And the costs are high. But first, let’s see what a racket is and deal with what we get out of what is called “running a racket.” The definition of a racket is: A fixed way of being plus a persistent complaint.

What is it that you do and what do you get out of running a racket?
-    You are right and your partner is wrong.
Read the article “On Being Right”
-    You try to dominate or avoid domination of a situation or your partner.
This may include pressure, bullying, insisting on your point of view, all subtle passive/aggressive behaviors, etc., as well as the “don’t tell me what to do” syndrome, even avoiding the domination of your own promises. (Read the article on Integrity In Relationships)
-    Your actions are always justified (by you, of course) and your partner’s actions and/or opinions are by default invalidated.
We judge others by their actions. We judge ourselves by our intentions.
In short, what we get out of running a racket is avoid responsibility and by default lose power.

You may notice that for most people this is a default behavior, we do not know any different. But, the big question is: are we aware of the COST? Do you know what the costs are? I bet you don’t — these are very obvious so here they are:
-    Love and intimacy
Love starts with complete acceptance of your partner (read the article onLove In Relationships in this blog) and intimacy is freedom and the ability to safely communicate whatever you are present to at the moment
-    Full self-expression
This means being free to be yourself at your best without having to justify, defend, survive, or in any way compromise your integrity (read the article onIntegrity In Relationships)
-    Health and vitality
You know how you feel when your relationship isn’t working. It can literally make you sick. Depression is another option. Vitality is nonexistent.

And now that you know what it costs you to run a racket you may try to become more aware of what comes out of your mouth preceded by your thoughts. In order to become aware here is how to recognize if you are running a racket or not:  Whenever you are frustrated or upset and that state of mind is familiar to you, you think, “it always happens,” you may be sure that you are running a racket.

Running a racket and thus passing on the responsibility to others, circumstances and/or the environment is the best way to lose power and control of your life and a say-so in your relationship.

Please also note that running a racket is an instinctual, knee-jerk reaction and totally counter-intuitive. Nevertheless, it is a necessary component of your happiness in a happy and gameless relationship to be practiced on a moment-to-moment basis until it becomes your second nature and you can stop a racket in its tracks, even before it manifests itself in language and behavior.

Absence of rackets in your life guarantees happier personal life, stronger relationships, huge leaps forward in your personal development and valuable contribution to others.

Now, how resistant are you to this notion? Take a little time and think about it. Does it empower you or does it DISempower you?

Before you try to answer this question a few words about responsibility. When I say 100% responsible we need to be on the same page, i.e. we need to agree what is meant by responsibility. In this context what I mean by responsibility is NOT burden, fault, blame, credit, shame or guilt. Responsibility simply starts with saying you are cause in the matter and that you are able to choose a response. You may not be able to choose what happens, but you are always able to choose how you will respond to it as opposed to simply automatically react to an event or a situation. In taking such responsibility there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is only the stand that you take and the reality of what is.

Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the point of view that you are the generator of who you are, what you do  (how you choose to respond) and what you have. Again, that is not the truth. It is just a place to stand.

Now, in this context does being responsible make you more or less in control of your life? Is being responsible an empowering way to be?

Take every chance to be responsible.

1.  Give up your right to be right.

It feels sooo good to be right!  I do not know a sin­gle per­son who does not enjoy it. It makes us smart, intu­itive, more respected and liked. Right? Not really. Espe­cially in our rela­tion­ship, when we insist on being right, fight over an issue, try to prove our­selves, look for approval, and behave aggres­sively. In fact, when we try to be right we make it impos­si­ble to have a con­ver­sa­tion. We can’t really talk to each other, and there­fore, we can’t be in a relationship.

How many rela­tion­ships do you know that have fallen apart due to one person’s unwill­ing­ness to give up the right to be right? You may even say: “But he/she was right. It’s the fact. I know it”. But it really comes down to a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ties. What is your pri­or­ity when it comes to a dis­agree­ment; to be right and dam­age your rela­tion­ship, or to really com­mu­ni­cate and help your rela­tion­ship flourish?

