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š§µ Thread (13 tweets)
If you look at the state of your correspondence and find it wanting (chronic nitpickers, it you,) you can replace the whole thing with 1. STFU 2. Agree thoughtfully and supportively when you see an opportunity to agree and you will immediately find yourself making more friends
You can disagree supportively too, though that requires more skill and nuance āBut I donāt want to support people!ā - that means you donāt want to make friends. Sounds like a sad and lonely life to me, but fair enough itās your life https://t.co/sl601VdAQT
There is an art to replying and commenting, and probably like 60-70% of people Iāve seen on the internet fail at it. The important thing is not to speak your mind, but to āsupportā the OP. You can support them by disagreeing well & you can āmis-supportā them by agreeing stupidly
āBut the wrong people,,, need to know they are wrongā - do they really? And does telling them they are wrong help them see they are wrong? Iāve seen people use this logic to enable their bullshit for years without ever stopping to see if it even works (hint: it doesnāt)
It can *seem* like it works because you receive signals of support from other people who agree with you that the wrong people are wrong, and you *can* make friends this way, sometimes great ones But if youāre not careful, you end up surrounded by haters. It only takes a few
I think a sad thing Iāve seen is when people who have been wronged, victimised etc set out to seek justice - which is IMO a good thing!! - but in the process inadvertently end up becoming a proxy for contemptuous haters. It happens. There are abusers just looking for a reason https://t.co/i722EA6NzK
IMO, the best way to help people āsee they are wrongā is to ask them questions. The full playbook would take like ~30 tweets minimum so not gonna get into that now,,, but anyway, always worth considering & evaluating the outcomes of your correspondence. Does it spark joy? š
You can construct the playbook yourself from 1st principles if you know a few things. Peopleās conclusions are based on (a) their experience + (b) cherished assumptions, so youāll rarely persuade them by arguing about conclusions. Ask kindly about a & b https://t.co/llbrYvkfTe
here's another way of looking at it if we have a disagreement, we need to identify our respective assumptions, and talk about our respective experiences. if you're not open to doing that then don't waste people's time by disagreeing with them stupidly https://t.co/QctWih0sPd
A thoughtful disagreement can probably be reduced to āthis is where Iām coming from, where are you coming from? Help me understand why I donāt see things the way you see.ā Once you see this, witnessing conclusion-level disagreements is dispiriting https://t.co/0QgRDtvdIz
more simply: a disagreement is interesting if both parties make an effort to show each other what they each see, and to try and see where the other party is coming from. it's uninteresting if one party is just mindlessly going "boo, no, ew, ick, weak, stupid, bad, fail"
Also!! People generally love to corroborate their experiences (itās a fantastic thing to do, all good conversations have some of this) AND, people are often shy/nervous to just blab on about themselves SO, asking people kindly about their experiences is INCREDIBLY POWERFUL
What have you seen? What surprised you? What have you been wrong about? What do you know now you didnāt before? What have you struggled with? What has your relationship with X (food, money, parents, job, dating) been like? This puts you in 0.1% and people will *love* you https://t.co/CmH88FeEmt
I used to *suck* at this, but I was earnest and eager to be better. And itās had the *biggest* impact on my quality of life. People seek me out to talk to me, itās super nourishing. Iāve learned so much about the world I couldnāt have otherwise, via people https://t.co/8XO9AQCkkc
Btw I wrote this story a while ago because I wanted to talk about this (getting good at peopling) but didnāt know how to do it š it really resonated with people https://t.co/NThxoRkOXJ
Story: You suck at something It bothers you, so you work hard at it & many years, through lots of pain and failure You are now good at the thing & it comes easy to you You look around and you see that most people suck at this Why donāt they just get good?? Being good rules!