Many of us have a dread of confrontation, in some cases because we felt unsafe when the adults around us fought when we were children. 

Our minds are constantly checking our current experiences against our experiences from the past, for similarities.  This is a natural biological process, which helps human beings to think faster.  However, we don’t have a reverse mechanism.  We don’t have a system which compares our now experiences to our then experiences and says “This is how that situation was different”.

 

There’s no little voice in our brains which says “But hey, I was a child then and answering back was bad behavior.  I’m an adult now and standing up for myself is proper behavior.”

 

Sometimes it is necessary to raise issues of others’ behaviour, and the outcome’s best when there’s no blame or power struggle.

 

Perhaps your parents’ way was to insist they get their way … but that’s not the most effective method of living in the NOW. 

 

Effective communication means negotiating and continuing  talking until a compromise is reached … change occurs.  

 

Listen as much as you talk … and when you do talk, try to do so without blaming, accusing or even suggesting the other person was wrong.

 

Nobody’s wrong and nobody’s right : or everybody’s both wrong and right. We need that positive and negative energy to survive. 

 

Most confrontations occur when we’re trying to convince someone that our opinion is fact, but thoughts and opinions are NOT fact – everything’s open to interpretation and everyone’s interpretation is different.

 

People don’t have to agree with us, for us to be right.

 

Negotiate  to get what you need, but try not to waste energy in a battle for the “winning” position because we’re all winners, deep down.

Neomie Da Costa 2008