#582: Are You A Conflict Avoider?

Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. I'm Summer McStravik and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. That's right. Hi everybody, it's Summer. And welcome. This is Flow Dreaming. And today, this episode, number 582 marks a pivotal, pivotable, pivotal moment, a turning point yet again in the 13 years long history of this particular show. So I'll tell you some of my thinking behind this and what's about to happen and what you're going to get, of course, in this episode, which is, are you a conflict avoider? We're going to look into that and discover instead how to get our needs met in life. But back up a second. I almost started a new podcast. In fact, I might still. But I thought first, before I did, that I might see what would happen if I began to bring this particular show into its next phase, into its next era. So unlike a lot of people who just hop around and they make show after show and they get tired and they start something else and then they do another one. You know, Flow Dreaming has been going for 13 consecutive years. It means, though, that it's about three or four different shows because I evolve. I mean, I hope I evolve. Geez, hope we all evolve. My thinking evolves, my interests evolve. The stuff that got me excited and I wanted to share, you know, so long ago has changed and so my show has changed with it. And those of you who've been following all of this time, well, you've kind of gotten to see me grow up, right? You've gotten to see me change as well. So we're standing on the brink of another change. What's happening is I realized I have taught Flow Dreaming the principles of it, the basics of it, over and over and over. And I've made some really good core shows, core shows that teach you how to flow, how to get into this beautiful state of ease and no resistance in your life and co creation and really speak the powerful language of the universe, right? That's cornerstone and that, that always informs everything I do the way that I think. But I like to think about all kinds of things. And increasingly more and more I like to think about what are we doing here, how are we living here? How are you living into your life, how are you living Inside the situations that get thrown at you or that you create. So we're shifting, and old flow dreaming is still there. I will still be doing flow dreams from time to time, just not every time. But I will be lasering in on what I hope are kind of provocative questions. Right. Questions that we think about on the odd moment. Why am I here? Let's start with the biggest one ever. No, like today. Today's topic, conflict avoidance. And it does relate to energy and emotion in my particular worldview. But I do know there's also a way we can move past it, move into what happens when you no longer avoid what happens when you embrace, which is really, you know, one of those basic tenets of being in flow. Right. Resistance is futile. The Borg. Resistance means hardship, difficulty. Right. Fight, defense. But when you lean in, everything shifts for you. Everything opens for you in the palm of your hand. So we're going to look at conflict avoidance. And the reason I picked this one is because, just like with all of my episodes, there's usually something going on in my own life, in my own thinking that's got me to the point where I've been stewing on this and thinking on it and again, leaning into it. What do I do with this? Oh. So I realized there's a part of my personality that is severely and cripplingly conflict avoidance, truly. And I realized this because over the years, I've worked really, really hard to actually get rid of a lot of conflict. Right. To go into things, to deal with things before they grow to that next level, to stand up for myself, to say no, to enforce healthy boundaries. And I'm pretty good at it in a lot of the areas where I've practiced it. And probably you are, too, in the areas where you've practiced it. Like, if you've got to take something back to a store, you're like, yeah, you should take this back. I don't care if it's been 324 days since I bought it. You're taking it back. Right? Right. But when it comes to telling somebody you love that your needs aren't getting met and things have to change and you're not going to tolerate certain things, maybe something more intimate. Maybe that's the point where you close up and shut down and you think, how can there be these two different parts of me? Well, it's actually not. It's just that this tendency that's inside of us has been worked through in some areas but not applied to others. So I want to look at what is conflict Avoidance, like, how do you know if you're this person? How do you know if you're even doing this? Or if someone that you love and care about or have to hang out with a lot is doing this? How do you know? And then we're going to move into, what do we do about it? How do we change ourselves, our energy, our thinking, our action around this? So I'll start with a little story this week came to my attention that once again, I had let something