But how do you know when you should end a long-term relationship? When you know it’s best to finish it, what can you do to cut off a long-term relationship without having the person burn your house down? This article answers these questions.

The Most Common Mistake Made in Ending a Relationship – and What to Do Instead

The normal way to determine if you should end a relationship is a pro-con scale. You analyze what’s good and bad then weigh the points against each other. This creates the dilemma and confusion of when to terminate a long-term relationship. “No connection is there, but he’s so nice to me.”

Mira Kirshenbaum, in her book Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay, describes the “ambivalence” we experience in relationships. There’s the good side of a relationship where you’re financially looked after or you’re not beaten. Then there’s the bad side where your needs are ignored, you’re emotionally degraded, or you’re with an addict. Positives exist but so do negatives causing the pro-con scale to not be of help in your final decision.

The correct approach Mira suggests is to use a diagnostic method much like a psychologist uses criteria to classify mental disorders or a doctor uses symptoms to diagnose a disease. If your relationship exhibits certain symptoms – notably something like abuse – it’s diseased and your better off ending it.

Advice For the Married Reader

Nearly every book and article I discovered on this topic helps you decide if you should end a relationship from a selfish standpoint. The summary is: if you’re not happy, end it. A healthy marriage is more complex than that.

Marriages around the world end because men and women are unhappy then unwilling to honor their vows working through the inevitable challenges. One man thought he should end his marriage because he no longer loved his wife. “I just don’t love you” is not a sign the relationship should end. Love is a skill. You can learn how to love people to rebuild a relationship.

I believe marriage is another ballpark to what’s discussed here. What’s revealed is not intended to apply fully to marriage. I don’t want the signs of an ending relationship revealed below be reason for you to get out when things get tough. That’s selfish. The self doesn’t always precede others.

Two become one in marriage – your unhappiness doesn’t justify divorce. No marriage exists without the couple changing and working through problems.

10 Signs of an Ending Relationship

How do you know if your friendship or date is on the brink of finishing? Below are some symptoms of a dying relationship. If you spot several signs of an ending relationship, that alone is not enough reason to terminate it. The signs are just indicators of the current relationship condition:

1. You break their boundaries. Respect is absent.
2. You’re more resentful than usual. This shows up in irritability and fighting over little things.
3. You fight less. Whatever happens, happens because you no longer care.
4. You jump to harsh conclusions. For example, your partner is late to arrive home from work so the thought of an affair crosses your mind.
5. You describe the person to someone in unflattering words. Similarly, if someone else belittles the person, you agree and feel satisfied.
6. You find yourself spending less and less time together.
7. You have chronic boredom. This means you do little together, aren’t having fun, and don’t enjoy each other’s company.
8. Promises aren’t kept.
9. The two of you remain at emotional opposite ends. This signals no rapport, a disconnect, and a lack of love. The relationship is weak when it doesn’t bother you the person is hurting.
10. You’re concerned you’ll find signs here that apply to your relationship.

If you saw one or two signs in your relationship, don’t freak out, call the person up, and say it’s over in a crying mess. Let the signs be red flags for you to address. We all make relationship mistakes that can be solved.

What’s not a sign of an ending relationship is fighting. Conflict is healthy to have so it’s important you resolve conflict when others avoid it.

7 Questions for When to End a Long-Term Relationship

For our diagnosis, ask yourself the following seven questions. These are filters that indicate you should end the relationship:

1. Has there been multiple occasions of physical violence in the relationship? All violence is inexcusable. If you answered yes, get support, be safe, and leave. You deserve better than abuse.
2. Does the person have a behavior like an addiction that makes the relationship difficult to be in and they’re unwilling to change? Most people are addicted to something. The questions to consider are: What? How destructive is it? And are they seeking help?
3. Were times ever good together? The relationship may have been doomed from the start. The question gives you a higher perspective that current problems can be worked through. Keep in mind the cliché that people change so don’t forever clasp the past trying to recreate it.
4. Do you want to bring up important issues? It’s good if you actually do it, but a desire to address an important issue is enough indication you care for the relationship.
5. Have you chosen a goal like a career move that must exclude the person? There’s no reason to keep a relationship going when you’ve already decided the person being in your life is not viable. Be honest to yourself and them.
6. Aside from positive traits and current problems, do you and the person like each other? Not an easy question to answer because it’s difficult to see through resentment.
7. If I told you it’s okay to leave, would you feel responsible for your decision, say yes, and be relieved?

Having gone through the seven questions, do you think you should end the relationship? You may want to postpone cutting the relationship and instead correct the problem pulling you two apart. If the person behaves destructively, consider expressing what you expect from the person.

Some less important relationships aren’t worth fixing. These are the ones you don’t care about. You’ll have dying relationships where the investment of time and emotional energy to revive the relationship is better spent elsewhere.

Another point to consider when ending a relationship is treating a new relationship as a separate issue. If you’re holding onto the person because you don’t want to be alone, you’ve got issues with single-dom that need to be faced. You can learn how to attract someone so don’t let it blur judgment of your current relationship status. If you should end it, end it. Here’s how to do it.

8 Steps to End a Long-Term Relationship

Leslie Baxter from the University of Iowa in her Strategies for Ending Relationships: Two Studies paper analyzed how people end relationships. The communication researcher found that how you’ll end a relationship depends on relationship closeness and your perception of what caused the relationship to rot. Dating for one week and got cheated on? You may dump via an angry text and leave it at.

If you don’t know how to end a relationship, I’ll give you a simple eight-step process. Most of the difficulty in doing so comes from you not wanting to hurt the person. Here you take responsibility for their feelings – a toxic trait. You need to release yourself of controlling other’s emotions and instead focus on being responsible for yours.

You can choose from the indirect and direct options. The indirect option is letting nature pull you apart. You stop doing nice things, you skip deep conversation, and time causes you to split. The direct option of splitting up face-to-face is more difficult. Use this process:

1. Think through what the person will say. This isn’t to make you a rigid robot, but aims to put your best foot forward.
2. Get into a quiet place alone.
3. Begin by saying, “This isn’t easy for me to bring up because I know it’ll hurt you, but I need to do it.”
4. State your reasons without rambling. If the person wants more detail, they’ll ask for it. When you clearly give reason as to why you’ve ended the relationship, you help the two of you move on. Not understanding the justification for splitting up is possibly the number one reason someone fails to get over a relationship break up.
5. Be specific where possible (“The other day when you…” instead of “You don’t care for me anymore.”)
6. Expect and accept strong feelings from the person. He or she will feel rejected and likely deal with the emotion by making you feel guilt. Don’t let their game alter your stance.
7. Avoid reassurance (“Things will work out for you”). It’s a frustrating communication barrier to hear and an attempt to stop the person from feeling hurt. Nothing you say will change their hurt.
8. Learn some techniques of how to say no so you stand your ground.

Stop driving yourself crazy. You know the signs of when to end a long-term relationship and how to do it so get off the fence and pick a side. If you choose to leave, you’ll look back in 1 year and be happy you made the decision.

If times are tough and you’ve decided to try make the relationship work, keep learning and developing your relationship skills and eliminating the 12 communication barriers. Relationships aren’t easy. That’s why they’re so satisfying.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Getting Over a Relationship Break Up
2. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management

I’m going to teach you what to say and do to win a fight. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you with this street-wise 15-tip guide to shield yourself from verbal brutality:

1. Use mental rehearsal. Psychologists for years have known the power of rehearsing an event in one’s mind before the real thing takes place. By visualizing a conversation before it occurs, you become strong, stubborn, and unmoving to the faults of another person’s illogical logic.

If you know your spouse will accuse you of always thinking about yourself, shout back a time your partner was selfish. If you know your laziness will be sniped, think of all the times you were busy and overworked. Visualize exactly how you’ll start the conversation and counter-attack their moves to corner the person and guarantee yourself victory.

2. The best defense is the best offense. Keep this in mind at all times. Whenever you’re cornered, vulnerable, and prone to damage, enter rampage mode. The mindset here is to steal the ball from the person’s hands and go hard, doing as much damage as you can to make your initial actions look good.

Did your partner spot you sneaking a peak at that young waiter? Tell your woman you wouldn’t oogle at hot women if she wasn’t so boring. The guilt you’ve established in her will make you the victor.

Did your friend accuse you of stealing his beer? Tell him he shouldn’t be a jerk all the time.

Did your boss catch you snooping around on his laptop? You better put your boss in a defensive position before he can fire you. Tell him to let you go free otherwise you’ll report him for the stash of drugs you placed found in his drawer.

3. Dodge like a butterfly… then sting like a bee. When you must be defensive, get ready to dodge. Change topics if you feel you’re losing the fight. Default phrases to help you slide in another topic for discussion include, “That reminds me… “Speaking of…” “Funny you should say that because…” Laughter is another good tool that releases your tension and shows you don’t care even though you’re collapsing inside.

