Fred the farmer needed to plow his fields. But his tractor was in the shop and the repairs weren’t going to be done in time. Fred noticed that his neighbor, Ed, had finished his plowing decided to ask if he could borrow Ed’s tractor.
Fred headed down the lane toward Ed’s house, thinking to himself, “I’m sure he won’t hesitate to lend it to me. Ed’s a good guy.”
A little way further down the lane, Fred mused, “Of course, some folks can be a bit odd about lending expensive equipment.”
Then he thought to himself, “He’ll think immediately about the price of gasoline. I’ll need to make sure he knows I’ll pay for the gas.”
A few more steps and Fred realized, “Ed hasn’t been over to chat much lately. I hope he’s not upset with me about something.”
As Ed’s house came into view, Fred remembered thinking that Ed had looked at him oddly at the last church supper. “I wonder what that was all about?”
As he stepped onto Ed’s front walkway, Fred thought, “I hope he isn’t going to make this difficult. He can be a bit ornery sometimes.” In his remaining steps to the front door, Fred’s mind reeled with all the ways Ed could be a jerk about the tractor.
He rapped his knuckles on the door. When Ed answered, Fred said, “You can keep your darn tractor, you selfish SOB. I didn’t need it that badly in the first place!”
Runaway thoughts and catastrophizing can hobble your difficult conversations before they even begin. Indeed, they can even make conversations difficult when they wouldn’t have been otherwise!
I see this challenge frequently enough in my mediation and conflict coaching work that I’ve developed ways to help clients avoid the trap. And I’ve written about the topic before, once telling another story about runaway thoughts, another time offering ideas for cultivating a non-anxious state of mind during difficult conversations, and yet another with questions to help you confront without catastrophizing. I’ve also written about my grad students’ reaction after a difficult conversations assignment.
By the way, if you know the original source of the above joke, I’d love to know it.
Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.
angry her husband couldn’t just guess what she needed, better at taking a break when she felt herself approaching her boiling point, and regularly choosing better timing for when she raised difficult matters for discussion and negotiation.
Not all difficult conversations are hard because of conflict. Some are difficult because of the circumstances enveloping the conversation.
(amazon affiliate link).
by Ellen Langer
for permission to user her door story in this post.
Blame is oh so tempting, however. One of the things I’ve noticed that people do when some difficult change hits is to ask, “Why is this happening? It’s got to be someone’s fault.” We don’t want it to be ours, so we find someone else to pin it on: “Oh, it’s Mary’s fault, not mine, so I can feel a bit better about the fix we’re in.” It makes us feel more in control to have a why that’s not us. But finger-pointing has unintended consequences that are worth understanding.
(amazon affiliate link). When the review copy Ryan sent arrived in the mail, my first reaction was that a book couldn’t be more apropos for the times than this one. It’s written not for those who manage change (they don’t really need yet another book on the topic), but those who are the recipients of major changes – folks who’ve lost jobs, had their work restructured substantially, and are dealing with major financial losses.
, Amanda Ripley points out that people who tend to survive catastrophes such as fire, flood, bombings, kidnappings, etc., accept what’s happening more quickly and therefore take action faster than others. Blameis one of those human impulses that creates interference with acceptance. You can afford the time or mental energy it takes to lay blame, much less to fight with others who want to point the finger at you. You’ve got more important tasks to attend to. When a tidal wave is about to swamp your boat, it’s not the best idea to fight over who’s responsible for the fact that you’re sitting in a dinghy rather than a battleship. You just need to pull together and row like mad! [emphasis added]
. Now I’ll be giving out 
Jay Rothman, author of 
(Amazon link) tells this story:
The earlybird discount for my November 5 conflict resolution seminar, 
What would your life be like if you no longer carried the stress of conflict on your shoulders? What would your days be like if you knew how to keep your balance during disagreements and strengthen your most important relationships in the process?
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