I never understood growing up in my family that relationships and connection help us understand who we really are. I now know that when we get triggered by something or someone, including colleagues, family, friends, and a conflict or misunderstanding emerges, it's an opportunity to challenge our assumptions and go deeper.
For example, in our everyday encounters, professional and personal relationships, when we react with frustration, annoyance, angst, dismissal or encounter an uncomfortable body sense within, it is best to pause, take a breath, and ask ourselves, what is really going on inside me? What am I thinking and feeling? What am I assuming about the other person?
By suspending our judgements in the moment and asking clarifying questions of the other to understand their meaning and their situation without presuming, our awareness and insight will improve. Sometimes we can even resolve the situation quickly and move on. Even when emotions are high, we can ask to take a break and suggest circling back at a time when we are calm to re-address the discussion.
By creating a space from the encounter, new realities often emerge. It helps us look at our assumptions and ask if the issue is really important, if there is something to learn, and if there is an opportunity for growth and connection. Instead, when we generate a knee-jerk reactions, stonewall, or give a harsh response, presume the worst, we rob both people of the chance to grow and reach a new level of connection and intimacy.
Conflict is a gift if we work through it with mutual respect and appreciate our different beliefs and pressures. It helps us become more fully human.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968), mystic, Trappist monk, Order of Cistercians, was absolutely on point when he said, "The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
Michelle Waters