{"id":1564,"date":"2018-02-14T22:27:35","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T03:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=1564"},"modified":"2018-02-14T22:39:20","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T03:39:20","slug":"no-bs-advice-ultimatums-are-a-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/no-bs-advice-ultimatums-are-a-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"No-BS Advice: Ultimatums Are A-OK!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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For whatever reason, ultimatums have a bad rap\u2014probably because people presented with ultimatums are usually pissed about it. They feel they\u2019ve been unfairly backed into a corner, blaming the ultimatum giver for leveling threats at them.<\/p>\n

But fuck that. An ultimatum is a choice between two courses of action as defined by the ultimatum giver, along the lines of \u201cIf you do or don\u2019t do this, I\u2019m going to do this.\u201d There\u2019s usually some kind of major consequence involved, hence the term \u201cultimatum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life is a series of choices\u2014note that failing to make a choice is also a choice\u2014and an ultimatum is no different. The problem is people often mistake ultimatums for threats. A threat<\/em> is using fear to force someone to act in a way they normally wouldn\u2019t, ex. \u201cSign this document or I\u2019ll kill you.\u201d An ultimatum<\/em> is forcing someone to take responsibility for their actions, ex. \u201cGet help for your drinking problem or I\u2019ll leave you.\u201d<\/p>\n

An ultimatum can seem like a threat, but the key difference is the ultimatum receiver\u2019s fear is irrelevant; a person giving an ultimatum is stating a fact about how they<\/em> will act, not about how the receiver should act. For instance, in the above ultimatum example, the receiver can decide to do nothing to curb their drinking. It\u2019s the ultimatum giver who then acts to change their own behavior by leaving as they said they would, which may or may not affect the ultimatum receiver.<\/p>\n

I see to many people stuck in crappy relationships because they think issuing an ultimatum is a shitty thing to do. It\u2019s not! Remember, an ultimatum is about forcing someone to accept responsibility for the things they\u2019ve already done, <\/em>and you<\/em> are being forced to act, not them.<\/p>\n

So go ahead and issue an ultimatum if the situation warrants it\u2014that is, if you\u2019re ready for a change no matter what. Because you absolutely must follow through on an ultimatum; otherwise, it\u2019s just an empty threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For whatever reason, ultimatums have a bad rap\u2014probably because people presented with ultimatums are usually pissed about it. They feel they\u2019ve been unfairly backed into a corner, blaming the ultimatum giver for leveling threats at them. But fuck that. An ultimatum is a choice between two courses of action as defined by the ultimatum giver, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “No-BS Advice: Ultimatums Are A-OK!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[336,337,338,335],"class_list":["post-1564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consequences","tag-fear","tag-responsibility","tag-ultimatums-versus-threats"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-pe","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}