[Opinion] On Predicting the Future

You can’t do it.

Neither can we.

Human beings (all of us) spend a lot of time generating a lot of anxiety, about what will happen tomorrow, what will happen next, or when this thing we’re doing now will all be over.

We can’t help it. Our biology has us wired for fear and anticipation of the next thing over the horizon. But, we believe that the work of conflict is for human beings to overcome their biology.

In our modern, conflict ridden culture, we have the tendency to mythologize the past, as if the people who lived then were somehow less intelligent, less forward thinking, less analytical, and less worried about the future. This orthodoxy of nostalgia is a poison, particularly in the context of a conflict. When we mythologize the people and situations of the past, because the future is unknowable—and thus scary—we hand over power to the worst impulses inside of us.

However, there is a way out, but we have to do a very scary thing first: We have to jettison the orthodoxy that mythologizes and infantilizes past decisions, people, and situations and realize that we will, in turn, more likely than not, be mythologized and infantilized by future peoples as well.

Pride and vanity—in our accomplishments, our technology, our knowledge—are pathologies of the current age. In the age of the present, people elevate themselves over the populations of the past, and become anxious and fearful about how they will be judged and categorized by people yet to be born. The humbling thing to realize is that such pathologies are no more pervasive in people now than they were in people of the past.

Pride and vanity—along with a courage deficit and a need for safety—go a long way toward ensuring that conflicts we thought were over—in our families, our organizations, our societies, our cultures— continue on into the future.

Humility in the face of past, faith in the face of the future, and peace in the situations of the present, lead to not worrying about the future, rather than expending mental, emotional and spiritual energy on trying to predict it, control it, or prepare for it.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[ICYMI] Stories We Tell Other People

The stories that we tell other people in our lives (the cook, the waitress, the kids, partner, the co-workers, and the judge) tend to be of a different variety.

They tend to be “me” focused (as in “Can you believe that THIS thing happened to ME!”).
They tend to be really focused on convincing other people of the rightness of our position (as in “I’m a [insert positive adjective of your choice here] person, I don’t deserve this! Don’t you agree?”).
They tend to be structured to imprint over other people’s emotional content that they are generating about us and the story that they are hearing (primarily by using emotionally laden words, phrases, vocal tones and speech patterns).

The stories that we tell other people about the conflicts in our lives are focused around figuring out who’s on our side and who isn’t. Not about what was right, what was wrong or what was out of our control in the conflict.

Who are you trying to convince with your conflict story?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[ICYMI] Stories We Tell Ourselves

The stories we tell ourselves about conflicts and our roles in them, tend to have three characteristics in common:

Stories We Tell Ourselves

They tend to be incredibly personal,
They tend to begin with the word “I,”
They tend to primarily be focused on self versus others.

And, with the rate of personal self talk averaging around 300-1000 words per minute, per day, there’s a lot of storytelling going on out there about the world and our place in it.

Is it any wonder that we have such trouble hearing other people’s conflict stories above our own noise?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

[ICYMI] Top 5 Workplace Conflict Stories

There are 5 workplace conflict stories that we tell ourselves.

They are based on the five typical stories that people have always told themselves, whether camped around a fire in the woods, or in the dark watching a Hollywood blockbuster.

Except that these stories have different acts, because…well…they happen at work.

The Quest story typically describes a hero’s pursuit of an unattainable goal. At work, the words that begin this story are “I worked really hard on this project and now…”
The Love story at work typically describes the process of falling in love with an organization, a project or an ideal. At work, the words that begin this story typically are “I really want to get along with everybody, but…”
The Revenge story is the one story at work that is typically mixed up with a lot of other stories. And that’s typical because this story tends to permeate most workplace conflicts. At work the words that begin this story are “I know that I was right and here’s why…”
The Stranger-In-A-Strange Land story is the hardest to identify at work because this story may hide a passive aggressive Revenge story. Sometimes, the words that begin this story are “I don’t know what anyone else is doing here, but I think…”
Finally, the Rags-To-Riches Story (or Riches-To-Rags, take your pick) is the story that comes from entry level and new people in an organization, but to other, more seasoned employees, it can come off as annoying. It typically begins with “I know I just showed up here, but at my last job this happened…”

Thinking about those five stories, how many have you related to yourself (or to others) in order to justify conflict situations and responses in your workplace?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Don’t Wallow in the Gap

Our heads are the most dangerous place to be in conflict.

