It always intrigues me how largely we can overcome, if not mitigate, the impact of conflict situations that involve others; by changing our own stance in a conflict.
Some conflicts seem impossible to solve but if only if we are to introspect honestly, we would see how actually we ourselves are contributing to the rot. Here are some common conflict stances that will help you to see how you keep chasing your own tail in an endless pursuit of your ends:
Looking through filtered shades: somehow our sense of ego makes us into such larger-than-life heroes and heroines who have been wronged by a cruel, selfish, slimy and vile adversary! We begin to have a victim’s mindset; that we have been wronged therefore we are entitled to get back at the slimy adversary. Our real or imagined adversity actually makes us arrogant.
Then we stop noticing altogether that our victim mentality actually becomes our club in attacking the adversary wherever we believe it will hurt most. What we don’t realise is that even if our attacks are largely our own mental simulations, they do little to solve the issue and they are only a one-sided view of the situation at best.
In other words, we reduce a fully functional human being with positive attributes into a slimy adversary and see our transaction with this person from a filtered shade. For instance, you hate your boss and feel that you are better suited for his position. Your mind keeps telling you that you are better than that rat sitting on the big desk and ordering you about. What your mind filters from your view is how that ‘rat’ may actually be more disciplined, methodical and suave with negotiations (crucial managerial skills) than you are!
So if you wish to overcome conflicts, you’ve got to check if you are looking at the people you are in conflict with through filtered shades. If you focus on their positive attributes, you might see common grounds for a truce, a fruitful alliance and possibly areas for self improvement.
Waiting for the Other Person’s Stance: this is another ‘wont-get-you-far’ spanner from a failed fighter’s toolkit. You base your stance in a conflict onto the actions of the person you are in conflict with.
For instance, you’re being asked by do-gooders in the family to patch up with that whimsical sister-in-law of yours with whom you had a big tiff several months ago. But you tie your patch up, to her making the phone call to you first. After all, you’re older than her and deserve more protocol.
In a conflict, the more conditions you impose (even if just in your mind) onto another person in defining your response, the weaker and easier to manipulate you will be. The more unconditionally you approach a conflict, the more powerful you will be. So it will help to realise that the protocol you wish to receive from your sister-in-law is actually an ego soother that actually enslaves you to her stance.
If instead you drop all pre conditions and put your own best foot forward, you will have washed your hands off the sordid drama and risen above it.
Dragging the Past into the Present: it does us mighty good to approach a conflict situation by being in the present moment. The more antiquated dirty linen you drag in, the more baggage you’ll collect for yourself to sort out. But then sometimes we resort to this without realizing how pointless it is in solving the issue at hand. Our snapshots of the slimy adversary from the past only makes the conflict more twisted.
My father used to tell me how in his village it was rather a custom for neighboring women to fight all day long by recalling events from several decades back thanks to emotional baggage inherited from their ancestors. When it was time to wash up the kids or cook lunch, they would hang a slipper onto a wooden stick facing the neighbour’s house to declare time-out and then resume once they were done. Fighting for them was a refined hobby of sorts.
Likewise, when we keep dragging carefully collected, rotten snapshots from the past to show to our adversary hoping to achieve more points, it leads us back to us chasing our tails in terms of conflict resolution.
Replaying resentment mentally: Finally, the more you’ll ‘bitch’ about the adversary to a bunch of sympathizers or in your own mind, the more effectively you will have bound yourself in the cobwebs of the conflict. Backbiting only reinforces your filtered view, it only fills you with negative energy and this negative energy NEVER solves a conflict.
You might like to believe it’s your adversary’s loss when you keep replaying your real or imagined responses in your mind or sharing them with your so called friends, but actually you are chaining your own self to the situation.
In reality, true freedom only comes from true forgiveness. And true forgiveness only comes when you realise how you yourself are also vulnerable to weaknesses. The silent mind and the peaceful heart that you get from moving on are far more precious than the heroic avatars your ego keeps flinging at you.