00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 197, "Connecting Through Conflict." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. So glad to have you with me. Just a couple of things Just gonna make a little announcement: I actually got married last week, and this for you would not be last week. But for me, this is last week. Mr. 90-Days number three. Go figure! I figured out some stuff. Next week I'm actually gonna be talking about that experience, my last 90-Day experience. 

00:54 

So if you like that kind of stuff, you won't want to miss next week. Some of you may have known that if you get my Friday email then I talked about it last week, the day that I got married, I came out with some information on it. So if you're not getting my email, what the heck, come on! Right? This is how you can get it. You can go to my website tanyahale.com and go to the "contact me" page. And if you scroll down just a bit, there's a place where you can sign up and then every Friday, well usually on Friday, sometimes on Saturday and Sunday, but generally Friday morning, you will get an email from me. Meant to be read in about a minute or less, just small and short, but some just some good information to just kind of help reconnect you with the kind of person that you want to be,, and what we're moving towards and what we're working for here. Which is really cleaning up our relationships with ourselves and cleaning up our relationships with other people so that we can really step into the kind of connection that we want in life. And it's just something that I became really passionate about the last few years as I struggled with this for my entire marriage, all 24 years of my marriage. And I got out and I was like "I don't get it. What didn't I know? How could two people not figure this out, two good people?" It was such a struggle and I really started to search and really started to figure things out and now I feel like I have tools that help me step into this marriage in a completely different place, of a much healthier place. And I'm going to talk about one of those tools today. 

02:32 

So today we're talking about connecting through conflict. So a lot of people will say, I hear this all the time, "I hate conflict. I don't do well with conflict." We have this idea, and I think rightfully so, that conflict is a negative thing because it's always associated with negative behaviors like fighting and yelling and that kind of stuff. But I want to shift our understanding of conflict a little bit. I want to shift our definition because I think it's really helpful to look at it a certain way. When we put conflict in the circumstance line, conflict would become neutral. And what I want to identify is that how we think about conflict is key because then that's what creates our feelings and our actions and our results. So let me put this in a thought model for you so that you can see how it works. 

03:35 

So in my circumstance line, if I have conflict, and my thought is "I hate conflict," what feeling does that create? For a lot of people, probably anxiety. The actions that can come with anxiety can be we avoid, we back off, we give the silent treatment, we might attack or accuse or yell or blame. We do all these things to protect ourselves, right? And the result is that we hate how we show up. We show up contentious and we don't like that. So notice that the thought "I hate conflict "results in the fact that we don't like the way that we show up. We never feel good, when I show up in that action line that I just gave you, avoiding, backing off, silent treatment, attacking, accusing, yelling, blaming, right? I never feel good. I do not like it when I show up that way, right? So our thought always creates our result. And in this way we can see that the thought creates the anxiety, which creates those actions, which creates the result of not being happy with how we show up. And this is why we hate conflict because it feels horrible in the result line. We show up horrible and we don't feel good, all right? 

04:52 

So what has happened is that the conflict has become difficult contention, okay? It turned into contention. It separates us. It causes us to put up walls and it breaks down the connection that we ultimately really seek in every relationship that we have. The big idea behind relationships is that we want to connect with other people and when we move into those kinds of actions, we are breaking down connection. And when we feel that contention, we will have feelings such as anger and  frustration and annoyance and irritation, right? We get these and none of these feel good. They don't, they're not rejuvenating, they're not energizing, they don't feel good to us. 

05:42 

So what I want us to do is to look at how we view conflict. And I want us to see conflict as being more neutral. If we're going to put it in the circumstance line, it has to be neutral. Which means that it would just be something that could be proven in a court of law; it has to be a fact. So the definition that I want us to look at with conflict is that it's "two people who have two different opinions." Or I guess it could be two groups or something, but for the sake of ease here, "two people having two different opinions." And if we talk about it being an opinion, neither person is right or wrong. We have opinions based on our experiences, our formal and our life education, our beliefs, the things that we were taught growing up on, all these experiences that we've had. That's what creates our opinions. So if this is how we look at conflict, okay? Conflict is merely two people having two different opinions. Let's put that in the circumstance line. That's neutral. Two people having two different opinions, neutral. Our thought might be when we hear the other viewpoint, "that's an interesting viewpoint." The feeling that that can create is curiosity. The actions we engage in when we feel curiosity can be that we ask questions. We seek for clarification. We really listen to understand. And then the result line is that we then understand their viewpoint. 

07:21 

So notice again that the thought, "that's an interesting viewpoint," creates the result. We understand their viewpoint, right? So we get interested in it and it creates understanding because we get curious and then we ask the questions and we follow up and we listen to understand. And when we understand their viewpoint, that feels amazing. Now notice that I didn't say we agree with their viewpoint. We don't have to agree with anybody's viewpoint; we can still have our own while also understanding someone else's. This is what feels good, and this is when we begin to understand that conflict, having two different opinions, does not have to lead to contention, but rather it can lead to connection, which is a deeper understanding of one another and a more emotionally intimate relationship. So most of us would not equate conflict with intimacy, but this is part of rethinking what conflict can be, because the potential for intimacy is so much greater when there is conflict that is dealt with in a healthy way. In fact, I would even dare say that to get to the deepest levels of intimacy, conflict is actually necessary, because when we learn to manage our thoughts around conflict, two different opinions. and not feel threatened by the other opinion, we can actually strengthen our relationship and create healthier spaces in which we coexist. 

