The Happiness Habit

In Chapter 10 I wrote about the fact that we feel guilty if we fail to adhere to our personal rules. We get angry or feel disappointed in ourselves when this happens. If someone else breaks our rules, we tend to get angry or disappointed with them too.

Relationship rules are the rules about how you expect the world to see you. They are about how you expect the world to treat you and about how you expect the world to be. We tend to react negatively when these rules are either broken or come under threat. We do this by getting irritated, frustrated or angry, or by expressing our disappointment by moaning, whining or sulking. When that happens we tend to attempt to restore order by imposing our rules yet again and oftentimes more emphatically or forcefully. However we do it, we do so in a way that lashes out or snipes at the ‘offender’, thereby breaking that person’s rules and so the conflict exists and the argument begins.

The fact of the matter is that when you enter into relationships with other people, whether it’s your family, your life partner, your friend, your boss, your work colleague or whomever, there will inevitably be at some stage some degree of conflict. It is how you handle the conflict that matters. Arguments occur when someone fails to live up to your expectations of what should be done or should not be done. Or in other words they break your rules.

Conflict is often a sign that something is wrong or that someone is unhappy. Avoiding conflict or ignoring the problems could mean that you are choosing to avoid talking through important issues or exploring the underlying reasons that have caused the conflict. Conflict can be healthy and often leads to improvement if handled sensitively and correctly, that is the upside. The downside is that we can get entrenched in our camps of self-righteousness and we dig our feet in so that it all becomes a lose–lose situation.

Often our arguments come down to our mental sorting patterns (or meta programs) and have little to do with the issue itself. We will deal with this in Chapter 12.

• Acknowledge where you are at emotionally first. If you are fuming with rage, you know this is not the best way to get a resolution to your problem. Give yourself a chance, take some time out, change your state, go for a walk, go for a run, and work off some steam. Do the washing or something physical before you end up working it off on your loved ones. That being said, it is important that you state how the problem makes you feel, remembering that you get to choose your feelings even if your partner’s actions initially gave rise to them.

• Look before you jump. Acknowledge where the other person is at too. In general, people tend not to be malicious, oftentimes they do things because they are so wrapped up in their own world that they forget they belong in yours too. There are other times when their reasons are valid too. Wayne Dyer tells the story of two children on a train. They are being noisy and boisterous running about banging and bashing into the other passengers, who are visibly getting annoyed. Eventually one of the passengers pipes up at the children’s father and asks if he is not embarrassed by the behaviour of his children. Does he not expect them to behave better around others? The man answers, ‘I suppose. But I don’t know how they are supposed to behave when they just got news their mother died.’

• Ask yourself whether it has to be dealt with right now. Most things can wait until you are in a better mood and most things work out better that way too. Put it out of your mind for now. If you keep thinking about the problem you are most likely to magnify it and with it your responses to it. Sometimes it is simply better to direct your focus elsewhere until you are better capable of coming at the problem with a level head and an easy stomach.

• Keep the bigger picture in mind. We tend not to argue with people we don’t care about. Work out if the issue is worth fighting over. If this person is important to you then . . . how important is it that the lid is on the toothpaste? Will the world end if her room is not tidy? Is it more important that he arrives home safely than that he is later than he said? If you look back on some of the things you have fought about, you realise they are silly, funny even. So rather than wait until the future, do what the comedians do and find the funny part to it now.

• Separate the problem from the person. Arguments lead to criticism, so if you must criticise, then criticise the behaviour rather than the person. ‘You’re a bold boy’ is a lot different to ‘You did a bold thing’ or ‘That was a bold thing to do’. When people are hurt they are highly suggestible so be careful where you place the blame. If you give out to your daughter for doing a bold thing by telling her she is bold then she is most likely to make the jump and store the ‘fact’ that she is bold and that is certainly not what you want, is it?

• Stick to the issue at hand. Save your marriage or your partnership by dealing with one issue at a time. It is not useful to bring up your partner’s entire past failings when you are arguing about why she took so long in the shower.

