I’ve received more feedback about my recent episode on how to discern your calling without feeling pressure than almost any other episode to-date. I’m so glad you’ve all reached out to me about this because it lets me know that, clearly, the subject of pressure is a hot-button one for you.

As a result, I’ve decided to cover the topic of pressure from a few more angles.

In this episode, I’m providing you with three questions to ask yourself that will help take the pressure off confrontational conversations.

Take a listen to the episode below!

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

A couple of weeks ago, I did an episode called How to Discern your Calling without Feeling Pressure?  That was episode #67 and I’ve received more feedback on that episode than I have many on any other one other than like maybe my first episode that we did here.

And because of that, it really helped me to see that this idea of feeling pressure is kind of hot button right now for the listener, for you.  So today and maybe in a couple of weeks, I’m going to try to talk about this idea of pressure in a couple of different other contexts and we’ll see where it goes.

But for today, we’re going to talk about how to confront other people without feeling pressure.  Have you ever felt like you just need to tell somebody that they really upset you?  Or you’re really struggling in this relationship and you know that this relationship is not going anywhere and you really need to confront this person or confront the situation if it’s going to move on.

Do you love that?  In a scale of 1 to 10 – I absolutely love confronting people with hard and difficult conversations what most people called difficult.  But they’re not difficult for me.  You’re a 10 if that’s the case or maybe you’re like “Absolutely not.  I will not do it.  I completely avoid them.  I run away from difficult conversations and from confronting people.”  Where are you?  Where do you fall?

Just be honest with yourself on that.  I think we all struggle with it to some degree because it’s hard.  It is threatening to put ourselves in that position where we’re really not sure what the other person’s is going to say.  We’re not sure what they’re going to think of us when we get done with this conversation, when we confront them.  And we’re not sure what’s going to happen.

I think that this unease come so much from that lack of control confronting other people.  Yeah, many of us want harmony.  We don’t like to have relationships feel out of whack.  Sometimes we get to that point when we have to and we have to do something about it.  And yet, we’re scared to do something or we’re hesitant because either we’ve had a bad experience in the past or maybe you confronted somebody before and it didn’t turn out well.  Maybe you confronted somebody and you know you end up hurting them more in that process.  Maybe you confronted somebody and they ended up hurting you more in that process.

Our experiences and our fears whether we’ve experienced those fears or not, you know, they might be imagined, those things can really mess with our minds.  And then we feel all kinds of pressure because we can tell it’s like being squeezed and we can tell that we’ve got to do something but we’re not sure exactly what.  If it means confronting somebody then what?  How do we handle this without feeling so much pressure?

I recently re-watched the movie called Saving Mr. Banks.  Have you ever seen this movie?  It is a Disney movie and it’s about how Walt Disney worked with, I think it’s P.L. Travers.  The woman who wrote the book about Mary Poppins, the series about Mary Poppins and how he tried to get her for 20 years.

He tried to get her to sell him the rights so that he could make the movie Mary Poppins.  Anyway, I haven’t done any additional research.  So this is in terms of the movie, his daughters apparently loves the book and he promised to make them this movie some time.  And she just refused; this woman just did not want Disney to touch Mary Poppins.  She told him in the movie, “They’re like family to me.”

So the only way that she even got into conversation with him, in the first place, was because I think she was hard-pressed for money and she agreed to, at least, listen to the script that they had been working on.  And as long as they would listen to all of her response and really pay attention to every little detail that she says need to be changed.  So nothing happens unless she approves it that kind of thing.

Well, you can imagine somebody that is so tied to their characters that they wouldn’t even consider the option as letting somebody like Walt Disney to make it into a movie for 20 years.  You know, she’s so _____ to this pretty tightly and yet Disney had this vision for this character, Mary Poppins, and how important it is for him to get this out into the world.

So what’s interesting, the whole movie is really fascinating, and as a moviegoer, you’re able to see the back story.  They do flashbacks and you can see the back story behind the books of Mary Poppins because it actually has to do with her real life.  However, nobody at the Disney Corporation had any idea that that was the case.  They didn’t realize that they thought that maybe it just came from her on mind.

So when she became so stubborn and would say things like there cannot be any color red in the film and Mr. Banks cannot have a mustache, “No, he does not have a mustache.”  And she just got so picky about everything.  They just felt like she was just being, you know, just…I don’t know, I’m trying to think of another world…you know, bitchy, but that’s essentially what she was doing.  She just was being so picky that she just could not let go of these things that she was clinging to, his ideas.  And they were just like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

So they get through.  They’re almost done with the movie.  They’re almost done with the process of getting her to agree to everything.  I apologize if this is totally messing this up for you, but if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s been up for a while.  So you could still see it and it would still mean something to you, I promise.  But anyway, she ends up giving up and going home and she says, “No, I’m not gonna do this.  For whatever reason, I won’t give you that part away.”  She says, “Nope, I’m not gonna approve this.”  And she takes back her rights and she says “I’m not gonna do it.”