We tell ourselves a story about the nature of the conflict, who’s at fault (and who isn’t) and what the solution should be (preferably one that benefits us and makes the other person the enemy).

We then plunge forward, tackling the conflict with the tools that got us into the conflict in the first place: we don’t actively listen, we don’t engage emotionally with the other person’s content around and within the conflict, and we engage (happily or miserably) in the gamification of the conflict process.

We temporarily pause the conflict (sometimes for hours, days, weeks, months, years or decades) and call that pause resolution—when in reality that pause represents a “lull” in the conflict conversation, where more content floods the gap.

And after all of those steps, we look around an wonder why our workplaces, our families, our schools and our churches are not “doing what they should be doing.”

This is not a condemnation, or castigation. We have engaged in all of these steps as well, with conflicts between us and other people in our own life. We engage in some of these ways even still.

But there is a way out of the narrative trap:

Break the language: Language = Thought and thought = language. Take a pause and review the words that you use to talk about yourself, about the other party in conflict and about the content of the conflict scenario. Words give meaning and set up paradigms for future behavior and decisions.
Break the trap of decisions: What got you here to conflict isn’t going to get you there to resolution. The decisions, patterns, and behaviors that got you into the conflict you’re in today (and the ones you’ll be in tomorrow) have to be broken through self-examination.
Break the gap: Being intentional about the outcomes you want to achieve through avoidance, accommodation, assertive confrontation, or any of the other choices for responses that you have in a conflict, is critical to avoiding the gap. That temporary pause, or “lull” in the conflict flow.

These tips seem obvious and easy, but if they were, we would be collectively performing them all the time, rather than stumbling through the narratives we’ve built. Ultimately, the way out of the narrative trap of conflict, takes having courage to take the steps in the first place.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] On Courage

The difference between people who “succeed” and people who “fail” in a conflict scenario is individual levels of courage.

Courage is in short supply and always has been since the days of the playground bully and meeting new people once you got off the bus for the first time in the first grade and Mom and Dad weren’t there to hold your hand anymore.

Courage is not about preparation, learning, discipline or even persistence and grit—although all of those skills and internal factors help.

Courage is about not needing external validation from the world—basically, not needing assurances to do the right thing—and just doing the right thing in the first place.

Which is often the hard thing.

In a conflict scenario, it takes courage to confront in a healthy way, prepare for the feedback you will receive about your role in the problem and then integrating that feedback into your worldview, while also giving feedback to the other person about their role in the scenario.

It takes courage to confront a cheating spouse, explain how what they did impacted you and your family and then to listen to them tell you why they made their choice.

It takes courage to address a difficult employee who has little social skills and appears to have even less desire to develop them, and try to find a middle ground to get tasks done in the workplace.

It takes courage to speak up when you think bad decisions are being made in a fraternal, civic, volunteer, or church organization that you disagree with. And it takes courage to hear and accept why those decisions may not be the best for you, but are the best ones for the organization.

Courage is at the bottom of all resolution. Forgiveness is at the bottom of all reconciliation efforts. Labor is at the bottom of all engagement practices, advice and opinions.

So then the question becomes: How much do you really want to grow as a person before you leave this life?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] 3 Steps to Eliminating Hurry

Ruthlessly eliminate hurry in your life.

Many time management seminars and productivity hacks, mobile applications, in-person trainings and coaching sessions, skirt around the core problem at the heart of modernity: There are only 24 hours in the day.

The problem is not that people have too many tasks in their adult lives (we do); the problem is not that people are constantly busy with priorities that don’t really matter to them (we are); the problem is not that people are stressed out, frazzled, feeling like they are browsing through life, and deeply emotionally and spiritually unhealthy (we are).

The problem is that most of what we read, absorb and try to put into practice focuses around moving around the priorities we don’t like, and trying to squeeze one more ounce out of the 24 hours we do have—so that we can do more things we don’t like.

All while telling ourselves the story (in this case, the lie) that “Well, if I just do THIS thing, I’ll have more time to do what I want to do.”

Really, the issue comes down to patience. In our American culture (and if you’re reading this another country, or from another cultural background, this statement may or may not apply to your experience) we value impatience, hurry, and idolize the cult of busyness, over many other areas.

We resent people who appear to have more time than they know what to do with. And we envy in our hearts people with wealth, who at least outwardly, appear to have no worries about time at all, and appear to have boundless energy.