• Validate the other person’s position. Sometimes people just need to be heard and to have their frustration acknowledged. You don’t have to agree on everything to diffuse the tension. You can say stuff like ‘I see where you are coming from.’ ‘I hear what you are saying.’ ‘I can imagine that I would be annoyed if I was in your shoes.’ All of these statements acknowledge the importance that you place on the other person’s opinion, once you do that you are more likely to get a reasonable solution to your differences by working on the things that you both have in common.

• Don’t be afraid to admit you are wrong. Life gets easier when you do. Owen Fitzpatrick, my business partner, tells of an experience of his some time ago which demonstrates this concept perfectly. ‘I am running to catch a plane, my luggage is overweight and I am late. The person at the ticket counter says I need to go to another desk to pay the extra charge on my baggage. When I go over to the desk, the lady there says I am too late. The plane is now boarding and I am going to miss my flight. She is obviously annoyed and tells me I should have given myself time for this. On and on she goes . . . I listen. I agree. I say I am sorry. I do not defend or argue. She continues giving out to me as she is processing my payment and checking me in at the same time. I look at her seriously and say thank you very much. I get my plane, she keeps her rules – everybody is happy.’ If Owen had stood his ground it could have been so different. He would have been left stranded in the airport, frustrated as hell and looking for another flight.

• There is more than one truth. You can agree to disagree. Nature has set us up in a way to believe that we are right most of the time. The problem is we often expect everyone to agree with our limited worldview. This is the stuff that wars are made of. Think of it this way, you believe you are right about something and because you do, you expect that your partner should agree too. If your partner did agree, your partner would be just like you. Now if that is how you would like the world to be, then really all you need is a mirror for a relationship because it will always agree with you – but that is a lonely place.

• Be prepared at times to avoid the issue. Sometimes agreement is simply not going to be reached. Some arguments do not have a solution that you can both be happy or equally unhappy with. Relationships that last over long periods of time recognise this and accept the difference. Every problem does not have to be addressed. For example, your partner had an affair but you have both talked and decided to give it another go. Once you have dealt with the reasons that gave rise to it and the motivations to end it then the only way forward is to draw a line in the sand and move on. This means that going through the sordid details is deliberately avoided because any reference to them will just reignite the bad feelings of jealousy and resentment and wreak havoc on what you have built up.

• Forgive does not mean forget. Be prepared to forgive. No one gets it right all of the time. You have been there too, it is only human, we all make mistakes and we all deserve more than one chance. However, whereas it is always important to forgive, it is not always wise to forget. If your boss takes advantage of your good nature and asks a little more than you can give, you can forgive her for being inconsiderate, but if you don’t remind her of what it cost you, she is likely to do it again.

• Be prepared to work through your issues. Most people go out of their way to avoid conflict because they don’t want to upset people or be upset themselves. This happens in business all of the time. It is why people settle for bad service, they simply won’t complain. The fact of the matter is if you deal with your issues you will feel more positive and it will give you a sense of achievement. You will feel more relaxed and will sleep better at night. You will develop stronger relationships as a result and you will feel happier.

There can be nothing like a good family get-together, family, friends, in-laws and outlaws all together under one roof drinking, eating, chatting, sharing stories and having a great time. At least that’s how it starts out or how it is intended to be, but as we all know it doesn’t always end up that way. Oftentimes we find ourselves in sensitive situations with difficult family members and as tensions run high and patience runs out festering resentment boils over and arguments unfold in front of our very eyes. This is because any social group that has existed over an extended period of time is bound to have its rules, its cliques and its scapegoats. Differences of opinion are bound to exist and where difference exists so too does tension.

Every group has a number of ways of releasing the build up of tension and that is typically by forming subgroups or cliques. Members of these subgroups often appoint themselves as moral supervisors or guardians of the wider group and react to nonconformity by a series of means. The choice of reaction will depend on the strength of individual members of the group. The basic idea is to get everybody to fit in. Initially this may be done subtly or overtly through welcoming outsiders and newcomers in with good-humoured persuasion and inclusion and the gradual assignment of roles and responsibilities.

All is well until there is a breach in conformity, then the demons show up and attempt to restore order and control. This can be done through high or low level aggression and is manifested through acts of bullying, complaining, criticising, spreading guilt, undermining and even ostracising the offenders until such time as they fit back in, are excluded or are kicked out. This process can be hell. So if you find yourself in this situation and don’t want to end up as the scapegoat for group tension perhaps what you need are a few ‘coping’ strategies to help you survive.

