Pick Your Battles
Advice to live by?
I remember being given the advice to “pick your battles’ when I was struggling with the challenges of adolescence as a lone parent. It came from an older friend whose children were then young adults. Her words have been a valuable touchstone throughout my parenting years and beyond. It’s simple, clear and memorable which is why more than thirty years later I still recall it. It has proved it’s worth time over which is why I have shared it personally with friends and professionally with families I have encountered.
At first hearing, it reminded me of the ‘count to 10’ advice for thinking before reacting to a situation out of surprise or anger. But is there something deeper, more complex hidden within these simple words? Might it be saying more than just ‘walk away’? Let’s look at each of these words and consider the fullness of their meaning.
Pick your battles. To pick something means to make a choice, to select. It reminds me of those times in PE when you had to line up and the chosen team captains took turns to pick who they wanted in their team. This must be one of the cruellest, most humbling and often shaming experiences encountered in childhood if often left to the last or to ever to be the only one left so not even chosen! Okay sometimes people were selected because of their sporting prowess but often it was friends looking out for friends or being persuaded by the ever-growing chosen team. I wonder how often we consider the privilege it is to have a choice or to even consider letting that choice pass us by just because we can? When faced with a choice we get to consider our options, we might prioritise them or identify our favourites. It might be that the given options reflect our reasoning about each on offer in a positive or negative way. Obviously, there are other definitions about what it means to pick. For instance, to pierce with a pointed instrument. In the Bible, the psalmists often cautioned about the power and use of the tongue. The book of James devotes a chapter to the importance of taming the tongue acknowledging its potential to cause pain as well as praise. To provoke and probe are other meanings that could apply here. They imply that once picked there will be a response and the need to be prepared for that.
Pick your battles. Yours, not his or hers, not theirs or our but yours. The dictionary definition of the adjective your states ‘of relating to you or yourself or yourselves especially as possessor or possessors, agent or agents or object or objects of an action’. When thinking of battles, it’s easy to think that the issue is someone else, their language or actions perhaps, but this advice pivots the issue back to us. Why is it your battle? Because whatever has occurred has caused an emotional reaction with feelings hurt or has been the catalyst for anger or distress to rise. No one can tell us what to feel, no one can argue with how we feel. Our feelings are just that, ours, yours, and mine. So, if the fact that your voice or opinion has been ignored or your values have been carelessly trampled over that is yours to name. When we start to lay claim to our personal feelings in this way, we must be prepared for the way others may not see it the same way. Others may not see it as personal nor understand why or how they have caused such an emotional response. To bring some clarification, saying ‘when you do… I feel…’ helps to direct focus upon the action or behaviour and the impact it has had upon you whether that was intentional or not. No one else knows how it feels like to be in our skin nor what we’re feeling. Sometimes it’s also worth considering whether we have the emotional energy to explain all this and that brings us to consider the final word.
Pick your battle. A battle seems to me to be a word of olden times. In comparison to the wars we hear about on the news, I hear an intensity in the word that makes it seem more intimate and personal. I recall as a child doing battle on fallen logs with my brothers, it was a one on one competition where we would be pushing one another until one of us overcame the other who lost their balance and toppled off. Looking at a dictionary definition, it is a hostile encounter, a combat between two persons, a struggle to succeed or survive, a lengthy contest. No one should go into battle unprepared or ill equipped so it might be considered pre-meditated, it could be considered pre-meditated, and yet words conjure words and very quickly things exchanges can become hostile. There will always be clashes between individuals but do these always need to result in a battle? Over the years, when I have experienced a clash, I have tried to consider why it is this happening? Soul searching to know if this might be the result of something I have said or done or whether it is that I am at the receiving end of someone else’s inability to tolerate any more. Let’s face it, we all have days when our window of tolerance is constrained. I try to do a body scan to identify how is it making me feel and consider why that emotion has been evoked? Sometimes I just don’t have the emotional energy to connect with a situation. Finally, the key question, does it matter? Does this situation or exchange matter enough to me that I need to speak up about it or is it relatively minor perhaps because of other things going on at the time, in which case maybe I can use Nelson’s eye on occasions and let it go.
When we pick our battles, we are exercising self-care. When emotions run high, physical energy soon runs low, by protecting our emotional energy we are often saving ourselves from overload and exhaustion. It might also mean we’re not overwhelming the other person either but are giving a clearer message about what is important, intolerable, non-negotiable or whatever. We recognise what really matters and by doing so, we are informing others of our personal values and the things that we are not willing to compromise on. Picking our battles shows some emotional intelligence too. Daniel Goleman explains that when the thinking and feeling elements of the mind are in sync in an emotive situation like a dispute, whereby doing the right thing, at the right time and in the right way, it is an act of emotional intelligence. This is because in that moment, there needs to be motivation to be self-aware and to regulate personal emotions along with expressing empathy towards the other using the right social skills. And that includes knowing when sometimes, it’s just not our battle to fight and to leave it to those that need to act upon it.
We all probably have similar nuggets of advice that we have absorbed and carried with us over the years. It doesn’t mean we always remember to apply it, but often they do come to mind and can help us navigate our way through life or perhaps they have become embedded into the way we live and are integral to our inner compass. I wonder what advice has helped you over time and whose insight was it? You might like to listen out for any new nuggets of advice offered or overheard in the coming weeks.
Mentioned in this piece:
www.merriam-webster.com
The Holy Bible, NRSVA. James 3.
Daniel Goleman, 1996. Emotional Intelligence and why it can matter more than IQ. Bloomsbury Publishing.
All good advice Sian. There are lots of wonderful old adages that guide us. This one I’ve often spoken, sometimes even to myself. Thanks for sharing.