Today's Reading
INTRODUCTION
You know those days: Flight delay after flight delay transforms a trip into an exhaustive test of patience. The airline reps assure everyone that boarding will commence in ten minutes despite no aircraft at the gate. Ten minutes morph into thirty. Sixty. The gate TV monitor reads On Time. Why do carriers refuse to post accurate status reports? That alone makes your ears steam, compounding the fret you have over not getting a good night's rest before the potentially career-changing interview you have in the morning. You manage to subdue the frustration—then customer service announces that your original 5:05 p.m. departure has been pushed back once again, with a new departure time of 10:59 p.m. You glance at your watch. Seven o'clock. What do you do?
Or envision an office scenario: Your company's CEO has hired and assigned their nephew—an inexperienced, recent college grad—to your team. You're tasked with a new product launch, the success of which is critical for your company to rebound from recent declines. With quarterly numbers due in short order, your direct reports need to be on their A game. Except that Mr. Neo Nephew regularly arrives late, doesn't complete paperwork, is constantly on his phone, and rolls his eyes when you give him instructions. Confounding the situation, your other team members are kissing up to him to garner favor with the CEO. What do you do?
There's no shortage of potentially exasperating interpersonal clashes thrust upon us. Some, admittedly, may be ripple effects of our own doing. Or we may be innocent bystanders roped into a mess. No matter the origin, these conflicts can elicit confusion, ire, and, often, a sense that we lack control over certain areas of our life.
An old college acquaintance hounds you to make more time to get together, right when you're slammed both at work and at home.
Commuting to work for a critical all-hands-on-deck meeting, you stop to pick up coffee and breakfast treats for everyone. What was an impromptu act of kindness becomes a stressful hustle as the line takes forever. Just when you think you're going to get to the counter with seconds left to spare, another customer cuts in front of you.
You're asked to sign a petition at work, and even though you can see how a divide between you and your colleagues will cause you difficulty down the road, you don't believe in the cause.
Your teenager has started running with a bad crowd and huffs out of the room the second you bring it up.
Your spouse disapproves of one of your favorite, but expensive, hobbies, and the two of you have gotten sideways on discretionary spending.
What do you do?
What if there were an efficient way to reliably turn the tables in your favor? From professional to personal, inconsequential to monumental, the conflicts you bump into can be vastly diverse, just like the individuals involved. No singular methodology will solve every problem. A strategy that succeeds in one case could backfire in another.
Ah, but there is a pattern. And patterns can be reprogrammed.
Human beings are capable of incredibly complex calculation and dynamic creation—if and when our environment allows. The evolved part of the brain, our cerebral cortex, houses the mechanics for reason, analysis, logic, thoughtfulness, and talents such as patience, listening, foresight, and altruism. We tap into our cortex on routine days, when life is proceeding as normal and we have time and energy. When we're stressed, it's a different story. Feeling overtaxed, overworked, frightened, cornered—these conditions push us substantially outside our comfort zone and can induce an involuntary suspension of cortical functions. In the face of pressure, the brain is designed to flip off information processing "luxuries," like memory and problem-solving, in favor of using subcortical structures (such as the thalamus, which regulates alertness, and the basal ganglia, which controls conditioned habits) that operate faster and with less consumption of resources. This protective mechanism and quick-response neural shift has served the survival of our species well.
For an oversimplified analogy, what do you do when you inadvertently rest your hand on a scalding surface? Do you weigh your options, assess the merits of rotating your shoulder left versus right, take a minute to ballpark your skin temperature? Of course not! You yank back your digits before a conscious thought can be formed. Humans react to conflict in a not-so-dissimilar way. When we're faced with external pressure, our deep-rooted habits, desires, and behaviors launch into action.
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