• Anticipate potential pitfalls. Most of us have been there, you know what is most likely to happen and who is most likely to cause it to happen, so prepare in advance to avoid it or cope with it. It is no use relying on blind faith to take you through, you need to have a plan for each eventuality. Work out what could go wrong and work out how you will cope with it without making matters worse. If there is likely to be an encounter that could produce tension, say, for example, a family member holding a grudge or one that you don’t particularly get on with, make sure that you visit them early in the day – there is less likely to be much alcohol consumed, which is the thing most likely to get you into difficulty. Once you have your plan in mind, visualise it going well as often as you can.

• Set time limits to your visits and stick to them no matter how well things appear to be going. You know what your tolerance levels are, you know how long it takes before your patience runs out (and that differs depending on the amount of alcohol consumed). So set it up in advance, have something or someone that you have genuinely got to visit or something you genuinely have to do after a set time, and politely excuse yourself, express your thanks and leave. Make it so that you leave on a good note not a strained one.

• Focus on the present. Avoid running over bad past experiences and focus solely and totally on the brief period that you will be in the particular situation. If someone brings up a past issue, whether alcohol-induced or not, use a ‘Pattern Interrupt’ or a sudden interruption to redirect attention and take control by bringing the focus back to the present again.

• Focus on coping not resolving. Do not assume that because you are in a happy mood that others are too and do not attempt to fix any longstanding family feuds, now is not the time. Keep your focus on ‘coping’, so you are always working to get through it rather than getting over it. Aim to have a pleasant gathering, to focus on the things that are going well and that are worth enjoying and to settle with coping with the things that are challenging.

If you have to meet someone and you know it is going to be a huge challenge, try and do so on neutral ground so that if tensions do erupt at least you can walk away.

It is useful to understand why people engage in difficult behaviours and the reason is simple: it works for them. As we move from childhood into our teenage years and later adulthood we tend to take on strict roles or make concrete decisions (rules) about how we will deal with people and life in general. We are not always consciously aware of these coping life strategies, but nonetheless they guide our behaviours, make up our personalities and determine our success or the lack thereof in life. These strategies or decisions are a natural part of the growing-up process and are reflected in the following manner:

In order to best enjoy life we must become flexible. Being flexible means coming up with fresh responses to each challenge as it presents itself. Being flexible does not mean sacrificing your overall well-being or giving up your rules. Being flexible means being prepared to make alterations or changes in your words, your thinking, your reactions and your behaviours if only for this short period of time to ensure that life is a rewarding, enriching and enjoyable experience. For you, for your friends and for your family, being flexible makes sense.

In his book and audio series Dr Robert Bramson, an expert on conflict resolution, identified nine basic ‘Difficult Behaviour Types’ and provided some tools of interaction to help you cope with them. I have used his work as a basis to form my own categories of ‘difficult people’, described below.

1. The Bully: Avoid getting into a catfight but do stand up for yourself. Create eye contact. Call the bully by his first name. When he interrupts you, look him in the eye; tell him that he has interrupted you. Keep your tone non-accusatory. Use statements like ‘I disagree with you but tell me more’ or phrases such as ‘in my opinion’. Once he has interrupted you a few times and you have stood up to him in an adult way, a change will occur, he will look at you as if he has seen you for the fist time and he will listen.

2. The Sarcastic One: Hit the nail on the head as soon as it starts. Sarcastic people rely on getting a group behind them to compensate for feeling powerless, so flush them out immediately. When she snipes, stay really quiet, smile and raise your eyebrow but keep looking at her when the group are looking at you. When she snipes again, keep the non-expressive look going and let the silence build. Give it a few seconds and then put a big smile on your face and say, ‘Are you done yet?’ When she has left the cover of her group, meet her head on and challenge her behaviour. Keep the smile going but let her know you won’t stand for it. Her objective is to make you the one that feels weak.