in my life grow to the point where I was stewing on it, I was spinning. That's what I call it in your mind when you start to obsess and you go over and over the same thought patterns, right? It's actually an obsessive compulsive kind of situation. We think we're just going it over and over in our minds. But believe me, not everybody does this. Some of us do it a lot. And I notice that if I'm doing this more than three times around a situation, I have fallen into some sort of power leak, some situation where I recognize something is happening that's not to my liking, but I have been unable to take action on it for some reason. And that's when I get really curious, what's this reason? And why do I keep resisting going into this? So in this case, it had to do with somebody who helps me around the house. And I'm not going to be too precise because I don't want to, like, get anybody in trouble or maybe they'll listen to it, but they help me around the house and. And there are things that I need to have done and they just weren't doing them. And I've known this person for a very long time, and I just thought, oh, you know, it's just not working. It's not working. But every time we wanted to talk about it, I said, oh, I can make it work a little longer. I'll just make it work. I'll just. I'll handle it next week. We'll make it work a little bit longer. And it got to the point where I started to get angry. And I thought, why am I getting angry? Why haven't I just said, here is what I need and I'm not getting it right, or here is where I think you're asking for too much from me and I'm giving too much to you for what I'm receiving. We're not in a balanced relationship anymore. And I realized, boom, that's it. That is where I go from being conflict positive into conflict Negative. Whenever I have to disappoint someone, whenever I fear I'm going to hurt their feelings or make them feel bad or unhappy, or whenever I have to fire them or let them go or tell them I'm done with you in my life. Okay. Right. That sounds pretty rational. A lot of us feel that way. But you still step up and you go into it and you do it. As opposed to the conflict avoidant pattern, which is just a little longer. We'll just. We just won't talk about this yet. We'll just wait a little bit. I can handle this a little bit more. And meanwhile, this thing is growing and bubbling. So we can start right away with looking at any situation that's in your life. I bet, I'm just betting dollars on this, that most of us have at least one situation right now where we are avoiding conflict. And we're avoiding the conflict because in our mind, some weird little equation has taken place. We don't even know that we made this equation. But the equation says something like this. The pain is going to be worse than the suffering I'm constantly feeling now, the pain of that moment. And here's where it gets curiouser and curiouser, Alice. We are prioritizing someone else's pain above our own. And sometimes it's someone you're not even that close to. You don't want to tell the student council that, you know, you can't be on the parent advisory board anymore. You're not close to them, but you just can't. You feel obligation. You feel loyalty. You don't want them angry at you. You don't want them retaliating at your child. I mean, it could be anything like this, but that's where it kind of pops up. So I saw this about myself, and one of the first things I realized from my energetic perspective, like I said, we're still gonna go there. Is that the areas that I've worked out over and over again have become easier for me. Not perfect, but easier. The areas that have to do with someone that I'm intimately connected with are the most difficult. Now, it might be opposite for others of us. Right? You can easily tell your friend, your daughter, your husband, whomever, hey, this isn't working. I need something. But telling a stranger that or telling someone at the store, it's like, oh, no, I just won't deal with that. We're all going to be different here. But what I saw is that these intimacies for me created real fear. And I asked why? Well, the energy of it Goes like this in my mind, because I'm empathic, right? I have a natural tendency to put onto other people my feelings of what I think they are going to feel. In essence, I pre feel for them before I even give them a chance to feel. Because in my life, I'm so used to feeling other people's feelings, I factor in what I think they're feeling before they feel it. I mean, it's gotten to that extreme, and a lot of us are like that. So immediately what I'm thinking, that I'm going to take something away from someone I go into, oh, they're going to hate me. Oh, it's going to be hard. Oh, we're going to, like, it's going to. It's going to be, you know, breaking glass. It's going to just be, ugh, I can feel it. Oh, I don't want to feel what they're feeling. So I'm not going to go there. But you see, this has nothing to do with the other person, right? Has nothing to do with them. At this point, it's actually me. It's all inside of me. Because I don't want to feel