Conflict Is All About Making Mistakes Before, During And After

We Need to Approach It With a New Vision

The truth is, it’s not that you are a failure when it comes to engaging in conflict or even that the techniques are faulty. It is that in this fast food, instant results society, we do not give ourselves the time or the confidence to achieve good results. I would go so far as to say that in this celebrity-driven, airbrushed, bling-chasing consciousness that permeates our culture, we envision the results to be glamorous, without blemish, and sparkling.

My experience, as a practitioner in the world of conflict resolution who has also parented with these techniques, has shown me that the best results are often not so pretty, filled with human frailties with sparkling moments waiting to be acknowledged underneath. Getting there requires being committed to practice and becoming better and better at using them.

I want to give you the encouragement to gather all those great communication and conflict resolution techniques that you have learned over the years and toss them back into the playing field, but with a new foundation. A foundation that shows you how to be patient with yourself and the process, fully present with all that is happening, feeling all of the emotions that arise, and able to persevere until you see lasting results.

Sounds like a large almost impossible task? Not with a more human picture of what engaging in conflict really looks like.

Even with all of my skills and experience both in the conflict resolution field and in using these techniques at home, there are still many times when I create the “imperfect” picture rather than a highlight reel. The more we know, the more we grow is absolutely true, but we never outgrow being human.

Even though I have messed up my “happy ending” in some of the conflicts I have chosen to engage in, I learned something vital from those experiences, something that I was able to deposit into my Bank of Humanity. I learned that fear is a strong emotion that can cancel out reason, technique, or the best of intentions. Fear is so strong that I believe it is an emotion that masquerades as other strong feelings and unconsciously fuels many of our unwanted reactions, and we live in a fear-nurturing society.

This was a major discovery for me, one that led me on my own journey to become patient with myself in conflict knowing that no matter how much I know, I will still make mistakes even major ones. I learned that in order to be aware of, take a look at, and learn from my mistakes, I need to be present with my actions and my feelings in that moment or the moments shortly after. Last but not least, I need to stay away from judging myself and persevere as a person committed to applying what I’ve learned and viewing the outcomes realistically and I want the same for you.

So may I suggest: