I read on Weibo this week that "It is not selfish to live the way you want, but it is selfish to ask others to live the way you want." I stopped and thought for a moment. This is true at first glance, because I know clearly that no one can change others, and everyone has the right to choose their own way of life. But judging from my own experience in work and life, it doesn't seem to be the case. I later retweeted that with the comment "It depends on what kind of relationship you want." This article will talk about a little bit of my growth and summary in improving relationships.
Everyone was or is still stuck in a relationship
Humans are social animals who live in relationships, and naturally they are bound by relationships. Whether it is the relationship between colleagues at work, or the relationship between husband and wife, parent-child relationship in life, it will bring trouble and even pain to people. The embarrassing thing is that solving relationship problems is easy to fall into the zero-sum game dilemma of right and wrong, you change or I change.
At work, the lack of harmonious relationship between colleagues will make people feel tired and unable to live. Because individuals do not fully develop themselves, they care too much about other people's feelings in words and deeds, and they feel aggrieved, and even put themselves the victim in the relationship. Of course, I've also seen extreme cases where an individual's self-perception is so skewed that it strains relationships with everyone else on the team.
In life, couples initially chose to hold hands with each other because they fell in love with each other, but because they could not form a positive interactive relationship, they may "kill each other", which greatly proves that "marriage is the grave of love". Many contradictions in life are not in the big things, but in the seemingly "trivial" little things, and in the "Brownian motion" mode of communication. The typical paradigm of the latter is: what was going to be discussed was thing A, but one side "drifted" to thing B, the other side "slipped" to thing C, and finally ended up with "you don't love me".
The difference between a relationship with a colleague and the option to not maintain or distance yourself from the other person is that it is not so easy to give up. When the relationship between husband and wife cannot nourish each other, hurting each other is likely to be the main theme, and the best ending is to remain indifferent to each other. Such a relationship will be somewhat unwilling.
When stuck in a relationship, I turn to reading to find the antidote. At first, it was natural to think about improving your communication skills to improve your relationship. For example, read Nonviolent Communication, Critical Conversations, and Methods of Communication. After reading through, you will find that the core ideas of these three books are actually the same, and they are briefly summarized as follows:
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"Nonviolent Communication": one side, stating observation -> expressing feelings -> what is your need that led to that feeling -> making a request; the other side, listening -> empathy -> responding to the request.
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"Key Conversations": Observe -> Be Safe -> Control Your Emotions -> State Your Opinion -> Understand the Motivation Behind Your Opinion -> Respond with Action.
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Methods of Communication: Identify emotions, facts, and expectations, and respond, confirm, and act on them, respectively.
The process of communication requires special attention to distinguish between facts and opinions, which are likely to be subjective feelings rather than facts. For example, "This movie is great" expresses opinion, while "This movie has a score of 9.2 out of 10" expresses fact.
However, when I read and practiced these three books over a long period of time, I found that there was no qualitative change in the relationship I wanted to improve. In the past year, due to the qualitative changes in the relationship between husband and wife, my wife and I concluded the "∞ Relationship Improvement Model" after discussion.
∞ Relationship Improvement Model
This model consists of two rings, which are expanded by the "I" and the "other" in the relationship. Let’s first look at the key steps that will be experienced from the perspective of “I”, namely:
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feel . Bad feelings about the relationship are the starting point, and having sustained attention to yourself shows that you care about the relationship.
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be aware . Once you have bad feelings about the relationship, you need to calm down and look inside yourself. Is it caused by your own unilateral emotions, or based on some assumptions, or caused by some inappropriate demands of yourself. The test of awareness is whether the individual is honest with himself and whether he has the courage to face up to his own inadequacies, which can well represent whether the individual's self-development is relatively mature. Not surprisingly, most people are lacking in this ability to begin with and replace it with irrational emotions.
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learn . The purpose of learning is to open up one's own spiritual space, build up one's own eyes of God, and be able to separate oneself from various scenarios to observe and examine oneself, and to demonstrate good self-awareness. This is a bit abstract, but precisely because it is a bit difficult, it requires individual practice and understanding. In addition to learning through reading, life experience is another essential way of learning. The difference between the two is that reading gains knowledge, while experience transforms knowledge into one's own wisdom. Wisdom is the product of individuals applying what they have learned to find solutions in pain, heal themselves, and continue to explore and develop themselves. On the road of self-development, I don't think that a lot of reading in a short period of time can make people quick, and it is difficult to form one's own wisdom without time-precipitated life experience.
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change . In my opinion, this is the most critical step of all. If there is no change, no matter how we feel, what we perceive, or what we learn, we will just stay where we are. Change is not about making it happen all at once, but about taking a step forward, even if it’s only a small step.
When the primary responsibility for relationship problems lies on the "me" side, each iteration of the "me"-centered loop theoretically improves the relationship. I used to believe in "don't think about changing others", so I focused my energy on self-change, and only focused on making the "me" circle continue to turn, but continuous self-growth found that the relationship could not be improved qualitatively. . Obviously, when the main responsibility for relationship problems lies with the "other", no amount of improvement in "me" will help, because a healthy and sustainable relationship must not blindly allow one person to grow and the other to stay in place. , otherwise the gap will only grow larger and worsen the relationship.
