Tag: Nikki T. Anthony

When it comes to difficult conversations, avoiding the five big mistakes most people make is critical. Most people, not knowing how to avoid those mistakes, will simply choose to walk away from the conversation or avoid it.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t resolve the conflict that the difficult conversation is designed to overcome. The hurt feelings, frustrations, and fears that surround these topics remain, and continue to grow, in secret. Like an untreated infection, these negative factors grow into a lethal, toxic poison that, over time, kills the relationship.

It also doesn’t allow either party to grow from experience. Their blind spots remain, and they learn nothing except to become more cautious in who they choose to open up to about their beliefs, ideas, and thoughts.

There are many benefits to engaging in difficult conversations like these, even if they don’t feel comfortable at first.

1. It forces individuals to re-examine what they believe and why they believe it, allowing them to discard beliefs that no longer serve them and adopt new beliefs that are more functional;
2. It helps individuals to identify their own internal prejudices and biases, allowing them to see the truth more clearly;
3. It ensures they are not blindly following the herd and helps to prevent groupthink from taking over;
4. It will help them to grow in their understanding of why people think, believe, and act as they do, which will improve their ability to persuade others to join their side when the cause is worthy and just;
5. It will increase their skills in explaining their beliefs to others in a manner that is not confrontational and will help them keep their cool when under pressure.

Path To Publishing doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations like those that center around racial divisions and the current state of race relations. We embrace them despite the difficulties, and we want to encourage others to embrace them, too.

That’s why we’ve chosen to crowdfund the book, The Price We Pay (being published under our traditional publishing imprint, PTP Press), and to equip our contributors to take an active role in leading these kinds of difficult conversations with the following resources:

1. Magnetic Thought Leadership Training to equip them to lead these conversations in a way that creates an inviting, respectful space where all voices are recognized and seen as being of equal value.
2. Lessons in how to hold difficult conversations that are productive and meaningful where both sides feel respected and heard, yet challenged and encouraged to find room for compromise.
3. A Study Guide to navigating the challenges of discussing sensitive topics in an inter-racial community.
4. A community of like-minded individuals who are ready and willing to lend their support and encouragement along the way.

To discover more about the novel and our approach to opening the doors of communication, visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up to #JoinTheConversation.

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Remember, many books and publications tackle subject matters that lead to hard conversations to have. This can often be awkward for some authors during readings and signing, or even during panel discussions and live videos.

To learn more about the training we offer at Path To Publishing to help you navigate your role as an author, thought-leader, or change-agent, which includes having, moderating, and leading tough conversations, email [email protected].

Anyone who studies art soon discovers that perspective is not reality. It is a distorted version of reality based on the limitations of human eyesight and the position of the viewer. The only way for artists to draw with accuracy is to forget all the facts they know to be true about an object and draw only what they see. Nothing more and nothing less.

The hardest part about distinguishing between perspective and reality is that there is no way for individuals to know what they do not know unless someone else tells them. That is the value of engaging in conversations with other people. It can help an individual see the areas of their life where they may be overlooking things or missing things due to their own personal limitations.

The natural tendency of every human being is to assume that their personal experiences are universal to everyone. That assumption can lead to people becoming upset or offended when others don’t see things the same way they do. They can’t understand why someone can’t see it the same way without realizing that it is a literal impossibility for anyone to see things exactly the same way they do.

That’s the value of choosing to engage in meaningful dialogue with people of varying — even opposing — viewpoints. By listening to and asking questions about experiences that differ from their own, individuals are given the opportunity to broaden their own perspectives, incorporating things they’ve learned into constructing a new picture that is closer to reality.

The difficulty in engaging in these meaningful conversations comes when the beliefs that form around those viewpoints are tied directly into an individual’s sense of personal identity. That’s why most people advise against discussions about race, religion, money, politics, gender, and sexuality.

If done without great care, those discussions are too often viewed as personal attacks. These can erupt into arguments that leave lasting emotional wounds. However, shutting down these conversations doesn’t create lasting peace, nor does it bridge gaps in understanding.