3. The Emotional One: When he first explodes, do nothing apart from maintaining eye contact. Let the rage subside and once you do you may notice his eyes falling to the floor as he becomes upset. He may at this stage begin to cry. Then say to him something along the lines of ‘Look this is really important and I want to hear everything that you say. But not this way.’ By taking him seriously you are in fact dealing with the threat that he is responding to, which is loss of control. Try to get some privacy. Next gather the facts, and then offer immediate help and work out a plan of action.

4. The Indecisive One: Find out the reason she is not making the decision. What specifically makes her hesitate? Help her to solve her dilemma. Make a personal statement of support. Watch for non-verbal signs, and be careful not to pressure her. Once you get her to make a decision, tell her that you believe that the decision she made was the best one for all concerned.

5. The Complainer: Never agree with him. Simply paraphrase back what he has said to you. Do not apologise to him for what you have failed to do. This will only give him the opportunity to criticise more (and another thing . . .). Get him into problem-solving mode. Ask him questions. Ask for his help. Get him to explain the problem and how he is going to fix it for you, as opposed to how he wants you to fix it for him. Put a time limit on him. Say something like ‘Listen I am out of here in five minutes what would you like to have done by that time.’

6. The Pessimist: Save yourself and remain positive no matter what she puts in front of you. Never argue. Never nod in the affirmative while she is preaching her brand of doom and gloom. Say something like ‘You are probably right’ and don’t expect help from her, get ready to motor on by yourself – but don’t be surprised if it’s offered.

7. The Non-Responsive One: Start the conversation yourself. Pause and end each statement with a question: What do you think of that? What would you do in that situation? What’s happening? What are you thinking? Enter into the silence yourself and wait and wait for a response. Next lean forward with an air of expectancy written on your face, put your hand on his forearm or shoulder, if that is acceptable, and say, ‘You are not talking to me, what is happening?’ Again enter the silence, while still demonstrating with your body language that you are expecting a response. If this fails to get a response, you need to tell him that you are reading his lack of response as a snub and a message for you to leave him alone. Tell him how that makes you feel and then leave him alone. Tell him that you will be happy to talk to him whenever he decides he is ready.

8. The Know-It-All: Listen and provide verbal feedback by paraphrasing what she has said. If you don’t, she will think you did not understand her because you are stupid. If you disagree with her, you will have to use questions to get her attention otherwise she will not hear you because you are the dumb one. The two basic types of question to be used are:

• The ‘baby blue eyes’ question – think of Marilyn Monroe, flicker your eyelids and say, ‘I don’t understand. Could you explain that to me one more time?’ As she is doing that, get ready to launch in with question number two.

• The extensional question – ask a question that draws out what she has already said, ‘So what you are saying is . . . and that means . . .’ (this is where you slip in your own thinking in the form of an extensional question that teases out her thinking in a safe way in an attempt to demonstrate the flaw in her thinking in the first place). Once she sees the flaw, she will have pointed it out to herself and so therefore it is less likely to cause you a problem.

9. The Super-Agreeable One: You have got to help him to be honest and give feedback, to say what he really thinks and do what he really wants. When you know that he has a problem with something, tease it out. For example, ‘I know you’re happy with the job that I’ve done for you on the garden in general, but perhaps there is some minor area that could do with the slightest bit of improvement, after all nobody is perfect and we all need a little help at some time or other.’ Once he squeezes out a strained, ‘Well maybe the such and such could be a tiny bit better.’ You know that is where he has his biggest problem and you must fix it immediately. Once you have done that thank him for his enormous help, it may actually encourage him to be more honest in the future. These people need plenty of encouragement so be lavish with your praise.

1. The Angry Child: Avoid getting angry back. Talk and use reason with her. Elicit compassion from her. Offer alternatives to her behaviour. Highlight her good behaviour. Use a kind, attentive, firm tone of voice with her to let her know that you are the boss without having to say it.

2. The Explosive Child: Provide help and make him feel safe. Distract him, use humour, tickle him. Talk to him. Soothe and empathise with him. Help him prepare for the next time things don’t work out the way he expects or wants. If you can, preempt a reoccurrence.

3. The Disruptive/Noisy/Hyperactive Child: Find out the reason for her behaviour. Reduce the amount of stimulation that she is exposed to. Give her a break to wind down. Provide an opportunity for her to work off energy. Help her regain control by paying attention, hugging and reassuring her.