Politicians are your idols at dodging bullets. Model your favorite evasive politician by slipping in random comments that shift the conversational subject to something you desire to speak more of.

4. Build allies. Not all relationships are bad. Relationships are useful when ally parties join to fight for your cause. Establish an ally of coworkers to single out the problematic coworker. Reinforce your point to a stranger by teaming with friends. Martial arguments can be easily won when the children are on your side. With people comes protection and strength.

5. Generalize, distort, and delete what you hear. Good listening is poison to good relationships. Should you accurately hear what someone says, you might discover the truth and start connecting with the person. Yuck.

It’s best you minimize good listening by manipulating information intake with these three tactics:

1. Generalize. Turn one statement into an overarching belief with exaggerations that disorient your victim. They ask, “Can you do the dishes?” You say: “You always make me do the dishes”, “You never do the dishes”, or “All-the-time you control me”.
2. Distort. Alter what they say so they’re the villain and you’re the victim. They say, “I need you to be home on the weekend.” You say: “You don’t want me to have fun”, “You’re trying hard to make me avoid friends”, or “Man, you hate me”.
3. Delete. Simply skip important information. Ignorance is key here. “To succeed in life,” said Mark Twain, “you need two things: confidence and ignorance.”

6. Be extraneously attentive. Just because you should generalize, distort, and delete information when listening, doesn’t mean you fully ignore someone. It’s best you adhere to what teacher of conscious living Richard Moss said: “The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.” Give people your well-developed attention if you want to win a fight. Your motto here is to “Know more about the enemy than he knows about himself”.

One way to do this is to pick on intricate details that display the person’s imperfection. If you know a girl is insecure about her front teeth, tell her she’s an ugly Bugs Bunny. If a guy mispronounces a word, point it out. If your spouse stumbles over the carpet during an argument, call your uncoordinated other “clumsy”. Be attentive to drill out flaws.

7. Always be right. You’re a perfect human being. Everyone else is a jerk. The moment others learn this, your life will be easy. Until then, you must criticize and complain about other people’s (incorrect) opinions.

Ignore the principle of consistency. You’re not weighed down by past decisions because you’re a clear, rational human being. If other people fail to see how you’re right, it’s because they’re dumb.

If you’re explaining what one plus one equals – and you get it wrong – your job is to contend why one plus one equals a window or how it equals three because of synergistic principles.

8. Never fix a problem you made. Remember, you’re always right, which means whatever you do is how destiny is suppose to play out. Anyone that makes you think otherwise must be verbally stoned. Since there’s no modern day option of a public stoning, you can publicly humiliate them by drawing attention to their faults like how the person has wronged you.

Did your friend accuse you of stealing his girlfriend? It was hardly his girlfriend if she cheated on him. Don’t apologize or amend a mistake because that concedes defeat and makes you look weak. Apologizing has no benefits. It’s in your best interest to leave forgiveness to religious followers.

9. Be your own person never dependent on others. Weak people depend on others, but not you. You’re strong and independent. When you know people are untrustworthy and it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, the only person you can trust is yourself.

If you want something to get done, it’s up to you. Getting other people to do things is slow anyway. Successful, happy individuals like Bill Gates do everything themselves to ensure things get done the right way.

10. Block out emotion. You’re an unemotional being because emotions have thwarted your survival in the past. Darwin would be proud of your unique evolution.

Crazed females, asylum attendees, and the weak are the ones controlled by emotion. Smart people are the best communicators because they communicate with logic. If another person gets emotional, it’s best you feign ignorance as it’s an attempt to derail you from supremacy. The only time you want to be emotional is when you repeat words at a louder volume.

11. Use superior vocabulary. No one can win an argument against you when you pick apart their delusional misconstructions of rationale at present. Slotting in large words within your vocabulary gives you the added benefit of talking longer, making you more likely to convince another person against his or her will.

12. Be respectful only when you’re respected. When you’re verbally punched, break the rules of good relationships. Throw in a low jab then bite the persons ear because their actions justify your retaliation. Only treat people well when they treat you well. Relationships are an Enron investment to be avoided. Minimize your costs in relationships when possible.

13. Advanced name-calling. Children call others names like “Stupid-head” and “Big ears”. You’re more mature. Use degrading terms, but give them a righteous foundation with clear logic. Think through an insult to leave your opponent prone to follow-up attacks.

14. Start a meta argument. You may run dry on ammunition leaving you with little to attack someone. In these desperate times, shift the argument to a meta state by arguing about how they’re arguing.

If they’re slow to respond to a point, use a Major Payne line, “Ta, ta, ta, today junior!” If they don’t change their mind, call them “thick”. If they misunderstand you, tell them they’re “ignorance is laughable”. With this infinite supply of ammo, you’re guaranteed to shoot down your enemy.

15. Walk away. If all the mentioned techniques fail to win you the argument, give up in disgust and walk away. The person is stubborn, not you.

If you hadn’t figured it out already, this article was a fun jab at our bad habits amidst conflict. If you read just one tip nodding your head in agreement and planning your next conquest, your people skills are in need of serious surgery. Please for your own sake, get my Communication Secrets of Powerful People program.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. How to Correctly Apologize
2. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace

Why It’s Hard to Communicate Well in Conflict When Stressed

If you’re like me, you find it hard to communicate in stressful moments. Scientifically, it is impossible to communicate well when under stress. The body experiences a primal response that agitates people in conflict. A stressed guy will tense his facial expressions, breathe shallowly, raise his voice, respond faster, and not think clearly. (If you controlled these, you wouldn’t be stressed). Not only does the tension hurt your communication, it also creates a viral effect as the emotional rigidity infects those you talk to.

Conflict is probably synonymous for you with stress. To be in conflict with someone is to be stressed. For me, however, I can have my mental and physical tension under control so I can communicate effectively to improve my relationships. If I don’t manage my stress, it inevitably gets the better of me, as it will to you.

Stress makes us mentally ill. A psychiatrist could diagnose you with depression, mania, psychosis, bipolar disorder, or another mental illness when you are stressed. The difference between you and someone diagnosed with one of these mental health problems is the time you and they spend in those states. A person diagnosed with depression feels down for most of the day while you may temporarily be depressed only when you are under loads of stress. No wonder it’s difficult to communicate well when stressed.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response

Stress in conflict evokes the fight, flight, or freeze responses. An argument, disagreement, or confrontation elevates tension as you yell, withdraw, stand confused. You do things you later regret.

Aggressive behavior towards another person temporarily feels okay, but then reality kicks in as you feel even more stressed from hurting the person. When you are submissive as you try your best to hide the tension, your suppressed emotions eat at you, which then hurts your relationships.

When under stress, your communication style will change in response to the situation. You can go from a cool, collected person one moment, yet when a stressful situation impinges your tolerable threshold your calm style can quickly shift to aggressive or submissive behaviors. What behavior you fall back on in stressful situations is the one comfortable to you in the past that offered momentary protection.

When someone has surpassed their tolerable degree of tension, telling them to get their act together or how ineffective their current communication is, does not work. It won’t work for you either. It’s human extinct to block out external factors, such as other people’s feelings, and listen to internal ones as your interpersonal communication skills decline. Better communication in intense conflict is a matter of managing stress otherwise it is next to impossible to deal with conflict.

“What Did I Say?” – Memory Loss and Other Dangers of Stress

Stress motivates us to take action, but it too often works against us. We yell, withdraw, or shut-down in tense communication. Our bodies produce cortisol, known as the “stress hormone”, to compel us into action. Without this double-edged hormone, we would accomplish little. If you are completely relaxed in conflict and untrained in good communication skills, you could overlook the problematic issue or give an unsympathetic response.

Research has shown cortisol to improve cognitive functioning. Too much cortisol, however, causes impairment. If you have ever forgotten what you said in a verbal fight, cortisol has literally shut off short-term memory. Cortisol obtrudes neurotransmitters that are chemicals responsible for communication between neurons and other cells. That is why you can memorize a speech 50 times and forget it when you present it. A stressful crisis temporarily results in a blank mind.

Stanford neuroscience professor Robert Sapolsky found that cortisol also causes long-term memory loss. When the receptors for cortisol located in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory, gets flooded overtime, it melts like microwaved Swiss cheese.

The affects of stress are too numerous to list here. From rapid aging of the body and heart disease, to poor sleep and skin conditions, the effects are real. You need to learn techniques to manage your stress; not just for your communication, but also for your health.

Stress Reduction Tips: 9 Key Lessons for Intelligent Stress Management

Because we have primal responses that arise deep from within our neurology, we need to attack the issue at that level. Thinking positively or talking yourself through stress isn’t going to reduce tension. I have developed nine effective ways and techniques to manage stress that you can use to keep calm in stressful moments so you can communicate better and live a happier life:

1. Prevention is the best cure. The best technique to deal with stress is to stop it before it begins. Create the appropriate measures, boundaries, and strategies to interrupt rising tensions. If the tension between two people rises beyond a safe level, one strategy is to pause, walk away, punch a pillow, and take slow deep breathes before commencing the conversation. You can incorporate other stress management techniques listed below into your plan to be more calm in conflict.

