You have been working on discovering and using your power to influence the direction of a conversation, a meeting, an exchange, or even the direction that an individual or a group takes. You have discovered—through compliments, silence, agreement, or voicing what you like—how you can influence others and encourage their behavior in directions you desire.

You are power and the more you develop yourself, the more power you manifest. A key skill in developing yourself and becoming more “you” is knowing what you yearn for and acting to meet your yearning. Many of us don’t truly know what we yearn for, what we truly like, what we desire, or what we don’t want or desire. Often our scope of desires is limited, which in turn limits our life and our personal power.

The recent lessons are designed to help you both discover and express more about yourself to have more influence in the world around you. You will have the opportunity to deepen this with growth assignments of identifying and expressing what you want and what you need, starting with what you like and what you don’t like and expressing these fully with others and getting your yearnings and desires met. These have been profound assignments for many people in discovering the depth and range of their desires, expressing them fully in all of their relationships, fulfilling their needs and yearning, and discovering their power.

Part of discovering what we like, agree with, and yearn for is to identify what we don’t like and what we don’t agree with. And part of having influence is sharing with others what we disagree with and what we dislike. Through this week’s lesson, you discover the power of disagreeing and sharing what you don’t like. You see that you can directly influence a person or a group by opposing what is happening. You begin to notice how you can lead and have influence in a variety of situations. You discover that when you disagree directly, clearly, and responsibly, you can actually be a positive influence in the direction you desire. However, when you are disagreeing in reactivity, you can influence in a negative direction. Your disagreement has power either way. This week, you become more aware of the impact of your dislikes and disagreements.

Disliking

When you dislike something, you have a feeling of aversion or disapproval. You find something objectionable or simply don’t like it; it doesn’t meet with your approval in some fashion. Depending on your relationship, your dislike of some aspect of a person’s behavior can have an influential impact on them. For example, when you tell a friend or a spouse that you don’t like what they just did, they are more likely to stop doing it. As human beings, we do genuinely want to please others. When you are displeased, your dislike or your disagreement can change someone’s behavior or reorient them in a different direction.

There are differing levels of disliking something. When there is more of an emotion connected to it, like anger, it conveys one message. If your dislike is expressed with disdain or hate, it conveys another message. When your dislike about what is displeasing to you and what you would desire instead is not expressed clearly, it may not be as directly powerful.     

In fact, John Gottman’s research has shown that constructively expressing what you don’t like can do wonders for relationships. His research also shows that irresponsible expression of dislike in the form of contempt—disrespectfully putting someone down, insulting, sneering, rolling your eyes—is damaging to relationships and makes couples vulnerable to divorce.

Disagreement

When we disagree, we differ in opinion. There is conflict when we disagree—there is not a synergy, and there is often a level of stress or discomfort and an increase in tension.