Book summary Difficult Conversations| How to talk about the most important things.

 Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen 

How To Talk About The Most Important Things.

in two words,

 we will see how you can talk to your partner about the things that are important, but which you are hesitant to do. This book tells how you can complain to your partner or any person or you can put your problem in front of him without hurting him.

 Who is it for

•  Those who are hesitant to do important things. 
• Those who want to learn to talk well. 
• Those who want to make their relationship better than before.

About the Authors,

Douglas Stone is the founder of Triad Consulting. He is a lecturer at Harvard Law School. He has been teaching people to negotiate with the help of his program for the last 20 years. Bruce Patton is the co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project. He is an author best known for his book Getting to Yes, in which he teaches how to negotiate. Sheila Heen is the co-founder of Tried Consulting. She is a lecturer at Harvard Law School and works with Douglas Stone. She teaches MIT students to negotiate with her husband.

Why you should read this book?

Many times it happens that we want to say something but for some reason, we are not able to say it. Sometimes we are upset about something about our partner, but we do not talk to him about it because we think that he will take our point badly. Sometimes we keep some things to ourselves because we feel that others will not understand that. This book tells us why it is necessary to do these things and how we can do these things. This book tells us why difficult things are difficult and how we can make them easier. Also, this book tells us how we can start doing these things. 

 Why is it important to talk about difficult things? 

 Why are difficult things difficult? 

 What is the third? A story and how can you use it to put your point in front of the front.

Chapter 1:

Don't hold back from talking about difficult things for fear of repercussions. 

Many times we want to say something to the other person which is not easy to say. It may be that your neighbor watches TV or listens to songs very loudly, due to which you are in trouble. Maybe you want to talk to your partner about his bad habits. 

Such things are called difficult things. It includes sex, politics, complaints, and everything that you are hesitant to talk about. Doing these things can have two consequences. Either the person in front will understand your point and will try to solve it together with you.

 Or else he will get annoyed with you and will quarrel with you. Doing these things in this way can have both good and bad consequences. But not doing these things will only have bad consequences. This will always trouble you. It will be difficult to talk about them, but it will be even more difficult not to talk about them. So do not turn your back on them, rather try to solve them by talking about them.

Chapter 2:

Difficult things can have three parts.

No matter what kind you shy away from talking about, chances are there are three parts to them. Their names are the things of what happened, the things of feelings, and the things of identity.

First of all, come the things of what happened. In this, two people are fighting among themselves and blaming each other, and deciding who is right. They are trying to prove themselves right and in the meantime try to prove others wrong.

For example, you may throw your partner's cigarette to get rid of his cigarette habit. You can tell him here that you are fed up with his habit.

But in return, he can also tell you that he is also troubled by your habit of watching TV all the time. After that, you start blaming each other.

After this comes to the matter of feelings. Talking about difficult things is difficult because talking about them brings out some negative feelings. There may be feelings of anger, irritation, fear, or even remorse. After this comes the things of identity.

 In this, the person in front may say something to you that will hurt your identity. Maybe you can go to your neighbor and ask him to turn down the sound of his TV. On this, your neighbor may think of you as being angry and say something that will make you feel bad. , This can make you start doubting your identity. 

 In such a difficult matter, all these three things can be present together.

Chapter 3:

Instead of blaming each other for what happened, try to understand each other.

 First of all, we will try to see how the other person is looking at things by turning the things of what happened into learning things. In this, you focus on solving the problem instead of fighting, accusing, keeping quiet, or doubting yourself. For this, first of all, you have to stop misunderstanding the person in front. 

Don't think about how he can say this, rather try to understand what he is saying by seeing or thinking. Try to understand what his point of view is. After this do not think that the person in front wants his profit and your loss. Rather, think that he may be trying to help you in some way.

 If your partner picks up your cigarette and throws it, don't think that he is trying to control you. Rather think that he wants your best and did not want that your health should be spoiled. In the end, do the work that can settle the dispute. Instead of blaming your partner, try to understand with him how you both got into this quarrel and how to get out of it.

Chapter 4:

Instead of blaming each other for what happened, try to understand each other.

 First of all, we will try to see how the other person is looking at things by turning the things of what happened into learning things. In this, you focus on solving the problem instead of fighting, accusing, keeping quiet, or doubting yourself. For this, first of all, you have to stop misunderstanding the person in front. 

