soapboxdiner

Con mucho gusto

I've been listening to audio seminar tapes during my commute to and from work lately. Last week was building communication skills and this week is managing anger.

Funny, you know, last week one of our employees came into my office and threw things on my desk and commenced with some yelling. I was already in the midst of experiencing a brain aneurysm caused by too many deadlines = stress, and here this guy waltzes into my office to give me a sucker punch in no uncertain terms.

Needless to say, all did not go well.

Then Friday night I go over to D00d's, walk in the door and M00d immediately greets me with, "Oh, by the way, you know that compost you got for your birthday? I used the rest of it up. Hope that's OK."

Well, honestly? What choice do I have now? The compost is already gone and anything I say will be moot and serve only to make me look like an asshole. But you know? I'm fine with you using the compost that was MY birthday present. But it's just kinda customary that one ASKS to use something BEFORE they use it. Just saying.

And Sunday she announces to D00d. "The mortgage was due to be paid last week some time, but they haven't taken the money from my account yet. Oh, and since the mortgage hasn't gone through, I wrote a $300 check for the insurance using the mortgage money. I should be fine though. I'm sure if you give me money and I use the drop box at the bank today, they won't charge me an overdraft or do an NSF or anything."

Needless to say, all did not go well. No prayers are necessary though, D00d has fully recovered from his brain aneurysm and the doctors report he'll be able to come home soon.

D00d: Mom, if you use the drop box today, the bank won't process it until Monday night, and it won't get posted to your account until Tuesday.

M00d: That can't be right. Aren't there little people in the drop box just waiting for me, oh, me, to drop a deposit outside of normal business hours? SBD what do you think? Which one of us is right?

Anyway, it's just kinda funny. Listening to the tapes, they talk about how people relate to you and what that tells you about forms of power. Some people have power based on politics, or things they know, because of the resources they control or the people they know, and some people just exude leadership, personal strength and certitude that attract others.

Some people express anger inappropriately, but there are ways to deal with that that do not diminish relationships or minimize your authority or power. If you don't fly off the handle by expressing the first thing that comes to mind, you can catch a person off guard, defuse their hostility, and by taking a second to get a grip on your long-term intentions and by understanding where they are coming from, you can keep your cool and empower and reinforce their driving needs that prompt their anger. Or if you're really good, you can build and foster strong, trusting relationships and negotiate conflict resolutions before the other person has the opportunity to even build the negative momentum in the first place.

And what does this do for us, darlings?

That's right. It elevates the perception of our personal power and leadership in the eyes of others, which is one of the underlying sources of power.

Heady stuff, darlings.

Like the Gnostics, Philo held that during this life the soul was something of a pilgrim and a sojourner, with no firm root in the world of nature. He wrote of how, when the mind soars up to initiation in the Lord's mysteries, it judges the body to be bad and hostile. The soul has descended into the bondage of flesh, like Israel in Egypt, and must seek its Exodus.

This dualism is very close to the classical Gnostic position. The aspirant must advance to a complete absence of passion [...] Within it human beings are progressively stripped of passions (those powers that hold them to the earth), which are handed over to their respective governors [...] as the humans rise toward the Plemora, or Fullness, of the purely spiritual realm, beyond the stars.

Tobias Churton, Gnostic Philosophy, From Ancient Persia to Modern Times.

10:41 pm - 05.04.09
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