Conflicts – When Will We Ever Stop?
Remaining calm in conflicts has been the goal of many people. “How do I maintain my calm when I’m boiling from the inside?” is a question I’ve been asked many times. I also meet those people who’ve mastered the tact of remaining calm in conflicts. “I never lose my cool or raise my voice in any situation of conflict”, they say. Both have lost their sanity, in my view. Both have entered the game of clash of personalities.
What is a Conflict?
Conflict is a situation of disagreement between two or more people with a certain conviction or belief. Emotions get charged up leading to a sudden or gradual loss of control resulting in either overexpression (through words, gestures or physical body movements) or forced suppression. This is the nature of the conflict.
When you read the above carefully, where is the scope of calmness anywhere in this situation? You’re a ticking time bomb, waiting for your turn to explode. You could explode even out of turn 🙂. The moment conflict begins, reactions start getting created inside human heads. Slowly these reactions spread and start becoming the predominant emotion. Now, all human faculties are under siege. Either this emotion will break all your defenses and result in the expression of reactions or will remain within the boundaries but will keep lurking at the fringes, waiting to leak.
The Leaks
- Silent treatment is one method used in conflicts. One stops speaking and ensures that the other one knows that they are being ignored. This is not disengagement. In fact this an active negative engagement. Till the time that another person does not get irritated and react, the silent treatment continues.
- Innocent Humiliation is used where you say something innocently to that person in the presence of other people in a manner that reveals the truth about that person in public. This is more like public shaming. The other person is sometimes left red-faced and sometimes this is designed to trigger a particular reaction. Sally has a habit of carrying homemade food whenever she goes out for work. Joe is in conflict with this idea of home food at work. When sitting amongst some clients when they are breaking for lunch, How makes an innocent public remark, “Will you also be joining us over lunch and eat what we eat?” This innocent looking question is a leak, the context of which both Sally and Joe understand. For other people, it has opened a question where they will now ask Sally, why will she not consider joining them for Lunch? or does she have a problem in eating normal food?, or even a question like, are you well Sally?, why won’t you eat what we all will eat?
- Sarcasm is another method that leaks the reactions under the construct of conflicts. A statement by Joe in this case may be on the lines like, “Well, Sally won’t be eating the same food like we, mortals, consume” or “What healthy and divine food have you brought today Sally?” or “Sally, it seems the healthy food has not doing you too well, you seem to be losing the shine that you normally have when you eat the normal food like all of us.”
- Sniggering Jokes is a method where Sarcasm and Innocent Humiliation are combined. This is again done publicly. These are usually the worst of all the forms. If objected to, Joe can turn around and put the entire blame on Sally by calling her oversensitive and further extending this behavior of harassment through jokes. If Sally will confront him he will simply claim innocence and blame Sally of being devious and misinterpreting his sense of humor . This is the most covert form of behavior of people in inner conflicts.
What is better? Expression or Suppression (followed by leaks)?
Why don’t we examine a 3rd method? What if we started working on our own convictions and examined our limitations caused by those? What if we made a clear choice that we will not Dis-engage or cause negative Engagements and each time we experience this, we will look within and overcome another one of our limiting beliefs or convictions?
There are times when you can witness the hardened beliefs and convictions of other people. When you have actively examined your own beliefs and convictions, you kind of start respecting other people for the limitations they live with, so long as they choose to remain within their closed or Ego driven mind. People live with beliefs and convictions. These are their survival tools. Allow them to survive. If your focus will be on how to enhance engagement with people, you will exit the mental situation of conflicts and probably help others do that too.
Do this Now.
Check your behaviour patterns for the leaks above. Work on yourself. You will never be able to remain calm in any conflict, so drop the pretense. Best is to work on your beliefs and convictions so that there are no Conflicts. Life is too abundant and can embrace all of us in all our forms.
Read this blog carefully and allow stimulation of your own convictions and beliefs. Your mind will either accept the above or will tend to question or reject it. Watch your reactions carefully. If you deem fit, share with me and others. It may help someone, you never know 🙂 .
Love
Sameer Kamboj
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🙏🙏
PS: Just fully recovered from the SKC Samarth of 27th April. Will start sharing thoughts with you again, more regularly. Hope you have been doing well in this time.
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Sameer expression as a form of resentment n anger I understand but wat about suppression. Clear me on this.
