Do you have conflict in your life?

At one point or another, everybody has some sort of conflict in their life. This could be internal conflict where there is a discrepancy between our needs and our desires or between our goals and our fears. It could be a conflict about our spiritual values and the tradition in which we were raised. Or it might be conflict with other people.

Looking at today’s world, it is easy to see lots of conflict and it can be difficult to keep from being pulled into the energy, sometimes without knowing that’s what’s happening. Whether it’s the conflict in the Middle East or our political conflicts in this country, it seems there’s enough to go around. I’m not going to address these outer conflicts here since many others are doing a good job of that. I want to talk about conflict on a personal level.

The more active you are in the world, the more you are trying to accomplish something, the more conflict you will seem to attract. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some conflict can help identify weaknesses in our plans or it could help us gain greater clarity about our goals. Like most things in life, it’s how we handle conflict that makes the difference in the outcome.

Here are a few basic ideas about how to handle conflict.

First, don’t deny that it exists. Identify the conflict or you can’t make a decision about how to handle it. Sometimes it’s easy to pretend conflict doesn’t exist even when it is staring us in the face.

Next, decide whether or not you need to do anything about the conflict. Like stormy weather, sometimes conflict will resolve itself and our best course of action is to witness or ignore it. This can be tricky and requires us to be honest so we don’t just ignore conflict and hope it goes away when the truth is we need to deal with it.

Third, if you determine action is required, be brave. Decide what needs to be done, draw up a plan of action, and deal with the conflict.

This sounds simple, I know. I also know how we can get caught up in conflict and either perpetuate it by not dealing with it properly or by dealing with it emotionally. Ignoring conflict, especially the internal kind, when we need to deal with it isn’t productive. The three steps above will help you decide what is true for you. If you need help dealing with conflict, don’t be shy about asking for help: we all need it sometimes!

Living in Grace and Ease

Krysta