Yes.

 

Really.

 

You know that feeling you get when you’re doing everything in your power to get someone in your life to do something that you really want them to do—and they simply won’t do it?

 

AAAARRRRGGHH!! (Right?)

 

Although I wish I could tell you that I never fall prey to this totally normal, deeply human feeling (which causes so much drama in the world), unfortunately, I can’t. There are times when I still fall into it just as easily as you do—even though you’d think I would know better.

 

Here’s the good news: I do know better. Although I still fall anyway, these days I can snap myself right out of it—exceptionally quickly—with my Everyday Communication Sorcery. So this week’s Playbook is every bit as much about me reclaiming my own power—in the aftermath of several recent forays into this feeling—as it is about sharing these strategies with you.

 

Now that I have fully embraced myself as The Communication Sorceress, that sound of “AAAARRRRGGHH!!” is my trigger to pay attention.

 

Here’s why: I have such a long history of feeling this way—in my previous two marriages, a variety of jobs and in so many former relationships—that it sometimes boggles my mind.

 

The huge payoff of all that “AAAARRRRGGHH!!” is that I have phenomenal hindsight that helps me tremendously in the present. These days I have the data points to trigger me into immense clarity about where I am and what I need to do about it. (More about that in a moment…)

 

 

Forty years ago, one of our instructors in my Navy Addictions Counselor School told us that we can never get anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. He was setting the stage for us to let go of any illusions we may have had as brand-new helping professionals about our ability to “get” our clients to change.

 

Mind you, he was speaking in the context of addiction. He was teaching us how to take care of ourselves, as well as our clients, in a field where the high incidence of professional burnout was a fact of life and 90% of our clients would likely fail to beat their addiction.

 

If we were to have even a prayer of success with any client, we would need to be humble enough to release the idea that we knew better for anyone, We needed the strategies he taught us to uncover what someone wanted to do—and how they benefitted—so we could help them to uncover other ways they could get that same benefit, without using alcohol or drugs.

 

This simple strategy of uncovering what someone wants—and how the their current practice for getting it benefits them—has remained one of my core practices as a coach, although I’ve been out of the field of addiction for 33 years. This strategy works for everyone—and you’ll see how in a moment.

 

The gift of this professional experience is that it comes right back to help me whenever I think I know better about “getting” someone to do something they don’t want to do. It’s astonishing how close this behavior is to the definition of addiction, which is “the continued use of (a substance or a behavior) despite negative consequences.”

 

When we continue trying to “get” someone else to do something that we need them to do—something they continue to not do for completely valid reasons of their own—and then feel that “AAAARRRRGGHH!” of frustration at their lack of compliance, we’re kinda like little crack addicts.

 

Here’s why…

 

 

 

This can make a weird kind of sense when you’re in a relationship with someone—because odds are high that you’re already getting lots of great things from them in your interactions.

 

 

This is always going to be a problem, because now, instead of happily receiving what they are freely giving to us already, we want to take more from them—simply because we need it. (Here’s where we most resemble those addicts).       

 

I can promise you (from a wide variety of harrowing experiences) that this is NOT a successful relationship strategy.

 

This behavior can doom an otherwise OK relationship when you keep it up. Because it’s another variation of you being right (about what you deserve to get from them) and you having to win (because they have to submit to your whims.) it qualifies as a relationship-breaker.

 

OUCH. (I hate when that happens…)

 

(If you missed all the details about the two things that will break any conversation and most relationships in last week’s Playbook, you can find it here.)

 

 

This Sorcery here is about choosing wisely. Because we are always in charge of getting what we need, it’s important to know where we can best get our needs met. Here are three options that always give me my best results:

Now you know what to do when the inevitable “AAAARRRRGGHH!” shows up in a relationship that matters to you. 

Find out what you really need and how you can get it for yourself—let the other person off the hook—and be on the lookout for those “AAAARRRRGGHH!s.”

 

Play of the week: This week, I invite you to consider the possibility that you can benefit mightily when you pay attention to the ways in which you can meet your own needs.

Try out these three steps and see what happens. The Big Win here is to consider the possibility that these steps have merit—something you can only prove one way or the other by trying them out.