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Hi Juhi,
Resentment and Anger are the outwardly expressions. Even the Leaks that I have mentioned are the outwardly expressions. But Leaks are caused by the suppression of our emotions. In a situation of conflict, we enter a state of either denial of our emotions and intellectualise that we are “tolerant” towards other people’s views while simmering underneath.
Alternatively, we suppress as an escape mechanism and manage that particular situation by keeping quiet and later leaking our emotions through the methods I have listed.
Hope this clarifies. 🙂
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Sameer this is all about Joe, what about Sally how will she manages her emotions when faced by Joe leaks???
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We have both the Joe and Sally within us. The moment Joe stops, Sally will also know what to do. 🌹
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🙏🙏🙏
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As I sat reading the blog aloud to my mother sitting next to me, I got reminded of all the convictions and beliefs , strong likes and stronger dislikes and the conflicts resulting in days of suffering.
PermalinkI realised just looking into your own patterns and reactions does help you understand the other person much better.
But my mom had a question Sir, how should you respond when anyone inflicts all these ways on you?
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Thanks Jaisika and thanks to your Mom for asking this question.
PermalinkWe usually spend our entire life reacting in different ways to people’s reactions. As we learn to witness our own reactions, our ability to let people be the way they are gets enhanced.
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Interesting insight on keeping quiet during conflicts or being calm !!
PermalinkI think it can be achieved by regularly thinking about it , and practicing it !!
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As you become more aware, you will need your practices to resolve your reactive mind. Glad that this blog helped you in some more ways.
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Good morning..
PermalinkI feel that other than having our own convictions and beliefs, conflicts also happen as we feel that managing our emotions and feelings is the responsibility of others, and when others are not able to do that all kinds of leaks happen..
Is my understanding correct?
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Absolutely correct understanding.
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Sameer, this is a great article. Thank you for sharing. It also explains in part the journey that I have been through over the last few years. Starting with judgement of others (and the feeling of myself being correct in most situations) I moved to a better awareness of myself and what in me triggers my conflicts (in expression or in suppression). Through better awareness, I started noticing my leaks when I supressed and the uncomfortable feeling when I expressed as that wasn’t me either. By understanding the triggers of my emotions I understood my convictions and compulsions better. Through learning how to resolve them, I feel in greater control of my life, experiences around me and deal with conflicts in a much better way as well.
Learning to be aware was an extremely important first step in my journey of reducing conflicts as I was able to understand what in me is the trigger.
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Well Said Abhishek. Awareness is the first step, Consciousness the final one. In between is the journey of reactions and sufferings caused by those reactions and our attempts of overcoming our compulsive reactions.
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Thank you for sharing this Sameer! What a simple explanation of such a complex behavior. I will always remember these leaks in unpleasant situations. In myself and others and the cause too. Thank you!
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Thanks Nisha. Remain aware, always.
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Good Morning
PermalinkMy own convictions – few basic thoughts
1. how do these come into being?
2. Resolution – Do I work on my convictions or Do I truly work on who I am?
3. I understand that the resolution may take longer, once we start working on it. In the interim, conflicts may arise. How should one protect the “work in progress,” yet not engage in another conflict?
🙏
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Mohit.
PermalinkConvictions come through the process of conditioning combined with our tendencies that we carry since our birth. In Sanskrit, we call these tendencies as “Prarabdh”.
“Who I am” can be uncovered only after peeling off the various layers of personas that are formed through the countless convictions.
Living like a work in progress is a far more refined version than the “Arrived” version. Allow conflicts to happen, for they occur inside us. Conflicts introduce us to our inner state. So long as these conflicts exist, we must know that there is work to be done on ourselves.
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Thanks Sir..
but if we feel or we know, that someone is exploiting us. And just to make our life easy should we allow others to do that.
Or we still keep working on our self?
Thanks.
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Namaskar Himanshu.
When you work on yourself, you don’t get bogged down in the pain caused by exploitation, you don’t remain a victim and neither do you blame the one who’s exploited you. You simply gather yourself and engage with the situation without remorse or revenge and do what is right.
PermalinkPeople who are exploiting do so for all their justified reasons, however brutal those reasons may be. Humans have an innate ability to justify every single thing they do.
An evolved person is one who can rise above the turmoil of the pain and then think what is right.
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Thankyou sir.. 🙏🙏🙏
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