How to Handle Tough Love
Sometimes tough love is bullshit. And if I wrote about 5 ways to handle tough love, four of them would be bullshit.
I’m currently reading an advanced copy of Keith Ferrazzi’s new book, “Who’s Got Your Back?” (full-review coming soon). It discusses the benefits of sparring in order to learn from one another and acquire new abilities and skills.
I think he’s onto something, particularly if you use the ground rules he’s laid out in his book. But most people don’t have those yet.
Sometimes tough love is genuine and you really are capable of having a heated discussion or being the recipient of a tirade. There are a lot of things to consider here: how well you know the person, how savvy they are about that particular topic, etc.
But guess what?
Sometimes tough love is malicious, sometimes it’s self serving, and sometimes it’s flat out bullshit.
People will tell you that they screamed at you because they care, and if they didn’t they would not have wasted their breath bothering to say anything at all.
Other people will tell you that they had to resort to ‘those measures’ to finally get your attention.
There are times that this is probably true.
In my experience though, there’s something that separates really successful people from those that get flustered and defeated, incapable of learning from the experience.
Successful people, people that know how to react to tough love don’t need a 5 step process. All they need is the ability to control their own perception. You see, people that react to tough love the best are always capable of turning it around and convincing themselves that whoever gave them the tough love HAD to in order for them to see through the fog.
Is it true? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter because these people absorb the blows, assess the situation and extract the important message out of all the yelling. Provided there is one (a valuable message) of course. If there’s not, they shake it off, learn that they don’t trust that person giving them advice about that particular topic and move on with their lives.
What about you? How do you react to tough love? Is your initial reaction to sulk in the corner, then come back with a vengeance and an “I’ll show them,” attitude. Do you flip it around, find the value, and apply it to your life? I bet it’s a lot more complicated than that. I bet it depends on who is giving the advice, how well you trust that person, their knowledge base, etc.
Join me in the comments section and we’ll continue this discussion.
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I internalize, assess the situation/advice, and enact the best plan I can to move forward. Most of this involves some manner revenge scheming (to show them how wrong they were) and then move on and try to apply the lesson (if one existed) to my everyday life.
This of course is meaningless if the advice came straight out of the person’s ass. Which it occasionally does.
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admin Reply:
June 27th, 2009 at 1:25 am
@Stuart – I love that you disguise your real, genuine ‘edginess’ as sarcasm, but I read your “How to be a Dick,” post on SME and know better. I think internalizing the situation/advice FIRST is really important. I’m as guilty as the next person as being mad for 30 minutes before actually gleaning insight from the situation.
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I don’t handle it well. I think I handle changing things in my life when I hit the tolerance level of where I know things need to change and to just take the leap.
You can’t live in idle and I see my friend doing all the things wrong and not going anywhere. So I guess I might use that as a spring board.
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admin Reply:
June 27th, 2009 at 1:25 am
@Jamie – Welcome to RSM. So glad you decided to spend the time to contribute to the conversation. Some people have the innate ability to really be self-driven, but nobody gets anywhere near the proverbial top without the help of trusted friends, family, advisors, etc.
For people that aren’t self driven tough love CAN, if done right, help you keep pushing through life’s minutiae. Or sometimes it can help us get back on track. We all get stuck sometimes.
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Interesting post, Ryan. Something I’ve never spent a whole lot of time thinking about. Personally, I think that I’m worse at dishing out the tough love than taking it. I think playing sports a lot growing up (and having my dad as a coach for some of them) helped me learn that tough love is meant to help you learn and grow.
For me, though, showing others tough love is always a little unsettling because I can never be sure how they will react to it and I don’t want them to think I’m just trying to be an a$$.
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admin Reply:
June 27th, 2009 at 1:25 am
@Jackie – I completely agree with you about giving out tough love. There are times when I’ve really cared about someone who I felt the only way I could really get through to them was ‘tell them the cold hard truth,’ but I never brought myself to do it because I worried internally how they would react and if that would adversely affect our relationship.
At the end of the day, it all worked out for them, but I was probably doing them a disservice. As nice as you are though, I bet it’s something you really struggle with.
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However, the more heated the “tough love” gets, my tolerance for the tough love definitely decreases.
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May 14th, 2009 at 8:43 amThis is a thinker (and a great post!).
I want to clarify that it’s a huge “it depends”, just like you say, but after all, I have to admit that a little vengeance has been a huge motivator for me more than once.
I like to believe that I can focus on the message, but taking the challenge and defying the ones that don’t believe in you has always been a very thrilling way of giving my best.
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May 18th, 2009 at 3:03 pm