Get Curious about Broken Agreements
When someone doesn't keep an agreement with you, the first thought you might have is "They should do what they say they are going to do!" Usually you feel angry or irritated.
Anger is an important emotion. It gets you to pay attention. If you understand anger as a signal, you take time to pause and reflect on your thoughts, underlying feelings, and needs. If you don't experience anger as a signal to pause, you are likely to lash out or express anger in an indirect way. Intuitively, we all know that behind anger is judgment. So even if you are careful in your language, it’s easy to trigger defensiveness in the other person when you are speaking out of anger.
One gem reader gives an account of this predicament:
"Living with many roommates, we had meetings and we agreed to do our part to keep the house clean. Oftentimes others wouldn't do their part, and I did, which didn't meet my need for fairness. So, I wanted to voice this need to them, but it took a lot of energy to get up the courage to say something cause I feared they would hear criticism. And they often did... On the other hand if I didn't have the courage to speak to the person, I would build up resentment."
If you have lived with others, you likely recognize this dilemma. There is much we could offer here, but for now let’s focus on managing anger with our gem reader.
As long as our gem reader is holding the thought, "They should be doing their part," she will be feeling anger and her roommates will likely hear her judgment of them.
To dissolve anger, it’s important to focus on the feeling of grief regarding the unmet needs and broken agreements. Allowing yourself to feel grief, begins to make room to see things as they are and open to curiosity. Curiosity inspires questions that take us forward like:
"What's getting in the way of making this work?"
"How could it be set up differently?"
"What's going on for my roommates that has them not keeping their agreement?"
“What new agreements might work better?”
With greater curiosity, communication with housemates might sound like this:
"When I think about our plans for chores and I see the floor has leaves and dirt and in the bathrooms there is hair in the sink and grime in the toilet, I feel sad and disappointed because I want a sense of community around keeping the house clean. I'm curious about how we can create a plan that really works for everyone. I am wondering what's going on for other folks around our chore plan or the state of the house, what do you see that's working or not working for you?"
This hopefully opens a dialogue that is a bit more connected and relaxed. It may be that her roommates have other priorities and are just fine with the level of mess. This is important information to have and important for them to be able to say rather than making agreements they won't keep.
Whether it is with broken agreements or other behaviors that stimulate judgment and anger, allowing grief then engaging with curiosity about the other person's world can help you find your way to negotiation that offers clarity, creates connection, and opens a new way forward.
Practice
Take a moment now to reflect on a broken agreement. What needs are unmet for you? Are you able to access grief about these unmet needs without going back into a story of “should’s”? What else would be helpful in giving you access to curiosity about the broken agreement?