How do you respond to expectations?
Upholder -> tightening -> getting trap by tighter rules
Questioner -> drain and overwhelm other people with their persistent questions
(stubborn, not a team player, …) + facing “analysis-paralysis”
Making everything into an inner expectations: meeting or resisting their resistance.
Obligers get frustrated with themselves because they meet outer expectations but struggle to meet their own inner expectations.
The key to meeting inner expectations if you are an obliger is outer accountability. Build systems of outer accountability around that behavior.
There are hundreds of ways that you can build an accountability.
- You can have an accountability partner,
- you can form an accountability group,
- you can work with a trainer or a coach,
- you can take a class where they are going to charge you if you don’t show up,
- you can think of your duty to be role model for someone else
- …
There is a lot of ways to build an accountability, once you know that that is what you need.
Obligers often experience the pattern of obliger-rebellion. This is when obligers will meet, meet, meet expectations and then suddenly they snap, and they say: “You know what, this, I will not do.” Sometimes, it can be small and a little bit silly, like someone refusing to stop by the grocery store to pick up something on their way home from work, and sometimes it can be huge and destructive like someone blowing up a long term relationship, or walking out the door of a job, quitting without warning.
Everybody needs to be aware of obliger rebellion in order to offset it. When does obliger-rebellion strike? It happens when obligers feel like they are being exploited or neglected or taking advantage of or not being heard.
The fact is that obligers are often taken advantage of by other people because they are always so willing to step in, to volunteer to meet outer expectations.
Obligers and people around obligers need to make sure that work is equitably distributed, that obligers aren’t taken advantage of, that they are taking needed breaks so that they don’t fall in that place of deep resentment and burn out that can trigger obliger-rebellion.
Rebels always want to express their authentic selves. -> explaining consequences + letting negative consequences fall
Harness the strength of tendencies
Offset the weaknesses and limitations of tendencies
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