Pillars of Character 6. Compromise

Oftentimes, when an agreement cannot be reached, we have to call for compromise. Many people miss-understand the concept of compromise and when they expect you to compromise, they actually expect you to give up on what you wanted entirely.

That is not what compromise is. Compromise is reaching middle ground, which satisfies both parties in a disagreement.

An example would be when you and your friend usually go to a movie on Fridays, but this week your friend wants to attend a party, which you do not really want to go to. In this case you could go to your movie and your friend could go to their party and you can spend time together on Saturday. Otherwise you could agree to go with to the party and your friend agrees to go to the movie with you on Saturday. Both parties get what they want and sacrifice in a small way.

Sometimes reaching compromise is more difficult, in which case you need to decide how important your viewpoint is. In your mind, give your viewpoint a level of importance between 1-10 (10 being most important) and do the same for your partner. What difference would going to the movie on Saturday make? What are your reasons for not wanting to attend the party? How important is that party? Did her dream guy ask her to attend? That would make it quite important to her!

Realistically scoring the importance of the situation to each person would make it very easy to reach compromise – simply let the person with the higher score get their way this time and make it clear that next time is the other person’s turn.

Don’t get into a situation where you are forced to do something you really don’t want to do and by the same score, don’t force others to do what they don’t want to. Remember that you should never compromise on your values. Rather leave when a situation turns into a direction where you no longer feel comfortable.