From the perspective of the "other", the following key steps are taken:
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communicate . When "I" feel uncomfortable with the relationship and I realize that I am not at fault, I need to tell the "other" through communication. This is where the content of the three aforementioned books on communication comes in handy. The purpose of communication is to start discussions based on facts, to clearly tell the other party what "I" feel, and the purpose is not to accuse the other party. The "I" should pay special attention to this point. When the "other party" receives communication from "me", it needs to be careful not to enter a defensive state of mind. It is better to replace it with curiosity.
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see . The biggest purpose of communication is not "me" to make "the other" change, but to let the "other" see. When the other party really sees "I", it is very likely that the relationship problem has been solved in half. Seeing helps "me" to let go of grievances, and the process of seeing is actually a process of empathy and understanding, and a process of "other" responding to "me"'s feelings.
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change . Even if the "other party" sees it, it still needs the "other party" to make changes in the end. If the relationship problem is not big enough to require the "other" to make changes, then there is no need to use this model to analyze it, and it is estimated that it is not a big deal. Once this model is used, then the change of the "other" is inevitable. Changes in the "other" will make "me" feel it and form positive feedback, which is the key to qualitatively changing the relationship. If this change does not occur, the long-term accumulation of "I" is likely to form an inherent prejudice against the "other", and once the prejudice is formed, it will bring obstacles to future communication.
The model has a hierarchical relationship, in which the "I" ring in front emphasizes that self-learning and change should come first, and the "other" ring in the back emphasizes that the improvement of the relationship cannot be separated from the other party's seeing and/or changing. "I" and "the other" in the model are interchangeable, depending on what role the person using the model has in the relationship, both roles that each person plays in the relationship.
A little advice on using the model
This relationship improvement model should be simple enough, but it took my wife and I 27 years to figure it out. Some suggestions may help readers make better use of this model.
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Both parties in a relationship must continue to learn. There is still a lot of room for improvement in the current situation of childcare in China. It is not difficult to think that many people who have grown up today are not sufficient in their self-development. Only by continuous learning can we improve ourselves and better develop our own awareness, and then let this ability play a role in relationship processing. Of course, don't be obsessed with the simultaneous learning of both parties. It is more likely that one party will lead the other party first.
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The purpose of learning is to change. Active learning for self-change is usually not a problem, but don't rule out passive learning for change. Everyone has the right to stay where they are without changing, and if that is the case, they have to accept that the quality level of the relationship remains the same.
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Be careful of the potential influence of the family of origin on both parties. I learned about the family of origin through the book "Family of Origin". The name of this book is not well translated. Its original English name is Toxic Parents, the literal translation is "toxic parents", which is about the inappropriate parenting methods And to shape our bad subconscious. Some subconscious minds will appear instinctively in the process of our communication with people, and people will unconsciously make excessive emergency reactions (for example, if they hear different voices, they will enter a state of defense), so that rational communication cannot be carried out. However, the resolution of relationship problems relies heavily on healthy communication. The purpose of understanding the original family is not to blame the parents, but to know why "I" or "the other" behaves in that way. The purpose is to inspire mutual understanding and compassion. It will be better when we know the reason behind it. By accepting ourselves and others, we will also know how to learn the correct parenting methods to create a better family of origin for our offspring, and end the bad way of parenting us in our own generation.
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Be patient and wait for the moment. My wife and I are college classmates, and we have had a good relationship in the 27 years we have come to this day, but along the way, there are always some barriers that prevent the relationship from entering into a state of mutual nourishment. live. When Dawa entered Hangzhou Yungu School in 2017, because the school has a "Yungu School" for parents, we have the opportunity to learn together through parental compulsory courses, reading clubs, etc., and finally ushered in our relationship. qualitative progress. Some of the barriers between each other when young will not be magnified due to the passion of life, but with the accumulation of many years, it is likely to become prominent. When it is worthy of the attention of both parties, it is necessary to remain patient and learn together to find a solution.
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Take care of yourself first. From this model, the improvement of the relationship requires the interaction and self-change of both parties. When the bottleneck is not on your side, you can only wait. If that is the case, take care of yourself first.
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It is normal for both parties in a relationship to have different requirements, but higher requirements on a common sense level should be adopted. Adoption does not mean that the weak party must do it 100%, even sincere approval is a kind of adoption. The most fearful thing is that taking the low-demand as the bottom line is not conducive to building a positive relationship.
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This model also applies to co-worker relationships. I'm worried that the reader is emphasizing it because the latter part of the article is only about the relationship between husband and wife.
Finally, going back to the sentence mentioned at the beginning of the article, “It is not selfish to live the way you want, but it is selfish to ask others to live the way you want.” The “requirement” in it can be understood as someone else’s “appeal” or "Request", one's own mental space and pattern will determine the interpretation of "request". That doesn't necessarily mean selfishness. Instead, it is likely to represent care and love.
It is everyone's right to change or not to change, and it is the most critical step to figure out what quality level of relationship you want to establish with others.