Why Are We Yelling?: The Art of Productive Disagreement

Eventually, the voice of avoidance becomes as accountable as any of the others, but that accountability is a bit delayed. It’s just a different way of optimizing for short-term results.

If you both settle on a question about what is true, you can ask: Is there a source of information we both trust that could give us the answer to this question? What qualifies as a trustworthy source?

Our internal voices are automatic, filled with emotional and urgent declarations often related to safety. They make use of stereotypes and group labels to categorize threats and opportunities and our relation to them. They are blind to the passage of time—everything happening now has always happened and will always happen, unless drastic measures a

Many more arguments than we’re usually willing to admit are about personal preferences (why was I putting work above family?) and/or about strategy and pragmatism (was leaving Niko home alone the best option in this particular situation?). By holding on to the easy, information-based conflict, I exacerbated the other two kinds of conflict. I believ

listen to whatever voice is in your head for a moment and try to determine if this is a voice of power, reason, avoidance, or possibility. Then ask it some questions: What’s urgent right now? What’s threatening right now? What could I be doing right now instead of this?

How does the voice of reason get around this problem? Simple: with numbers.

This practice of “self-talk” isn’t a sign of mental health problems, despite some associations you might have with the idea of “voices in your head.” We all have these voices. Talking to ourselves is perfectly normal, and everyone does it without thinking twice about it. It’s when we stop thinking the voices are coming from parts of ourselves and i

Disagreements about information are by far the simplest conflicts to resolve, because there’s a source of truth out there, somewhere within reach.

FIRST THING TO TRY Watch how anxiety sparks Anxiety sparks when a perspective we value bumps into another perspective that challenges it in some way. If we find this new perspective to be unacceptable, that’s when our “Someone is wrong on the internet; I must correct them!” impulse leaps into action. When anxiety sparks—poof!—it’s like a little anx