OK!  So Walt Disney is in a position that we were talking about earlier that here we have the situation where we’ve been working together, we’re trying to come to consensus.  We’re trying to come to a conclusion.  We’re trying to get this thing to move forward, but this other person is being so difficult.  He couldn’t figure out why, “Why is she being so difficult?”

And everybody else was kind of like, “Well, she’s just difficult.”  And yet he was smart enough to catch a couple of clues at least in the movie I’m assuming.  I don’t know if this is actually what happened.  But in the movie, he was smart enough to catch a couple of clues to realize that this runs a lot deeper for her.  There’s a reason for why she’s holding on so tightly here.  And because of that he could tell that he was going to have to do some things.

He’s going to have to talk about this differently.  He’s going to address not the surface level answers that she was giving about not wanting red in the movie or not wanting the animation or whatever it might be.  But that really wasn’t the issue, even though she was kind of coming across _____, “No way, I’m not gonna let this.”  That was the point of conflict.  He saw that there was that there was something underneath of that that would take care of everything.

And this is what we have to do.  If we want to take pressure out of the confrontational conversations that we have to have in our lives, we need to be able to see beneath those surface level annoyances to understand where this is coming from.  “Where is this coming from?  What am I actually confronting?”

So I’m going to give you a few things here to take a way, to kind of start to apply, to take this pressure off of these confrontational conversations, OK?  They do not have to feel like a fight.  They might.  I’m not going to say it just won’t, but it doesn’t have to all the time.  It definitely doesn’t have to feel so personal to you.

So here are some things that I want you to just keep in your mind when you go to confront.  Number one, the question to ask yourself, is what it is that I’m actually confronting?  So Walt Disney knew that she left because something along the line she didn’t want to have animation in the film and didn’t realize that he was going to do that.  She felt like he deceived her.

So she left over this point of, gush, she can’t trust him and there’s going to be an animation and I don’t want that.  In all reality, it’s surfacy.  It’s a surface level complaint or annoyance or concern.  And yes, trust is a little deeper.  So that’s a little deeper but why does it matter so much to her?  Why does it matter so much to her?

And this is what you have to ask yourself, am I confronting the way that she’s talking about this?  Am I confronting the fact that she’s been so annoying to work with?  Am I confronting the fact that she’s wrong about animation and then we have to have the animation to make this work for Mary Poppins, the movie?  What am I confronting her?  Wait a second, there’s something deeper going on here.  What’s the deeper thing going on here and what Walt Disney knew was that “Oh my goodness, this is about her own experience as a child in her own father.”

So Mr. Banks was such an important piece to her that she didn’t want him let him down.  So Disney then could come in and he could say, “I’m not confronting.  I know that all this stuff is bothering you but this is about something much deeper, isn’t it?”  And then he goes into a conversation with her about the deeper things.
You need to begin by asking yourself, why does this matter so much to this other person?  Why are they responding in such an annoying way?  What happened before?  What are the beliefs that they’re holding on to?  What is the guilt that they feel, the shame that they feel, or the fear that they feel?  What is going on so much deeper that…what am I actually confronting here?

So when you go to talk to somebody about something like this, you might now know the answer.  You might not be Walt Disney and have a bunch of clues that you can go trace down to find out what the answer is, however, you can ask.  You can ask.  So if you start by saying something along the lines of this acknowledging the fact that there’s tension, “Look, I recognize that we’re really struggling with this particular thing with this conflict.”  Or “I noticed that you were upset about something or that you reacted to something that I said.”  That’s important and then you can say, “Why does it matter so much to you?”

Let me tell you something right now, they’re not going to give it to you right away.  They’re not going to be able to just dive right in with you to tell you what is going on, but they will.  If you continue to be curious, most of the time, people start to open up because they start to realize that you actually are asking them questions that are tapping something real inside of them.  If they’re not too afraid of going there, they will go there.

People wanted to be touched deeply.  They want to connect with other people deeply.  If you believe that then you come at this with “What is it that I’m confronting and is there something else going on here?  Is there something more important to adjust?  Is there a deeper issue to deal with?”  That is a very loving thing to do then it’s not just about you, it’s about the other person.

So number two with the second question; is this about my ego?  And maybe better yet is what of this is about my ego?  Because more than likely, you’re feeling threatened in some kind of way, that’s probably one of the reasons why you feel like you need to confront somebody because you feel threatened.  So what is threatened inside me?  What about this is about my ego?

And get honest with yourself before you go to that person.  Do you need to go internal work and think something through first?  Do you need to realize that, you know, maybe talk with a friend or something and say, “I’m realizing that there’s something deeper inside of me here that needs to be addressed before I go and confront something that might be deeper instead of somebody else.

So let’s go back to Saving Mr. Banks, Walt Disney, he was feeling frustrated and threatened by the fact that he invested time and money and energy into beginning to produce this movie.  So for him, he was feeling threatened by that that she could just come in and say, no.  That was hard for him and was frustrating for him as frustrating for the people who were working for him who’ve invested so much time and energy on it.

