“Never do for another that which they need to do for themselves.”
(Abraham Lincoln)

Whenever we use threats to control anyone’s behavior, we ruin any chance of getting what we actually want most. See, we don’t want our employees to improve because we threatened to fire them, we don’t want our spouse to do the dishes because we threatened to withhold sex, and we don’t want our kids to do their homework because we threatened to punish them.

What we really want is for these people in our lives to be SELF-motivated, not threat-motivated. It follows, therefore, that whenever we threaten them, their own self-motivation becomes impossible.

So, what are we supposed to do instead?

For a little while, nothing.  If we’re constantly thinking about how to motivate others, then we’re working way too hard on other people’s problems, and not enough on our own. So first, concentrate on making your own improvement, washing your dishes, and doing your homework. All the while, resist the urge to even think about what these f0lks are, or aren’t doing.

Try that for a week, if you can, and see what happens. You may feel irresponsible, or resentful, or downright enraged. These are all symptoms of over-functioning. And it never fails…the more we over-function for others, the less they do for themselves.

Peace begins with pause,

“It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.*”

(J. K. Rowling)**

More than anything, our ability to choose is what makes us human. It is also the primary determinant of our success or failure.

Given this reality, I find it so odd that parents would like to take choices out of the hands of their kids. Since kids are so young and inexperienced, we reason, and the possible mistakes they can make so potentially tragic, we would rather just take control of their lives, commanding them what to do, until they can prove capable of making good choices.

This is nonsense. Here are three reasons why:

1. The only way our kids get good at making choices is by…you guessed it…making choices.
2. The only way they can prove the ability to make good choices is if they’re allowed to practice…making choices.
3. If we tell our kids what to do, we’re not removing any choices from them, because…who decides whether or not to obey our commands? They do.

Training our kids to evaluate, make, and learn from choices is the greatest thing we can do for them, if we actually want them to be human.

*This is the opening quote in the book I wrote to my daughter, Choose Your Own Adulthood. It’s a fantastic blueprint for teens and young adults to grow into good decision-makers.

**Of course, I had to conclude this week of quotes from Scottish writers with perhaps the most famous of them all. I love me some Harry Potter, but I find some of Ms. Rowling’s quotes about life to be the most rewarding of all her writings.

Peace begins with pause,

“Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society. Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.”

(Alexander McCall Smith)

People ask me all the time about teaching your kids to have good manners.

Here’s the best way I know how: Identify all the manners you want them to learn, and relentlessly practice them yourself…in your interactions with them.

• Look them in the eye upon greeting them, and give them a firm handshake…as if they are actually a person worthy of your respect.
• Tell them a hearty “thank you” whenever they do anything beneficial…even if you think it’s something they should be doing regardless.
• Apologize like a grownup whenever you mess up, without any “but…” at the end…even if you think they should apologize first, or if you think apologizing makes you look weak (it doesn’t).

Don’t model good manners for them; practice good manners toward them.

Peace begins with pause,

“O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!”

(Sir Walter Scott)

Whenever we deceive others, in order to make things better for ourselves in the moment, we deceive ourselves most of all. The real lie is thinking that by avoiding the difficulty of the truth in this moment we’ve actually avoided the difficulty for all moments.

In reality, every time we lie we invite an even bigger discomfort to visit us in a future moment. And what will we do to avoid that discomfort? Lie again, usually.

–“No, Honey, nothing is bothering me. I dunno why you keep asking me that. I’m fine.”

–“Yes, I got all of my work done. It just needs some polishing up, but it’s essentially finished.”

–“No, I did not say that to her. Don’t you trust me?”

Kicking the can of truth up the road just invites a barrel to roll back on us.

Peace begins with pause,

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. ”
(Robert Louis Stevenson)

There is a time to reap rewards. These come in the form of business accomplishments, athletic victories and academic victories, and even those magical relationship successes like hearing someone say, “I love you.”

But those rewards are rare, and they only come after we’ve put in the much less glamorous, and oftentimes much less pleasant, work of planting seeds. Seeds like…preparation. Seeds like…practice. Seeds like…serving and apologizing and refusing to freak out no matter what.

Planting always comes first, and never gets the glory. But that’s the only way to make the harvest possible.

Peace begins with pause,

“Let us do or die.”*
(Robert Burns)

All of us are surrounded by unfinished projects…at work, in our homes, in our relationships. These undone actions can be haunting, constant reminders of all we once meant to do. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then that road is littered with unfinished projects.

