is we lose sight of our intent.  If we’re going to stay cool, we must constantly ask ourselves, “What’s my intent—what do I want to have happen here?”  It’s very easy to get pulled away from our intent.  In the book, Crucial Conversations, they discuss a number of deviations from our intent—we can see these in ourselves, sometimes, or they can cause us to react to the other person.  Two of the most common ones?   Getting defensive and wanting to win.  Both create conflict.  We need a win-win to stay cool!  Read more in my article http://j.mp/1CHNh95 

When Things Heat UP─the way we look and sound have impact!

 

The way we look and sound in a situation—and the way the other person looks and sounds—can have a lot to do with things heating up.  We call this the Process and can look at it from both ‘sides’ when things heat up.  Did the way you looked and sounded when things heated up help escalate the situation?  And, did you react to the other person’s facial expressions and body language or tone of voice?

It can be as simple as being a frowning thinker.  Frowning thinkers look mad!  And sarcasm is all about changing the meaning of the words by changing the tone of voice.  Many of us react to this tone, causing things to heat up!

Read more in my article http://j.mp/1CHNh95

 

How to Stay COOL When Things Heat UP!

 

When things heat up, we can blame the heat—and our reaction—on a little critter.  Our lizard brain!  Otherwise known as the amygdala, it holds emotional memory—fear, anger—and ‘helps’ us react without thinking.  Seth Godin—the author and blogger whose TED Talks are very popular—calls it our ‘lizard brain.’  He says, “Your lizard brain is here to stay.  Your job is to figure out how to quiet it and ignore it.”