{"id":1033,"date":"2020-02-22T11:53:56","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T01:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2022-03-28T10:21:27","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T00:21:27","slug":"seek-first-to-understand-two-real-life-examples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/seek-first-to-understand-two-real-life-examples\/","title":{"rendered":"Seek first to understand – two real life examples"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cSeek first to understand, then to be understood\u201d  Steven Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are always going to be times when we encounter that person who just doesn\u2019t behave in the way we expect and our response can range from irritation and annoyance to frustration and even anger. How do we deal with this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s always one…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I regularly attend a local gym, and when you go often enough, you get to recognise familiar faces, their training habits and routines. The culture is great, it is relaxed and friendly, people use the equipment appropriately and give each other space when using weight machines and doing floor work.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one area that is reserved for pushing a piece of equipment called a sled. The carpet on the floor is a different colour to indicate the track where the sled is pushed up and back. Other carpeted areas in a different colour nearby are used for floor exercises with mats provided for the purpose. Most people use this area for floor work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s always one person always uses the area reserved for the sled for floor exercises. She gets in people\u2019s way, seemingly oblivious to the fact that people want to use the sled. Many people get frustrated with her, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads and complaining to the staff. And yet, despite this, she continues to do push ups and stretches on the sled area. I\u2019ll admit, I would often feel quite frustrated myself, thinking that she was selfish and rude.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All behaviour satisfies a need<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I started noticing she did floor exercises on the same part of the sled area, and this was a regular pattern of behaviour. Understanding that all behaviour satisfies a need, I knew there had to be a reason for her exercising in that one spot, but I didn\u2019t know what it was. I wondered if it had to with the colour of the carpet, or concerns about hygiene. Finally one day when I went to use the sled and she was there on the floor in front of it, I decided I needed to say something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sought first to understand. I asked her: \u201cI notice you like to do your floor work on the coloured carpet. I wondered if there was a reason for that. Are you worried about the cleanliness in the other areas?\u201d She explained that she was concerned about what she might be breathing in from the carpet in the area where most people walked.\u00a0 She liked to work on the sled area to the side because that was an area where people didn\u2019t walk.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I understood. She wasn\u2019t selfish and rude, her health was important to her, and she behaved out of her need to feel safe.\u00a0All behaviour happens for a reason. The most common reason for seemingly inappropriate behaviour comes from a need to feel safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behaviour comes from a need to feel safe<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I was walking my dog in a park one day and let her off the leash to play with other dogs who were also there. My dog is a large, friendly, goofy thing who loves to be sociable. Some distance away was a family with a child in a pram, and off my dog lolloped to say hello before I could catch her. Most people are delighted to meet my dog, especially children, but not in this case. The mother yelled at me: \u201cYou need to have that dog on a leash!\u201d I apologised profusely and collected my dog, put the lead on and headed off. The mother wasn\u2019t satisfied and continued to yell at me after I apologised a second time and walked away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt hurt. I meant no harm, I had apologised and this woman wouldn\u2019t accept my apology and kept on yelling. I\u2019ll admit I really struggled to try to understand the reason for her reaction, and it took me almost a whole day to come to terms with it. The mother or her child may have had bad experiences with dogs in the past, and if a large strange dog came bounding over to her child, she would have sensed a threat and automatically reacted angrily, because anger and aggression are responses to fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anger and aggression are responses to fear.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It is difficult to view behaviour that is unexpectedly inappropriate or aggressive as an expression of fear, particularly when we feel it is directed towards us. It is not easy to seek first to understand, especially when we feel attacked and our senses tell us to automatically react defensively.\u00a0It is hard to seek first to understand, but it is well worth the effort.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is hard to say to a child \u201cI can see you\u2019re upset, what\u2019s worrying you? \u201d while they are yelling and screaming at you. It is hard to understand that the student yelling abuse at the teacher is afraid of looking foolish in front of their peers because they can\u2019t read or don\u2019t understand the work. It is equally hard to understand the teacher who is yelling back or imposing a punishment because of their fear of appearing to lose control of the class.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is surprising how much challenging behaviour is based on fear. If we seek first to understand the other person\u2019s perspective, we have the opportunity to meet them halfway and restore peace. We may not know the reasons for a person\u2019s behaviour, we may not even agree with it. But we can accept there is a reason for the behaviour. Seek first to understand that reason, and we have taken the first step towards achieving a better outcome for all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are always going to be times when we encounter that person who just doesn\u2019t behave in the way we expect and our response can range from irritation and annoyance to frustration and even anger. How do we deal with this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[48,197],"tags":[53,55,52,51,54,50,56,49,57],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4879,"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions\/4879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectivebehaviourmanagement.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}