2. Accept your feelings. Never tell yourself you shouldn’t feel what you do. Do not say, “I shouldn’t be feeling stressed right now.” You must accept your feelings otherwise they will persist or repress into forms that severely affect your mental health and ability to effectively communicate. When you accept your stress, you move one step forward to taking personal responsibility.

3. Accept responsibility for how you feel. It is tempting and too easy to release your stress on other people. Do not treat people inappropriately. If you treat people in a way they don’t want to be treated, you make them tense, which they will be happy to put back on you.

Blame can only make you more stressed because anxiety is directly related to events within your control. What is beyond your reach makes you anxious. If you blame a spouse for making you angry by yelling, the only visible solution to you is for your spouse to lower his or her voice. Your anxiety and stress will continue to rise because you have little direct influence over your spouse’s voice.

When you accept responsibility, you eliminate blame. You live in truth. You do not become a victim of others. You take control of your feelings. Your new levels of responsibility cause you to do something about how you feel.

If someone causes you stress, address the person. Explain to them how you feel, why you feel that way, and what can be done to fix the problem. Do not worsen the problem by blaming them for how you feel, but focus on the problem. Be problem-oriented; not person-oriented.

4. Breathe. When tension in your body rises, you automatically take shallow breathes. This is one of the first stages prior to full fight, flight, or freeze responses that hurt effective communication. When your stress levels rise, take several deep, slow breathes and you will instantly reduce your stress levels.

5. Take time out. A walk away is guaranteed to refresh your mind. Don’t call for the travel agent to book a Caribbean cruise though, because a temporary break is all you need. Go for a walk or workout at the gym. Be active to release hormones that counter stress. Exercise is the body’s emotional reset button.

Absence from the situation that created the tension takes your mind off the problem and gives you clearer thoughts to attack the problem. Be sure to address the problem after your time out, however, otherwise you will only have temporarily avoided the real issue.

6. Be flexible. Stress is like the sunrise and sunset. It is inevitable. It is a part of your human body. Therefore, the best way to deal with it is to change your behavior and communication.

Be soft; not brittle. Recognize signals of stress by reading people’s verbal and nonverbal language, then adjust yourself accordingly. Be flexible by going a bit out of your way for them to assist their temporary needs and wants. Don’t run around the world for them, but do be more aware and respondent of them. This can lead you to less stress.

7. Discuss the problem afterwards. Combine this tip with the prior tip of remaining flexible and you have two keys to manage tense people. You need to address the problem following the stressful moment otherwise destructive, repetitious behavior occurs. Also, if there is someone you know that finds it difficult to manage their stress in communication, you can refer them to this article by clicking the “ShareThis” link at the bottom of this article.

8. Ask others about your responses in stressful moments. You are to do this because you cannot provide an accurate self-assessment when stressed. Your short-term memory loss makes it impossible to recall information.

Also, an awareness of your behavior can trigger a pattern interrupt. If the person says you consistently yell when stressed, raising your voice can trigger an awareness that your stress needs to reduce before the conversation continues.

9. Listen to binaural beats. Discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove in 1839, binaural beats describes the low-frequency pulsations in the brain created by different frequencies played into each ear. The brain integrates the two sounds to form a third sound that relaxes the mind.

In terms of stress, binaural beats is a miracle. A correctly made binaural beat will scientifically make your brain produce alpha waves, which is the same brain wave you have when resting. That wonderful feeling you have when lying in bed almost asleep can be produced by binaural beats. Imagine how better your life would be by simply putting on a headphone the next time you’re stressed as you enter a relaxed state at will!

If you’re after binaural beats, Paul Kleinmeulman has a good program that includes a series of binaural beats for different purposes. You can check out his program here, where you will learn more about the proven science behind binaural beats, which can make you motivated, sleep better, intensify your focus, learn efficiently, and keep relaxed.

Conflict does not need to be synonymous with stress. Neither has to make you miserable. Stress can be a good thing – just like conflict is good for creativity, openness, and growth – when it is controlled with the above tips.

Your body experiences stress because it is threatened in conflict. Do something about it. You don’t want to feel the same way in a fight as you do when watching the Simpsons. Harness this primal response and you will be communicating more effectively in your next confrontation.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. How to Manage and Deal with an Aggressive Boss
2. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
3. The Benefits of Communication Skills
4. How and When to End a Long-Term Relationship
5. Getting Over a Relationship Break Up

Principles do not change. Water is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom – this will not change. The North poles of two magnets repel – this will not change. Gravity rips you down to Earth – this will not change. The unchanging laws of science are parallel to the unchanging principles and laws of communication to deal with difficult people.

If you have a difficult person in your life, you may think he or she is impossible to deal with, yet the person is not an impenetrable rock. It’s human! And humans follow laws of psychology and behavior you can benefit from. This article will provide you with judo-like principles to convert seemingly impossible forces of a difficult person into tips to effectively deal with them.

The world is filled with stubborn people. The difficult people – and not so difficult – even think you’re at times difficult. Learn the following tips (taken from my Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program) to deal with difficult people in your everyday life:

What Doesn’t Work

Sending solutions. Common phrases that indicate solving include: “What if you…” “Stop doing… and start…” and “Why don’t you…” Telling people what to do does not work. Solutions are the problem. The more you push solutions on people, the more they pull away from you and your suggestion. Real solutions, commitment, and desire for change come from participation.

Moralizing. Common phrases that indicate moralizing include: “You should….” “It would be good for you to…” and “Stop doing wrong…” Chapter eight of my program defines moralizing words as “using what is right and wrong, good and bad, black and white to further your logic.” Manipulation from guilt and other emotions that arise from moral words do not change difficult people – yet alone anyone.

Complaints. “I wish Bill wasn’t so damn annoying.” Bickering is mental masturbation. Creation comes from being proactive. If you complain, you’re the difficult person. You become no better than the person you try to change.

Criticism. People criticize to build change. “I’m results-focused. I criticize people to get things done.” Similar lines of thinking drive the 12 communication barriers (criticism, labeling, diagnosing, praise, orders, threats, questions, moralizing, advice, reason, reassurance, and deflecting). Avoid criticism because it is not charismatic persuasion. Criticism intensifies conflict. Criticized individuals feel diminished, unworthy, and less important.

What Does Work: 10 Principles and Tips to Deal with a Difficult Person

The following principles and tips are not short-term tricks to transform an annoying person. Endless articles have been written on the Internet that provide frivolous advice on this topic. When the core problem is addressed, however, colds get skipped and the cancer is cut out. The advice in this article gets down to the core of what really matters when dealing with a difficult person and does not change from situation because the advice is timeless.

1. You see the world as you are. Stephanie Rosenbloom for The New York Times hit the heart of difficult people; or rather the people who think someone is difficult. Rosenbloom says the issue “is not the difficult people themselves. It is you.”

Most articles that provide tips to deal with difficult people focus on difficult individuals (“They’re the problem”); hence they miss the real problem (“You’re part of the problem”). You play a role in a difficult person’s behavior. Problems transmute from your perception, then your reaction. Carl Jung said we repress certain characteristics often due to our attempts to fit in with people, which manifest in discomfort around people we repulse. Jungian psychoanalyst Edward Whitmont writes:

“Ask someone to give a description of the personality type which he finds most despicable, most unbearable and hateful, and most impossible to get along with, and he will produce a description of his own repressed characteristics – a self-description which is utterly unconscious and which therefore always and everywhere tortures him as he receives its effect from the other person. These very qualities are so unacceptable to him precisely because they represent his own repressed side; only that which he cannot accept without ourselves do we find impossible to live with in others.”

What characteristics in people do you hate most? What do these characteristics say about you? Who doesn’t find the person difficult? What can you learn from people who don’t find the person hard to face?

A chronically difficult person is rare. Your self-image makes people difficult. I strongly encourage you to notice as often as possible what you deny in yourself because this could be a repressed image, a shadow you see in others, that you have ignored in the past. “In the end,” says Rosenbloom, “the specialists say, we cannot control other people, only our response to them.” (The first chapter of my Big Talk training course taps into this deep, dark psychological theory that stops us from enjoyable conversation. When you connect with your full self, it becomes easy to connect with people and make friends. This is cutting-edge material you can discover more about here.)

2. Lose the need to be right. When you enter a conversation with the intent to fix someone, you become difficult. Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says you must open yourself to be influenced to influence. Quit thinking you’re right because this drives your resistance to be changed and change people.

3. Clear your heart, open your mind. Too often our experiences with people hurt our current conversations with them. It takes time for someone in your negative light to shift under a positive spotlight – even when the person hasn’t been difficult for a while.

