A win-win with the in-laws

At a holiday party last night, I watched two married friends of mine, Beatrice and Jonas, come up with a beautiful solution to a dilemma they were facing with Beatrice's mother. So I thought I would share it here as a really great example of creative problem-solving in this holiday season.

It's a tale as old as organized religion: Bea's mother is a church-going Christian, and every Christmas she brings her husband and two kids to mass, even though they are not religious themselves. Neither Bea and her brother enjoy attending the mass (her brother listens to audiobooks during the service), and yet they attend because they fear that their mother will be sad if they don't. Enter Jonas. Jonas is not religious, and does not want to go to mass this year. What to do?

Stage 1: Justifications
At first, Jonas and Bea railed on organized religion. The hypocracy, the brainwashing, the artifice. They gathered mountains of evidence as to why church was an abomination, and hence why Jonas was completely justified in saying No to Bea's mother's request. Bea just shrugged. I know, it's silly, she said.

Stage 2: What are the real issues here?
Then the conversation shifted a bit. Bea explained what her mother was really looking for in mass: to spend time with her family, doing something religious. That doesn't seem so unreasonable on Christmas, does it?

Stage 3: Resolution
With the real goals of Bea's mother laid out, it became clear that going to mass was not the only option. Bea realized that her family could work at a soup kitchen instead. The family would be together, and reaching out to the poor could definitely be a religious experience for Bea's mother.

The moral of the story here is that if we move away from a place of justifying our own positions and toward an understanding what the other person really wants, we oftentimes find that there are many mutually-beneficial solutions. Instead of a compromise solution, which had been Bea's appeasement strategy in the past, Jonas and Bea's mom could collaborate on a solution that would ensure a happy holiday for everyone.

Have a joyous holiday season, everyone!

Image courtesy of http://www.squiglysplayhouse.com/ArtsAndCrafts/ColouringPictures/Christmas/