When someone is misleading others and we need to stop them how can we do so more calmly?
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Question, if somebody tends to speak very forcefully and also leads others in a wrong direction then we have the responsibility to stop them but how can we do that without becoming too emotional about it or without becoming too strong or harsh about it we can do it gently and rationally the answer, it depends on the situation sometimes if something is wrong is happening and the consequences are going to be catastrophic, serious, emergency like say if we see a child running towards a road and there is a vehicle coming on that road then we can’t politely, gently tell that child stop, because that road is there don’t go there, we have to just strongly tell at that time with a child it is very easy to understand we need for a strong communication especially if it is a family relationship close relationship, children we can do that in a professional setting still if it is a situation that is likely to have immediate and severe consequences then even if we speak a little strongly the situation warrants it and it will be understood that person doesn’t understand it was a medical offense but once somebody is about to delete some important data or make some emergency, situation that is ok, so in general people’s perceptions of us are definitely formed by by you could say our out of the normal actions that means normally I am polite and gentle and that forms some impression but if I am normally polite and gentle and sometimes I just become very harsh and rude, then people get that sort of dissonance, cognitive dissonance that which is the real person is this a gentle person or is this a harsh person is this really harsh and that gentleness was just a cover concealment or is it actually gentle and this was just something out of character because of the situation or whatever so if those kind of situations where we are speaking strongly or even harsh, somewhat some might think as harsh that is only occasional and if not before that action afterwards, the rationale for our action is at least intelligible to the other person even if not acceptable, at least intelligible then that’s ok we have in Chaitanya Charita Amrit the example of Shivanand Sain’s son-in-law or nephew, Srikanth Sain he was very disturbed because it was said that may your family die, something like that so he was very disturbed and when he came to meet Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu he offered obeisance to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he forgot to take out his upper cloth while offering obeisance and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said I can see from his face he is disturbed, don’t disturb him further so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu didn’t take that very seriously because it was circumstantial provocation circumstances that is out of sync for him and from the normal behavior, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu excused him so that’s one situation where one possibility where out of sync perception out of the normal perception doesn’t really affect people’s perception because it is circumstantially understandable why we did like that but if it becomes habitual sometimes human circumstances don’t warrant it, at that time it happens then it becomes a real issue that’s the time when we have to really check how maybe we have to restrain ourselves generally there are some people who do press R buttons or maybe they do something which press R buttons or just the way they act tends to provoke us, so if we know that then it is better to be prepared before we are dealing with them, maybe one strategy is that if there is a high pressure meeting then best is to if we know that sometimes things can become very hot then sometimes it is said you have to give negative feedback, give it in private appreciate in public and correct in private that is true if the hierarchical nature of the situation is very clear, that is we are an authority and that person is a subordinate and we are sure we are right the other person is wrong and we need to just correct them but if we are not sure about that situation if that person doesn’t really accept us as authority then sometimes having a third person as a mediator as a friend, somebody whose presence or maybe just a gentle word their calming guidance, calming inputs not necessarily guidance can keep our behaviour moderate that could be helpful some other way we may get off on some person when we are just alone with them and the way we behave when we are with several other people that can be different so in many ways we outsource our sanity to society that means at every moment our mind can provoke us to act in hundreds of outrageous ways and we can’t consciously, constantly be reasoning, oh I shouldn’t be doing this, I shouldn’t be doing this one of the ways we reject many of the minds propositions is by knowing that society will disapprove it and this can be a bad thing if sometimes some things which are important for us to do, we don’t do it because of social discipline, but in many ways the insanity that the mind may prompt us towards or push us towards we protect ourselves from it by being around people and their behaviour their presence itself moderates our behaviour so in that sense we outsource our sanity to society on many occasions just having someone helps so beyond that it’s just a matter of we learning to anchor ourselves in sattva more and more through our spiritual practices through our introspectiveness and then those extremes of the mind will become lesser otherwise they are going to be there and at least if we are aware then they won’t catch us unawares we won’t be ambushed by them we may still be we may still get carried away by them, we may still be wounded but we will be lesser this change happens gradually step by step it is not overnight so three things I would say first is that circumstances warranted then we can’t really sugarcoat we just have to avoid emergencies and people won’t take it people’s impressions of us won’t change just because of change to negative just because of one out of the normal strong behaviour if that is circumstantially warranted it is explained appropriately second is that we sometimes the presence of other people can help us moderate our behaviour and third is that we have to over ground ourselves more in sattva even if we are not always in sattva but at least we ground ourselves in sattva at the start of the day through sadhana, through spiritual practices and then we can