What Did I Do? | Crosstraining 5.9.14

Matthew 7:3-5 In any school, you can always tell when a fight breaks out because a group of students will immediately surround the fight and begin getting worked up. I’ll never forget a fight I witnessed when I was at school. Everyone knew the fight was going to go down at lunch between two guys on the football team, so people were trying to get into place to have a good seat for the show. I watched as one of the guys hit the other from behind when the other walked around the corner. It was a cheap shot. The guy ended up winning the fight, probably just because he had the upper hand from the beginning because he caught the other guy off guard. When it comes to arguments, taking cheap shots often seem like the easiest way to get advantage in a heated discussion. We know what will set the other person off, so we go there because we can. Four particularly low cheap shots we often take are criticizing, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. We start out by criticizing and just being negative and complaining by attacking the other person. This criticism leads to contempt when we roll our eyes, use sarcasm, and are disgusted. This leads to defensiveness where we place the focus on the other person and their faults. The final stage is stonewalling where we check out, act like we don’t care, or are done with the situation or even the relationships. All these tactics are cheap shots that aren’t productive in an argument. They just leave a trail of frustration, hurt feelings, and even more problems. When you are in an argument, do you take cheap shots to get the upper hand in your relationships?]]>