..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.
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.