Thursday, October 25, 2012

Resolving Conflicts in Relationships (Part 1)


Ever been so frustrated with your partner over a simple disagreement that you could just wring his or her neck?  We’ve all been there – but why is it so difficult to work through these simple disagreements to avoid explosions into full-blown conflicts?
 
The questions is how do we resolve conflicts when they occur, and even more importantly, how do we avoid allowing  simple disagreements, decisions or routine exercises to explode into conflict – whether that conflict be verbal or physical.  It is often-times the unnecessary conflicts that emerge over simple things when multiplied over time that drain our patience and capacity to handle the bigger decisions and issues of life that must be worked through in a productive manner within a relationship.

A few tough, but simple principles:
 
1.   Resist the tendency to become easily offended.
2.   Be aware of the internal dialogue in your own mind.
3.   Remove your own contribution to the problem before trying to correct the other person.
4.   Learn to FORGIVE


Resist the tendency to be easily offended.
We are very often offended by events that occur that have no actual reason to cause offense and that the other person in fact had no intention of causing any harm.  Yet, we allow ourselves to become angry and may even say, “you made me so angry…”.  But, the reality is that no one has the ability to make you angry.  Can you think of a time that you became angry or offended after making an assumption, coming to a conclusion, and then taking an action based upon that conclusion, when the initial assumption was wrong in the first place.  Many, many simple conflicts in relationships begin in this way.

Be aware of the internal dialogue in your own mind.
Once we have made a false assumption and have become offended, the anger and the offense begins to feed off of an internal dialogue in the mind that seeks to justify the false conclusion and the action that we begin planning to take.  You know that you have fallen into a negative internal dialogue when you are in the shower, or driving, or at your desk at work, or anywhere else with no one else around and you are thinking about what someone did to you.  This negative internal dialogue is occurring when you play back the situation and talk either out loud or in your own mind about the situation and how another person should have acted differently.  You must become aware that this dialogue is not productive and actively  bring your mind back to the present.

Remove your own contribution to the problem before trying to correct the other party.
There is rarely a conflict that occurs in which one party is totally right and the other completely wrong.  To truly resolve a conflict, we must first examine ourselves.  I f you only contributed 5% of the problem, remove your 5% before you attack the 95% of the problem that your partner brought to the table.  Look into your own thinking and actions and identify the error in thought, speech or action that you contributed to the conflict and be honest about that first, before you can expect to be heard when you tell your partner what they did wrong to cause the conflict.  This is difficult, but absolutely necessary if you desire to restore a positive and peaceful  relationship.

Learn to FORGIVE
Cultivating a spirit of forgiveness in a relationship is one of the hardest, yet most important lessons to learn in the art of preventing and resolving conflicts. Forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself that allows you to stop the internal dialogue of feeling offended and replaying it over and over in your own mind.  It is a gift that allows you to stop focusing on the other person that you cannot change and begin focusing on the only person that you can change – yourself.  Forgiveness allows you to see your own contribution and choose alternative responses and behaviors that will begin to break old patterns that inevitably lead to conflict.  Forgiveness is so powerful that it is written in the form of a guarantee that , “…if you forgive others, your Heavenly Father will forgive you”.

Michal Muhammad is the founder of Give Life Coaching.  Bro. Muhammad focuses on applying fundamental, spiritual and practical solutions to solve problems within interpersonal relationships, families and other groups of people.
For more on this subject and others, visit my blog at: http://www.givelifecoaching.blogspot.com
Be sure to connect with me on FaceBook at www.facebook /GiveLifeCoaching
and follow me on Twitter at:  www.twitter.com/MichalMuhammad
My website: www.givelifecoaching.com

"I am Better" - The Root of Human Suffering. (Part 1)


Michal Muhammad, Founder: Give Life Coaching


Money has often been described as “the root of all evil.”  But, if we really want to look deeply and seriously into the human condition to pinpoint the root cause of suffering that any and all of us can identify with and immediately begin to change – we have to go deeper than money and look into our own thinking.




Thought always precedes action.  Whether that thought is conscious or unconscious – the thought is first produced in the mind and is then followed by a corresponding action in the physical world.

When we look at the many problems that we experience in relationships, in our families, on the streets, in our communities, between nations, and even between man and the environment – these problems can be traced back to a common thought that is truly the root of all inequity and the basis for the justification of the mistreatment of one human being by another.

Lets take a trip back in time to an event recorded in the scriptures that points to a problem that exists in the nature of human beings.  It is wrapped up in a thought – an idea that – “I am better”.

Recorded in the scriptures in allegorical language is a conversation between God and an angel  who  is referred to in the Holy Quran as “Iblis”, and also in the Holy Bible as “Lucifer”. God is having a conversation with the angels, informing them of His intention to create man as a ruler in the Earth.  God gives an instruction to the angels to give to man the respect and honor due to a superior – and the angels comply – except for one, named Iblis or Lucifer.  When Lucifer fails to give the respect and honor requested of him, God asks, why did you not bow down when I commanded you?  Lucifer’s response was – I am better than him!  I am created of fire, Lucifer says, while this man is created of the lowly dust of the ground.

Whether you consider yourself spiritual, religious, atheist or other, it really does not matter.  The basic truth presented here transcends any particular ideology and simply points to an inalienable fact that exists within the human condition.

This thought that “I am better” looks to find support in numbers and thus expands to “we are better” and becomes the root cause of racism, sexism, excessive nationalism, religious oppression, gang violence, war and most of our problems in family and inter-personal relationships.  This thought that “I am better”, is not passive, it is extremely aggressive.  The thought manifests itself by creating a false psychology and philosophy of superiority in one group, then manifests on the other side of the equation as the false psychology of inferiority in another individual or group.

I am better because I am a man.  I am better because I am White.  I am better because I am American. I am better because I am a Christian.  I am better because I am from the west-side.  I am better because I am blonde.  I am better because my hair is straight.  The list of meaningless distinctions used to justify this thought that “I” or “we” are better, goes on and on.

In the reverse, and equally as damaging is the psychology created on the other side of the equation that manifests a thought pattern that “I am less than”, I am inferior”, or  “I am not worthy”.  Because I am a woman;  Because I am Black; Because I am poor; because my hair is short; because I am over weight – again, the list goes on and on.

This thought that manifests itself as “I am better” on the right hand and “I am less” on the left hand – this false sense of superiority and inferiority is at the root of human suffering.  This delusion on both sides is actually a disconnection or the illusion of being disconnected and separated from God, our inner source of strength, and our connection to the all of creation.

Once we are disconnected, we become weak and this flaw in our nature is easily manipulated to divide us based upon meaningless distinctions.  This flaw in our nature comes forcefully to the surface to cause problems in every relationship that we have.  And we will remain in constant conflict in our homes and in the world until we face this flaw and begin the process of self examination, self analysis and self correction to recognize and eliminate these patterns of superior and inferior thinking from our minds.

More in my next article…

Michal Muhammad is the founder of Give Life Coaching.  Bro. Muhammad focuses on applying fundamental, spiritual and practical solutions to solve problems within interpersonal relationships, families and other groups of people.
For more on this subject and others, visit my blog at: http://www.givelifecoaching.com/blog/
Be sure to connect with me on FaceBook at www.facebook /GiveLifeCoaching
and follow me on Twitter at:  www.twitter.com/MichalMuhammad
My website: www.givelifecoaching.com