Don't think about how he can say this, rather try to understand what he is saying by seeing or thinking. Try to understand what his point of view is. After this do not think that the person in front wants his profit and your loss. Rather, think that he may be trying to help you in some way. If your partner picks up your cigarette and throws it, don't think that he is trying to control you. 

Rather think that he wants your best and did not want that your health should be spoiled. In the end, do the work that can settle the dispute. Instead of blaming your partner, try to understand with him how you both got into this quarrel and how to get out of it.

Chapter 5:

Instead of suppressing feelings, learn to understand them and talk about them.

 Difficult things are difficult because they contain feelings that we don't want to talk about. There are some feelings that we find difficult to talk about with others and that is why we think it's okay to keep them to ourselves. To get out of this problem, first, try to understand what is going on inside you. Try to figure out why you are doing what you are feeling. 

For this, you can ask yourself some such questions, why did you feel that it would not be right to talk about these feelings? How did you deal with this kind of feeling when you were little? Did your partner say something that hurt you when you expressed this feeling? After this, you know that your feelings can change with time and situation if you start looking at the situation differently. 

Ask yourself whether you have misunderstood the intentions of the other person. Did you not say anything wrong to the person in front, which he also called you wrong? If your father is always asking you to find a job, for example, you might think that he calls you a nerd all the time. But it may also be that they wish you well and want you to be capable. 

Thinking this way will change your feelings about that thing. In the end, you have to express your feelings properly. If your father keeps asking you to find a job all the time, you have to tell him how you feel about this and how he should talk to you. This is how you can deal with your emotions.

Chapter 6:

Don't think of yourself as completely good or completely bad. 

Many people think that they either have everything or they have nothing. They think either they are completely good or completely bad. They think that either they are totally capable or totally useless. In this way, when they see their actions that do not match their image, they fall asleep sadly. For example, you may think that you are always helping others.

 But one day someone says that you do one thing for him, then you do not help him. So does this mean that you have changed now? Maybe you are tired at that time and you have a lot of work left to do on your own, so you told him no or maybe you thought that your friend should do that work by himself, because If he doesn't do that work then he may have trouble tomorrow. 

It is not necessary that you help others by doing the work yourself. Sometimes you help them even by not doing their work. Once you have an idea of ​​what you don't want to lose, you can work on it. In this way, if someone tells you that you do not want to help others, then you will not mind what they say, because you know that you are teaching him to walk by himself instead of helping him. 

In this way, you can protect your identity. Apart from this, always stop questioning your thoughts. Many people think that if they say one thing in a different way then their partner will not mind. But you can never know what the person in front will feel when you say something, after understanding this, if your partner will be angry at what you say, then you will not be surprised at that. you feel that

Chapter 7:

By telling a story, you can start talking difficult with the other person.

 Now we will see that if you have to talk difficult with a person, then how can you start him. If you have a problem with any habit of your partner, then how can you tell this to him so that your problem is also solved and he does not feel bad. For this, you can take the help of a third story. 

This is a story that is told neither from your point of view nor from your partner's point of view. Rather, this story is told from the perspective of a third person who does not favor anyone. 

For example, your partner may have told you something jokingly in front of some people. You will tell him that I did not like the way you talked to me in front of your friends. This is your story. By saying this your partner will feel that you are accusing him that he is not a good person and hence he will tell you to save his image that he was just joking and you don't need to take him to heart. This happened to be his story. But if you can see this thing from the point of view of a third person, then you can easily solve this problem.

 For example, you can say to your partner - it seems that we both have very different ways of joking, after that you can talk about how your partner jokes and how you joke. Then you will come to know what is the difference between the thinking of both of you and after understanding this, you can solve your problems.

Overall, by doing difficult things, we can eliminate them by finding solutions. But if we don't do it, we will be troubled by it for the rest of our life. That's why it is important to talk about them. When you talk to him by understanding the point of view of the other person, keeping in mind your feelings and his feelings, then you will be able to find a solution to every problem. Pay attention to your inner voice. Your inner voice is the voice that comments on everything you hear, see, or read. Sometimes this voice becomes so strong that you do not hear anyone else's voice in front of it. Instead of silencing it, try to understand your thoughts by listening to them. This way you will be able to recognize your inner thoughts and listen to others better.