Go along to get along

It’s tough not to say something when you disagree with somebody. It’s also tough to say something and risk offending the other person. Believe me, I’ve faced the internal struggles of knowing when to speak up and when I need to just shut up. Sometimes it’s a fine line we walk in finding a balance between the two. With my mild-mannered persona, it seems too often I error on the side of not saying anything. This is known as the go-along-to-get-along mentality.

At first blush, it would be easy to think that I often choose this route for fear of offending the other party. Admittedly, that’s a large part of the equation. And there’s a fear of confrontation involved as well—not that I care to admit it. However, there’s an aspect of my calculus which, I believe, has some merit: I don’t want to put myself in the position of having to retract some statement I made in error later on. Therefore, I want to make certain I would have grounds to speak up, and it wouldn’t be just me asserting myself at the expense of others. That’s where I make my decision to err on the side of caution. It’s here that I think to myself, “Does the other person have a point?” It’s a difficult thing to do, but you try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective. You look at all angles to identify any points of contention and their validity. The downside of all this analysis is that it can get pretty tedious and you end up tip-toeing around the whole thing.

One thing I think important to remember is that you do need to stand up for yourself. Some of the ground you stand on—others will just take it from you unless you take a firm stance against them. Just folding like a lawn chair at any sign of opposition puts up a sign indicating that your land is free for the taking. It’s not even so much about gaining the respect of others, but just respecting yourself. If you do respect yourself, you’ll gain their respect anyway.
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Something else that rings true is that some battles just aren’t worth fighting. To take a firm stance on an issue that’s of trivial importance is not usually worth it. You don’t want to die on a hill that’s not really worth owning. You’ll get done fighting—and maybe even win—and then wonder what you’ve just won. In these situations, go-along-to-get-along might not be such a bad thing. But it becomes an issue when we do this on such a continual basis that we never stand up for anything. It takes some discernment to know when you need to make your opinion known. It takes some courage to learn to be indifferent to what others might think. It takes some wisdom to form opinions and present them in a palatable form. But at the end of the day, you don’t just go-along-to-get-along; you go along with what you must, and you get along as much as you can.

…Let’s go deeper

 

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