Giv­ing up your right to be right does not mean that you are going to let any­one abuse you in any way. It just means allow­ing the other per­son to have their point of view, which you are will­ing to con­sider, or agree to disagree.

If you are right, then you make the other per­son WRONG. No one likes to be wrong.  It would be much smarter to lis­ten to the other per­son and rec­og­nize what works with their point of view instead of what does not.

2.  Lis­ten

Most of us pre­fer to be heard, to say what we want to say, to express our­selves, to get our point across. What would it look like if all of us would do that all the time out loud? There would be no one to lis­ten. Every­one would be talk­ing. In fact, this is exactly what is hap­pen­ing all the time, except that we are talk­ing to our­selves while pre­tend­ing to lis­ten. We even pre­tend with our body lan­guage to lis­ten when instead we are judg­ing and assess­ing, eval­u­at­ing, think­ing about what we would say next, think­ing about some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent, or just sim­ply check­ing out. We have so much invested in what we think that we actu­ally believe that our own real­ity is the only valid and the right one, that only our inter­pre­ta­tions and mean­ings are real, good, right and true. We do not even try to con­sider other peo­ples views. We just com­pare them with our own views. If they match, then they are right.  If they don’t, then they are wrong. What’s more, we have fixed expec­ta­tions about what we will hear from the other per­son – espe­cially the ones close to us –that we have already decided about it. We hear what we want to hear and NOT what’s being said. What are the chances of the other per­son say­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent and actu­ally being heard? As far as you are con­cerned, the chances are prob­a­bly nonexistent.

Con­sider how your rela­tion­ship, and in fact your life, would change if you were to lis­ten to the other per­son as if they may have some­thing cru­cially impor­tant to com­mu­ni­cate to you. What if you could actu­ally learn some­thing extra­or­di­nary if you only lis­tened with­out all the thoughts that fill your mind? You might actu­ally hear some­thing. You might even dis­cover some­thing won­der­ful and new about the other per­son that would be so sur­pris­ing to you, and your whole rela­tion­ship might shift. We were not given two ears and one mouth for noth­ing. Just con­sider that.  Try it out. Your rela­tion­ship will improve by leaps and bounds.

3.  Be vulnerable

Both of the above skills require you to let your guard down. By talk­ing and being right we think we are assert­ing our­selves. Instead what is really hap­pen­ing is that our ego takes con­trol.  Our ego has only one agenda: to be right in order to sur­vive. We are still dri­ven by the neces­sity to sur­vive a saber-tooth tiger, but our lower brain with thou­sands of years pro­gram­ming does not dis­tin­guish between a saber-tooth tiger and a sim­ple con­ver­sa­tion. In for both cases adren­a­lin kicks in. So, every con­ver­sa­tion auto­mat­i­cally becomes a sur­vival sit­u­a­tion for us. The only thing that will save us from this self-destructive behav­ior, is to use our abil­ity to self-reflect and become highly self-aware, to observe our thoughts, feel­ings and actions. In other words, ask your­self a ques­tion: What the hell am I doing? Am I under­min­ing my rela­tion­ship and my hap­pi­ness by try­ing to sur­vive? Sur­vive WHAT? My recommendation…learn to be vul­ner­a­ble. There is really noth­ing to sur­vive. The only way to have a great rela­tion­ship is to let your guard down and be vul­ner­a­ble. Besides, being vul­ner­a­ble is very charm­ing and attrac­tive.  Try it!

Aware­ness exercise:

•    How impor­tant to you is it to be right in a con­ver­sa­tion?  (scale of 1 to 10)
•    Think of some past con­ver­sa­tion that has dam­aged your rela­tion­ship. Was it worth it?
•    Pay atten­tion to what goes on in your mind when you are lis­ten­ing to some­one talk­ing, espe­cially when you have some­thing invested in the out­come.
•    Notice your feel­ings when you think you are in a vul­ner­a­ble position.