Forgive to clean your heart then keep an open mind as to why someone is difficult. Stop hopping to conclusions by portraying the problem as the person’s difficulty. You blockade truth with judgments and fear of self-analysis.

Perhaps you are the problem, their father was diagnosed with cancer, or they are in financial trouble. Acknowledge that you do not – and will never – know all reasons why someone is difficult. An open mind that welcomes a person’s point of view to enter possible explanations for their behavior creates a cushion to soften harsh judgments.

Listen to the difficult person and let them express their point of view – it will help you see why they are difficult. This tip alone can be enough to deal with the person as you see the reason for their behavior. Listen honestly, actively, and empathically.

4. Want difficult people. It’s scary, but wanting a bothersome person helps you. Difficult people create conflict – and this creates change. If organisms faced no challenges, they would have no reason to evolve. Difficulties challenge you, compelling you to evolve into a superior being.

Does this mean you can be difficult? No. There is people who find you difficult enough. The diversity of human nature brings with it differences that catapult humanity through difficulties.

5. Be proactive, not reactive. Reactive persons blame circumstances for their reality. They reciprocate bad behavior. They reason other people need to change.

Proactive persons create what they want regardless of constricting circumstances. Create a value in yourself to be proactive and treat people with respect. Once you stop reciprocating bad behavior, you feel proud, empowered, and in control of your life – regardless of whether you successfully handle the situation. Make the fundamental decision to commit to the advice given in this article.

6. Be responsible, not a victim. Don’t blame people for how they make you feel. The degree you’re a victim of someone’s behavior controls the impact it has on you.

Take responsibility for how you feel. Prevent people from entering and exiting your emotional state at will. Eliminate blame to free yourself from a person’s difficult behavior.

You don’t have to be burdened by people’s problems. You will work towards a solution faster and be less emotionally exasperated when you lose the victim mentality and stop thinking people are villains. My friend Gary Harper has a good article on this where he also discusses similar principles to this article.

7. Be problem-oriented, not person-oriented. Difficult people have a difficult problem and are trying to fulfill a need the only way they know possible. It seems elusive, but even they want to live in harmony.

People are not the problem. Focus on the problem and not the person. A helpful tip for this is to disassociate the problem from the person. Their behavior, even you, or something else is the problem.

8. Find the unmet need. Difficult people have an unmet need. Whether somebody is angry, unhappy, depressed, loud, or anxious, they try to fulfill a need – though it is often done poorly. Notice a hidden need beneath someone’s difficult behavior, and you will see another human being. This will allow you to compassionately communicate. The Nonviolent Communication Process is a model that gets you focused on, and fulfilling, other people’s needs and your own.

9. Be interdependent. Dependency is unhealthy. To overcome this, self-help experts teach independence. According to most people, independence is health, freedom, and power. By itself, nothing could be further from the truth.

According to Robert Greene, author of 48 Laws of Power, a powerful individual living in isolation destroys his power. John O’Neil in The Paradox of Success confirms Greene’s remarks. O’Neil says leaders and other individuals in powerful positions destroy their success and happiness with overt independence. Such persons do it all, have chronic obsessions with work and difficulties getting their mind off work, and easily become irritated by others who disagree with their decision-making.

A powerful communicator knows how to distribute decision-making for freedom. He or she knows how to seek help because the person is not afraid to admit failure and learn. This is the interdependent standpoint you need beyond solitude. “When we try to pick out anything by itself,” said famed conservationist John Muir, “we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

You don’t need to solve all problems by yourself. It sounds simple, but talking to a parent, manager, or human resource department is helpful. Other people bring knowledge, skills, and persuasive power to handle a difficult person. However, be beware of risks associated with making a private problem public. It’s your responsibility to respect a person’s privacy concerns, but at the same time you need to request another’s help when necessary.

10. Be detached from an outcome.

If the above tips and principles fail you, it’s not because they don’t work – it’s because you disobeyed them. The principles and tips given to you cannot fail because they are the foundations for good communication.

If you lose the need to be right while remaining proactive, for example, you deal with the difficult person. Stop thinking the only way to deal with a difficult person is to change them, such desire only makes you difficult.

When you attach to an outcome by seeking a specific result from an interaction at all costs, your rigidity causes resistance. The most common outcome people attach to when they converse with a difficult person is their need to be right and change the person (principle #2). Going into a conversation with the righteous intent to change a person guarantees failure. You must detach from an outcome.

If the principles and tips do not bring you the result you’re after, be prepared to walk away. Give the two of you some space to think the problems through. By doing this, you clear your heart and open your mind, remain proactive, and keep problem-oriented. A tough issue can be solved at a later time. Another day can bring different possibilities. Emotions, thoughts, and attitudes change all the time.

Unsuccessful conflict resolution of an issue with a difficult person can often escalate the problem, but adhere to these principles and tips to deal with a difficult person to make the difficult more manageable. “Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen,” said Friedrich Nietzsche, “few in pursuit of the goal.”

(If you are reading this and found the above principles and tips to deal with difficult people helpful, you will enjoy my “Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program” where the principles for this article were extracted. Click here to learn more about the program and how you can develop your communication skills to charismatically have cold-hearted persons wanting to change. You can also discover more about Big Talk, my training course that lets two persons openly and freely talk with one another, here.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Controlling People – Signs of a Controlling Person and How to Deal with Them
2. Review of Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
3. How to Manage and Deal with an Aggressive Boss
4. How to Not Care What People Are Thinking About You – and Release Your People-Magnetic Self Into the Conversation
5. Review of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

See if you can find a link between the following short scenarios: Your partner leaves the room in anger after another argument; A friend lashes out at you despite you having done nothing wrong; Your children’s constant disobedience makes you extremely frustrated and causes you to yell and do things you regret.

Why do the above scenarios, or similar situations, constantly play out in your life? There are thousands of situations like the ones listed above that all have a common thread. We know there is a better way to handle the situation, but we cannot figure it out. Our emotions often get the better of us as we poorly handle the situation. We know something is wrong and that we can fix it, but how? The answers to these questions and the secret human need I will show you how to fulfill is through a method of communication called “nonviolent communication”, also known as NVC.

An Overview of Nonviolent Communication: Your Key to Compassionate Communication for Shared Understanding

The process I am about to discuss in this article is one created by the Center for Nonviolent Communication. The organization is a nonprofit organization founded by Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Rosenberg and a couple hundred other NVC trainers, conduct workshops throughout the world where they teach people their nonviolent communication model. The NVC process has changed millions of people who learned the techniques directly from trainers or Rosenberg’s book, and people who have been fortunate enough to have those trained in the NVC process use the model on them.

If you are after a process that changes a person’s behavior, NVC is not the best one to use. NVC builds a deep intimate relationship and connection with effective communication by satisfying people’s needs. It achieves a level of connection most people never experience. It can be used to change a person’s behavior, but the primary purpose of the process is to help people face what matters with compassion to connect at a very intimate level.

Once you have sufficiently gone through certain steps in the process, then you can use your negotiation skills to persuade the person. If you try to persuade the person upfront before you use NVC, you will often find the person resists you and ignores what you have to say.

When a person disagrees with you, refuses to comply with a request, or is angry at you, a poor communicator tries to firstly express oneself. The person seeks to be understood before seeking to understand. An NVC user, on the contrary, seeks to understand the person, which in turn leads to their own need of being understood. Once you understand others, they will want to understand you.

The commonality amongst the situations I mentioned earlier, and hundreds of situations you experience throughout the week, is people’s desperation to be understood. Your angry partner wants to be understood. Your friend wants to be understood and will have almost zero frustration once you understand. Your children want to be understood, which will naturally compel them to talk with you about intimate issues. Nonviolent communication helps you understand people and have them understand you.

The need to be understood is possibly the greatest unmet human need. Fulfill this need and you will trigger new experiences, intimate sharing, and connect with people at the heart. Thanks to Dan Kennedy, a great marketer that I intently learn from, I came across a quote by Cavett Robert, founder of the National Speakers Association, who said, “Most people are walking around, umbilical cord in hand, looking for a new place to plug it in.” If you can be that “socket” by understanding the person and empathically receiving their needs, you automatically share an electrifying connection with the person. Something about the person will change before your eyes. They will know something deep is going on without knowing what you are doing.

Unfortunately, the majority of people never arrive at this stage of electrifying intimacy. Answer this question truthfully: How many people truly understand you on a frequent basis? Think about the question for some time because it is important to understand understanding.

I ask this not to make you blame others for their failure to understand you, but to show you the scarcity of people who seek to understand. If you are like most people, you will not have one person that frequently and truly understands you in conversations. Few people care about understanding others, which causes themselves to be misunderstood. People who complain that “no one understands me” are constantly misunderstood because they live on a one-way street seeking to receive before they consider giving.

