Getting Into a Disagreement With Somebody

Remember, you can hear my radio program daily on SiriusXM Triumph and connect with me 24/7 at drlaura.com. Today we're gonna talk about something that I hate doing, and that is getting into a disagreement with somebody.

I hate it, and most of you probably hate it too.

Let's face it, everybody has their own thoughts, opinions, their values, perspective.

Disagreements are gonna be pretty common.

Friends, coworkers, family, whoever.

How do you get through these without World War III? And I'll admit, someti- sometimes I was way too passionate in a personal situation, and for the life of me, I could not understand why the other person was that bullheaded about something that seemed obvious.

So I've had that circumstance happen to me where my head would just explode, 'cause I just can't comprehend how anybody could think that, [laughs] whatever that was.

It seemed so irrational, whether it was or not, I'm not gonna argue that point right now, and counterproductive for the goal, which clearly that person and I shared.

So there are some times, no matter how good you are at this, how intelligent, how educated, how self-aware, there are times your emotion is gonna make your head explode.

At that point, you go to the end of my list of things to do and say, "You know what? My head has exploded.

I don't wanna lose our friendship over this.

I think we have the same goal in mind.

We just are diametrically opposed in how you reach it." It's not easy to do that.

But in each case, when I did this with somebody I really cared about, they were just as happy to dump it as I was, and we hugged.

And when they left, I said to myself, "I'm right, but it doesn't matter.

I'm not in charge of the universe.

I don't have power over the thing we were talking about.

Whether she and I agreed or not would not change the universe." So getting passionate about something to the point of your head exploding is useless.

And I recognize that, and I share that with you folks, 'cause it's really important.

If you're gonna have knockdown drag outs about opinions about things, it's really ridiculous, because neither one of you has any power.

So let's just say one of you is completely right and one of you is completely wrong.

It ultimately doesn't matter to the universe.

It just matters to egos.

So [laughs] how do you, how do you argue things? Well, the strongest argument is one that uses facts and logic instead of opinion.

So you'll be in a situation where, "I understand that's an opinion, but here's the fact." "Oh." And that happens.