Radomir

We all know the feel­ing we get when we are right about some­thing. We feel bet­ter about our­selves, we are smart, we know what we are talk­ing about, we are knowl­edge­able, we are in con­trol, and we won. Our self-esteem improves. We are “worth” more in our own eyes and hope­fully in other people’s eyes too. Being right often fuels our daily actions whether we notice it or want to admit it. If our life con­sists of the actions we take, con­ver­sa­tions we have and the rela­tion­ships we are in, then our very lives may well be dri­ven by the need to be right. Yes, the pay­off for being right is cer­tainly big. It often keeps us from those dreaded neg­a­tive esteem feel­ings. It’s a shot in the arm and a boost for our ego. We do get a lot out of it.

Unfor­tu­nately, there is another side of the coin. There is no “free lunch.” You can­not get some­thing for noth­ing. There are con­se­quences to every­thing we do. There is a cost to every­thing includ­ing the feel­ing about being right — some­times an enor­mous cost that we often aren’t even aware of. Our very rela­tion­ships with other peo­ple and the ones we love and want to be with the most are at stake.

Aware­ness exer­cise: Notice when you insist on being right and/or mak­ing the oth­ers wrong. The moment you think: “Well, I AM right and that is a fact”, con­sider what it costs you. It may not seem as if it is a big deal at the moment, but I invite you to take respon­si­bil­ity for the effect you are cre­at­ing by your insis­tance that you are right. You just may expe­ri­ence a much closer relationship.

Please share with us your expe­ri­ences, feel­ings and thoughts.

Thank you

Radomir

You’ve prob­a­bly already guessed: giv­ing up what does not serve us indeed may be ben­e­fi­cial to the hap­pi­ness we expe­ri­ence in our lives. The ques­tion is how do we know what to give up. If it is so obvi­ous that I am repeat­edly doing what does not make me, or oth­ers around me happy, how come that I still keep doing those things that I “know” do not work. Let me sug­gest that that you may very well NOT know that what you keep doing does not work. It is very hard to see. For exam­ple think about your insis­tence of being right, or jus­ti­fy­ing your actions although you know that you made a mis­take. Surely you gain some­thing by:

•    Being right /making oth­ers wrong
•    Jus­ti­fy­ing your­self / inval­i­dat­ing oth­ers
•    Dom­i­nat­ing oth­ers / avoid being dom­i­nated
•    Avoid tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for some­thing
•    Avoid being at risks (I do not mean a saber-tooth tiger, but some­thing like a conversation)

This is what we call a “pay-off”.

Now I want to think about what your pay of costs you. Let me sug­gest. How about:

•    Love / inti­macy
•    Health / vital­ity
•    Your self-expression
•    Your rela­tion­ship
•    Your participation

Are you will­ing to pay the price of the COST in order to get your PAY-OFF?

Giv­ing up your pay-offs in order to avoid the cost is “good” and use­ful as you might have noticed, but you may ask, how do I do it. The key is to be aware of what comes out of your mouth. Observe your­self, observe the oth­ers and how they react to you and observe, like a fly on the wall, your­self and oth­ers being in con­ver­sa­tion. What do you see? This is the time to be bru­tally hon­est with your­self. Be care­ful, though, do not cross the limit and start blam­ing your­self and mak­ing your­self “wrong” and being at the same time “right” about it. No one can fool us as we can fool our­selves. We are sim­ply mas­ters at it.

If there is un UPSET, FRUSTRATION, or FAMILIARITY in your actions then you can be cer­tain that you are about to, or that you re get­ting your pay-off. Give it up!

•    Exam­ples of what to give up:
•    Com­plain­ing about some­thing to a per­son who can­not do any­thing about it.
•    Gos­sip­ing, i.e. talk­ing about some­one who is not present.
•    Resistance to appol­o­giz­ing
•    Giv­ing rea­sons and excuses
•    Being dom­i­nated by your promises, etc.

Please share with us your insights. Since this is some­times so hard to see, your sto­ries may be a big con­tri­bu­tion to others.

Thank you

Radomir