It can actually foster the divisions between people and lock everyone down in fear driven by misunderstandings and misinterpretations of behavior. Only when the door to these conversations is open can authentic change begin to take place.

That’s why we at Path To Publishing are leading the way by crowdfunding a movement to change. The funds raised for the publication of our upcoming novel, The Price We Pay (being published on our traditional publishing imprint, PTP Press), is just the beginning. Path To Publishing intends to use our book as an instrument to open the door to these important conversations. We’ll also be providing a discussion study guide to engaging in these kinds of sensitive inter-racial conversations.

To discover more about the movement, the book, and our work to open the doors of communication, visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up to #JoinTheConversation and be invited to join the community.

Many books and publications tackle subject matters that lead to hard conversations to have. This can often be awkward for some authors during readings and signings, or even during panel discussions and live videos.

Difficult conversations are difficult because they are high-stakes conversations. At risk in this moment is the relationship with the other person, the individual’s personal sense of goodness, a need for validation, a sense of identity, and endemic fears of rejection and judgement.

When difficult conversations become productive, they improve relationships and strengthen them. When they go wrong, though, relationships can be permanently damaged.

That’s why it’s important to avoid the top 5 conversational mistakes most people make when trying to engage in difficult conversations:

1. Seeking to change the other person’s view, rather than to expand their own view.
2. Assuming their way of seeing things is the only way to see them and that anyone who doesn’t see it their way is wrong.
3. Listening to respond rather than listening to understand the other person’s viewpoint.
4. Failing to clarify what the other person means by what they say before responding to them.
5. Assuming that the other person is driven by bad intentions or a flawed character, rather than by misguidance, misinformation, or lessons learned in childhood and never challenged since.

While easy to make, when these mistakes are made, conversations inevitably break down and become counterproductive. It can even cause the parties involved to further entrench themselves in their beliefs rather than giving them the room they need to think through the new perspectives presented to them and incorporate those into their existing world view.

Avoiding these five mistakes is part of the training Path To Publishing will be offering to contributors as we crowdfund our novel, The Price We Pay. That book, along with the training, is all part of our plan to equip our supporters and contributors with everything required to help open the door to these important conversations in a way that is respectful and productive.

To discover more about our novel approach to changing the conversation around race relations, visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. #JoinTheConversation.

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To learn more about the training we offer at Path To Publishing to help you navigate your role as an author, thought-leader, or change-agent, which includes having, moderating, and leading tough conversations, email [email protected].

..and What We Can Do About It

It’s not hard to have a conversation about which color in a crayon box is the best. That’s because there are no emotional stakes to that conversation. It’s just one person’s opinion versus another’s. What’s being traded is of equal value but offers no emotional attachment.

However, when the topic of conversation is about race, religion, gender, sexuality, or money, how the topic is viewed is not just an opinion. It’s a reflection of the participating individuals’ personal identities, a judgement of their worthiness to be loved. That’s why those conversations become so emotionally charged.

Human beings intuitively understand that in order to be loved, they must be seen as good. That’s what drives the urge to justify and rationalize every negative behavior. Love is not a nicety. It is a necessity.

Although Abraham Maslow posited that love was something that only became a driving need after our basic needs were met, Harry Harlow’s later experiments, presented in “The Nature of Love” in 1958, proved Maslow wrong. Love is such a fundamental need that without it, it doesn’t matter how much food, water, shelter, or reproductive access we have. We will simply lose our will to live.

That’s where suicides and addictions creep in, as people drink or drug themselves to death trying to escape the pain of living without love. This was borne out again in Bruce Alexander’s infamous Rat Park experiments. Rats who were isolated and deprived of the social needs of love and affection would drug themselves to death. Rats re-introduced to the social environment native to them chose life rather than suicide by addiction.

