5 Conflict Resolution Techniques

It's unbelievable. Think about it. We don't teach conflict management training in elementary school or middle school or high school in North America in any meaningful way. What we say is, be nice or, that wasn't nice. We don't teach conflict resolution. And we know that. It's like, oh, no wonder we suck at repair in relationships. Repair is resilience. Repair is resilience in a relationship. What do I mean by that? Well, we think of, like, perseverance in terms of resilience. I'm like, no. In relationships, it's repair. The ability to repair conflict after it happens. To say, I'm sorry, to apologize, to accept apologies, to think, fix the situation or understand. Like, this happened. We didn't want that to happen. Let's try this next time. And allowing the ego to fade out of that. To be able to say, I'm sorry, to be able to say I was wrong, to be able to say, you're right, to be able to say, you know what? We didn't want that. Together without the hatred or the blame is everything Denise said this morning. She says it's so important to apologize for the other, to accept that apology and for the two of you decide to move on. I love that. Right? It's like, okay, apologize. The other person's gonna go, I hear you apologizing. I appreciate that you're apologizing. Thank you for owning that. What can we do better next time so we don't run into that? And moving it from problem focused to solution focused, Moving it from blame and upset to the next thing. That's so important. That's what I mean by repair. People have to learn how to repair when they mess up together. And you have to anticipate we're all going to mess up together. Right? I mess up all the time, but I'm so personally in all areas of my life, but I'm the first to apologize. Oh, I didn't see that. I didn't anticipate that. I'm sorry that happened. Oh, I see where you're coming from. Okay. Got it. Understood. And it's like that repair, like, intrigue. Maybe it's because I'm a people pleaser. I want everyone to feel good after an argument, like, right away. I'm not a steward. I can't remember anything negative that happened last week. Maybe it was the blessing of rattling my brains too many times. My memory sucks. But I just don't care to hold anything above anybody. It's like, okay, it happened. And my thought is always, we didn't Want that. We didn't want that because it's about the relationship, right? We didn't want that fight. We didn't want it. They didn't want it to go that bad. No one wanted get in the screaming match. And we always say, oh no, you don't understand my spouse. They want to scream, they want the argument. Actually they don't. They just lack the education and the perspective of how to do it differently. No one wants to be in anger and wants to be in vitriol and wants to argue and wants to be belittling and condescending and awful. They literally have never been trained on a better way. They're literally unaware or ignorant of another way. And it doesn't mean they're a bad person or they're stupid. It means they haven't had that training. Like it's a really struggle. I know for many of you in personal development land, right? How many of us like can't believe that people don't understand basic personal development stuff, right? And we get frustrated with them. But a lot of people have never, you gotta understand, 98% of this world has never had any training on mindfulness, wellbeing or relationship improvement. Zero training. Because in school all we taught them was to memorize a bunch of stuff from a bunch of old dead dudes, right? It's like we, we are not teaching people how to do peopling. So you can't get mad that a 30 year old person doesn't know how to resolve a conflict. They never had any conflict management training. Like, it's unbelievable. Think about it. We don't teach conflict management training in elementary school or middle school or high school in North America in any meaningful way. What we say is basically be nice or that wasn't nice. We don't teach conflict resolution. And when you know that, it's like, oh, no wonder we suck at repair. Because what happens is, here's how you know when someone is really trapped in life, their ego won't let them repair. Their ego has to hold on to the bitterness and the anger. Their ego has to make the other person evil and wrong and terrible. The ego makes the others always to blame. Always the awful, always just the stuff the ego traps. And so now the issue is you're trapped in your ego, but the ego wants to condemn everybody. Again, cancel culture or vilification culture where they're just this terrible person. They said the wrong thing, they made a mistake. It's okay, by the way, that you get upset about it. I'm not here to Say we should all be Polynesian. I get upset about tons of things. It's the question of, can you repair it? When you get upset, when you get too upset, when the argument goes sideways, when your energy together sucks, can you repair it? Can you say, you know what? I know our energy sucked together. We didn't want that. I'm sorry, for my part, I love you very much. And the other person go, I accept that. I didn't want that either. I love you very much. Let's go get a pina colada. I'm just saying there's ways to repair. Pina coladas are always good on our department. I'm just saying there's ways to move beyond things. And I hope that makes a little light because, listen, I know this is serious topics, but I love this stuff. I want you to have deep, meaningful, loving relationships. But you can't ever. If you don't repair the stuff as you go, not repair you five years, every 10 years, if you need to repair it, you're gonna tell all the people. I go, you got 48 hours tops to repair. Which I believe is super generous. I used to teach. I used to teach you get four hours to repair. And I was very well educated by some marital therapists, being like, well, that's not everyone's style. Some people don't go sit away. But if you sit on it for more than 48 hours, you have to understand their memory. And your memory has now coalesced against something being true. And the longer you wait to repair, the more what you believe to be true is solidified and calcified. And it's harder to change a perspective or to let go of that. Right? It's calcified. It's hard now. It's harder. It's more fluid in real time and in the moments and hours afterwards to being defined and released, the longer you hold it on because you. Some of you know this. Some people are holding on to stuff that happened to them. 20 years ago. I remember going back to a high school reunion. I was talking to a friend, and I think it was our 25th and 25th. 20th was talking about something that happened in high school. And the way they were talking, I could not believe they were still so upset about it. Now I. In my mind, thank God, I thought, okay, well, that was traumatic for this person. I have to understand that. But if there's still bitterness, hatred, anger, but also, most importantly, judgment against others. Now we're trapped in the ego and we need some help, because that's the difference Maker, like, we can have something that was traumatic, but if it's still in that place where there's vitriol and judgment against others, that becomes very toxic in our own mindset and we got to deal with that stuff again. Sometimes that takes therapy to learn to repair those things. But in motion with your relationships, I'd love to set that 48 hour rule for you. I personally am a believer. I came up in different culture. I came up in the never go to bed angry thing. Go to bed, like repair, resolve, coordinate love. Like let it go and go to bed. I know that's not true for everybody. So maybe you got to eke it out in that next day. But I would say if by the end of 48 hours you haven't brought up that you're upset, that is a weakness in your communication style, not something to continue holding against them. We must be more explicit when we're upset with people and let them know. I would say nine out of ten things that I do to upset Denise, I have no clue and I don't think is a big deal at all. But the 1 out of 10 she tells me, I'm like, I'm an idiot. I'm sorry. Explicit communication is the most important thing in all of repair. All of it. You must say it. You must not hint at it. You must not be passive aggressive. You must use the words to describe exactly how you felt and what your request is for next time. Describe how you felt, not describe what they did, describe how you felt, and then make the repair request for next time. Next time that happens, can we do this? Next time that happens, can you consider that next time, what could we do? And I think that's really important. Really important, Sam.