Posts Tagged coercion and relationships

Coercion versus Respect

A colleague emailed me the following paragraph from a book she’s reading called Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are by Jack Kornfield. The passage provides a great story about how coercion breeds defiance.

“With acceptance and respect, problems that seem intractable often become workable. A man began to give large doses of cod liver oil to his Doberman because he had been told that the stuff was good for dogs. Each day he would hold the head of the protesting dog between his knees, force its jaws open, and pour the liquid down its throat. One day the dog broke loose and the fish oil spilled on the floor. Then, to the man’s great surprise, the dog

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Coercion Is Not Always Recognizable

Coercion isn’t always recognizable.

The other night my wife was viewing the first ten minutes of a movie on TV. She was so enthralled with it that she pressed the “record” button on the DVR and then stopped viewing the program. She wanted to share the movie with me and said that she was saving it until a time when we could watch it together.

When that time came around, her enthusiasm pitched even higher. However, as she turned on the recording and the synopsis of the movie aired, I quickly realized that I had no interest in the show. My wife was so surprised and disappointed that she reiterated her desire to share it and the fact that she … >>>

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