As the poet instructs us, let us “do or die.” Let’s make this a week of action. Let’s you and I tackle an unfinished project today, whether it’s laundry to be done or a letter to be finished, whether it’s a construction project or a confrontation with a colleague.

I promise, it’ll feel really good.

*This week my wife Jenny is in Scotland, leading a group of high school English students on a literary tour of the country. So, this week all of our quotes come from great Scottish writers.

Peace begins with pause,

“I don’t have to agree with you to like you or respect you.”
(Anthony Bourdain)

All week we’ve been talking about disagreement, and learning to do it well. One of the best ways to do this quickly is to simply acknowledge how much you actually differ from the people closest to you.

Do you and your spouse agree all the time? Obviously not. My wife Jenny and I disagree daily, and over the last 20 or so years we even disagreed about parenting. A lot. (Now, I would certainly explain to her that I’ve got a New York Times Bestseller called ScreamFree Parenting, which proves I’m right. She, of course, would then express hope for me and that book to be very happy together, starting tonight. Suddenly, I had a new motivation for listening to her point of view.)

Do you and your best friend all agree on politics? Social issues? Religion? Football? Again, of course not.

What this means is that you already have found a way to like, and even love, those people who disagree with you. Usually, this is because the connection among you preceded the conflicts between you. But, as a mature growing adult, you can learn to respect, and even like, those you disagree with at first.

Peace begins with pause,

“He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche)

You are on the hardest journey of life, this climb towards the best you possible. This is the journey of maturity, where you learn to influence more by reacting less.

One of the underlooked essentials to this growth has been your ability to suspend your beliefs enough to genuinely hear another view. Think about it: every new truth you’ve come to accept required, at some point, your willingness to suspend what you believed…for at least a moment.

And you’ve had many people in your life do the same for you. As you’ve explored and then exclaimed new opinions, wise people around you suspended their reactions for at least a moment, allowing your words to reverberate around you both. Sometimes this has led you to then question and discredit these new ideas. Sometimes, it has led others to allow you to influence them.

None of this growth happens without a willingness to suspend our reactions and question our beliefs. That’s the only way true listening can ever occur.

Peace begins with pause,

“If you and I are always in agreement, then one of us is unnecessary.”

(Gen. George S. Patton)

Think about someone who agrees with you. Always. From politics to parenting, from movies to music, this person could actually finish your sentences and serves to solidify your opinions.

If you have a person like this in your life,

1. Do you respect them?
2. Do you fully trust them to tell you the truth?

If you do NOT have a person who always agrees with you (most of the rest of us),

1. Do you long for one?
2. Do you wish your spouse was like this?

The best people in our lives are not the ones who sing all the same melodies with us, all the time. Before long, we begin to question whether this person is actually, perhaps subconsciously, changing their opinions to match ours, or whether we’re the ones doing the changing. If so, this means one of us is being inauthentic, and both of us are missing out on the chance to grow.

The most necessary people in our lives are the ones who can sing in harmony with us. These are the folks who have their own distinct melody to sing, and it is similar enough to ours to stay in relationship, and yet different enough to force us both to grow better and clearer.

Peace begins with pause,

“It is only through dialogue, deep listening, and passionate disagreement that we find our way to something larger than a singular and isolated point of view.”
(Henry Kimsey-House)

This whole week we’re looking at learning to disagree well. Here’s one  thought: One of the misunderstandings about conflict is that in order for it be productive, it needs to devoid of passionate dialogue. Coincidentally, this has been a misunderstanding of what being “screamfree” is all about.

If we needed to be passionless in order to engage in productive conflict, we probably wouldn’t engage in conflict. The main reason we have conflict at all is because we care! We care deeply about what’s best for our families, for our companies, and for our society, and that’s why we’re willing to debate in the first place.

Instead of deadening our passions in order to disagree well, let’s learn to employ those passions instead. Both reason and emotion are fantastic servants, but terrible masters. This is why we need to listen to our passions, and even let them be known in authentic ways.

But let us never forget that our tone is our message. It is easy to let our passions for love and truth and justice come out in loud, demanding ways, but doing so runs the risk of communicating a passion for something else: our need to be vindicated and validated.

Only when we grow in validating ourselves, which means lessening the need to have anyone else pronounce our validity, can we truly be passionate about the issue at hand.

So, be passionate in your opinion; but know that we can tell if you’re more passionate about yourself than you are about anything else.

Peace begins with pause,