You need to adopt THIS mindset and conflict strategy to your RELATIONSHIPS
Brendon argues that treating conflicts as shared problems instead of battles changes everything. Reset conversations when emotions spike, insist on respect, and validate the other person even while disagreeing. These three moves stop escalation and actually solve things.
Chapters
Just think about this the next time you're going to go have a strong or difficult or conflictual conversation with your partner or your spouse or someone you're in relationship with intimately. Imagine if you just said, okay, we have a shared future together. I'm going to respect him or her in this process and I'm going to make sure I encourage them a little bit. If you did those three things, if you entered it from those three frames, a very different energy happens in that relationship. I think this will help you be more intentional and more capable in handling those difficult conversations or moments in your relationship with your friends or your family, your loved ones, you, your team, in such a way that you are better equipped to handle the emotions, to honor the other people and to move through it with a little bit more grace. So that's our job today. If you ask me, Brendon, Help me manage conflict better for the rest of my life. You get three phrases. Here is what they are. First phrase is shared future mindset. Shared future mindset. You know, when we enter conflicts, it's so often we get so myopic. We take things personally and we just want to win. So we want to just crush and trounce the other person and debate them and make them look dumb because our ego wants to be right and we forget we got to wake up with that person tomorrow morning. Maybe that's your spouse. We got to go to work with that person again tomorrow because it's Tuesday. We gotta, you know, see that person again in our neighborhood. We gotta that person who we're about to have a conflict with, they're probably gonna be there again. And once we can realize, oh, I'm entering a conflict, this is about to get, you know, heated up. We're about to have some debate here or you're already in it. If you can adopt the shared future mindset that, oh, we're going to share a future together, I'm going to have to see her again. I'm going to have to work with this person again. I'm going to have to deal with this probably again and again through multiple more projects in the future. Everything is shift. You'll approach the conversation differently, more strategically, more thoughtfully. When you keep the future in mind and importantly, if we're talking about relationship or partner or spousal conflict, somebody who you really love. If the two of you have in mind a compelling future together, you have shared interests, shared goals, shared adventures coming up. If you can always ground your relationships in. In the reality that you're building something together, if that pre exists, then moving into a conflict, you're more likely to resolve it more quickly and amicably. Right. Research shows even just having a couple have a conversation about something they're interested in doing or something good coming up in their future before having them talk out a difficulty makes that difficulty or that conversation of conflict so much more smooth, so much more short, so much less accusatory. It changes everything. Grounding ourselves in the future, I think it's important. The second phrase I would say here is respectful process. Respectful process. How many of you ever been in a conversation in a conflict and you were just trying to be thoughtful and try to be calm and the person you're dealing with was not respectful? All right. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of. A lot of hands raised here in the zoom. At least as we're doing this, it's very, very frustrating. And soon as we lose respect in the conversation process, you know, all is fair game in war. And so it's a very challenging thing. We have to go into conflict situations. But adopt this philosophy overall, I'm going to treat people with kindness and respect, even if they don't treat you that way. For those who don't know my background a little bit, this is a topic I really love. Because if you don't know, my master's degree was in communication studies, and I focus mostly on leadership communication. And I've done a lot of coaching, as you know, over the last 15 years. I'm a certified high performance coach, and over these 15 years, doing it full time every single week. A lot of times I'm dealing with conflict situations and couples or conflict situations between co founders. And soon as it devolves into disrespect, it is 10 times harder to pull it back. It is so much more difficult. And so you'll hear me talk about how you can maintain that respectful stance with your partner or the person you're having conflict with, but also know that the expectation has to be had in advance of the conversation. Sometimes you react in the heat of the moment without stepping back and. And setting the frame for the conversation. As simple as if you feel hooked or triggered, saying, you know, could we talk about this in like, 30 minutes in a much more calm way? I just need to go reset and coming back with the expectation and the conversation. Let's try this again. I want to be more respectful with you. I know that we love and care for each other, or I know that we need to work together, or I know that it hasn't been easy so let's try this again. Let's try to do this with kindness and care for another. And we can solve this together. I know we can. A simple reset into the frame of respect can change the outcome as well. And the third phrase. So the first phrase was shared future mindset. The last phrase was respectful process. The third one is empathy and encouragement. Now, we all know about empathy, right? We all know we're supposed to listen, understand, feel, sense their thoughts and feelings. We're supposed to reflect back how they're feeling and what they're going through. We're supposed to validate, maybe not their beliefs, but validate them as a person. We're supposed to really feel their pain or walk in their shoes. You've heard these phrases before, right? Empathy. People know they should do that. But in conflict, common sense is not always common practice. And that's why we really wreck relationships. And empathy is one of those. Being an empathetic listener. But notice the phrase empathy and encouragement. Do you know what in conflict also goes out the window? I said earlier, what goes out the window? Well, shared relationship and the future. Well, the ego also can't see and validate and praise the other person, which is exactly what they need. We forget because we're hooked or we're upset, or we disagree that the other person is, if you're a spiritual person, a child of God, or the other person has extraordinary potential, or the other person has been through a lot in their life, or the other person is struggling. And we forget that people actually need a lot of encouragement. And you, I know being in growth day, you tend to be the person who is more encouraging in your relationships. We know that from our research. You tend to be the person who's usually more of the optimist or more of the leader position, that you're the person who is supportive of others, more kind of others, and yes, more encouraging of others. But we forget that when we're angry. Who is guilty? Okay, a few of us. Think about the last argument you had with somebody. Did you praise them? Did you encourage them to share? Did you say a kind word? Did you appreciate something about them? Most people don't. They're on the attack. They're on the offensive. They think they are at war and they must win at all costs. That's the ego. That's narcissism. That's. That's sociopathy. You know what it is, is it's saying, I must destroy this person because it's a zero sum game. Either they're evil and I'm good or I'm right and they are wrong. And there is no in between. And what that does is it objectifies the other person into the category of darkness and bad versus recognizing human frailty, human suffering. It strips us away from that common humanity. And if we let that happen with every conflict situation, no wonder we live in a divisive world where it's accusatory, where it's blaming, where it's the worst assumption about the other person. When in reality what we really need to do is remember the human struggle, remember their humanity. Just think about this the next time you're going to go have a strong or difficult or con conflictual conversation with your partner or your spouse or someone you're in relationship with intimately. Imagine if you just said, okay, we have a shared future together. I'm going to respect him or her in this process and I'm going to make sure I encourage them a little bit. If you did those three things, if you entered it from those three frames, a very different energy happens in that relationship, a very different one. So a lot of these themes are going to come up. Shared future mindset, making sure we have a respectful process, encouraging other. This will change everything. Everything.
