Fight OR Flight; Attack OR Evade; Right OR Wrong; All OR Nothing; Win
OR Lose - all are a form of what we can call "The Philosophy of
Fear and Confrontation." When we believe that a potential outcome
has only two possible alternatives we come from a place of scarcity thinking
and invariably add a good deal of stress to the system being addressed
and limit what is possible.
In every interpersonal conflict both sides wind up wounded, albeit
one side perhaps more than the other. Whenever a person feels that you
must be wrong in order for me to be right, we invariably denigrate not
only the other person's point of view, but their overall character as
well. We move away from attacking the issues at hand, and get involved
in attacking each other. Arguing between right and wrong is often simply
an excuse to prove myself somehow superior to you. "With my superior
insight, with my superior intellect and knowledge, with my superior position
in the world, I look to show you how your perception of reality is incorrect." When
I think of you and your opinions as being somehow inferior to me and
my opinions, it is no wonder that you are not willing to agree with the
opinions I put forth. In order to agree with my opinions, you would have
to be willing to believe that you are somehow inferior to me.
When engaging in conflict resolution with others, staying locked into
grappling between one of two possible outcomes requires that we both
shut down our ability to notice additional alternative realities. When
two individuals are locked into a confrontational mode of exchange, both
parties to the conflict lose the possibility of acquiring information
that might offer generative solutions that either side has yet to think
of. We lose the possibility of understanding that in some important way,
our limited range of thinking tends to make both of us somehow "wrong." Or,
to say it another way, we fail to realize that "We are both, both
wrong and right, at the same time." We lose touch with the fact
that given new sources of information, both of us might come to a different
opinion.
Often, the first step in successful conflict resolution requires that
you acknowledge that your philosophy of fear and confrontation limits
your ability to notice how a different way of thinking and a different
way of using your body, would lead to a much wider field of possibilities.
For the average person, the more you feel attacked, the more you will look
to defend. The more you look to defend, the more you narrow your field
of vision, tighten up various muscle groups, and limit the flow of blood
and oxygen in your system. And guess what happens at such times. When my
adversary notices that I am preparing to defend, he perceives instead that
I am preparing to attack him. What does he do in this instance? Why the
very same thing that I am doing! He tenses up and prepares for the worst.
In this moment of entering into mortal combat we get swept away by the
vortex of fear and confrontation that is being generated by the both of
us. When we react from this place of "high alert" on a regular
basis, we quickly wind up weakening our immune system, and severely limit
our ability to defend ourselves from the onslaught of physical and emotional
disease. In Aikido this leads us to say that "The best defense is
no defense," which is another way of saying "The less defensive
you are, the better able you are to defend yourself."
About the Author
Charlie Badenhop is the originator of Seishindo, an Aikido
instructor, NLP trainer, and Ericksonian Hypnotherapist. Benefit from his
thought-provoking ideas and a new self-help Practice every two weeks, by
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Life Coaching. You are also invited to learn more about the Seishindo
approach to Anger
Management issues, which draws from the wisdom of Aikido as well as
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