what I think they're going to feel. And now what they're feeling has become larger in my mind than what I'm actually feeling. You follow? But here's the thing. I might be wrong. In fact, I'm often wrong. And in fact, the situation I just described you, this person who helps me around the house, I felt all kinds of stuff about what I thought they would feel. And then yesterday, I finally took care of it after months. I know. I'm, like, so embarrassed to admit this took me months. And I'm a coach. I lead people in personal power and strength all the time. But you see, I didn't even know I was doing it for a long time. I just kept kicking the can down the road like, yeah, I'm not happy, but it's gonna take more effort to deal with it, right? It's like an illusion, we tell ourselves, until we get to that day when we realize, I'm really angry. Oh, my God, what's happened? So I had the conversation yesterday, and I said, I am not getting what I need anymore. We used to, but I'm not now. And I said, are you getting what you need? And the answer, no. And I just was like, well, gosh, we should have talked about this a long time ago, because my ultimate goal is that we both get our needs met. And it opened up the dialogue, and from there, we have a Resolution, Right. So all of the energy that was building, building, building has now been pulled from this situation and we have a resolution. We fixed it. Still doesn't mean that I won't do this again. You won't do this again. So think again about that situation that you have right now where there has been a buildup and it could be anything. Your boundaries were crossed, right? In my case, my boundaries were crossed. I didn't even know it, though, because I just kept saying, oh, it's not a big deal. I was willfully ignoring, which is one of the hallmarks of someone who puts off conflict resolution. I know something's kind of wrong, but I. If it's not that wrong, it's not that wrong. And we could just let that go a little while longer. So where was I? Right. I still get off on my tangents like I did before. Oh, right. So for conflict avoidance, the thing is, you have to recognize you're doing it, and then you have to recognize that the other person, empathically, what you feel, they may feel, you may be wrong. Just because you've had a lot of experience feeling other people's pain doesn't mean you know how someone else will, in fact, feel. So when this person said to me, I was really upset and concerned and I didn't know and. But yeah, it's not working for me either. I had to switch my whole head around and think, oh, so what I was anticipating, I wasn't right about. I'd like you to think about that in your own situation right now. What if what you are presuming someone else is going to feel is in fact incorrect? Right? Wherever your boundaries have been crossed, wherever your needs are not getting met, wherever you are saying, I'm not going to go into this conflict with you. Let's just start right off the top by, what if you are wrong? What if this person is just dying to talk with you about this, is waiting for you to talk with them about this? Now, let's flip this around. What if this person is not you? What if it's someone else and you want to talk with them and they will never talk with you? You know how that drives you crazy, right? Well, you don't want to be that person, nor do you want that person in your life. So what are the characteristics of somebody who is like this? Let's just back up a second. So I do a lot of research on the Internet. You know, whenever I go into a topic, I'm like, what's already being out there? Where do. Where do I have a different understanding or a different light. And of course I found so much garbage on the Internet, just like Pablum, just, you know, silly basic stuff about, well, to avoid conflict, you can blah, blah, blah, go into it, da, da, da, da. Like, yeah, yeah, we all know that. But I did find one really good article I found on bustle.com. i've never seen bustle.com but I really enjoyed this one because it sums up, like I, I looked at all of their, like, the hallmarks of the conflict avoider. And I said, yeah, I've got about, you know, nine out of 10 of those. Number one, you fear or disappointing, you fear disappointing or displeasing anybody. And I thought, yeah, sometimes I do. I don't like the feeling if I disappoint someone or displease them, I don't feel good. And sometimes my fear of having that feeling is even greater than my desire for my own inner strength and power. That's pretty heavy, right? My fear of feeling that is greater than my own desire for happiness, fulfillment, power, contentment. Which means that I'm actually prioritizing, trying not to feel a negative emotion over prioritizing feeling a way up there, positive emotion. So when I saw that, I went, oh my gosh, what is wrong with me? Why am I fearing that feeling so much? Well, this brings me to point number two. A lot of us have a disproportionate fear of being hurt, of feeling bad feelings. It often comes, frankly, from childhood. And that's another point point on Bustle. If you