Violence is widespread because one person or group desperately wants to be understood while another party they are in conflict with also wants to be understood. The failure to see each other’s needs means neither gets one’s needs fulfilled. The result is an outbreak of emotional or physical destruction. So much pain in the world is caused by misunderstandings.

The anger and frustration present in everyday situations appears to be irrelevant to deeper issues, yet it is our inability to effectively face conflict that contributes to a global scale of war and hatred. Our everyday wallowing in resentment, frustration, and misunderstandings has as much – but probably greater – impact on peace and love than kind actions. If you cannot resolve your minor nuances in relationships that are suppose to be intimate and love-filled, you cannot expect nations who have hated each other for centuries to resolve major conflicts. To understand another person is a secret of world peace. “Peace cannot be achieved through violence,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “it can only be attained through understanding.”

The nonviolent communication process is a simple once you know the process; though it’s not always a fun slide to ride on because emotional pollution clogs your use of it. With practice, you will become better at NVC and be more successful in your communication and relationships. Over time, provided you continually practice the techniques and polish your skills, you will become excellent at the process.

The Four Step Process

The process has four steps: observing, feeling, needing, and requesting. There are really eight steps, however, because you firstly apply the four steps to the other person, then you apply them to yourself. Remember what I said before about seeking to understand before being understood? The first four stages make you understand people so you can be understood when you apply the four steps on yourself. This is the most critical part of the concept to grasp.

Unless the person is a compassionate communicator, go through the four steps first on the other person otherwise he or she will not listen to you. Use the visualization of a vacuum empathically “sucking up” the person’s communication. Until the person feels “cleaned”, you will be unable to clean yourself. Once you have sucked up the person, and hence understood them, you are then ready to use NVC on yourself.

Most people identify a few problems in firstly focusing on the other person. If you have not identified one of these now, you will as you continue to read about the process. The biggest concern I had with NVC is that you forgo your own needs, concerns, and emotions like anger. NVC prevents destructive expressions of anger and frustration via harmful attitudes and behaviors (think of the sarcastic teenager or the employee who does poor quality work). The process encourages you to express intense emotions – especially anger – in a healthy way that fulfills the underlying need.

At first glance, I understand the model may overwhelm you, but keep at it and reread the pages in this article to refine your ability to understand people and be understood. The NVC process as described in this full article will give you a good idea of what to expect in my Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program should you want to invest in it. It could be one of the greatest investments you make. Once you know how to understand people and help them understand you, you can mold your relationships however you want. It is time to kick into the first stage: observing.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
2. The Heart of Effective Communication: How to Love People
3. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management
4. The Benefits of Communication Skills
5. The Greatest 15 Myths of Communication

Delegation transfers the decision-making process to someone else. It is simply the transference of responsibility to another person. It allows you to get more done in less time than if you tried to do the activity yourself. You must learn this skill because time disallows you to do what you want done.

This article is beyond business to help you empower anybody to make decisions on their own while not subjecting them, or anyone else, to emotional pain. You will learn how to avoid turning yourself into a cantankerous, controlling individual while still getting things done.

You do not need to be a manager running a department or leader guiding a team for delegation to be useful. Too frequently we fail to say “no” to the flood of requests, which makes us overwhelmed. Effective decision-making skills given to you in the decision tree of leadership allows you to establish responsibility in people without you controlling them.

The ability to create self-reliance in people is one of the most empowering skills you can develop. You will bring out the best in people, they will feel powerful, and they will not feel burdened by your control. Whenever you transfer responsibility and other duties, under safe circumstances, that lead to feelings of importance in people, you increase your personal magnetism and make people like you. With that said, let’s move onto describing the decision tree of leadership.

The Decision Tree of Leadership – A Model Used by Great Leaders

Since reading Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-cybernetics and Michael Hall’s Mind-lines, I realize how powerful metaphors are to learn and implement a skill. To overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed, Maxwell Maltz provides a powerful metaphor and visualization of an hourglass. No matter how much sand is in the timer, the sand only pours through the funnel grain by grain. One by one gets things done.

When we create a metaphor that is similar to a problem, we draw associations and learn something new from old information. It is abductive thinking, a creative process whereby “what could be” generates new ideas. Symbols are used to indirectly mean something else. What this means for you in layman’s terms is your knowledge about a tree has the potential to help you better empower people, free up your time, and get them to like you!

Think of a simple tree. Each day decisions are made to keep it green and healthy. For the purpose of this metaphor, we categorize a tree into four parts: 1) roots, 2) trunk, 3) branches, and 4) leafs. From the ground upwards, we have:

Roots: Root decisions have the most potential to hurt an individual, group, or organization. They are made from a lot of input and consultation with others. Once an outcome is determined to be the best, the person responsible makes the root decision. Each person is kept up-to-date with the results of the decision.

Trunk: After roots are the tree’s trunk. Trunk decisions have the potential to hurt an individual, group, or organization like root decisions, though to a lesser extent. A trunk decision can take into account other people’s input, but the ultimate decision is made by the person in charge. Who is in charge depends on who can initiate or omit the action. A parent can be in charge, but a trunk decision for the teen in deciding to find a job is made by their teenager. The outcome of trunk decisions should be reported immediately.

Branches: Branch decisions are very similar to trunk decisions. The main difference is the timeliness of the decision. A branch decision does not have to be reported immediately once the decision is made. The person making the decision can take action immediately without other people’s suggestions. A teen deciding to get a job is a trunk decision, not a branch decision, because the teen is the one who acts on the decision while his or her parents are influenced by the decision.

Leafs: Leaf decisions are clear and simple. Sometimes the person has faced and solved similar problems in the past. A leaf decision is the outer-most and highest level of decision-making a person can achieve. It involves making a decision and acting on it without consulting anyone. Unlike other parts of the tree that require the input of others, leaf decisions are pure independence. The person who makes the leaf decision does not report to upper management or notify someone what has been done.

The foundation of a tree is its roots. Without its roots a tree will quickly die. After roots is the tree’s trunk. Tree trunks are important in maintaining the tree’s strength. Next, the trunk leads to many branches. The branches of a tree shape how it looks. They need to be maintained. Lastly, leafs grow from branches. Should a leaf or branch die, the whole tree does not suffer. If the roots or trunk of the tree sustain serious injury, however, the livelihood of the tree is jeopardized.

In terms of decision-making, a leaf decision does not mean it is less important than a trunk decision. Rather, it explains the ramifications of the decision. Leafs can die while the whole tree lives. A tree dies when its roots die. This is the most important metaphor to understand in the model. Your family should not suffer because you made a leaf decision that is actually a root decision, like buying your next house, on behalf of your family.

The decision tree of leadership does not takeaway a person’s ability to impact his or her family, marriage, friends, or organization. It encourages leadership while maintaining a finger tip of control. We hate being controlled and having to report everything we do to a superior. The decision tree of leadership creates freedom and empowers people to become responsible and influential. The outcome of a leaf decision can still be life-changing.

Any teenager or employee at some time experiences a shift in self-reliance where their dependence on people change. Teens desperately want freedom from their parents while employees wish their overbearing bosses would release them from their controlling grasp. A male teen wants to become his own person, but you and I know that giving someone pure independence is not a safe choice. Mistakes get made and people get hurt. The decision tree of leadership provides you with a lovely conceptual understanding of empowering another person so you grant a person their desired level of independence – while at the same time, you avoid being seen as a grumpy controlling onlooker.

In intimate adult relationships, I often see something called “child-parent dependency”. Child-parent dependent relationships have one individual termed the “child” who complies with the other individual termed the “parent”. The parent dictates who does what and who goes where. When an important decision needs to be made by the child, the person consults the parent on the problem or shifts all responsibility back to the parent. The child of the relationship can hate being told what to do, but he or she will find an excuse to avoid the task whether through silence, avoidance, or forgetfulness because the child lacks assertive skills to solve the control issue. Child-parent dependency can be helped through the establishment of self-reliance with the decision tree of leadership. This is one of the many benefits of the decision tree.

The Six Strengths of the Decision Tree

A group, namely an organization, that follows the decision tree of leadership will benefit for several reasons. Firstly, employees frequently voice their pain about not having the power to implement actions they are responsible for. To change, grow, or conduct a simple daily activity, an employee monitored from their boss’ hawk-eye requires their superior’s approval. If you want employees or members of a group to enjoy what they are doing and feel a sense of pride, ownership, and responsibility, you need to empower them with the decision tree of leadership.

The second strength of the decision tree of leadership is the clarity it establishes. Defining the level of authority establishes clear boundaries and expectations. If you lack expectations and clarity, you are more likely to blame someone else for a problematic result upon making a decision. When expectations are made clear that empower an individual, the individual knows what is expected of him or her and works to achieve those expectations. We want to make an impact and we need to know where it is we can make our mark.

The third strength is the personal and professional development the model builds in an individual. Communicate the decision tree of leadership to an appropriate person in your group and they will develop self-reliance and confidence. They become motivated to grow and work towards more leaf decisions.

