A Guide To Anger And Conflict Resolution
When I first started to teach a graduate course at the University of Minnesota on conflict resolution, from time to time a student would ask me to compare what I was teaching to assertiveness training. “From what I know about assertiveness training,” I explained, “it teaches a very narrow skill that can be helpful at times, particularly for very shy people. But it doesn’t adequately…
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Last week I provided readers a post on positive criticism—that is, criticism that points out what we like about someone’s actions, possessions, or appearance. There, I explained that I think that just as there are immature and mature ways to provide negative criticism (see PROVIDING NEGATIVE CRITICISM: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY), there are immature and mature ways to provide positive criticism. When it comes to providing…
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Earlier on this blog, I provided a post that describes what I view as the five levels of maturity for providing negative criticism. Now let’s turn our attention toward providing positive criticism. With positive criticism—that is, criticism that points out what we like about someone’s actions, possessions, or appearance—our task of distinguishing mature responses from immature ones is considerably easier than when it comes to…
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We find a charming illustration of Dagwood utilizing a simple source of personal power below: These three frames are just the beginning of a very early Blondie comic from 1932 that I found in The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. At that time Blondie was depicted as coming from the lower classes who had recently married the wealthy Dagwood Bumstead. Many from his social circle…
Read MoreA couple of weeks ago, I provided readers of this blog a post titled, “How I Met Cool Steve.” There, I told a story from one of my novels about a teenager, Jeff Star. At one point, Jeff is in an angry mood because his teacher gave him so much homework, and perhaps he is also having some jealous feelings about how much respect the…
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If you follow the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, you know that Calvin, from time to time, does some things that upset his Dad. And it is often not hard to understand why his father might become angry at some of Calvin’s actions. Here we see Calvin’s dad blowing up in anger. My wife and I raised two sons, and I wouldn’t be honest if…
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Over the course of the last few weeks I presented some lessons that aim to get you to think about immature and mature ways to provide negative criticism to yourself (see CRITICIZING YOURSELF: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY and CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE). As I’ve pointed out on many occasions, becoming a master at utilizing the higher levels of maturity takes more than just thinking…
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Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Recently I presented a post that aims to get you to think about immature and mature ways to provide negative criticism to yourself (see Criticizing Yourself: Five Levels of Maturity). In that post there is a fun practice section to help people to get familiar with the different levels. Becoming a master at utilizing the higher levels of maturity takes…
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In last week’s post, I presented a lesson on responding to negative criticism that utilized a Luann comic strip. It was so popular that I decided to once again have Luann help us out; but this time, rather than focusing on the most mature ways to respond to negative criticism, let’s focus on the most mature ways to provide negative criticism. For those of you…
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Over the past year, followers of this blog have been learning how to skillfully deal with criticism. Some of the lessons focused on the four levels of maturity for responding to criticism (see HERE). Throughout these lessons we looked at the various reasons why some responses are viewed as more mature than others. I also noted that because people often get defensive when criticized, it…
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