experienced a childhood where you never saw a good example of conflict resolution, then you don't know that there is a way to resolve conflict that isn't hurtful. So my household growing up, multiple divorces, screaming, physical violence, police coming to the house, abusive arguments that would last hours, hours shouting, door slamming, name calling. It was so rough, right? The only way that I could take care of myself was to shut my bedroom door and then shut my closet door. And that was my little place so I didn't have to hear it or be affected by it. And then when it sounded like things had been quiet for a while, I could go out again. I never saw an example of how things work out. Well, all I saw was conflict is scary. And that is what embedded in me. And I think it embedded in a lot of us. And I've made it a real mission as a mom and a wife today to create a very different model for conflict. And whenever I have a disagreement with my husband now we have Rules. No name calling ever. If you raise your voice, I'm done. Right? Because it sends me back. I'm like, no, we can't raise our voice. We can still talk with one another. We can go through it and into it, but the minute we start raising the voices, no, I don't want to model that for my kids. And the next thing we do is if we fight. This is again, a little tangent, but if we fight in front of the kids, I make sure to say, the kids, hey, Daddy and I work this out. You can come to a resolution. And I feel okay, and he feels okay, and it's resolved. And I'm so glad we did that. Right. Constant positive mentoring. But going back to poor us who didn't get that as kids. We tend to approach every conflict now with extreme wariness and with an extreme sense of, I'm not going to get anything like good happening from this. It's just going to hurt more than what I'm currently experiencing. And this is why we shoulder so much. So, you know, so many of us have built our lives on shouldering more and more conflict and discontent and difficulty, you know, And I talk to you every day because I coach and I teach and of course, in me school and my diamonds, you know, and I have people who say, I'm a real survivor. I can handle anything. And I say, good for you. Let's not do that anymore. That's not something to be proud of anymore. It means you've learned how to handle it, but it also means you expect it. You expect it, and you know you can handle it. So you feel comfortable handling it. I said, let's learn how to handle something else. Let's go into these new areas instead, where you are not constantly called on to be the one who handles it, holds it, shoulders the burden. So you see, you start walking this path. Yeah, we're talking about conflict avoidance, but it goes really big in our lives. It starts to impact all the decisions we make, the kinds of goals and things we reach for, the income ceilings we want to bust through, the relationship that we want to have. What we're afraid to say or not, it goes into all of these areas. So it is so worth going into this. But let me get back now. So what else do people who avoid conflict do? Just, you know, you may have a feeling it's you or your husband or your wife or somebody, but let's just find out. You avoid and delay at all costs having a conversation, right? You. You avoid or delay. Oh, not tonight, honey. I'm Tired. I'm not fresh enough to talk about this. Oh, let's put this off till next week. Oh, let's. We're so busy right now at work, we can't talk about this for, you know, how about a few more weeks down the road? Right? Anything to buy more time. That's conflict avoidance. Like classic. Why? Why do you want to buy more time? Again, you see what's happening? There's fear running you. And that fear is, I think something is going to happen that's going to create something bad for me. We talk a lot about lack thinking in flow, dreaming, lack thinking, anticipating lack. I will get hurt. I won't get my needs met. That's what I'm bracing for. That's what I'm preparing for. Well, you know, that conversation is all going to be lack and terrible and hurtful and painful. Better not have it. Conflict avoidance is like the very first little indicator that there's a really deep lack thinking. So instead what we do is we say, my pain is more handleable than getting this fixed. So we hold onto our pain and in essence we elevate the other person or the situation and we give them our power. And this is maybe the most important point of our whole episode today. We give these other people, these places, these situations, our power because we're prioritizing their happiness over our own. And not only that, but we don't know if they're going to even be unhappy because we projected our lack and our empathic feelings toward them. So we think they're going to be unhappy. We don't even give them a chance to be unhappy, to even have their own feelings about the situation. We've already decided for them how they're going to feel and how the whole thing is going to feel. So we're not going to go there. Oh boy. This is where we back up and we remind ourselves, give