All of these behaviours come from established and rigid rules sets. Rules, values and beliefs are all creatures of the same species. It is worth having a look at the beliefs that have been handed to you over time and to do as Timothy Leary suggested: ‘question authority, question everything’. It’s not about whose rule is the best one, whose value is the most important one or whose belief is the right one. The belief is only ‘right’ if it works for you.

There are certain things that we believe in, that we take for granted. Sometimes it’s a good idea to find out where they came from. Now if it works for you, brilliant, knock yourself out. If, however, you begin to decide that someone else should believe it too, well then you are screwed. The purpose of this book is for you to develop your own belief system, to find out:

• What’s the most important thing for you?

• What is it that makes you resonate?

• What is it that makes you happy?

• What is it that makes you enthusiastic?

• What is it that makes you motivated?

• What is it that inspires you?

• What is it that actually creates a better life for you?

At the end of the day you can look at any religious text and the basic idea is to do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. That’s a pretty good rule.

My son Dylan is an exceptionally smart young chap and he performs really well academically too, so the teachers took a keen interest in him. When he was about eight years old they asked him if he would consider attending an educational programme for (academically) advanced children in Trinity College, Dublin during the summer. When Dylan arrived home from school, we had the following conversation:

He’s quite spiritual now but he doesn’t have those beliefs and that’s okay. If you have those beliefs that’s great because it works for you and that’s what matters. But he’s got spiritual beliefs that work for him. If you believe there’s a way to live life but it’s not making you happy, why believe in it anymore? Because the idea of believing in something needs to be workable, it needs to produce good results. At the end of the day the only thing that you are here for on this planet is to get a full human experience and the baseline for that is to feel good. That’s really what you are about.

One of the most useful beliefs is to believe that whatever happens happens for a reason and a purpose and it serves us. That may not be true, but who cares, it’s a nice belief isn’t it? If I have a bad day I ask myself ‘What can I learn from this?’ If something happens I say, ‘Well, it’s supposed to happen so I need to do something about that.’ It’s just the way I frame it. Remember you are a reality-building machine. Every single day you create ideas inside your head that literally dictate your reality and you can build whatever you want.

My younger son Cian comes into me and he says, ‘Dad how come bad things happen in threes?’ And I reply, ‘That’s not the rule Cian; the rule is this, when one bad thing happens, three good things happen after that, that’s the rule.’ Cian looks at me with a little scepticism and then goes off. Two days later he comes back to me and says, ‘Dad you know that’s true.’ So I casually say, ‘Yeah I know.’ And he says, ‘How come?’ To which I answer, ‘I don’t know, I don’t make the rules.’ But in actual fact I did. You know, sometimes it’s a good idea to lie to your children.

I was talking to a guy once in Waterford who began telling me that his hand was all busted; he had got annoyed and in a rant he banged his hand off a chair. I was with Michael Connolly in his yoga centre at the time and Michael interrupted and said, ‘I’ve got the very thing for that’ and he brought from his office this cream, which I found out later was pretty useless, and said, ‘This is fantastic stuff Frank.’ To which I responded, ‘Aahh you got the cream Michael, that stuff is the business.’ Michael agreed and he continued talking to me while he was really working on Frank. ‘The way it works Brian is it seeps into the hand and it just softens it up and your hand begins to relax as the cream does its thing.’ He continued on in this way, declaring the exceptional qualities of this wonderful miracle cream, and ten minutes later Frank’s pain that had lasted for two days was gone and even he was saying how great the cream was.

It’s how you add to a thing that very often creates reality, so is what you say about it. You might have experienced something like this in school when the teacher said, ‘Right ladies and gentlemen, we are going to do maths today. Now maths is a very difficult subject, but we will struggle through and if you work really hard you might just squeeze a pass out of an honours paper.’ So you said to yourself ‘Oh man I’m not looking forward to this’ and you set your mind on looking for what was really difficult and what was bad about it. The teacher had effectively hypnotised you into a negative belief about maths. Had he not said anything, you may have found it a lot more enjoyable. Very often the way you set up things dictates how people think and feel about them. The question for you is: What do you want to set up for yourself?

CHAPTER 11

Golden Rules for Dealing with Difference