The fourth strength is it increases the likelihood of good decisions. Mistakes often originate from inexperience and a lack of knowledge. A primary reason we make decisions for others is our lack of faith in the person’s decision-making skills. Parents that control their teenager’s life act from fear over their teenager’s supposed inability to make correct life decisions. A lot of unnecessary conflict can be reduced. The decision tree of leadership teaches people to swim in shallow water before venturing into the deep end. Once they get out to the deep end, they know no one is holding their hand, which makes it all the more satisfying.

The fifth strength is the resources it frees up. People higher in the hierarchy do not get bothered by problems people lower in the hierarchy can solve. The model gets people making more leaf decisions. Managers and executives are left with time that can be used to make more impacting decisions.

The sixth strength, and one of the most powerful reasons for using the decision tree of leadership, is the large amount of personal accountability created by the model. A lack of personal accountability causes the blame-game and the involved group to not move forward as they fail to learn from past mistakes. The decision tree clearly empowers people to make decisions, which leads to accountability. “The driving force behind any and all successful programs, initiatives and companies is accountability,” writes Gary Horsfall in a paper titled Accountability: The Force Behind Empowerment. “It is not possible in an environment where people feel that they have little or no control over their own destiny.”

Your Action Plan

Now you are aware of the decision tree of leadership and the power it has to transform an organization or similar group, I am going to share with you a quick step-by-step process for implementing the method. Next, I will provide some real-life examples of what decisions fit into which category of the model. Lastly, I will finish the article with an exercise to help you use the method as I want to help you go from intellectualizing the information to behavioral change and results.

To start using the method, you firstly want to mention a new method you have learned that will improve the family, organization, or team. They may not care what you have learned so you need to tune them into their favorite radio station, WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Tell them if they give the method a shot, they will develop more freedom, independence, and personal power. No one will say “no” to that!

Next, explain the decision tree to the person (or just email them the link to this page). Once you have done that, ask the person what categories their most common decisions fall under. Are they leaf, branch, trunk, or root decisions? Mutually working out a solution here is the secret to its ongoing implementation. When we make a choice on our own, instead of being forced into a choice, we stand by it stronger and for longer.

The Decision Tree of Leadership in Action

Okay, now to provide a few examples of the decision categories. I will use a teenager and a parent to demonstrate the decision tree because the majority of people should relate to and understand the example. As you read the examples, keep in mind that the decisions made by one family or an organization will be differently categorized for different families or organizations. Individuals have different personality characteristics and situations vary.

In this example, Julie is a parent to her teenager Sam. A leaf decision for Sam could be what he decides to do in his spare time. He has shown in the past that he does not need to be “babied around” in his free time. Though, you can probably see that this leaf decision could also be a branch decision. For example, Sam may need his mother’s permission for her to drive him to the local sports field.

A branch decision for Sam could be deciding what University to attend. While some parents control their child’s education more so than others because of price and other variables that differ between countries, the university Sam decides must fit in with what he wants. Once he has made the decision, it would be helpful for his family and parents to know his decision as soon as possible, though he is not required to tell them immediately. Sam can ask for other’s opinions as to what they think about the issue, but the decision is for Sam to make.

One possible trunk decision for Sam is housework. Julie gives Sam a moderate amount of freedom to choose what chores he wants to do. Sam is influenced, not controlled, by his mother’s input into the decision. Whether Sam does or avoids the chores, his final decision affects his family to a minor extent.

A root decision for Sam could be borrowing his parent’s car. The implications of taking his parent’s car without permission greatly affects Sam’s family. One possible affect is them being stuck at home with no means of transport to get somewhere important. Safety is also an issue because Sam’s parents would be concerned for his whereabouts.

It can be tough to decide whether a decision is a leaf or branch, branch or trunk, trunk or root decision, but it does not matter. Not every decision fits perfectly in the model – it does not need to. You can be imprecise. It is a model to help you – not one you must live by. In this model, close enough is good enough provided you have mutual agreement.

To implement the decision tree of leadership in your family, organization, or other group, here is a simple exercise to do. Over the next week, write down your most common branch, trunk, and root decisions. Leaf decisions can probably be ignored because there may be too many of them to write down. Once you write down your common decisions in the categories, you will see what areas you, or other people, are independent in and how your many decisions affects other group members. The exercise will help categorize and track what is going on.

The grand purpose of the decision tree is to establish freedom and personal growth. We hate being controlled and made to feel like a caged animal at the zoo. The decision tree of leadership empowers people to make decisions they would like to make or once could not make. Follow the decision tree of leadership to nurture growing, healthy relationships free from the constriction of thorns of controlling individuals.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Create Your Own Future by Brian Tracy
2. Review of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
3. The Heart of Effective Communication: How to Love People
4. The Only “Cure” for Social Anxiety Disorder and Achieving Social Freedom
5. Review of The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie

Covey’s book has sold over 15 million copies for a reason: It ignores trends and popular psychology, and sticks with enduring principles of lasting change. His seven principles build a lasting foundation for truth, openness, and integrity. The principles are timeless – unchanging to events – which has made the book the personal development favorite of many self-help experts.

The first three principles are: 1) be proactive, 2) begin with the end in mind, and 3) put first things first. These first three principles deal with dependence as the author moves the reader through new paradigms.

The first principle moves people from blame and victimization to responsibility. The second principle moves people from destructive centeredness and obsessions to a healthy focus and clear values. While the third principles deals with the “fourth generation” of time management where you will learn to do what matters most instead of following to-do lists and doing frivolous tasks that contribute little to your life and other people’s lives.

The second lot of three principles (four to six) deal with interdependency. The second triplet of principles are self-explanatory: 4) think win/win, 5) seek first to understand, then to be understood, and 6) synergize. These three principles are more like communication skills as the first three principles provide you with the foundation to use them.

It is sad to see many people ignore these principles. As a result, their relationships suffer and people resent them. Any success they get is short-term, unsatisfactory, and often lonely.

Covey emphasizes that effective people are interdependent on others. While they are independent and strong in their own right, when they use the three principles for interdependence, the sum of people’s work is more than the individual parts.

The last principle is called “sharpen the saw”. It deals with renewal in the physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Just as a blunt saw becomes tiresome for a woodcutter, so does a failure to renew in these four dimensions result in unproductive – and sometimes destructive – living for the exasperated individual. When these four dimensions are renewed, the seventh principle of “sharpen the saw” is followed to encapsulate the other six principles. It is in such ways that all the principles feed off one another.

The last point I want to emphasize to encourage you to invest in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People if you have not already done so is the character ethic Covey focuses on. Most books these days focus on the personality ethic. A personality ethic deals with attitudes, behaviors, skills, and the techniques for human interaction. While the personality ethic is important, without the character ethic that offers courage, patience, and integrity, long-term success is inhibited. The establishment of a strong character ethic creates change from the inside-out.

Overall, you must get the book. I have heard so many personal development public speakers, authors, life coaches, and organizational trainers say the book is the best they have ever read. I highly encourage you to grab your copy of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People now from Amazon right now by clicking here today.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Heart of Effective Communication: How to Love People
2. Review of The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie
3. Review of Winning with People by John Maxwell
4. The Decision Tree of Effective Leadership to Create Freedom and Independence
5. Review of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

No longer do you have to try a mumbo-jumbo technique, a psychological trick, or the latest dietary secret to “remove” your fears. According to Jeffers, just do the thing you fear. If reading that statement scares you, you are normal!

There’s no wonder this book has sold over 2 million copies. With fear being so common in society, Jeffers has a solution that gets the reader to act in the face of fear.

Ironically, your fears disappear, or at least greatly diminish, once you “just do it”. When you feel fear, yet take action, anxiety vanishes as you see the irrational nature of the fear. Then you become what people call “a confident person“. You save yourself time and worry in failed attempts to deal with your fear.

Jeffers’ best-selling book is named after a class she taught on fear. The class quickly became a hit. Her students were able to act in the face of their fears and build confidence from their action.

As was common in her classes, the students thought their fears were weird, unique problems. Her students felt different from the rest of society. As students gradually began to share their stories, each class always warmed and filled with a sense of excitement, a sense of hope their “weird problems” could at last be cured.

We think fear is a psychological problem. You may perceive yourself to have some weird mental or emotional problem, but it isn’t some weird problem. The fear we experience is more an educational problem than a psychological problem – an educational problem made clear to you in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.

The book’s main message is that fear comes from an uncertainty in capability to handle the situation. Our fears come from a disbelief in our ability to handle whatever life gives us. Jeffers says, “All you have to do to diminish your fear is to develop more trust in your ability to handle whatever comes your way.”

Though this may seem contradictory to the book’s main message, the book is not focused on removing fear – as the title goes: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Many of your fears can go away, and the book helps you to remove fears, but as Jeffers shares with her first truth about fear, “The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow.” The 5 truths about fear are real eye-openers.