someone a chance to feel how they'll feel. Give someone a chance to be upset. Give them a chance to say no. Give them a chance to understand that they're hurting you. Give them a chance. Otherwise, what are you really practicing here? I don't see self love in this. What I see is you're more important than me and I can handle this for a little bit longer. I can deal with this. And if I deal with it long enough, we trick ourselves. It'll just go away, right? Things will change and I'll never have to handle this. The ultimate goal for the conflict avoider, if I just handle it long enough, everything will change and Then I'll never have to. It'll just kind of quietly and secretly go away. And you know what? Sometimes it does, but often it doesn't. It goes just the opposite way. It builds and it escalates. So what can we do as people who are devoted to reclaiming our personal power, as those of us who are devoted to. To speaking our truth, to being seen, to getting our needs met, to communicating openly with ourselves and the universe and other people? What do we do? What's the next step? Well, I'm gonna leave you on a cliffhanger right there, because I think that's a perfect time for us to go to a very quick break. Anyway, check it out. Me school. It's@flowdreaming.com and stick with me. It's a very short break. We'll be back right this. So I have a really important question for you. Me school. You've heard me talk about it, mention it, and I'm just wondering when it might be a fit for you, when you might jump to the next level, which is going from maybe listening to the flow dreams and playing with them or. Or listening to this podcast and saying there is. There is a next point from here, and I've been kind of playing around the same area for quite a while, and I'm ready. I'm ready to see what else there is. And maybe you're nervous and scared. You don't know how much it costs. You don't know what happens there. You don't know what will happen for you there. Look, don't be. Just don't be. Be scared. Mi school is the most beautiful thing I think I have made in my life, but it's the most beautiful thing because I take you, really you people just like you, into the program. And I take all the learning that I have been blessed with, that I have been mentored with, and I have been mentored and blessed with some pretty amazing people. My life and my job is to carry this information forward to then pass it on to you. And what we pass on is how to live well, how to be you, authentically you. How to live into who you are, who you came here to be, how to find that, how to move through your ceilings and blocks and blossom. You know, you're probably looking at this next big chunk of your life and wondering what's going to be there, what's going to be in it? Is it going to be the same as it was before? Well, for it to be different, you need to start choosing yourself. You need to invest in Yourself. You need to invest in your growth. You need to consciously say, I'm ready, it's time, I'm ready now. That's what we do in MI school. We spend that time and that's what we look at. Personal power, your ability to generate wealth, security, time free. We look at your emotional self. Are you in love with yourself? Are you in love with life? If you're not, let's make that happen. It's just a question of whether you say yes or whether you say no yet again. So jump on over to my website, flow dreaming.com and you'll find there a link, a button, an image. There'll be something where you can learn more about MI school and set up a time to talk with me and we will get you going. I'll share and answer all of your questions and hopefully be able to start working with you as you discover what your life is really there for and how it really wants to show up for you. So right now go to flowdreaming.com and just get your time scheduled for us to talk and think about may school and where you're going next. Just get it done. It's past time and now let's get back to our show. All right. Welcome back my little chickadees. I hope you had a chance to explore MI school. Like I said, it is a very intimate program and I work with you individually in the group to see where you need to go next in your life. I love finding patterns. I love finding even the conflict avoider patterns because you see, I know it so well. By the way, those of you who are very anxious in your life, you probably have conflict avoidance going on too. These things are all wrapped together. No, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist. I work in the realm of spirit, energy and just plain old common sense. And as you can tell from, you know, our program, all I think about is where we're going, not really where we've been, but what do we do right now? How do I solve something in myself right now? So one other thing, little piece of housekeeping. Yes, me school can be found@flowdreaming.com but I also want to turn you on to my new Instagram account. My new Instagram account is summermcstravic. It is a a new thing for me to just put myself as my name out there instead of Flow dreaming. And the teachings