Resolving Conflicts — Use The Milk Carton Rule
What’s The Milk Carton Rule?
It says that instead of dwelling on what you can’t change, focus on what you can.
In psychology, it is referred to as expectation-reality-difference, which is an unreasonable belief and demand that collides with our desire and leaves us stuck in the victim role.
The milk carton rule is based on a real-life example found in a psychology textbook, which tells the story of two people where person A often forgets to put the milk carton back in fridge, which in turn frustrates person B. A always apologizes, but continues to make the same mistake so, B brings up the problem to their therapist.
Therapist — How often does A forget the milk carton and for how many years?
Person B — I’ve lost count, thousands of times.
Therapist — Do you base your predictions on what A does or what you want A to do?
Person B — Based on what A does because A isn’t considerate.
Therapist — But after thousands of times, you’re still surprised at A’s behavior. Shouldn’t you expect A to leave out the milk? Are you basing your expectation on what you want or what A’s done?
Person B — I guess on what I want.
Therapist — Now, how would you feel if you set your expectations based on what A did rather than what you expected A to do?
Person B — I guess I wouldn’t be so angry. I’d just get two cartons of milk.
Applying Milk Carton Rule will help close the gap between expectations and reality and save you from unnecessary frustration of demanding that reality be different.
What Makes This Rule So Powerful?
- It help to choose the battles you really need to fight.
- It’ll train to move away from natural response of demanding that the other person should change their behavior when in fact, the reality is that most people won’t change.
- It helps to accept reality and the sooner you recognize that, the sooner you can start working on solving the problem.
- It helps to resolve conflicts and change focus to problem at hand instead of other people’s attitudes.
- It’ll help develop emotional intelligence as a simple shift in mindset can make all the difference in any kind of relationship.
How Can You Apply It?
- Change your focus from “How can I get them to change?” to “How do I avoid being affected by this?”
- Solve problems by focusing on what you can control.
- Don’t think that problem should not exist and instead, yield to it and free up to solve the problem.
- Remind yourself that people’s attitudes will upset you in many settings and will not alter.
- Recognize the severity of your frustration and utilize it to motivate you to try a new way to fixing the problem.
- You may have to accept the reality for problems that you simply cannot solve.
Every day, we are confronted with situations in which reality does not match our expectations. For instance:
- Client or customer who never pays on time — Understand their attitude and consider remedies such as imposing a late fee or re-framing client expectations.
- Colleague who says one thing and does another — Yield to their personality and consider techniques such as written confirmations.
- Significant other who often forgets trivial stuff — Accept their behavior and consider taking initiatives to managing it yourself or reminding them patiently.
We will not think of a new way to solve problem as long as we believe someone else must behave differently.
Usually lowering our demanding-ness may be exactly what we need!
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