Conflict Resolution: When Letting Go Is Key
Inevitably, in business and in our personal life, we will all say things that hurt or offend other people. We will say things that don’t clearly articulate what we really mean. We will say foolish things. We will be incorrect from time to time. Others will also do all these same things to us. All these circumstances boil down to poor communication, lack of communion, and a loss of harmony amongst people. Yet, all these interactions are a superficial aspect of life. Down deep, we all want harmony. We all want peace. We all want to feel our communion with others, with humanity, and with all of life.
Yet, all too often, it is the superficial irritations that dominate our hearts and minds. We just can’t let them go. So often we feel that if we can’t prove our point, we lose. We can find that loss to be degrading, humiliating, and offensive. We need to prove our point and be right at all costs.
Almost always, there is at least some degree of truth in everybody’s point of view. Their perspective may be confused, twisted, or expressed so poorly that it masks what they are really trying to communicate. But when it comes to conflict resolution, none of that really matters. Particularly because people become so charged in the conflict, it essentially becomes impossible for them to acknowledge the other person’s point of view, be it a more obvious truth or a hidden shred of truth. It really doesn’t matter.
More often than not, conflict resolution involves just letting it go. We said or did something that wasn’t appropriate. So did they. That’s called life. That doesn’t make a person, who we once thought was good, suddenly become bad. They are the same person they ever were and so are we. Everyone has something positive to offer, if only we are willing to let go of the superficial and come from a deeper place of wisdom and understanding.
If we can attain that level of letting go, we become wise. We cultivate precious, viable, and fruitful friendships through the years. We gain the respect of others, and equally important, we gain and maintain our own self-respect. Any individual we have a long-term relationship with will disappoint us from time to time. In fact, psychotherapists recognize that inevitably, the degree to which we put a person on a pedestal will, at some time in the future, start to even out and emerge as an equal degree of negative transference. It is as if what goes up must come down. To abandon a relationship every time there is a downswing in the cycle is not a wise way to live our lives. We then end up with very few precious, long-term relationships.
Conflict resolution is all about letting go. Even if we prove our point and convince the other person we are right or vice versa, it doesn’t matter. Conflict resolution lies in a place deep within our hearts, a place that dwells beyond right and wrong, or good and bad. It just means letting go of all that. It means communion: true communication on a level that is beyond up and down, beyond right and wrong.