You train people how to treat you
Are you sick of being pushed around in your relationships? Do you wish you had a way to stop letting people walk over you or guilt you into situations you don’t want to be in? Well, one thing to understand is that you train people how to treat you in your relationships. You need to reinforce the good relationships you have and weed out the bad.
Do you ever struggle with friends, family, or maybe even your boss or co-workers when they use guilt to get you to do something? Or maybe you feel that you are being pushed around in life? Perhaps you have some relationships that go smoother and there is a great benefit to both parties and a feeling of mutual respect is present? Well there is one thing you should keep in mind when you are creating and maintaining you relationships and that is that people will treat you how you train them to.
You train people how to treat you and if you allow certain behaviors to continue people will continue to take advantage of you. One way to break the cycle people may have on you is to not acknowledge people when they attempt to use guilt on you. If you ever had older or younger siblings like I did, I’m sure you remember them doing annoying things to you, such as poking you or making a weird face, and they kept doing it the more we reacted to it. The same principle applies even now that we are adults. Just like when we were kids all we had to do was simply ignore our annoying sibling and since they didn’t get a reaction out of us they didn’t get as much pleasure pushing our buttons and stopped bothering us. We can use that same technique today. Ignore the people trying to use guilt or manipulative tactics to get us to do what they want. If they don’t get that feeling of satisfaction of getting a reaction out of us they won’t continue trying to get results that way.
Another option is to call those people out on exactly what they are doing. People often try and use guilt as a sneaky way to get us to do things. If you are up front and simply ask them if they are trying to use guilt to get you to do something they usually get defensive and leave you alone or back off. If you feed them and give in, you give up your control and your power in that situation.
You get what you accept out of people. Perhaps you are in business or sales and people don’t seem to respect your time and show up late or break appointments with you. The longer you let people do that the more it will happen to you. If you have someone show up late to an appointment for example you can say something like “I understand (xyz) came up and got in the way of you getting here, it happens to all of us. Your time is valuable as is mine, so if this happens again I will have to reschedule or cancel. We both have a lot going on and I intend to respect your time and mine.” Those people will either shape up or ship out of your business or life. You can either bring people up to your standards or go down to their level.
Now not all of the relationships you are in are negative as those above and if they aren’t you want to practice the concept of celebrating what you want to duplicate. If someone is always punctual, or kind, or respects your goals, is appreciative, etc., you want to make a note and call attention to it whenever that person acts that way with you. You can say things like “I really appreciate how punctual you always are” or “I’m grateful that you always get your assignments, in a timely manner.”
You can use this tactic with your kids as well if you have them. Appreciate and positively reinforce what they do right. If they clean their room, make a big deal about it. Maybe they do their chores without being asked, then praise them for it. You can also use this technique in a group setting or the set up a competition of sorts for high standards. Instead of criticizing good results or behaviors of how people are treating you, you can bring up or complement others treating you how you want in front of those who are not living up to your standards. For example you could talk about how someone is always on time and you love it, in front of someone who is always late in the same room. This way you aren’t directly criticizing the late person but they will get the message, often the lack of praise is a far greater motivator than negative criticism.
Decide to bring people up to your standards and weed out mediocrity in your life. Reinforce the positive relationships in your life and start to sort out the bad.
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