Everybody fears doing, or being, something new because of the uncertainty within unfamiliar situations. If you don’t fear, you don’t grow. Moreover, if everyone experiences fear in approaching something new in life, the problem itself is not fear. The real problem is how you hold fear.

People paralyzed by fear feel helpless, indecisive, and angry; while those empowered by fear are powerful, action-oriented, and loving. The difference between the two categories of people is an educational problem solved by Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Fear, indecision, and anger are transformed into power, action, and love.

As you may have noticed in this review, the book doesn’t only talk about fears. It helps you become more decisive, powerful, action-oriented, and loving. Many of our personal problems relate to these issues that are subtle fears beyond our conscious awareness. For example, a wife stays in her miserable marriage not realizing that she fears the uncertain life ahead of her if she moved out. She continues to remain in the marriage constantly blaming her husband for what occurs in her life. The wife has anger and indecisiveness originating from her fear. You likely do too.

Chapters are devoted to understanding fear, personal responsibility, blame, self-talk, positiveness, and transformation to name a few topics. Jeffers has you control the “chatterbox” within you that makes you worry. I think the chapter on wholeness is brilliant because a whole life prevents us from fearing loss in other areas of life. Another great chapter was on no-lose decision-making. The author made me realize that no matter what choice I select in any decision, each choice leads to its own unique, fulfilling reward. What a great way to remove anxiety in selecting a choice.

The book is well written and simple to read. It doesn’t have the psychological terminology that can throw people off reading books about the human mind. Its simplicity combined with a concise 209 pages will have you quickly finish the book. You can be feeling the fear and doing it anyway in no time. Securely grab your copy of Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway now from Amazon by clicking here.

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1. 5 Truths About Fear: What Fear Doesn’t Want You To Know
2. Review of Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott
3. Review of Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo
4. Review of The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie
5. Review of Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins

Passiveness, otherwise known as submissiveness, is the opposite to aggression. Passiveness literally means detachment and acceptance. It is acted upon rather than acts on something. Passive communication involves “keeping under the radar”, “not sticking up for yourself”, saying yes when you really want to say no, and overly “selfless behaviors”. While it is different to being shy or quiet, shy or quiet individuals are often passive.

Amongst my reasons for passive behavior, is the benefits of passive behavior and communication, and why it is such a severe problem in families, the workplace, and human interactions. I want to share with you the deep reasons behind why people avoid “sticking up for themselves” and many other passive behaviors in this article. I believe once you understand this behavior, a powerful world is revealed before your eyes that would otherwise have remained hidden. Like all the communication secrets in my “Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program”, the things once hidden become visible to empower you to communicate powerfully with people.

Adults’ Contribution to Weak Behavior

Parents, teachers, and adults in general are partly responsible for passive behavior and communication in children. At a young age – and continually in life – adults condition passive individuals to continue their submissive behavior through verbal rewards. Passive individuals receive praise for their selfless actions, keeping quiet, and not voicing their concerns.

A bully steals a toy from a young girl who does nothing about it. An adult observing the girl tells her she is nice for not doing anything and making the bully angry. A student sits in the classroom, not answering any questions. The teacher at a parent-teacher interview says to the child’s parents that the child is nice and quiet. A young boy is asked what he wants for dinner, but his brothers and sisters interrupt him by saying what they want. The young boy then says, “I’m happy with what the others want” to which his parent praise him for compliance and selfless.

These three examples demonstrate how people are trained to continue passive behavior. Overtime, the person’s occasional passive behavior shapes into a stringent passive personality. Soon enough, the person doesn’t defend his space, participate, or state his desires. What appears “nice” transforms into a severe, habitual communication and behavioral problem that sucks the life from the person and his relationships. It’s no wonder many people struggle to learn assertive communication skills.

Behaviors in Conflict

Conflict contains several reasons for passive behavior and communication. Passive individuals avoid conflict by remaining quiet as they avoid expressing their point of view.

A failure to express their point of view occurs outside of conflict – it is frequent in conversations and social interactions. When they are asked what they’d like, where they want to go, or what they want to do, they passively respond: “I’m happy with whatever you want”. Rarely are they truly happy with what the other person wants. While they say “I’m happy with whatever you want”, the truth of the matter is their decision (or indecision) comes from a fear of disapproval.

Another reason passive behavior is beneficial for people who disconnect themselves from conflict and conversations is blame-avoidance. A person that says, “I’m fine with anything you decide”, puts the final decision on somebody else. The passive person leaves the other person to select an option. When the option is undesirable, the passive person can readily and easily blame the decision-maker for their choice.

Yet another reason someone can behave passively and avoid conflict is their protection from others. Other people fight for the person, which often gets them what they want. Some people laugh, get angry, or ignore an aggressive person, but when someone cries, most people stop what they’re doing to give the crying person what they want to wipe away their tears. A habitual crier can be more manipulative than an aggressor.

See the Price of Nice to Breaks Its Vice

So far you have seen the beneficial reasons for passive behavior and communication. Up until now, it seems to be an attractive way of behaving. Fortunately, it is not because the behavior has many destructive outcomes. By learning the negatives of passive behavior, you can help yourself break free from submissiveness and become motivated to help other people assert themselves.

Common problems with passiveness include:

• Unsatisfying relationships. Passive individuals are detached from their communication and relationships. They are completely disengaged from intimacy. They avoid intimacy because their authentic self is protected with the “nice guy” or “nice girl” mask.
• Growth is thwarted. Passive individuals create an environment where authentic feedback is not given or received. To critique a “nice person” makes the criticizer a guilt-ridden, bad person. Similarly, the nice person does not give feedback to other people, which limits their growth.
• Induces shame in others. Nice guys and girls manipulate others with guilt and shame. They avoid responsibility and giving feedback, making others feel shameful for their feelings towards the nice person. For example, the would-be receiver of a nice person’s feedback feels angry for not getting feedback then becomes shameful for feeling angry at the nice person. (The person is nice after all and it’s wrong to be mad at nice people.)
• Others get irritated. A guy, for example, forgoes his needs by molding himself into his lover’s ideal image. He thinks focusing on his partner is the relationship-healthy thing to do. The passive individual overtime, however, frustrates his partner with high compliance. His overt agreeableness leads to pity and irritation. It’s frustrating to be with someone who does not tell you what he or she feels or wants.
• Selfishness. Selflessness is selfish because the “selfless person” doesn’t have the capacity to act beyond oneself. It may sound contradictory to passive behavior, but the passive individual who lets others have their way robs oneself of happiness and love. The person is unable to love others because he or she holds resentment and frustration against those the person is selfless towards. People who give up their own lives to be loved by someone are often shocked when they discover the other person dislikes them for their plasticity approach to life.
• Volcanic build up of resentment. Forgo your own needs, avoid voicing your concerns, do not talk about yourself, and dodge confrontation – that’s a potent recipe for a life filled with resentment. All that pressure inside of you cannot remain hidden. Emotional eruptions eventually burst forth as seen in passive-aggressive behavior.
• Passive-aggressive behavior. I’ve heard marriage counselors incorrectly refer to passive-aggressive behavior as passive behavior, but behaviors like resentment and secret sabotaging can manifest from passiveness. Passive-aggressive behaviors include sarcasm, lying, and blaming. These behaviors are often expressed in sporadic outbursts to temporarily release the frustration of bottled emotions. Passive individuals are prone to flares of aggression. Momentary aggressive outbursts can occur because suppressed emotions suddenly gush to the surface. When I was overly passive, sarcasm was my common way of releasing anger from an inability to assert myself and express my feelings.
• Lack of emotional control. This is another paradoxical effect of passive behavior. Passive individuals think they manage their emotions through suppression, but the opposite results. Suppressed anger shows in many ways more harmful than if the person dealt with the emotion upfront. Suicide is the ultimate outcome of emotional suppression.

As you can see, there are many negative outcomes for passive behavior. While it can feel like an attractive behavior, it is very destructive for relationships and makes the passive person miserable. Passive behavior like aggression creates a win-loss or loss-loss outcome.

The powerful person, as outlined in my “Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program” is not passive nor aggressive. The powerful person is assertive. The powerful person does not need to get his way on every occasion. He is occasionally aggressive and occasionally lets others have their own way, but when his personal space is trampled on, he does something to regain his space. While passive individuals don’t protect themselves, their possessions, or other people, the powerful person self-protects. A powerful person knows how to get what he wants while giving others what they want – this attracts people into his life.

