2-1-1: On How to Win More Negotiations, Brush off Criticism, and Break out of a Slump
2-1-1: On How to Win More Negotiations, Brush off Criticism, and Break out of a Slump
Wisdom Wednesday #28
Hey fam,
It’s been a while! 7 Weeks to be exact.
Quick update to catch you up:
Im Retired?
I recently (late December) reached my FIRE goal and subsequently put my coaching practice on an indefinite hiatus while I re-evaluate my goals with Actualization Hub (the previous iteration made many compromises for the sake of short term money, which are now no longer necessary).
I took a month long “vacation” to get some life things squared away (taxes mostly) and follow my curiosity (just to name a few: I am learning programming to write a habit app for myself, reading Karl Marx’s anthology, and rebalancing my portfolio to dip far more into DeFi projects) and am now ready to start building again.
Wisdom Wednesday Wasn’t Working For Me
One of the biggest things in the way for my production is that I was finding the 3-2-1 framework too restrictive—“Idea bites” (5-6 sentences) require twice as much work as the old “big ideas” (10-15 sentences), and I rarely have all 5 things (3 ideas, 2 quotes, 1 question) that are actually good and novel, so either have to go digging for one or put something in there that just doesn’t feel particularly powerful.
So I’m going to try something new.
The Future of Wisdom Wednesday
Newsletter will come out on whatever day I feel like writing them, and will include as many or as few ideas, quotes, or questions, and with as much verbosity or brevity, as feels powerful in the moment.
If an idea gets “stuck” I won’t waste 2 hours trying to make it happen, nor will I go searching for ideas to meet a quota.
I expect to publish about once a week, and that they will be about the same length as the old Wisdom Wednesdays, but we will see and then I can tweak accordingly.
With all that out of the way, I hope you missed me cause here’s your first installment of “Wisdom Wednesday”. Enjoy!
Ideas From Me:
I.
Long term relationships are built on trust, vulnerability, and commitment. Short term relationships are built on leverage, opportunity, and power.
By default, most of us are much more skilled at one side of this equation than the other. However we will remain incomplete until we can manage both sides.
Without long term relationship skills, you will have no one who will help you out during hard times, nor will you feel any true sense of community or connection.
Your relationships will be all transactional; you will be fundamentally alone and dependent only on how much you can extract from people in the short term before they no longer want to play your game.
Take this too far, and you’ll earn a reputation for selfishness and greed and you’ll no longer have any game to play at all.
However, on the flip side:
Without short term relationship skills, you will always be exerting massive amounts of energy and over investing in people and relationships who don’t have a similar amount of commitment.
You will get taken advantage of constantly, and always get the short end of the stick in any negotiation or ambiguous situation.
Take this too far, and you’ll become similarly limited, mostly because you will build up so much pain, resentment, and scars that you will close yourself off from any opportunities for connection and depth.
If you want a life worth living, you need to be skilled at both of these. Seek a balance of at least 80/20—80% of the time you can rely on and deepen your strength, and then build your weakness enough to be able to count on it for the other 20%.
II.
The stagnant seek approval from their critics. The driven seek respect from their idols.
It has been shown over and over in behavioral economics that, when push comes to shove, we value keeping things that we have far more than we value gaining new things.
If I told you: “give me your life savings, and there is a 90% chance I can 10x it, but a 10% chance I could lose it all” would you do it? Most would not. The chance of ruin is weighted far more heavily than any upside, regardless of it’s size.
This programming is generally a good thing, which is why it exists, but letting it run unfettered can screw your decision making.
One of the most common ways this comes about is who we seek approval from.
If speaking up or taking action or building something would help five people but cause criticism or unhappiness from one, most people will choose to do nothing—picking avoiding criticism over gaining impact.
In this situation, our default response is a recipe to being unappreciated for our gifts, a slave to the whims of the worst people, and ultimately living a stagnant, unactualized, and fearful life.
Most of us realize this, but then make the mistake of trying to overcome it by “not caring what other people think”, which is impossible.
Instead of trying to delete your social programming, redirect it.
Seek approval. Seek acceptance. Seek affirmation. But only from your idols, not your critics.
Whether they are close to you, or in some other social group, or the other side of the world, or long dead, or not yet born, or perhaps not even human—take action so that the people you feel admiration, respect, and gratitude toward would feel these same things toward what you’ve done.
Quotes From Others:
I.
World renowned Negotiator, Chris Voss, on the biggest mistake we all make in negotiations:
Driving toward “that’s right” is a winning strategy in all negotiations. But hearing “you’re right” is a disaster.
When someone says “you’re right” you think you’ve won, but you actually lost.
“You’re right” is what people say when you won’t stop trying to shove your reasoning down their throat, and they just want you to shut up and leave them alone (what better way to get you to go away than to make you feel you’ve won?)
“That’s right”, on the other hand, is what people say when they feel you’ve truly understood their reasoning. It is only through that’s right’s that you build rapport and establish enough trust for them to ever become willing to cooperate.
Source: Never Split The Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
1 Question For You:
And finally one question to ask yourself this week:
What’s the biggest thing in your way right now?
What’s one small step or change you could make to remove it or at least reduce its impact?
(Personally, I ask this question every week in my Monday weekly review).
That's all for today!
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Catch you next time,
Matt