Do you have any unresolved conflict with someone you love?
Often we stay stuck in conflict because of our need to be right. We cling to our view of things and can't open up to other ways of looking at what happened.
The counterintuitive way to resolve conflict is to be humble and surrender your needs.
Choose to be gentle. Starting a conversation with gentleness decreases the chance it will escalate to conflict.
Choose to surrender your desire to be understood, validated, and agreed with.
Choose to initiate owning and apologizing for what you did intentionally and unintentionally to cause harm.
Check your heart and surrender your resentment. Whenever it arises again, all it takes is a prayer of surrender. Don't feed the story you are telling yourself that grows your anger and hurt.
Forgiveness is more powerful than being right.
Hold onto your value and honor theirs.
Seek to understand how the other person thinks. Learn their story. Connect with their fears and wounds.
Feel their pain.
Connect with their heart and their highest intentions to love you and be loved by you.
Is this a risk to be hurt again? Yes. Is it worth it? Love would not need to ask.
The solution is often simple, not easy. Lay down your power and love.
Quotes
"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."
St. Francis of Assisi
"Hate no one; correct some, pray for others, and some you should love more than your own life."
"Our influence will be determined by the level of our self-sacrificing commitment to our neighbors and our willingness to see things through even when things get hard."
Jon Tyson and Heather Grizzle in A Creative Minority
Questions
Do you need to surrender your need to be right?
Do you need to go first?
Endnote
Life is too short to focus on what divides you. Above all, seek peace.
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Live wisely,
Josh
