Dealing With Conflict

Do you know that feeling you get in your gut that tells you something is wrong? That gut reaction that comes up when you are around someone and you feel as though they are not forthcoming about their feelings about you? Or maybe you feel like they are not telling you the whole story. Maybe you feel like they are laughing or talking about you when you aren’t around. It is always important to trust that feeling. It is your natural defense mechanism alerting you that there is foul play going on in the situation concerning you. But the question is, what do you do when you get that feeling? How do you handle it? How do you protect yourself from the threat that you are being faced with? How do you respond when action is taken that confirms your gut instinct that something is wrong?

I have certainly been faced with this situation more than a couple of times in my life. However, only a few times where I was left to my own ability to reconcile it within myself as communication was simply not an option. So I am going to share some of the lessons I’ve learned throughout the process, as I am convinced that I am not the only person who has been faced with this situation and had to cope with this issue. I have found that the main source of empowerment is to change your way of thinking about the person or the situation. If you feel trapped or stuck, that is going to perpetuate that trapped feeling as you navigate the conflict. If you can find a way to shift your perspective to one of empowerment, you can begin to regain your power in the once seemingly hopeless situation you find yourself in. 

While listening to an Oprah interview with Byron Katie discussing her book titled, Loving What Is. Katie was talking about this same notion of changing your thinking, specifically when it is in contrast with close friends and family members and what they think of you and expect from you. I was instantly inspired while listening to the interview because it made me think of a situation where I received the most heartbreaking feedback from someone that I was genuinely trying to connect with. These debilitating comments leveled me to my core and stopped me in my tracks.

After the experience, I did a lot of introspection on how I believed I had failed. Now, the first thing I was realized was that I felt judged. That helped me to understand that I was behaving in a very reactive manner. This was in contrast with the behavior I desired to portray. I wanted to demonstrate a position of confidence in myself and my choices that I was making. Truthfully, I was caught off guard in many ways and I tried to react in the best way I could, but I had not yet developed the skills to handle the situation in the positive way I would have liked. Considering the depth of angry emotion being projected toward me, I’m not sure it would have changed the outcome, but I would have felt better about how I was handling myself at the moment. One thing I learned is that sometimes we are always doing the best we can with where we are at and that principle, by default, applies to the adversary in the situation as well.

One of the principle lessons I took from the Byron Katie interview was her take on the fact that an act of defense is the equivalent of engaging in war. I certainly felt that applied in the situation I was referencing above. It makes sense though, that the mere act of reacting to the adversary is thereby engaging in battle with them. What if you chose not to react. Let’s say you opted to simply ignore their taunts. If they cannot engage you, they cannot battle with you. Now they are merely battling with themselves. 

The lesson here is to remember that YOU CANNOT CONTROL OTHER PEOPLE. You cannot control their thoughts, you cannot change their thoughts about you. But YOU CAN CONTROL YOU, YOUR OWN THOUGHTS AND YOUR OWN ACTIONS! 

It seems like such a simple concept, but I assure you, remembering this in the heat of “battle” is life-altering. It allows you to regroup, regain your footing, retake YOUR POWER OVER YOU! In my situation, I realized I was allowing someone who truly knew very little about me, who had taken little to no initiative to know or understand me and I was giving them the power to make me question who I was as a person. The truth is, they can think whatever they want about me as a person and there is nothing I can do about it. 

Let’s examine the facts. The individual in question never asked or sought to know me, so their opinion is merely based on just that, their own opinion of me that can only be based on assumption, hearsay, and the minimal interaction they engaged in with me. I, on the other hand, have known myself my whole life. I am intimately familiar with my shortcomings and my strengths, the great successes and epic failures that I have experienced and learned from. That feels like a stronger ground to stand on. It was harder to accept that I would not be able to convince this individual of my worthiness of love. Then it hit me, I already know I am worthy of love. If they do not choose to partake, that is their choice and it absolutely has nothing to do with me, even if they would desire for me to believe that it does. It is my choice to assess and reject that notion based on my own experience engaging with the individual.

So the next time you feel your gut radar go off, always remember to trust it. Next, analyze the situation, remove the emotion it is evoking in you and review the facts. From there, you will begin to see more clearly and it will become easier to regain your individual power and transform your thinking. This will allow you to more easily choose not to engage in battle in the trivial effort of trying to change someone else’s perspective of you and focus more on your own perspective. This is where the real source of empowerment begins to reveal itself as you begin to discover that you are no longer controlled by other people’s thoughts and actions. You are free to be yourself, adhering to your own principles instead of other’s impossible expectations that were designed for you to fail in the first place. When you realize this, you can begin to release the adversary’s powerful hold on your mind and grant them the freedom to choose their own thoughts. You, in turn, become free to choose your own way of thinking about yourself, forgiving the adversary acknowledging that they are entitled only to control their thoughts based on their experiences in life, not yours. You can finally take a deep breath, and let it go!