D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
May 2008
Giving Peace a Chance
Page: 2The more you develop your listening skills, the more effective you will be at managing many forms of relationships. As you listen more deeply, your ego needs will seem less important and your heart will grow more capacity to understand and care.
You can even learn that it's not all about you! Reacting to disagreements as if they were personal insults just amplifies the criticism and negative-feedback cycle. You don't have to take disagreements personally, or stay stuck in past hurts. When others disagree with us, they are giving us new information that can keep our thinking fresh. Disagreements are ultimately good for relationships, and learning to use them will unlock many of their mysteries.
2. Learn positive communication. Words can be a weapon or a gift to others. Communication can connect people, or drive them away. Your intention matters, but your use of words also makes a big difference in how you are heard — especially if you're prone to verbal habits that convey negative messages and trigger defensiveness (e.g., put-downs, "you" messages).
There are a number of good systems out there for learning positive ways of communicating that minimize conflict and harm. The best-known system is Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication (www.nonviolentcommunication.com), but there are others, such as Constructive Communication by Dennis Rivers (www.coopcomm.org) Rosenberg focuses on considering the other person's needs in your communications, because denying needs is the root of most harmful conflict. It's important to use words that allow people dignity and respect.
3. Step away from egotism. How do you get outside of your own perspective? It requires only working to think from the other person's perspective. Walk in their shoes. What feelings are they feeling? Figure out or find out what needs they have.
The good news is that the work required to get outside your own ego makes you stronger. Stepping away from self-absorption keeps you more aware of how you are really seen, especially your mistakes and limitations. Trying to understand others' perspectives and to compromise with them makes you more flexible and creates energy in your relationships. Having humility about your flaws and limitations builds healthy ego strength that does not need flattery and lies.
4. Embrace change. The human brain relies on patterns to manage our complex lives, but we become resistant to changing our patterns as we age. Patterns play a major role in managing dynamics between people. Many problems arise when we get stuck and refuse to change, because then we are unable to correct negative, stagnant and harmful patterns.
Most people learn a particular style of managing relationships from their parents and stick with it throughout adulthood, where it shapes the quality of their relationships and keeps them repeating their parents' mistakes. To stay psychologically healthy, we must find ways to break out of patterns that aren't working for us, and to choose not to continue the cycle of hurt. There are many tools for that, but all require making a conscious choice to break away from the past.
Change makes you stronger, brings new life to relationships, restores inner balance and even sharpens your brain. Change is a powerful tool that most people are afraid to consider because we are terrified of letting go, even when we're holding onto a monster. The keys to unlocking our ability to change are to try something different, think instead of react, and fight the rationalizations that keep you stuck.
5. Consider kindness. Kindness is the ultimate antidote to harming one another. Though it has been highly admired and valued throughout history, few of us learn much about how to practice kindness. What we do learn is often a superficial version of kindness — pleasing others and making nice with a fake smile, while denying our own needs and desires.
True kindness is simply being open and friendly to others. There is no obligation to be selfless or to give to others, whether street beggars or unemployed relatives. Kindness requires only that we stay open to others as fellow human beings — to look at them and talk to them without prejudice. Then you would give to others under only two conditions: that giving will not hurt you and will not hurt them. This is balancing kindness to others with kindness to yourself, though that balance is tricky.
Kindness should not compel you to give to others when it would hurt you to give. A good metaphor for this is the idea of giving away your raincoat in a rainstorm, which is not usually a healthy thing to do. Generally, you should not put your needs below those of others, because denying kindness to yourself is also a form of abuse. Keep the raincoat and stay dry, unless the rainstorm is not harming you and it is harming someone else, when you might consider getting a little wet so someone else doesn't get sick.
You should also put some effort into considering what is best for the other person, and that may not mean giving them what they ask for. A good example is the lazy student who asks you to do their homework; "helping" denies them the benefits of work and learning.
Another questionable form of kindness is our inclination to protect others from the truth when it would cause distress. This is part of an overall pattern to think that caring always means we should make life easier for others. That impulse may deny others experiences that can develop their skills, knowledge and strength. In general it is kinder to be honest than to support a fragile, false ego or to try to keep things smooth.
Keeping things smooth can be a way to keep people in their ruts and blind to how they contribute to their own messes. Letting someone continue to do something stupid or mean does not help them to be the best person they can be. If you say difficult things with a caring intention and use skillful words, you can help prevent problems later.
Kindness requires looking beyond the surface of what's happening and finding what is ultimately going to work for as many people as possible.
Finding our way to peace: Finding our way out of this mess of childish aggression and angry self-absorption is going to take a lot of work. We have to look at how we each add to this climate that fosters alienation, us-versus-them thinking, and fighting to get our way.
The first step is to look at our own roles in perpetuating harm. Finding our own negative patterns can give us power over how these damage those we care for and, ultimately, ourselves. If we as individuals can get beyond the uselessness of harmful conflict, then our families, workplaces and communities will become more peaceful. Then perhaps even our leaders could discover the folly of conflict and learn how to make peace.