If you make New Year’s resolutions, won’t you also consider the “conflict resolutions” below?

1. This year, I will be kinder to others and to myself, too.
2. This year, I will accept the inevitability of interpersonal conflicts and see them as a healthy sign that there is something to be learned about the other person and myself.
3. This year, I will try harder to listen humbly and deeply.
4. This year, I will let go of hurts with grace and with compassion for the other person and myself.
5. This year, I will be grateful for the lessons learned from the conflicts I experience and continue to apply them.
6. This year, I won’t judge.
7. This year, I will be more careful with others’ feelings.
8. This year, I will do a better job of acknowledging and accepting our individual and collective humanness.
9. This year, I will cherish my relationships even more.
10. This year, I will do my best to bring peace to the world in whatever ways I can.

Warmest regards to you and yours, and may your 2016 be peaceful and wonderful in every way.

Picking up on the last Conflict Mastery Quest(ions) blog “Conveying Conflict Messages Passively”, tendencies to communicate indirectly when it comes to difficult messages are not always heard with the meaning intended. This conflict-causing situation can set up a bit of a game that leaves the receiver guessing and assuming, and the speaker frustrated with themselves.

If you do not always say what you mean, what are you preventing from happening?

In an effort to not offend others, some of us say things indirectly hoping the message will be heard. It doesn’t always work and for many, can be a destructive communication that serves no purpose other than to cause undue hurt. That is, the passivity and indirectness is often experienced as dishonesty.

If you tend to be indirect with the difficult messages you want to convey, what are you afraid of?

Sometimes we say “I’m sorry” immediately after realizing we offended another person. It sort of slips out almost in the same sentence as the statement or deed that hurt someone. What happens for many is that such a quick apology doesn’t help to rectify anything.

On the receiving end of someone’s offending statement or deed, what else would work for you rather than a quick “sorry”?

A ‘hot button’ for some of us is when people act aloof – defined by the Conflict Dynamics Profile as “people who isolate themselves, do not seek input from others or are hard to approach”. When this happens we may also attribute other characteristics to people we perceive this way. This includes that they are arrogant, uncaring, snobby and so on. One reaction is to become aloof too – mirroring the very behaviour we do not like. See also Projecting Our Stuff.

In what ways do you reflect the very same ‘hot button’ that irritates you?