What is conflict zen?
August 12, 2008 ·
What does it mean to move toward conflict zen?
It means you know how to keep your balance or regain it in the face of difficult conversations that typically knock you off center.
It means you don’t keep adding new communication and conflict resolution skills to your repertoire if what you need more is the ability to access the good skills you already have when you need them most.
It means knowing how to gain clarity about a conflict situation…what it’s really about, for you, and what most needs to be discussed to clear the air and get back on track together.
It means learning what workplace or personal conflicts deserve your attention, time and energy, and what ones just increase your burden needlessly.
It’s about softening your hard edges if you tend toward the aggressive (in places that’s not so helpful) and strengthening your courage if your preferred method of conflict resolution is avoidance. I call it making peace with your inner conflict junkie or your inner conflict coward.
It means learning how to unclutter your conflicts so that the most important things don’t get crowded out by conflict crap.
I’ll be writing about each of these in the coming weeks. What would you most like to know about any of them?
Odds and Ends
I’m considering offering one of my Conflict Zen retreats in New England in late fall. If you might like to attend the two-day retreat, please drop me a note so I can assess interest levels for that time of year. I cap the retreats at 20 and they usually fill up a month or two in advance.
Hi Tammy!
A quote by Walt Whitman came to my mind when I read your opening question about what it means to move towards Conflict Zen. It is actually a quote I read a couple of years back when reading Whitman for a class, yet only started to appreciate shortly after attending a conflict skills seminar that you held on campus (which I still consider a personal watershed). Whitman asked “Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed the passage with you? ”
Without conflict resolution and navigation tools, many of us can’t even begin to appreciate Whitman’s reflection. We don’t find our conflict zen. We’re blind. Banging against the same walls, inside the same box, practicing the same behaviors. Most importantly, we miss out on the greater life lessons these situations offer and lose sight of the larger opportunities they offer. Personally, professionally, spiritually.
Hurrah to CZ and Happy Tuesday!
Linda
Linda, it’s so lovely that you quote Whitman, with whom I fell forever in love in sophomore year of college when I read Leaves of Grass. It’s the perfect quote to be an addendum to this post and I’m deeply grateful you took the time to share it.
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