that I've sent out, I've always kind hidden behind them and I'm actually going to do a show pretty soon about that. But anyway, go check me out. Summermickstravik.com yes, difficult last name. I won't even bother spelling it. So I'm going to give you six ways, six steps, something along that line for how I have learned over time to step back into my power and not be afraid of having that encounter, of speaking my truth, of standing up for myself. Even, as I've mentioned to you, I've worked it through so many levels, but I find that there's always that next deeper level that I have to work it through. Just like this one yesterday when I realized, oh, now I'm at the level where I've worked it through with just about everybody else, but not in my most deep, intimate relationships where I have developed a sense of loyalty. Right? Oh, okay, now that's the one. And that's a bigger one for me, Right? So I'm working it through there. Probably once I work it through there, there'll be something else or someplace else. So the first step is, how many days have you given to avoiding this conversation, this encounter, this resolution, this statement, right? Whatever the conflict that you anticipate entails, how many days have you been avoiding it? Or maybe it's weeks, maybe it's months, maybe it's years. Maybe you said, well, I just shut it down years ago. I'm not going into it ever again. It's easier that way. It's better that way. Well, if it's still on your mind, probably means it's actually not resolved. It's partially resolved, it's smoothed over, it's painted over, but it's still there. Because if it was truly resolved, it wouldn't even pop up in your head. You get it. This is where I'm saying we conflict avoiders are really good at tricking ourselves into not seeing it because we say, and I'm air quoting here, I resolved it. It's good, it's fine. That's part of our avoidance technique. But if it's still there, if it pops up in your mind, literally, it is not resolved. So count for me. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months, 5 years. Now, I want you to look at that. That is a lot of energy that you've utilized in your life. Spiritual energy, emotional energy, mental energy, to managing and containing and avoiding something. That is a lot. It's a lot. Has it been worth it? Has it been worth it? What if instead this conflict had been finished, challenged, stood up for, resolved on day two, way back at the beginning, how much of yourself and your life and your joy do you think you would have reclaimed in the days, weeks, months, years since? What I'm asking you to do really, is see, what is this costing you? Because that's number two, I want you to ask yourself. And maybe you want to write these questions down, right, the six steps. Number two, how is my niceness costing me? What is the price tag on this? Because there is a price tag. In my case, I wasn't getting certain stuff done around the house that I needed to have done. Even though I was paying for it. It. My niceness was costing me money. It was costing me having to do the things that I was paying to have done that weren't getting done. It was costing me mental and emotional anguish, right? And I'm a teacher. I need all of my clarity and emotion for my students. So to have something that was taking away from it was not serving anybody. What is your niceness costing you? There's a price tag. What. Where does it hurt you? Where are your needs not getting met? Once you identify that and you start to see how disproportionate the whole balance of power is, you kind of get fired up. You're like, damn, I have to solve this. I want to solve this. So this brings us to the third question that you ask yourself now. What is the potential benefit from solving it? Oh, wow, peace, right? Maybe I'll save some money. Maybe I'll get a better situation. Maybe I'll have a. Get a better job done. Maybe I can finally not have to volunteer there anymore. Maybe I can, you know, set things right. There is a big benefit. My spouse is going to finally get off my back about this, or I'm going to. What is the benefit? It's there. It's huge. There's a huge benefit inside of you, and it's bigger than your need to protect someone else from their potential discomfort. And this is where you have to talk to that little voice in your head that says, but if they get uncomfortable at me, it's going to be messy, scary, hurtful, yelling, vicious, retaliatory. All that stuff is going to come up in you. Your job now is to put all that stuff down and say, not anymore. I'm wrong. And if it does happen, so what? So what? So what? I'm grown up. I can handle this. If they want to be that way, I can step back from it. I don't have to choose to go in and be hurt by it, too. You follow? Now your potential benefit is just going up and up and up. You see what's happening here? Is you're actually retraining yourself. You're retraining yourself emotionally. Action oriented, wise, energetically. Instead of fearing conflict, you're training yourself to embrace it. But it takes thoughtful effort and it takes action. Okay, so