Stress and Conflict Resolution + Two Self Coaching Tips

(Working notes from my book About…. Love, Relationships And The Stuff That Holds You Back.)

Relationships create the biggest source of joy and sadness (love and hate, mercy and severity) in our lives. People uplift one another. People upset one another.

We get out of synchronisation and foster anger, sadness, fear or guilt. We cannot see through the emotions that cloud our mind. We limit our learning. Nor do we open ourselves up to see through the darkness in our own psyche that our unconscious mind protects us from. This darkness manifests itself in repeating patterns.

I now see patterns that repeat in my life. I have encountered them since the very second I was born. Part of my life’s purpose has, in part, required me to recognise timely resonance (and the lack of it). Not to force others to submit to my will, or vice versa.

Self Coaching Tip 1: Find Your Fear…

Conflict stirs four emotions (in various guises): anger, sadness, guilt and fear. Should you feel any of the first three emotions, take a step back and meditate on your emotion. Take your time. As you quieten down and the mist clears, you will find an inner fear, perhaps your innermost fear.

Go back in time with that fear, if you can. Where did it come from? From whom did you accept it? Trace its affect on:

1. The life of the person you got it from
2. Your life from its root to the present day.

You now see its complete history. Go below your fear. For below you will find wisdom. And when you find it, you will now see through your conflict. And see it dispassionately from everyone’s point of view.

Neither embrace it, nor reject it. Just by seeing the problem you have already started to dissolve it.
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Self-Coaching Tip 2: to deal with someone you have been in conflict with. See it from three angles to dissolve the fear.

1. Park your emotions: can you recall a time when you were totally objective and calm about a situation where others were not. So go back to that moment, fly to it. Go down inside your body. Look at that old situation through your own eyes. Notice how you feel…….how you think…..how you speak. How do the other people there respond to you? Take in and absorb your feelings completely. And now bring them forward to the present.

2. Wise Observer: Take a dispassionate stance: put yourself (in the calm, totally objective state) in a neutral location mid-way between and to the side, of your old emotional self and the person with whom you are in conflict. Observe what goes on without passing judgement.

3. 2nd Position: Now go stand in the other person’s shoes. As the other person, ask yourself:

• “What value does the person I am in conflict with (i.e. the old emotional, you) bring to the table?”
• “What do I want?”
• “What is it that is uncomfortable about what they say?”
• “What is my underlying fear, about this conflict, such that if it were dissolved then so would the conflict.”

4. Now go back to Neutral position and give yourself 3-5 new ways to approach the conflict differently. Ways that would help to dissolve the 2nd person’s fears. Check that both sides are ok with the “do-differently” actions.

5. Go back to your old self, except without the emotion this time. Select which of the 3-5 new ways you are prepared to undertake. Go do.

“To change someone else, change yourself first.”

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Conflict, duality, is the nature of life; light and darkness. We are continually tested. Through conflict, we absorb learning. We can only know something is good, if we know what bad is. We can only see light from relative darkness. For if we were in a brilliant white light we would see nothing. We would be blinded.

And should we choose to either embrace or reject conflict, should we choose not to see the world as others see it – then we go our own way. And we find that patterns repeat themselves. Anger, sadness, guilt and fear reappear from situations that occur time, time and time again until we choose to learn from our darkness.