08:56 

So, how do we learn to manage our minds around conflict? Let's chat about that for a little bit, okay? The first thing we have to do is to create awareness around our thoughts surrounding the conflict. Now, this is always gonna be the first space that I'm gonna take you to. Let's create awareness around what's going on. Let's see things that we're not seeing before. Let's pay attention, right? This awareness comes as we put it on our radar and as we start to look for it. So, I know that one of the biggest indicators for me in the past, especially when there has been conflict, is that I would feel threatened. And for most of my years as a person, if someone had a different opinion, I thought that it meant that we were at odds or that I was wrong and they were right, or I was right and they were wrong and I hated being wrong, right, like we all do, or I felt that they were insinuating that I was stupid or not as smart as them. Now, I want you to notice that I made the different opinion mean something about me. So, one of the things I've really worked on is not making it mean anything about me and normalizing conflict. 

10:11 

Of course people are going to have different opinions. People don't have a different opinion because they're trying to attack me. Their different opinion has nothing to do with me and my opinion. All of our lives are completely different and we all see the world from a different angle. The world is really not divided up into right and wrong. Two people can have two different opinions and it doesn't have to mean that someone is right and someone is wrong. Sometimes they're both right when looked at from their own unique angle and it doesn't mean anything about me if someone has a different opinion. So I have learned to pay much closer attention to when I get that tightening in my chest that makes me breathe a little more shallow. This is a sign that I am not seeing conflict as neutral, right, that I'm feeling like it's gonna be something. So I start getting that tightening in my chest. Or I get the really defensive spinning in my brain that can sometimes make me feel like I'm seeing tunnel vision a bit, like my peripheral starts to get a little bit dark. Or I might feel the hotness that starts in my chest and works up through my neck and my face. It feels a lot like shame, right? I know that when I start getting these feelings that I'm moving into defensiveness. I'm starting on a path of a previous pattern of thinking where I put anyone with a different opinion at odds with me. Now I will say that this does not happen to me very much anymore because I've done a lot of work on it, to become aware of it and to do it, but I remember very clearly when this used to be my go-to, okay? 

11:56 

So the first steps are learning how to become aware of the signs that you are uncomfortable with someone having a different opinion. Look inside your body. How does it feel when that happens? What does your brain start to think? What's going on, okay? And then we want to consciously choose a more productive thought. Something that moves me out of defensiveness and into understanding. And so the thought that I used in the previous thought model that we did was that's an interesting viewpoint, but we could also use different thoughts like this. "Huh, I want to understand why they believe that." Or "I'm curious how that works in this situation. "Or "I want to understand them better". How about, "what can I learn about this that I don't know already?" And even, "they're smart. I want to know what they know or understand that I don't." Those are just some examples of how we can take a conflict neutral in the circumstance line and how we can have a thought that's going to move us into seeking more understanding. 

13:08 

Okay, so there are so many thoughts available to us so that we don't feel defensive, but instead we can move into that curiosity and into that desire to understand. And when we start to engage with this place of curiosity, then we can really start to understand the heart and the mind of the other person. And what happens when we understand someone else better? We gain a greater appreciation for them. We have more compassion for their point of view, and this creates greater connection. Conflict, two different opinions, is the perfect opportunity to create connection because it creates an opportunity for us to understand the other person at a deeper more intimate level. Generally when our relationships are easy and always fun, we don't have a real tight connection. We don't have that tough conversations that help us to get to know the deeper desires and motives of the other person. Riding a roller coaster or snorkeling or going on a fun sightseeing tour or watching a great movie is amazing and fun and we like it and it's and it's good. But it does not engage us at the emotional level that a deep conversation about someone's fears and hopes and dreams will. And conflict provides us with the opportunity to delve a little bit deeper into the person we love, to see them more for who they really are, to know them at a level that requires vulnerability on both sides. This requires that we create a space for them to be themselves. Even when, and maybe especially when, it's different than we are. It means that we see their differences and we can love and appreciate their differences. It means that we see them. This doesn't mean we have to agree with their opinion, but we can respect them enough as a person to make a safe space for them to be themselves without feeling threatened or feeling shame. 

15:22 

And when we engage in vulnerability with someone, willing to be seen and willing to see them, intimacy is created and that develops a greater connection. So when we can choose to move into seeking to understand the other person better, seeking to understand their opinions, their viewpoints, where they're coming from, when we understand them, we love them better. We create that connection. And this is how conflict can create that that deeper connected relationship that we all desire. And that we innately crave because we're humans. It's what we are built to do, is to connect with other people. 

16:09 

Alright, my friends, that is it for today. I hope this was helpful. If you're finding these concepts helpful, please take a few minutes and share these with other people and then you can have conversations with your friends about it. And you can discuss how it works or you can have conversations with your spouse about it or your boyfriend or girlfriend or your siblings or whoever. Share these concepts and talk about them, discover them for yourselves and discover deeper than I go of how this works for you. That's what sharing these concepts can do: creating conversations. And I hope that you're taking opportunities to do that. If you are ready to move into coaching with me, you can do that on my website tanyahale.com. There's a place that says "free consult" or something like that. I don't remember exactly. But listen, coaching is an amazing experience that allows you to see yourself and allows you to create that awareness that we need to move into the better relationships, the cleaner relationships that we want. This is what coaching offers us. An opportunity to have someone else help you see the things that you're not seeing. 

17:29 

I was working with a client on that just earlier today about the whole reason that she has jumped into coaching. It is because she saw something. What we talked about last week, totally implemented into her life this week and it changed a relationship with a daughter. And this is what we're talking about. I can see things because of my training that you're not going to see. And I can help you with that. And I can help you clean up your relationships and help you just engage with the people that you love on a deeper, more intimate level. So check it out. It's an awesome, awesome opportunity. Alright, my friends, that is it. I wish you all the best this week, and I will talk to you next week. Bye. 

18:13 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to TanyaHale .com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.