Book Bonanza Wednesday! Chapter 10: Fierceness
by Pace and Kyeli on March 18th, 2009 @ 11:46 am in
Usual Error Project
Tags: the usual error audiobook, the usual error ebook
Each week we give away the next chapter of our book for free. We hope you enjoy it! Here’s this week’s chapter:
Chapter 10: Fierceness
Our culture holds the illusion that there are only two ways to be: peaceful or violent. If you are peaceful, it’s not acceptable to stand up for yourself when someone crosses your boundaries. Peaceful people don’t rock the boat. Peaceful people obey authority. Peaceful people will go to any lengths to avoid conflict and appease those who are angry.
Your alternative is to be violent. Violent people aren’t nice. Violent people don’t respect the boundaries of others. Our society sometimes has a kind of sick worship of violent people, like ancient conquerors or CEOs who cut employee health plans to pad their own retirement funds. Violent people don’t necessarily cause physical harm, but they do whatever it takes to get their way, crushing whomever stands in their path. For ordinary people, however, it’s unacceptable to be violent.
This game is rigged! We’ve been offered the “choice” to go into either of these two boxes: the peaceful box or the violent box. The peaceful box sings of niceness, happiness, calmness; who would want to go into the violent box? Only bad people go in there. It’s a bait and switch. We choose the peaceful box, but the baggage that comes along is passivity, obedience, and complacency. We learn that it’s wrong to stand up for ourselves, and if we do, we’re often called mean, harsh, or cruel, and put into the violent box.
Luckily, there is a third box: fierceness.
…and here’s the rest:
- Related posts:
- Book Bonanza Wednesday! Chapter 32: Rephrasing things positively
- Book Bonanza Wednesday! Chapter 23: The only way out is through
- Book Bonanza Wednesday! Chapter 26: What do I get out of being right?
- Book Bonanza Wednesday! Chapter 31: Knowing is half the battle
- Book Bonanza Wednesday! Chapter 29: “That makes me really happy!”
 Have you read our book, The Usual Error? It teaches you how to solve communication issues with compassion and understanding, how to get rid of needless conflict from your life, how to make your relationships smoother, and how to generally be happier. Also, the illustrations are super cool. (:You can buy it on Amazon or read it for free online. |
3 Comments!
#2 Posted by 
Pace on July 30th, 2009 9:26 am | link
We talk about backing off when getting too aggressive a little bit in The William James Zone, and we talk about resolving a verbal conflict in a win/win way in Verbal aikido. Even if the other person feels like they “won” the right to step on your boundaries, if you back off to fierce instead of backing all the way off to peaceful, and if you continue to hold healthy boundaries in the future, the other person won’t be able to force you into a boundary-violating situation.
Does that help?
#1 Posted by
Andy on July 30th, 2009 3:36 am | link
I like how you explained the concept of fierceness, but I feel like there wasn’t much advice for maintaining it. How do you keep from falling into one of the other two boxes, when the situation tries to put you there? If you can feel yourself getting too aggressive, how do you back off enough to calm down without the other person feeling as if they “won” the right to step on your boundaries, and that you’ve “lost” the right to defend them? I know the simplest solution is to refuse to associate with that person in the future, but not all ties can be cleanly cut.