The best way to create conflict? Try your darndest to avoid it.
Most of the conflict in our lives falls into three categories:
– Self-made (because when we try to avoid conflict, we create an unspoken tension)
– Self-driven (then, because we created it, we think it’s real and we have to manage it)
– Self-prophecies (in managing it, we create the outcome we try to avoid: conflict)
In reality, most conflict isn’t real. What we THINK will happen rarely ever happens.
We spend all our energy trying to avoid the conflict and the problem, which then just leads us right to it. That’s because our brains don’t understand a negative, so it just barrels us right towards it. You know this already. If you say “let’s save money, we won’t go out to eat for a month,” then every night, you’ll be itching to pickup sushi. The brain has no way to process a negative thought, so it just removes that negative thought. It thinks “I want to save some money, so I won’t go out to eat for a month” means “I want to save some money, so I go out to eat for a month.”
I am a (mostly) reformed people-pleaser. It’s a practice. I’m never fully reformed, because we have conditioning coming at us every minute of every day. We don’t want to be a burden, so we walk on eggshells (only to be a burden by doing so). We don’t want to rock the boat, so we don’t say what upsets us (only to find ourselves angrier than ever, with no outlet in sight).
The way I handle conflict? By doing something about it.
Most people are trying to avoid conflict, instead of embracing truth.
When you have clarity around what it means to protect your peace and your heart and your reputation, then you will feel courageous and confident in handling conflict – at home and at work – and you’ll make sure the people around you are supporting you (not suffocating you).
The problem with avoiding conflict is that we create MORE of it by trying to avoid it – and more than that, we actually make it WORSE by avoiding it.
Worse for ourselves, worse for the people around us, and worse for the people we’re avoiding.
It makes sense, though, why so many people fear conflict. We live in a volatile world – people are up one day, down the next, and we never know what’s going on with other people. People pretend everything’s fine, showing highlight reels of their lives, but we never see the real people underneath it all. And if you’re honest, chances are you rarely let people see the real you underneath it all, either.
It feels scary to be real – to tell the truth and to be honest.
Being vulnerable means allowing someone to see your emotions, and that’s scary because there aren’t a lot of people we can truly trust in our lives. Your inner circle is a representation of what you hold most dear to you, but that circle won’t necessarily get you out of the cycle of fear and conflict avoidance. Those people want to protect you with every fiber of their being, so often, when a hard situation comes up that they’re afraid for you, they’ll tell you not to worry yourself with that conversation – but all that gets you is more tension, more conflict down the road, and more worry and anxiety.
So, today, I want you to consider whether you have someone in your life who walks you through HOW to handle perceived conflict. And if afterwards, you think you don’t have anyone, then be reminded: you have me. We can do that together. Always. A 90-minute session together will fix you right up, give you a mini-plan of action and the scripts to copy/paste, and help you get over the hump of fear.
Instead of avoiding conflict, head towards it: with love, compassion, and respect.
In order to get an outcome we want, we have to redefine the outcome we expect.
For example, when we have to have a “hard conversation,” we often create scenarios in our head about what we THINK will happen, which just gets us stuck in the “what ifs” of a conversation that hasn’t even happened yet. Thinking about things that don’t matter and getting sucked into the tiniest details about things we know nothing about yet keeps us stuck and anxious.
So, instead of getting stuck in the “what ifs” and the “shoulds,” try reframing them:
– Turn every “what if” into a “how about” (i.e. what if it does wrong vs how about this instead)
– Turn every “should” into a “want” (i.e. I should let them talk first vs I want to talk first)
– Turn every “but” into an “and” (i.e. but if they say this, then I should say that into and if they say this, then I will know that the conversation is over)
Try these. See how they work. And if you want help from an unbiased, gentle, loving Human who has no personal stake in the outcome, hiiiii – I’m here. Schedule a call.
We all want to avoid conflict – by preventing it *and* by resolving it.
I don’t remember a lot of conflict in my younger days. I was 8 or 9 before it really hit our family. The conflict I do remember was actually from other family members – people who would show up at our house at 6 am, and my mother (who did not like this), refusing to open the door sometimes. 😅 It wasn’t always pretty.
But you know what didn’t happen? She didn’t avoid it – she handled it right on. And what I learned from those interactions is that conflict is embedded in the poorly communicated expectations that we have of others and the ones they have of us.
When I learned about my Human Design, one of the things I realized right away was that my mom and I were awfully similar in how we believe people should behave. She didn’t mince words, and I learned not to mince mine, either. It was a pretty special feeling to be validated that it wasn’t just conditioning, but by DESIGN that we were supposed to shock people out of their little reveries. We both got immense satisfaction for standing up for ourselves. And I’m still doing it today – it’s a practice.
Often, we want to stand up for ourselves, but don’t, because we’re afraid we’ll forget something important, and not be able to clap back in the moment. Well, we’re never perfect because that’s just not possible, but it is certainly something we can always improve, and it never ever hurts to try. Protecting your peace, your heart, and your reputation takes just a bit of clarity around what you actually value: what people and projects and pay matter most to you, and what boundaries and expectations you want to have of yourself and others. The hard decisions take care of themselves when you have that clarity. That’s what I’m here for – to help you get it, and to get it FAST. You don’t have to act on it right away. Awareness is most of the solution.
Every single person I’ve ever known and worked with has struggled with conflict. Most avoid it like the plague. And for good reason.
They didn’t have a PLAN. They didn’t have the support, the resources, the skills, or the tools to know how to handle conflict, much less WHY they were trying to avoid it.
Most people think they’re avoiding discomfort. But in reality, when people avoid conflict, they’re avoiding TRUTH.
The way to get to the truth isn’t through avoiding it, thinking that the intellectual knowledge is enough. We need to reconnect our intellectual to our emotional knowledge. To allow ourselves to feel like success and satisfaction and peace and wonder and surprise are POSSIBLE. And in our work together, these won’t just be possible, they’ll be PROBABLE.
Society wants us to avoid conflict. It wants us to have unrealistic expectations of how good life can actually be.
It wants us to spend all our precious time and energy and money holding on to clients and work that aren’t good for us anymore. Society wants us to be a cog in the wheel.
But I don’t want that for you. Or for me, for that matter! I want us to handle conflict head on, because most of perceived conflict is fake. I want us to have wild and amazing ideas of how great life can be – to dream and to make the moves we need to make in order to see that dream come true. (I live on two continents! Who would have EVER believed it was possible?!) I want us to only bring the right people and projects into our sphere, and to earn the right money for that exchange of talent. You are not a cog in the wheel, and neither am I.
You have two choices:
- Do something about the conflict you think is waiting for you on the other side of a tough conversation, or,
- Keep pretending your truth isn’t real, and continue to feel a ripple of anxiety underneath the surface in everything you do.
I know what will happen if you do something about it – even if you just have a 90-minute call with me: you’ll feel BETTER, RELIEVED, and more READY to make the moves you know you need to make. I have only a few slots left for spot-coaching in March. Book it today, so you’ll be ready for it then. There’s never been a better time than now.
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👋🏽 Hi, I’m🌞 Sheila! I’m a human first and a title second, just like you. I want to help you make your next BIG decision. Supported by Gentle Accountability, that starts with resetting expectations about what you think you can have and deserve. It’s time for you to create your own Joyful and Thriving™ life and career!
#whatwouldsheilasay #shedsaydowhatyouwanna 🎶
