What's Your Narrative: The Set up, Confrontation and Resolution!
Conflicts are like oxygen. We breathe them into our lungs. It's how we know we're still alive. We have battles, wars, romantic breakups, divorces, children custody battles, estate confrontations, secrets and opposing interests. Live long enough and you'll soon discover for yourself, the rising and falling of human actions. The ones you'll very well experience and those that you'll read or hear about.
Conflict is either a past or present circumstance or future unknown. Sometimes the ending of a good romantic relationship. The breakup of a company. It's truly amazing because every good scientist, strategist, auditor, historian, or movie producer, usually can predict with some form of accuracy, the likely scenarios of life's unfolding events. But how do we simply avoid the gamut of these awful things, we don't want to occur?
Sometimes we're advised to get a good prenuptial. Other times we've had children out of wedlock. Even our own wedding vows say for sickness or good health or poverty or wealth. Sadly, it's highly impossible for us to avoid most conflicts. Divorce is a further sign of the ambiguities of life. In fact, I remember reading in the Atlantic, breaking up is financially hard to do when the job market is in tatters. An uptick in splits' means people are getting confident about their financial futures. Maybe this means the same for November stock splits too. There were 20 stock splits for this entire month.
No pun intended, we cannot avoid certain things that will occur. We can successfully plan and strategize the best possible scenarios to approach these more tense situations or conflicts. One way is to be more comfortable with them occurring. Because it's always possible to confront the unpleasantries of life events, in a way, that doesn't incite or cause more damage or harm to others.
In this case, making a firm decision to do or not do something is paramount. Keep in mind resolutions don't always mean peaceful or written agreements. Because sometimes we still decide to go to court or war after the peacemaking process. But the resolution process is a necessary first step, to further determine: intent, resolve, decision, aim, mutual interest, individual interests and mutual aspirations. It's also an overall good strategy to validate your own conflicts through conversations and then test what resolutions will work. People who do not talk through their inexactness, stay in their unresolved conflicts. There are no stupid conflicts. Every conflict is a cry out to understand others. So, everyone needs to be heard at some point.
Nonetheless, if you can come to a mutual agreement, why waste the time and resources making those unwanted messy matters much worse? The mental duress that comes from unresolved fights, arguments, disputes, and the monetary costs for defense, is never ever worth it. Most people tend to walk away with momentary value(s) that will mean absolutely nothing to them in their future. And, many more times you'll get much more of the direct blame, for destroying, damaging, harming, frustrating and hurting people, and not ending your disputes and wars peacefully. Self-awareness and the general awareness thereof, resolves conflicts.
People get a divorce and fight over materialistic items and end up living in a shoebox. Did you forget you have to pay the expenses for your lawsuits, minus your anticipated court monetary awards? There are other court related expenses too. Human misunderstandings are not the judges, or your lawyers fault. This is what tends to happen in courts. People litigate theirs mouths dry and their pockets empty. They simply do not listen. And, why as a caring professional and conflict advocate, it's so extremely disappointing for me to see so many disputes go unsettled everyday and end up somewhere in the courts. Also, keep in mind there are no such things as stupid conflicts. A conflict means you have a misunderstanding. It is a cry out for help. You need to make a difference and listen. Judges can't help you understand the person(s) you've had the misunderstandings with.
Avoidance, not listening and remaining completely silent, might be the best cover up there is and disguise for many of our personal and work problems. However, our human emotions are much more trickier than that. As the saying goes, never feed the bad wolf. The battle is always between two wolves hidden inside of us. One is purely vexed with evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is always much more caring and good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
Therefore, we must become more aware of our negative feelings and their quick reactive nuclear responses. The end results of more consciously working to identify your hidden or known conflicts are: 1) creative problems solving, 2) constructive interpersonal interaction, 3) relationship building, 4) respect and constructive empathy, 5) positive emotions, 6) abundance thinking, 7) values and integrity, 8) self-awareness, 9) self-management, discipline and control, and lastly learning to address your own problems, 10) complete mastery of dealing with those negative feelings and obtaining a resolution to them.
Additionally, let's look more closely at this complex word resolution. The word resolution is a noun form of a verb. It comes from Latin resolver, which specifically means to loosen, to release, disperse, to melt, to pay back, undo and settle. However, let's not focus too much on the pay back part. You know the eye-for-eye sort of thing.
The bottomline is when a conflict, or problem or mystery reaches its full impact, or boiling point, the undesirable situation has to be undone. In fact, if we decide not to seek resolutions to our problems, we might fall directly on to our faces. The same thing can happen, if we run around for too long with our shoelaces untied.
And, whatever your undesirable situations might appear to be, solving a problem is not a debate on beliefs. We solve our problems by facing our differences. So, whether you're the cooperative or the real assertive type, I strongly recommend getting more use to daily conflicts. Because believe it or not, conflict is highly necessary for problem-solving and effective communication.
Here a few ways people often deal with their undesirable situations, or otherwise human conflicts:
- Accommodation - don't rock the boat. We mistakenly believe our problems will resolve themselves. It's like the bully at school or in the office that won't go away.
- Avoidance - I've often observed teams slowly collapse using this conflict strategy. It can turn into a passive-aggressive long silent war of unknown proportions and numerous casualties. Most importantly failed projects.
- Collaboration - it is the best way to confront the bullying. Working together to solve our problems together. It creates mutual solutions to find a specific solution that serves your needs, as well as your team, including others. I think it's the best way to serve the needs of an entire large organization or company.
- Competition - this is highly common in most office settings. Sticking like glue to your one-sided ideas, biases, opinions, and conclusions, no matter what. In fact, it's usually a poor defense to protect an imbalance of power or positions within organizations, corporations, partnerships and marriage. We also may sometimes compete to make ourselves feel more brilliant, powerful and intelligent. However, competition may never bring forth problem-solving solutions, or any peaceful outcomes. Competition between spouses and employees keeps the status quo of conflicts. Remember, there's no "I" in team.
- Compromise - when you give up something to come to a solution. However, this may turn out to be a bad decision, if you're always giving up something you want and others aren't willing to sacrifice anything.
The above are conflict styles. Knowing the way you prefer to handle your conflicts is important. I also recommend SMART goals:
S - is for specific
M - is for measurable
A - is for attainable
R - is for realistic
T - is for timely
Don't learn to pretend to solve your problems. If the resolutions you craft, draft or scribe aren't SMART they will never work out, as you have planned them. We must be clearly much more realistic in strategizing successfully to meet the objectives of our complex problems.
We cannot write peace accords with hammers and nails. No problem in this world is ever insurmountable, impossible, and impractical to solve. Therefore, never assume everything requires a hammer and nail. Buildings are empty without peaceful collaboration. Resolve your differences and disagreements. Ask your questions. There are no right or wrong answers. And, feel free to exercise your full freedoms and tell your own narratives.
Undray Veranda Moore, The Mediator
"Purpose leads to wisdom. Youthful passions lead to conflicts. Those who are more wise will deal in peace. They've become master craftsmen of their own purpose" Undray Veranda Moore, The Mediator.
"Don't have friends, if you can't handle a conflict" Undray Veranda Moore, The Mediator.
"Those who have survived the worse, are those who have resolved their confrontations wisely. No relationship is without conflict" Undray Veranda Moore, The Mediator.