One of our realities in this life is that we find ourselves involved in various levels of conflict pretty much on a daily basis. Some of these aren't all that big. The person delivering your newspaper threw the paper in the flower bed instead of the driveway or the porch. You have a conflict, but for most of us, we tend to simply overlook that one (unless it happens on a regular basis). The person cuts you off on the road, and once you've honked your horn and given them a rude look, you've moved past it. These seem relatively minor.
But we're also faced with larger ones. You're sitting down to work on your budget with your spouse, and you disagree on how you should spend some portion of your income. Neither of you is very willing to budge very much. You've got a fairly major dispute on your hands. You may be a little bit less likely to simply overlook this one. After all, you've got some level of interest in what you think and believe. So you may find that you're a little more willing to stand up and fight for your position.
Or, it comes to a matter of parenting, or of care for an aging parent. You feel very strongly about one course of action, and the other person/people feel strongly about a different one. Now you've got a big conflict, and you have to find a way to resolve it. Once again, you probably can't simply overlook this one, and now you've got multiple people who will be affected not only by the outcome, but by how you handle the conflict.
So how would you respond? I'm a pretty firm believer that we each have a "default" way of dealing with conflict. If we look at our life, we'll see a pattern emerging in how we tend to want to deal with conflict. To some degree, we fall into either the category of fight or flight. Now, we can find ourselves in various degrees in each of these, but overall, we have a tendency toward one or the other.
However, that's a generalization. Certain circumstances will often find us breaking out of our default for a variety of reasons. If we firmly believe that one particular action is more "right" than others, we may be more likely to fight for our view even if our default is to avoid conflict. Or, our default may typically be to engage in conflict somewhat aggressively, but we have certain things that just aren't as important to us, and so we overlook them.
How do you respond? In some ways, we have our default. But in other ways, we recognize that every situation is a little different and calls for a different response. As we face that, I truly do think that it's worthwhile for us to think about how we respond to a given situation as we do, and to examine the reasons that we respond the way that we do.
But we're also faced with larger ones. You're sitting down to work on your budget with your spouse, and you disagree on how you should spend some portion of your income. Neither of you is very willing to budge very much. You've got a fairly major dispute on your hands. You may be a little bit less likely to simply overlook this one. After all, you've got some level of interest in what you think and believe. So you may find that you're a little more willing to stand up and fight for your position.
Or, it comes to a matter of parenting, or of care for an aging parent. You feel very strongly about one course of action, and the other person/people feel strongly about a different one. Now you've got a big conflict, and you have to find a way to resolve it. Once again, you probably can't simply overlook this one, and now you've got multiple people who will be affected not only by the outcome, but by how you handle the conflict.
So how would you respond? I'm a pretty firm believer that we each have a "default" way of dealing with conflict. If we look at our life, we'll see a pattern emerging in how we tend to want to deal with conflict. To some degree, we fall into either the category of fight or flight. Now, we can find ourselves in various degrees in each of these, but overall, we have a tendency toward one or the other.
However, that's a generalization. Certain circumstances will often find us breaking out of our default for a variety of reasons. If we firmly believe that one particular action is more "right" than others, we may be more likely to fight for our view even if our default is to avoid conflict. Or, our default may typically be to engage in conflict somewhat aggressively, but we have certain things that just aren't as important to us, and so we overlook them.
How do you respond? In some ways, we have our default. But in other ways, we recognize that every situation is a little different and calls for a different response. As we face that, I truly do think that it's worthwhile for us to think about how we respond to a given situation as we do, and to examine the reasons that we respond the way that we do.
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