Mind-Manual

Resolving Conflicts

This is about finding the root cause of arguments or disagreements. In this way, this is a little like a problem-solving heuristic. This is not about how to actually conduct yourself in an argument, how to “win” an argument or what have you.

In general, two or more reasonable people feel strong emotion about their positions because of an unseen disagreement. This is my first assertion, in general, once reasonable parties in a conflict understand the true cause of their disagreement, they can begin to make peace with it and/or work towards a negotiation, compromise or win/win situation.

My second assertion is that arguments are never about the things that provoked the argument.Â

Arguments are about emotions. Always. You don’t have an argument or fight without emotion, there’d be no reason to if no one’s feelings were hurt. So, both parties’ emotions in mind. And understanding is the real key to resolving conflicts, or just about everything in human communication. The principle in action is understanding.

I don’t think I need to repeat what I’ve found in most every communication book I’ve ever read, such as not finger-pointing, trying to be civil, taking a break, etc. By the way, taking a break may be really hard in the middle of a fight, because your adrenaline’s pumping and you wanna keep going, but do it. Another good tip to remember is that you should feel comfortable with AND should be able to sincerely appreciate the other person in the middle of a fight. A simple, “I know we’re having a disagreement right now, but I still care about you a lot” can do wonders.

The “heuristic” is that arguments are about differences in one or more of these three things, in order of easiest to trouble-shoot to hardest:

1. Interpretation of events. You think he wasn’t paying attention to you on the phone but his cat just died. You interpreted the event as saying, “You’re not worthy of attention.” or something along those lines and he was actually totally numb. This is the sort of thing where you get really, really mad thinking about something but then the person comes by and tells you it was an honest mistake, or purely circumstantial. I’m sure you’ve been there. If you find no help at this level, stop talking about events or “you always do that”. Don’t dig up events from the past that are similar to the current ones, except to examine them for the following things. Go to the next step totally.

2. Differing values and differing interpretations of how those values are expressed. Say, my highest value might be comfort–both yours and mine–while yours is absolute truth. So, I would feel ok telling you a little inconsequential white lie while you might feel betrayed.

Sometimes its not values, but what those values means to you. You say I don’t listen to you, while I think I do. After this back-and-forth, I realize that for you, “listening” means to be totally engaged in the conversation and empathetic, while for me it is hearing the words, understanding them and being able to respond to them, but not necessarily with any sort of emotion. So, I might not be very empathetic, but I can tell you verbatim the last few sentences you said to me.

3. Different mental models. This one is harder to trouble shoot, because you have so many of these mental models. Interestingly, in the past two steps, you’ve been troubleshooting mental models already (ie. of the event or of values) and now you’re moving to different ones. This can require a bit of creativity, but some good questions to ask are:

• “What different assumptions about our relationship are they making than I am?” I may think that in our relationship as a coworker, its totally appropriate for me to call you at home, while you may not. This question can be rephrased and perhaps answered better this way, too: “For someone in this sort of a relationship, what should they do?” The someone in this sort of relationship makes it less personal and more objective for yourself to answer. The “should” helps reveal your own values and mental model.
• “What different assumptions about the current situation do I make?” I may think its totally ok to come to work in chinos while you may think that I should dress up a little bit and that gets into an argument. Kinda stupid, I know, but that’s ok.
• “In general, what mental models apply here? Is it about how a relationship should be, a person should be or something else?”

Hope this helps. I had to make use of this model recently and I found it handy, so I thought I’d share it with you. This is a problem-solving model, rather than a general communication one. Have fun!

Further reading is suggested in the Recommended Books page, at the bottom.

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A Quantum Leap in Intention-Manifestation

Two years ago…

I lost two bikes, one on Friday and one on Monday, to theft. Looking back on it, it was a rough time for me, so I’m now considering this proof of IM.

Last Friday…

I decided that I was going to get a new bike, and put out the intention “successfully”, ie. detached from it totally.

Monday…

I was exiting out of a campus building and looked towards the bike racks and saw one of my bikes locked up. I stopped walking suddenly and became temporarily speechless (something that doesn’t happen much to me–to be sure, it didn’t last long). After a few hectic phone calls, the guy who owned it now showed up and told me he bought it online off craigslist.org. After talking to him, I told him it was my bike and that I’d like it back. Long story short…

Thursday (today)…

After over two years of my bike being stolen, it has come home and is resting in my basement. Welcome back, Luna!

Since seeing my bike on Monday, my belief in IM has gone up quite a bit (not quite absolute yet, but getting there, if this keeps up). Since then I’ve also gotten a new part-time job. It’s not that consistent but it pays a helluva lot better than my current job, and its at the same place. I’ve also experienced a few other bigger synchronicities.

The big lessons? A few actually:

• Don’t “try”. This is a tough one for many people to grasp cause we try to control and consciously force and will things to happen. Successful IM is not about willpower or force, its about putting out the intention and then detaching from it. Let go and trust. Read the chapter called the Law of Least Effort in Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Secrets of Success for info on this. You can find that chapter online here.
• With IM, there’s essentially two parts, which are the wanting and the allowing (or expecting, or believing). If you add up the wanting and the believing, they have to reach a certain threshold for manifestation to occur. Say the threshold is 5. The wanting is at 4 (ie, you really, really want it, which is what most teachers of IM teach, such as Abraham Hicks, Steve Pavlina, etc), while the believing is at a 1 (lots of doubt), that adds up to 5 and thus manifestation can occur albiet slowly. So, you essentially have two options: increase the wanting energy (by putting a lot of emotion into it) to make up for the shortfall in the allowing area, or increase your allowing (by reducing your resistance). It seems that wanting is an additive process (so, you add more wanting and emotional energy) while allowing is a subtractive process (you remove resistance and thus create allowing).
• My preference is for removing resistance and improving allowing. One benefit of this is that it allows me to become a full “Allower” and because this allows me to get things that I don’t really, really want, but would like to have (say, a big screen TV). What are examples of resistance? Fear (subconscious or otherwise), doubt, worry or anxiety of any kind, limiting beliefs, etc.
• You also allow more when you’re feeling better, which is also why the Hickses recommend this. The Sedona Method, and I believe the Silva Method also prefer this method, which is about removing resistance and improving belief, respectively. Other tools for this include journalling, meditation, practicing non-attachment and–the thing that really did it for me–acceptance.
• By acceptance, I don’t mean necessarily condoning whatever it is, but just stop resisting it. Accept the bad stuff as well as the good stuff. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is about this sort of thing. Accept what IS, as it IS, without judgement. Accepting my negative emotions and my resistance just sorta causes it to dissolve, allowing manifestation to occur.
• I made it my monthly focus last month to learn more about IM, so I read a whole bunch of books. This month was supposed to be a focus on financial betterment, but IM was going so well, I continued with it. I’ve been reading Michael Losier’s The Law of Attraction (very easy to understand book, I highly recommend it to someone who’s just coming to this stuff) and the Hickses Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teaching of Abraham, as well as The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. Maybe exposing myself to all this different stuff helped, so I’d recommend it. I got all those books out from the libary.

Hope this helps! I have a few kinks to work out (mostly in the limiting beliefs department, I feel weird about intending for any sort of contest prize wins and the concept of money without personal sacrifice is still a problem area, but I’ll work it out), but I really feel like after trying for a while (which, again, trying “hard” doesn’t really work), a dam has opened up, and honestly? I’m scared. I’m scared of my own power. I’m also sorta stuck. If you can have anything…where do you start? I also don’t know the limits of this sort of thing. I still feel like I’ve got about 60% of this thing down, though, which is the heavy half.

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