The "real why" behind bad behaviour

Children, I've often heard and found, can be annoying. The more they have, the less grateful they seem. The more you try and advise them, the less they want to hear - in fact, the more they try and tell you that you're wrong. It's hard to believe that we "grown-ups" (meaning those of us adults who feel that we have grown up) ever behaved quite so strangely. I've heard many explanations for this seemingly repetitive state of affairs including generational theory. But the more obvious one, I don't hear quite so often. Here's my shot at it.

All humans are born with a natural ego. Some of us manage to develop this in healthy balance as we mature, and others get it knocked out of us at an early age, and the rest go a bit over the top. The ego demands that we're right, it fires up the drive in us, it even suggests that the impossible is possible and it sometimes causes us to pursue lost causes. That ego battling to be acknowledged and validated goes a long way towards explaining why children can be a little difficult at times, especially when they become teenagers.

Is it possible that exactly the same may apply to adults too? Can it be that employees who feel that they are not being heard, developed according to their ability, appropriately mentored or recognised may exhibit the similar behaviour to children - resistance, frustration and anger? As we get older, we may mature and thus handle things differently. But the emotions experienced by a three year old are identical to those experienced by a sixty three year old - it feels the same.

These emotions so often boil over when people who are prevented by circumstances or conditioning from achieving what they may have achieved, become frustrated. Frustration is our natural emotion when we feel blocked. When we observe others being frustrated, it seems almost comical, but it's really far from funny and can manifest itself in many was, some of them quite destructive.

If you knew that you had the ability to do something or be something and you were being blocked over weeks, months and years, how would it make you feel? What would it do to you in the long term. Would you simply accept it? Maybe. Some folk do, but many folk simply won't, and when the pot starts to boil, the lid's going to come off.

Whether a person acts or reacts negatively in any number of ways, there is usually a reason behind it. The nature of the response is often associated with habits and conditioning, but the emotional nature can so often be traced to discontent, or something I have learned to refer to as The Real Why.

So if you're the one now looking in - facing a "brick wall", or feeling exasperation about someone else's behaviour, or the behaviour of a group - be it employees, your child or partner - anyone, try and find out, in each instance, the real why. Because when people feel understood they feel a little less frustrated. When they feel less frustrated they feel they can talk a little more calmly. When they feel that you understand, they also begin to understand. And when the negative pattern is broken, so is the frustration.

Now we're out of negative ground and sitting on zero. It's time move in to positive territory, to ask that person's opinion - and then listen to them. You don't have to agree, but you can acknowledge that their point of view is valid and adds a different perspective. That's validation. When we acknowledge people and validate their input, their frustration is far less likely to flare up again. Validated people who feel acknowledged and worthwhile don't moan and strike as much or become so violent towards others, and sometimes they become catalysts for change themselves - just one more little bird has been saved.

There isn't a single good deed that you do that can ever be meaningless. If each person had to show understanding to just one more person every day, the world would change immediately, crime would plummet, and who knows, even the hurricanes might stop coming.

Just one thing. The understanding, the listening and the journey to find out the real why starts with you. If you wait for "the frustrated" to start the process of change and understanding, before long, you'll be the one who's frustrated.

Paul du Toit