As promised, today’s article is about how showing up with the power of your presence when conflict arises will create outcomes better than avoiding conflict. Conflict seems to be universally feared, the irony being that in order to avoid conflict, people will often make matters worse. All too often what starts off as a conflict that could easily be addressed escalates from disagreeing to harm being done.
Conflict invites you to show up with your power and your presence for creating something better. Conflict is part of everyday life, like the mundane conflict between getting out of bed in winter’s dark and cold mornings and wanting to stay in your warm and cozy bed. Or the more important conflict between being honest when asked an opinion versus shading the truth for not making waves. Conflict invites taking differences and creating something better for both.
Let me make it clear that I’m talking about conflict, not anger. Anger is an important emotion to develop a relationship with, for anger alerts you to danger, to when boundaries are being crossed, and for when you are being dissed. And like all emotions, anger offers you important information about yourself. Whereas conflict is an invitation to problem-solve. Anger may be part of the ecology of the conflict but anger and conflict are different and require different engagements from us.
Marriages are great teachers of the perils of not bringing your power and your presence to conflict. Married people have expectations of greater happiness and fulfillment from being married. Yet expectations-voiced or unvoiced-will get you in trouble every time. Unmet expectations can lead to resentment or emotional withdrawal when the expectations are not met. Or to compensating behavior such as overspending or going outside the marriage for getting needs met. While learning to show up with your power and your presence could get you not only more of what you want in the relationship but foster more intimacy as well.
So how do you bring your power and your presence for engaging conflict?
- Disagree but don’t seek to destroy. Disagreeing is part of being in any relationship, even the relationship you have with yourself. Seek to understand the other instead of rushing to defend your position.
- Ask questions more and defend less. Being defensive can make you lose sight of any common ground between you and another. Reacting to another’s words or actions is your brain’s survival response whereas listening engages you for being able to be creative with problem-solving.
- Seek to understand instead of needing to be right. Needing to be right or the other person to be wrong is the enemy of working things out. Seeking to understand the other reflects your willingness to treat the other with respect even when you disagree.
- Before saying “yes” get clear on your “no”. Saying “yes” is a conditional response unless you also feel confident when to say “no”. How often have you said “yes” in order to not have conflict and then resented what you agreed to or found a way to not follow through?
- When feeling strong emotions, take a few slow deep breaths in and out. Your brain is wired to keep you safe more than to preserve relationships. And while being safe is important, your relationships are the basis of what brings much satisfaction and happiness in life.
Learning to not be afraid of your emotions but to engage and learn from them is a critical part of engaging conflict with your power and presence. Knowing what is true for you and telling yourself the truth will support engaging conflict as the invitation to create something better that conflict really is. Showing up with your power and your presence, trusting you have power within the conflict, is how conflict becomes an opportunity to make something better.