Who is Your Disagreeable Accountability Partner?
Rediscovering the value of healthy dissent
I have a weekly phone call with a dear friend of mine who is the only person in my life that I can claim as having significantly different views than my own.
We question each other freely, commonly submit when called out on our illogically constructed reasoning, and create so much life-giving energy in a short 30 minutes that I’m consistently left wondering why the way we converse can’t be the norm in our wider culture.
Subconsciously, when an agreeable conversation shifts toward disagreeable territory, a dance between conversational partners occurs to get back to safety.
What if we were consciously presented the choice, once per day, between the agreeable and disagreeable conversation? At some point, be it day two or day 200, our natural desire for “different” is going to choose the disagreeable conversation.
The first time we make that selection, it might go terribly, but time will pass and the temptation will likely return to give it another go.
Eventually, I would hope, a disagreeable conversation would occur that left you feeling grateful for engaging in it. So much so you might want to continue that conversation the next day and engage an entirely new topic…
