A friend of your editor recently mentioned the story of how a long family friendship was summararily broken when he tried to offer advice on a particular personal situation. Over a less than 24 hour period after the initial advice was offered, his female family friend as good as shouted him out of her life. This was really the first significant altercation between them after many years with no real chance to address the situation. He wasn’t rude in any way, but obviously unintentionally offered offending advice.
Your editor then encouraged his friend to contemplate his options by posing the following question: “What could be a friend’s optimum way to neutralize a broken family friendship; considering 1) been family friends for a number of years, 2) a desire to advise and help backfired, 3) shouted my friend out of his family friend’s life, and 4) offended friend’s personality unlikely open to permit reconciliation?” Again, it’s appropriate to focus on just these four considerations to reduce complexity in his eventual decision, when that ultimate moment arrives – despite there being many other possible considerations out there.
He agreed to sustain the same fitting yin and yang “bookends,”as these help to keep people’s minds focused against other immediate mental distractions. Bookends such as these are vital for preventing our fertile intuitive minds from wandering and losing concentration. We are mostly unaware of how powerfully valuable but foot-loose our intuition can be unless we can keep it properly focused on such occasions.
Those “bookends” turned out to be: “Just wait for time to heal the emotional wound” – Haven’t got years to wait;and “Buy a very expensive gift as recompense” – Doesn’t have funds to meet the possibility. You will note the italicized detractors associated with these least likely options, which shows why they are not a particularly good idea for consideration. Even so, these bookends will now hopefully nudge his intuitive thinking into high gear and focus to come-up with a range of realistic options – see ourLatest Worked Example.
From there, he now set-about coming up with at least five plus realistic options – A thru F – that were then ready for some emotional distancing, Emotional distancing would allow him to take a couple of hours or more of quiet reflection, or even sleep on it, beforecoming to any final conclusion/decision. You can replace these proposed options with any new ones of your own.
While these six options looked especially interesting, he was particularly intrigued by – Option B: Mail a regret note for an early lunch. He did pursue emotional distancing with your editor’s advice that, once he revisited his options, he should stick with whatever choice his intuitive mind arrived at. It would only likely work against him to second-guess himself once his initial decision has been made…no matter the challenges ahead.
If you have an example of your own, please share it with this blogger, through the COMMENTS area or contact him at peter@ileadershipsolutions.com . Thanks Option Solving. (NOTE: Our next posting will be in two week’s time: “PO: What could be a friend’s optimum way to neutralize a broken family friendship?” Let’s have your COMMENTS or go to peter@ileadershipsolutions.com . Allow time to connect with the blogger. Also consider buying the book: “Smart Decisions: Goodbye Problems, Hello Options” through amazon.com)
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