Recently, I had the pleasure of delivering a workshop based on the book I co-authored with Judy Zehr Hold On To Yourself – How to Stay Cool in Hot Conversations.
It was a three part workshop, 90 minutes a week for three weeks in a row, and all 10 of us in the Zoom calls enjoyed ourselves! As I dived deeper into the book and organized the workshop into discreet experiences based on the various chapters in the book, I walked away from the workshops with this overarching realization:
To deal with conflict well, it is best if we all simply relax!
I have already seen this play out time and again, in my own life and in the lives of the clients and students I’ve helped transform conflict. It makes sense – the calmer I am, the more I can access the resourced parts of myself for the task at hand.
However, the deeper realization was the link I made to fundamental well-being! Here I am, engaged in a one-year experiment to deepen my relationship with fundamental well-being and I realize fundamental well-being is central to my work as a conflict resolver as well. Fantastic!
In my workshop, I ended up advocating for, and giving everyone permission to, go out and enjoy themselves!
And I mean that in the most integrated way. It’s when we pay attention to ourselves mindfully, when we connect with our breath, our hearts and the present moment that we can land in a more spacious and productive place to start to engage conflict with another.
It was a most exhilarating experience to realize conflict and feeling good can come together for me in one career.
So let’s get happy to deal with conflict!
“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” … Johann Wolfgang von Goethe