Once of the most amusing experiences I have had in the dojo was at the end of a class a while back. There was a new manager in the sports club and it seemed like he wanted to be running a tight ship. Sensei often runs his classes late - it's a mutual unspoken understanding between us and the staff. We put the mats out and then put them away, this saves the staff a lot of bother and so they leave us to get on with it. In all fairness; who wants to challenge Sensei on the subject of time keeping when he's just thrown a few ukes across the mat or into over-the-tops? However, one evening the new manager, who hadn't taken the trouble to learn of the unspoken agreement between his staff and their customers, stalked into the dojo when class finished and trampled right over the top of the mats with the clear intention of giving Sensei a piece of his mind. Aside from his total lack of respect for the dojo, he ignored everyone he passed, making a beeline for Sensei. When the manager was half way up the mat, Sensei turned round and it was as if the wind was totally taken out of the manager! The closer to Sensei he got, the slower he became. He smiled sheepishly and dumbly confirmed to Sensei that we had over-run our class. Sensei spoke softly in reply so I don't know what he said but, for all the drama that the manager had created on entering the dojo, nobody noticed him leave.
The point of my story is that somehow Sensei defused the situation before it became a conflict. Aikido is not about fighting - it's about blending with your attacker, de-stabalising them and neutralising the attack. Sensei wasn't in a dojo-controlled situation, for example 1st form shionage or 3rd form ikkyo, he was in a real-life situation requiring him to use his aiki so that the conflict didn't start at all. The manager's intended attack was verbal and, like many conflict situations you might experience on a daily basis, Sensei's defence could have been to throw a verbal punch in retaliation and an argument would have ensued breaking down the working relationships that he had worked so hard to build with the rest of the staff. Instead, he used his Ki and body language to disarm the manager before he had a chance to attack and then, I'm assuming, used words to blend and neutralise.
I was thinking about this the other day in a meeting at work. We all have that one colleague (some of us maybe have more than one) who are never truly happy and always seem to want to start an argument. For me, it's a member of my team who is, by far, the most pessimistic person I've ever met. My challenge is when we're in meetings and I have a suggestion or an idea which she always, without fail, counteracts with a negative comment or story. I leave the meeting feeling demotivated - me being in that meeting is a total waste of time because I can't put anything useful forward. However, a couple of meetings ago I fought back. My colleague aggressively questioned something I had put in the minutes of the previous meeting and I verbally punched her back which resulted in an argument in front of the entire room. This time, I left the meeting feeling shaken and exhausted - like I'd actually just done an hour of physical exercise! As always, when I feel something hasn't gone particularly well, I reflected on what I could have done better. I'm not satisfied with just sitting back and letting this person sap the spirit out of me, nor am I satisfied at getting into a fight with her. So what could I do instead?
In a previous job, my line manager was a bully and regularly put me down or made fun of me... or was just down right nasty. It was during that time that I read a quote by O-Sensei along the lines of "the wise win before the fight while the ignorant fight to win". My way of dealing with her was imagining the first poke in the Jo Kata and making contact with her so that she flew backwards out the office window. The more I imagined doing this, the further out the window she went! Interestingly in reality, the more I did this in my mind, the less she spoke to me and the more peace I got! Especially if I imagined it the minute she walked in the room. My current "nemsis" is not a bully and is in fact a nice person overall - she's just one of these very unhappy people that can't see the good in anything.
I decided the next time we were in a meeting, instead of imagining an attack, I would try to disarm her first therefore negating my need for the imaginary Jo! And so in the following meetings, I smiled at her and nodded my head encouragingly when she spoke. If she belittled me or pushed my ideas aside, I thanked her for her opinions and asked if she had an alternative solution. I by-passed anything that I could have taken offence to and essentially just ignored her negativity. If I got stuck, I asked for other people's thoughts and that would get the conversation going again.
I'm not going to lie, it's hard work! And I still haven't got it 100% right as it's all too tempting to bite back or withdraw into myself or, even worse, get up and walk out of the meeting because I just can't be bothered anymore. If I did any of that during class, Sensei would have something to say and I'd be ashamed of myself!
That's not to say that I haven't had the same feelings on the mat. A while ago (I may still have been a yellow belt at the time) I was at a different dojo (within the same aikido club of course) with a different Sensei taking the class. As there were no gradings coming up we were having a bit of "fun" with eleventh form. Eleventh form just frazzles my brain and normally I do have fun with it because I don't need to know it for an upcoming grading (yet) but this particular exercise we were to practice was just so confusing! The more I tried to do it, the more confused I got and the more frustrated I became which meant that anybody working with me was having to stop and explain what I was supposed to be doing. While I always appreciate the help, it was just getting me more stressed out as I knew I was holding the rest of them back. At one point I just wanted to sit down and cry! It happened again when we were practicing grading techniques for our green belts. I knew what to do but it just wasn't coming together that night and it took a lot of effort for me not to fold my arms and announce "I can't do this, I'm not grading anymore". I have no idea what Sensei would have done! But out of respect for him, my fellow practitioners and myself, i have never allowed myself to be beaten by my own frustration and I would NEVER walk out of a class. So why should a meeting at work be any different?
During my endeavours to win before these little fights with my colleague even started, I came across this website: http://www.verbal-aikido.com/. For me, it makes a lot of sense. I work in HR so you can imagine that my meetings with my pessimistic colleague is only the start. Sometimes, staff can get very angry at something and want someone to blame. Or they want to vent their frustrations on an imaginary punch-bag. Very often they end up in the HR office either to verbally attack me or as a result of one colleague verbally attacking another. It's actually quite hard to have an "inner smile" without actually smiling on the outside! When someone is in the middle of ranting about how rubbish the conditions of paternity leave are, it doesn't help when I start smiling at them! Just like actual Aikido, verbal aikido is going to take some practice!
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