Changing the world one conversation (or blog post) at a time

A lot of the people around me want to change the world. My mediation students and faculty colleagues do and that’s what led us to the conflict resolution field. A lot of my clients do, as I tend to draw folks and businesses high on the social responsibility scale. A lot of my family and friends do, since many of them are artists, mediators, social workers, and higher ed folks, all working to change the world in their own ways. I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who care about leaving the world better than when they entered it….something that feels pretty darn hard in the U.S. these days.

I think it’s one of the reasons I was first attracted to Liz Strauss and her blog back in early 2006. I think it’s one of the reasons we reached out and connected with one another, and I interviewed her for this website. And it’s one of the reasons Liz remains one of my most pleasurable daily reads…she inspires, she builds dialogue, she makes me think and feel.

Some of you already know Liz well, because I met you through Liz. For those of you who don’t, I’ve been puzzling over how best to share Liz with you, because so much of what she writes is relevant to those of you who visit here. I’ve decided to do what Liz invites her readers to do: Take the conversation she started, bring it back here, and continue it. So I’ve picked five of Liz’s posts that I bookmarked, commented about each, and connected them to a bit of what I’ve written in the past:

Surrender Dorothy…Visible, Valuable and Mighty explores the courage–not the weakness–to lay down the defenses you’ve set up to protect yourself. I care that courage and surrender are two sides of the same coin because they’re intimately related in conflict resolution:

• Conflict? What Conflict?
• 7 Fears of Confronting Conflict

Ask for What You Need ponders how simple it is just to go ahead and ask for what we need. Liz is right: It is simple. And yet a lot of folks find it hard. In relationships, you may not ask because you believe, mistakenly, that if there person really loves you, they’d know what you need. Uh oh. Danger, Will Robinson! And in negotiations, women may not ask for what they deserve because of socialization:

The Women’s Advantage
• Salary Negotiation: What Women Should Know

Get Some Perspective challenges us to reconsider the stories we tell ourselves by exploring them from outside our own point of view. The stories we tell ourselves are so powerful…they become The Truth the longer we tell them, when really, they’re just narratives we’ve constructed. The ability to get out of our own perspective is not only life-changing, but can also be life-saving:

• From Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones

Give Someone Perspective considers the common mistake of turning “what ifs” into “what awfuls.” I see this mistake lived loud in clients’ fears about confronting a difficult conversation. Catastrophizing tends to make things worse and the conversation is rarely–especially with the right preparation–as difficult as anticipated:

• Should I Confront that Conflict?
• Stepping Up to Difficult Conversations: Fear Is Normal

Knowing When Not to Listen invites us to tune out certain kinds of conversation that don’t do much for making the world a better place. I love this post and its title because dialogue-builders like me tend to be a bit harpy-ish about good listening. Liz has reminded me that what we’re listening for is what matters:

• What We See Depends on What We Look For
• It’s Not How Well We Talk, It’s How Well We Listen

How am I changing the world? One conversation at a time, because peace building begins in our own homes and our own workplaces. And you, how are you changing the world?

Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.