Never miss a golden opportunity to say nothing...
When confronted with someone who disagrees with our opinion of the world, we feel the need to correct them and even defend our opinion, sometimes more vigorously than we need to.
We do this because of our in-built Fight or Flight response. Subconsciously we feel threatened and we must defend ourselves. We feel that if we don’t say anything we’ll be seen as weak.
So how do we overcome this?
Martial Arts provides the answer to this…no it doesn’t mean you punch them in the head no matter how much you want to.
I can tell you from my own experiences as a young man, I always felt I had to defend myself and my opinions, which stemmed from a childhood of relentless bullying which left me with an “Attack is the best form of Defence” attitude.
I was fortunate to be introduced to the Martial Arts and learnt to box and had a few fights along the way. I was never going to be a world champion, far from it, but the better I got at fighting the more easily I was able to walk away from a confrontation with my pride intact. That is the guts of the problem with confrontation (both physical and emotional), people feel like they will be cowards if they walk away and don’t stand up for their view of the world. But when you become confident in your own ability, in your own view of the world, it becomes easy to walk away without losing face because you know if push comes to shove, you have the skills and the knowledge to defend yourself or your views, or at least make it difficult for the other party to hurt you or dent your views.
It also taught me never to overestimate anyone nor underestimate anyone. Never judge a book by its cover. Just listen and watch and don’t be a slave to your first impressions or your automatic thoughts.
As I said…Never miss a golden opportunity to say nothing.