Then, we read the articles on productivity, time management, wealth creation, the “1%” and on doing more with less, searching for assurances that we are right and “they” who appear to have more than us, are wrong.

But, what if we tried three other things rather than just moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic one more time?

Say “no” more…and mean it—“no” to promotions that we don’t really need and that take more time from priorities we said were “non-negotiable,” “no” to obligations that come packaged as opportunities and “no” to productivity and time management “hacks” that don’t get at the core of what we really need. Which is the courage to say “no” in the first place.
Eliminate hurry—don’t hurry. That’s it. Just slow down to a crawl. Take time to talk to people in front of us, rather than the people on Twitter (we are deeply guilty of this one, so we are are talking to ourselves here as well). Take time to drive in the slow lane for a month at the posted speed limit. Do the old things (like writing and reading) that require us to put aside the things that don’t matter (like work) and put in front of us the things that do matter (like self-improvement).
Get active—55% of mobile phone users go online through their phones. Most of this is browsing, shopping and in general, watching what other people are doing. Television used to be the driver for passivity, but we now have a TV/computer/radio in our pocket all the time. But getting active in our own lives requires us to stop watching the escapades of people who are already active in their lives.

Difficulty in balancing seemingly competing demands is the first stop on the road to conflict. For many people, difficulties begin with the management of their perception of hurry, patience, stress, and other people. When we have the courage to ruthlessly eliminate hurry, stress is reduced and difficulties become manageable, rather than events that can derail an entire day with anger, stress, and impatience.

-Peace Be With You All-

[ICYMI] Curating Vulnerability

We tell ourselves compelling stories, where the drivers of the conflicts that move the narrative along, are not us, but others.

We do this for two reasons:

We want more credit for successes and less blame for failures.
We get uncomfortable with tension and discomfort.

In an era of curated reality, the biggest tension is between the realities we choose to show our audiences, versus the realities we know exist inside of us.

Social media provides somewhat of an outlet for us to resolve this tension. However, too many people keep telling the same faulty story, where we are the stars and everyone else is a goat.

In reality though, we are just perpetuating the tension and creating more unreality.

But, what is “real?” Is the “real” person the one that lives inside of us, or is the “real” person the one we display to the world via our endlessly streaming social feeds?

Acquiring authenticity requires us to be vulnerable in ways that we cannot, because we have never learned to be vulnerable within ourselves, too ourselves, and by ourselves.

The leading of double lives are destroying and reshaping the social contract, and the results of that destruction are ongoing and endless intrapersonal conflict, as well as depression, anger, resentment, impatience, and narcissism and so on, and so on, and so on.

Originally published on December 15, 2014.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] No

The word “no” is so compelling because it serves as both a positive and a negative.

We’ve written about this before, here and here, and it never fails to amaze us how much more there is to cover. This is because the crowning question that we asked, from clients to casual observers of our blog and social feeds is: “How do I say ‘no’?”

Saying “no” to an opportunity, a person or a situation is hard for three reasons:

It requires us to articulate the values that we hold dear.
It requires us to make judgment about those values in relation to another persons’ desires and requests.
It requires us to place a potential future best, above a present tangible good.

It is hard for people to say “no” (positively or otherwise) because we feel as though we are letting down other people. And being the social animals that we are, reciprocity and social norming exert a powerful pull upon our psyches, our hearts and even our souls.

The word “no” places a delineating marker between people, ideas, projects and purposes. It segregates, and closes off, even as it opens up other possibilities. This is why rejection is such a hard thing to overcome for sales professionals, marketers and others who engage in the business of persuasion.

“No” ultimately can feel like a rejection of persuasion, rather than a statement of preference:

Preferring the safety of nostalgia over the danger of the new
Preferring the comfort of the present over the uncertainty of the next moment over
Preferring the status quo over a change

What are you saying “yes” to by saying “no”?

Originally published on March 19, 2015.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] Does All This Stuff Really Work?

Yes.

But it requires you to engage and be active, rather than passive.

How many people do you know that are passive participants in their own lives?

How many of them are in conflict with others?

Stuff doesn’t just “happen”(no matter what the bumper sticker may tell you) and active participation in choosing to be empathetic, to be a listener or to be positive is tough.

The family won’t save a person in conflict.
The workplace won’t save a person in conflict.
The school won’t save a person in conflict.
The church won’t save a person in conflict.
The society won’t save a person in conflict.

The only person who can save a person in conflict is themselves.

Originally published on November 24, 2014.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!