There are many contributing factors to the challenges involved in navigating difficult conversations:

• Our personal limitations
• Our need for validation of our personal experiences
• Our ignorance of other people’s experiences
• Our challenges in seeing ourselves or our beliefs in an objective light
• Our personal biases and background/history
• Our emotional attachment to our own ways of thinking and believing

When all these things are on the line, it’s normal to be defensive and to seek to protect ourselves when we are challenged or feel our beliefs are under attack. That’s because we aren’t just defending our beliefs or opinions. We’re defending our sense of personal goodness and worthiness to be loved.

Overcoming these difficulties requires training. That’s why we’re offering Magnetic Thought Leadership Training so that our contributors are equipped to lead these conversations in a way that creates an inviting, respectful space where all voices are recognized and seen as being of equal value.

We are also offering lessons in how to hold difficult conversations that are productive and meaningful, where both sides can walk away feeling respected and heard, yet challenged and encouraged to find room for compromise. We feel these difficult conversations are necessary to clear the air and create space for positive momentum forward.

Finally, we’re offering a Study Guide that will help people navigate the challenges of discussing sensitive topics in an inter-racial community. We are confident these three factors will open the door and allow everyone a space at the table to make themselves heard.

This is just the first stage of our larger plan at Path To Publishing to take a novel approach to changing the conversation around race relations. Discover more about the movement, and the book at its heart, by visiting our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. #JoinTheConversation.

You can also visit www.ptppress.com to learn more about PTP Press, which is Path To Publishing’s traditional publishing imprint.

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Do you need help leveraging your role as a leader, be it as an author, coach, consultant, or in your career or business? Visit https://www.pathtopublishing.com/ptp-certification-verification to learn more about our Magnetic Thought Leadership Training programs.

…and How We Can Overcome That

There’s an ancient Indian story about four blind men examining an elephant and attempting to define for each other what an elephant was based on this.

One held the trunk and reported that an elephant was long and tubular with two holes at one end.

One held the tail and disagreed, saying that an elephant was cone shaped and furry at the end.

One held a leg and disagreed with the first two, saying it was a tree trunk.

The fourth one held an ear and disagreed with the other three, saying it was a tent flap.

All four men were convinced they knew the truth and could not be persuaded from it, no matter how ardent the argument.

A fifth man came along and heard the four men arguing. Fortunately for them, he was not blind. He was able to help them see how they were all four correct and all four wrong at the same time. With the seeing man’s help, they were able to get to the bottom of what an elephant was, based on a more complete picture rather than on the limitations of their personal experiences.

This story illustrates why conversations about beliefs are so difficult: they are based on an individual’s lived experiences. They know what they’ve seen, felt, heard, tasted, and touched. Their survival depends on their ability to trust their own experiences, and their brain will go to great lengths to protect them from information that threatens or challenges the beliefs formed based on those experiences.

It also illustrates why beliefs need to be challenged: they aren’t always based on reality, but on the limitations of an individual’s perspective and what can be seen at the time of their experience. The more people that contribute to the conversation, the more perspectives that are available to use in assembling a complete picture.

Path To Publishing is not just an author assistance and literary service provider. And PTP Press is not just another traditional publishing imprint. We are a change agent. Our novel, The Price We Pay, is a vehicle for our plans to open the door to a novel way of engaging in conversations about race relations.

Our goal is to unite people who are willing to do the work required to assemble a more complete picture of one another, one free of the misperceptions that creep in when we view one another through the limitations of our perspectives rather than the realities of our lives.

To discover more about our work to change the way difficult conversations are held, visit https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. If you like what you see, we invite you to #JoinTheConversation.

Do you have a thought, idea, concept, book, story, testimony, or message that you know deserves to have a movement behind it or some type of cause marketing? If you need help fleshing it out and/or building it out, visit https://app.10to8.com/book/gmerivvtrtwgsyuezivgt-free to schedule a paid 30-minute or 60-minute literary consulting call with one of our Verified Literary Consultants.

If you need help building your crowdfunding campaign, email [email protected] and request a quote.