He had to kind of say, “But wait a second, I have to not have this be about me.  What is this about?”  So what am I really confronting in the other person?  What of this is about my own ego?  What do I need to deal with in order to be able to talk to that speak from a deeper place and then connect to a deeper place in that other person.  Because once you have a sense of your own stability, your own sense of centeredness that you realize that you don’t have to feel threatened anymore and now how can it be about the other person?  Is this going to benefit them as well?

The third question is how can this benefit this other person?  It’s not just about me; it has to be about them too.  If I’m going to be confronting something, then it needs to not just be about me finding my voice and _____ my voice and feeling triumphant in the moment.  Now, I’m not going to say that that’s never beneficial but I want to suggest that it also needs to be for the greater good.

So how can it be about helping the other person as well?  Sometimes, confronting another person about something that’s bad that they’ve done that can help because it’s not good to be a person who is doing bad things.  It’s not good for their heart and their soul.  And so to confront somebody and to put that in front of them is hard for them but it’s good for them  In that sense, it can be good for the other person if you’re needing help to kind tie those dots together.

Let’s go back again to this movie to this example because what Walt Disney realized was that this woman had felt like she had let her father down.  Her father had actually died.  He had not come out triumphant as Mr. Banks does in the movie.  And she wanted to help him.  She wanted to save him.  She wanted to save Mr. Banks that’s what she wanted for the movie.  The Mary Poppins in her real life, she didn’t save the _____.  She wanted her to, but she didn’t.  She said she was going to but she didn’t because her dad ended up dying.

So in a sense the book was for her, an opportunity to redeem the situation to rewrite the story of her life, to rewrite the story of her father.  What Walt Disney realized is this, he comes in it that level with her and he says “I want you to trust me because we are going to save Mr. Banks.  I understand that this so personal for you and that the most important thing is that he is saved in the end that there is redemption for this character and so because I understand that, you can trust me with him.  In the end, she gave him license to be able to do what they wanted to do with the movie.

So all the things that she has said before, you know, you can’t do this.  You have to do that.  I don’t know what the actual story is, but according to the movie, it just appears that she ended up just trusting him because he got it.  He understood what she most cared about.  And because he understood what she most cared about and he promised her, he was like “I am going to make sure, I’m going to do this justice.  We will save Mr. Banks.”  And because of that she was able to trust him.

This is the redemption of the whole story is that he indeed did find redemption in the movie.  And when she went to the premier of the show, she could see it that was her opportunity to see it with her own eyes, to see Mr. Banks be saved.  And for her, that was honoring to her father.  It was something she could do for him that she couldn’t do while he was alive.  That has so many implications for I’m sure many, many people who have watched it since then and have learned that lesson along with the character.

When Walt Disney came to her, he knew it couldn’t just be about; we got to make this film.  She’s got to let me have it.  I’m gonna railroad her.  I’ll just throw more money at her.”  He knew it wasn’t about money.  He knew it wasn’t about power in it that he was just going to force her to do it or something.  Instead, he went for what she really did want.  He looks for how it’s going to help that other person and he realized, she needs to be healed.  She needs healing.  She needs to feel forgiveness and the only way that that’s going to happen is if Mr. Banks is saved.

And the only way we can really make that happen is if we go with my vision because I know movies, you know.

So when you are going to confront somebody else, you can take the pressure off of it by those small interactions that are surface interactions.  There’s always something deeper going on.  And if you’re just fighting at that surface level, all you’re going to feel is pressure because you’re just going to want to get that thing to go through, “I just want you to stop doing this.  I just want you to do that.”

Well, even if you were able to get what you wanted.  For example in the movie, the animation, even if he came to her and he said, “Look, I just want you to agree to the animation.  I’m gonna show you why it’s important.”  And then list off a bunch of reasons.  Well, you can’t make penguins dance, you can’t train them dance.  So we have to use animation.  It’s the only option.  He could have gone and on and on and on with some rational argument about that but it would never have hit her where she needed to be touched.

It never would have touched that place in her heart.  Instead, we have to see that people need to be touched at that heart level when they are holding so tightly to something like that or when they are annoying us with something, “Oh it’s so annoying!”  What is going on inside of them that is bringing to them to the place where they feel like they have to do that?  These are the questions that we have to ask.  Like I said if you don’t have those clues, if you’re not sure then ask, stay curious.

You may not find out in one conversation.  It maybe something that you have to have conversation and conversation and conversation and the truth of the matter is is that not everybody will go there.  But I’ll tell you what, a lot of people will.  More often than not, people will go there with you if you sincerely care, if you’re willing to say, “Wait a second, what am I confronting?  Is this about my ego?  How do I do this by making sure that this is about them and not just about me?”

How can we connect to that deeper level because if you connected that deeper level then all of a sudden, everything at that surface level changes.  It’s like it becomes a non issue because you’ve connected at that deeper level.  This is how to confront people without feeling so much pressure.

Go ask these questions.  Be bold in your love and make that voice matter more!