You can become a powerful woman or man instead of living at the helms of other people and your circumstances. If you want to break through passive behavior, I encourage you to get my “Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program”. I have overcome the same problem of submissiveness, shyness, and quietness you’re trying to defeat. You can release your powerful self into the conversation and gain the respect you want by learning more about the program here. If you want to defeat shyness forever, learn about my Big Talk course here.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Four Parenting Styles in Passive, Aggressive, and Assertive Behavior
2. The Benefits of Communication Skills
3. Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills – and What to Do About It
4. The Heart of Effective Communication: How to Love People
5. How to Not Care What People Are Thinking About You – and Release Your People-Magnetic Self Into the Conversation

Part three of this course provides you with many tips, techniques, and pieces of advice to help you correctly apologize. The advice I’m about to share with you will help you in ways beyond an apology. The tips can be applied to many areas of your life and communication as you will soon see.

What It Means to Correctly Apologize: To Be Forgiven and Forgotten?

Some people think apologizing correctly is as simple as saying “sorry” for a mistake. This is a shallow understanding of what you need to achieve in an apology. The goal of apologizing – and what I define as “apologizing correctly” – is when the person you hurt accepts your apology and forgives you. The person neither rejects your apology by saying something like “no need to apologize” nor holds the mistake against you. Things do not necessarily return to the way they were before.

It is beyond the purpose of an apology to make your relationship stronger, indifferent, or worse because these outcomes depend on the severity of the mistake. If you keep screwing up by making mistake after mistake, you’ll have successfully apologized when the person forgives you – but it doesn’t mean your relationship is the same as it were before the mistake.

There is a lot of confusion about the old phrase “We must not forget; but we must forgive”. We know forgiveness is a must. Without it, the person unwilling to forgive emotionally suffers – often leaving the person who did the damage unscathed. But where does forgetting sit in a successful apology? Should we aim to have our mistakes forgotten by those we hurt?

If another person holds the bitter memories and resentment of your mistake against you, the person has not forgiven. It is almost humanly impossible, however, to forget another’s mistake. Forgiveness heals the past releasing ill will against the person. Not forgetting provides a memory of the pain that guides future actions. Forgiveness and forgetting are closely knit together, yet define entirely different things.

An apology is successful when it is accepted and the mistake no longer is held against you. The person may not forget your mistake, but he or she forgives you and no longer resents you for the mistake or uses it to manipulate you. Resentment, frustration, anger, gossip, bitterness, ill will, and other outward manifestations of hatred are erased upon a successful apology. Someone with these emotions possibly signals the person has yet to forgive.

Now that a successful apology is defined, I feel it’s important to note that apologizing correctly can only do so much. There is no iron-clad, fool-proof, guaranteed technique to successfully apologize. Sometimes you need to suffer through your mistakes and bear the punishment. Apologizing can sometimes be a bandage on a wound to help heal the pain. If the wound is repeatedly reopened, it is not the bandage’s fault, but the person who inflicted the pain. Most people can forgive you so many times before they lose trust in your. They cannot forget the pain you have caused them. A reoccurring problem needs to be dealt with instead of expecting an apology to make amends.

Though apologizing correctly can be difficult, use the following tips. You will fix your mistakes, repair your relationships, and initiate emotional healing and freedom. Master these tips and you will be equipped with the tools to repair emotional damage from your mistakes.

Plan

Plan what you’re about to say by thinking your apology through beforehand. Prepare yourself to give a sincere apology. You can also write down your apology to clarify your thoughts so you increase the chances of it being a success.

When intense emotions fly everywhere in a situation, such as in a heated argument, it’s hard to think of what you want to express – yet alone say it in a constructive manner. Intense emotions blind you to constructively express your thoughts. Plan your thoughts before going “live” with your apology to increase the likelihood of a successful apology. A plan gives you guidelines to act from – helping you remain on track and not deviate with relationship damaging statements too common in emotionally intense situations.

The same lesson in planning carries over to help you achieve life goals. Success stems from the seeds planted with planning. Don’t take this advice lightly. Planning nurtures golden relationships.

Responsibility

Admit you hurt the person. Your innate social intelligence will give you an intuition or feeling when you hurt someone. If you hurt the person by saying something offensive, admit that you made the mistake. Don’t say, “You shouldn’t be offended by what I said.” Avoid a non-apology (from part two on barriers and mistakes made in apologizing), which involves blaming the other person while simultaneously giving a poor apology. Here are non-apology examples:

• “I apologize to those I hurt because of their loss.”
• “I’m deeply sorry for those who I may have offended.”
• “Please take my apology if you were offended by what I said.”

These examples appear to be apologies, yet are attempts to avoid responsibility. Own up to the mistake and take responsibility regardless of your intentions and whether it truly hurt the person. The little voice that tries to take you away from accepting responsibility and apologizing is your ego. Egos are filled with deceitful lies and pride trying to deter you from responsibility.

Timing

For a little problem you need to apologize straight away and prevent it from growing into a big one. It’s very simple. If you accidentally step on someone’s foot, obviously you should say “sorry” straight away instead of apologizing at a later time. (I’m sure the person will think you’ve got some serious problems if you write an apology for stepping on their foot.)

For a more serious problem, take the time to get in a good environment where you can honestly apologize and they can safely respond. Don’t cause more pain by “going into a boiling room” by trying to apologize when the two of you have red-hot emotions.

In addition, it may be necessary to give the person time after your apology. You can have all the right ingredients for a meal, but time is needed to cook the ingredients. Provide the person with extra space to let him or her come to terms with what happened. Letting your apology seep in could be what makes your apology successful.

Explain

Why did you make the mistake? You are not justifying what you did, rather you are to Let the person know about your faults. Become vulnerable. Explain to the person that you didn’t see them there, you let your anger get the better of you, you were ignorant, you should have understood them better – whatever the mistake maybe.

Explain why you did what you did without blaming the mistake on external circumstances. It is tempting when explaining your mistake to shift the explanation onto the other person. You start off by saying, “I’m sorry for not taking out the garbage…” then your selfishness can kick in as you say “…but I always take out the rubbish and you don’t ever do it!” Explain the problem, but don’t convert it into someone else’s problem through a non-apology.

Use the who, what, why, when, and how to get you started in explaining your mistake. You don’t need to explain everything – just say what you think will help clear up the understanding between the two of you.

One last point about explaining is to avoid going overboard with your apologies and make a big issue over something small. It’s annoying to have someone constantly say “sorry” or use other forms of apologizing when you have forgiven the person and moved on. When the person has forgiven you, move on.

Sympathy – Display Your Social Emotions

Sympathy, a powerful “social emotion”, is an expression of pain felt by the person you hurt. This is important because social emotions, in general, create cooperation and understanding. We don’t learn in school how to feel another person’s pain, yet we have innate social emotions that make us feel, behave, and act in a way that complies with social codes. Remorse, embarrassment, and guilt are important emotions to display in your verbal and nonverbal communication when giving an apology. A guilty individual showing remorse is more likely to give a successful apology than someone that hides their social emotions. (If social emotions fascinate you, I discuss them in-depth in the tenth chapter of my Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program.)

Display sorrow for your actions. Communicate sympathy to show you understand the person’s pain and your mistakes. If you want, you can go one step further than sympathy by showing empathy, which involves psychologically and physiologically experiencing what the person feels. (See here for a more detailed discussion on sympathy versus empathy.) The pain connects the two of you to build understanding and harmony.

Share the person’s pain by reflecting your feelings about the mistake with something as simple as:

• “I’m sorry I lied to you. I feel guilty that I’ve let you down.”
• “Having scratched the car, I feel ashamed that something so careless will hurt our finances.”
• “I feel I have let you down and hurt our relationship by yelling at you.”

A common misunderstanding with sympathy is you focus on yourself, diverting attention from the hurt person. Sympathy, however, shows the person you are also suffering from your blunder. The person will be more understanding and willing to discuss their feelings because you have expressed yours. The person may even be happy to receive this little bit of secret revenge. If someone hurts us, we get a little kick of happiness seeing them also suffer from their actions.

How Did It Go?

Was your apology a failure? If an apology failed, do not take it personally. Failure is a result, not a person. If your apology failed and you are certain you successfully applied all these tips, try alternative forms of apologizing, such as writing an apology or getting someone else to apologize for you. Do not forget that letting time pass could make your apology a success.

On the other hand, if your apology was successful, congratulations! Be grateful for the person’s forgiveness and for a second chance. Learn from your mistake and move on.

Do not dwell on the past. You have a great future ahead of you. Make use of it by putting your attention on what you can do in this very moment to improve the relationship. You are now ready to complete emotional healing and freedom with forgiveness.

Links to all four parts of this course, “Freeing Yourself From Mistakes and Pain: A Four Part Course On Apologizing and Emotional Freedom”:

1. Power of Apologizing
2. Barriers and Mistakes in Apologizing
3. How to Correctly Apologize
4. Finding the Art of Forgiveness: How to Forgive and Be Forgiven

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Barriers and Mistakes in Apologizing
2. The Power of Apologizing
3. Finding the Art of Forgiveness: How to Forgive and Be Forgiven
4. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
5. How to Fight and Win Any Argument Fast