next. Well, I kind of already mentioned it. The next question, what is wrong with someone disliking me? What is wrong with letting someone else have painful feelings? What is wrong with it? Especially because you've been shouldering and saying yes to your own painful feelings so that they wouldn't experience theirs. What's wrong with them experiencing theirs? Maybe they need to. Maybe you've been shouldering it for them. Why would you do that? Do you owe them that much? Really? Why not let them shoulder their own painful feelings? Especially if this is something where you know it's not. This isn't aggressive. This is you just stating what I need. Or don't cross this boundary or don't do that to me or don't ask that of me or I need you to show up like this and not like that, or I can't pay you this anymore or I need to let you go. You can't be on my team anymore. It's no longer working. What are you afraid of? That you don't want that other person to experience that? You know what, they're going to get over it. They will move on. They might like you and understand, they might hate you and not. But who are you prioritizing? You. You better. Because this other person, this other situation, they're going to move on in their life. You, you stay with you. So you begin prioritizing you right now. Which leads me to the next thing. You have to go into this. You have to go into this. You have to set a date and time. You have to say, the next time I feel like saying, no, not now, we're not going to talk about it. We're not going to. Instead you say yes and you speak your truth, speak your mind, you speak your strength. And you don't have to rationalize it away. You don't have to justify yourself. You just say, here's what I need, here's what I feel. Here's what's working for me. Here's what's not working for me. And you know, as you do this, you are in an active form of retraining yourself. You know what's beautiful about this? The more you retrain yourself, the easier it gets. The hardest part is always at the beginning. The hardest part is the first three or four or five times you go to the Gym. Ugh. It all hurts. It's hard. You feel bad, like, oh, I'm that weak and that out of shape. Oh, that's the hardest part. But once you begin strengthening this, your life transforms. You change, and your life changes. So this brings me to my final number six. After you enter into this conflict, you must reward yourself. You must. Right? You've changed something about yourself. You're reprogramming your energy, your expectations. You're prioritizing you for the first time, you must reward yourself. Love yourself up. Tell yourself, you're such a good boy. You're such a good girl. Tell yourself that because you are. You know how many people don't ever do this? They just get into the pattern and they just kind of move through it their entire life. And they say, I don't know why I'm unhappy, and I don't know why I'm depressed. Like, well, here we go. Look, take a look here. But you're doing it. That's the difference. That's why we are, you know, hooked on personal growth, because we become happier, better people. Happier better people means going into your conflict avoidance, embracing it, and loving it. Now, I am going to speak into flow right here at the end. Typically, this is where I do a long flow dream, but I'm not going to this time, you guys. If you love flow dreaming, if you want to work with an amazing emotional experience that will help you with this entire process, like, grow these muscles for you, grow your inner strength, grow your feeling of speaking your truth. In fact, I have a flow dream. It's called Speak My truth. Right? I recommend it. It's in a playlist@flowdreaming.com. but if you want all of this, go to the website, start practicing it, use it there. Right? The recorded ones at my shop are way better than any of them I've ever done on my podcast. So go check that out. But that said, yes, you should be cultivating a feeling in yourself and in your flow. You should be working emotionally. And maybe this is bonus number seven. If you work emotionally and you remind yourself and you go into flow and you say, I'm confident. Conflict always works on my behalf. Right? Conflict always works for me, not against me. Sounds like an affirmation. It kind of is. But I need you to add the punch to it, the juice to it. That's the feeling behind it, the belief, the knowing. Conflict always works to my benefit. Why would I ever fear it? It always works to my benefit. Why would I ever fear it? Write that down. Conflict always works to my benefit. Why would I ever fear it? Now when you go in flow and you feel the emotion of that statement, of that understanding, you're finally completely changing you. You're doing it through action and you're doing it through your pre action. You're doing it through your em emotional state. Conflict always helps me. Why would I ever fear it? And that, my friends, is what I want to leave you with today. Go practice this. Practice feeling this way in your flow. Practice this with something in your life that you've been dodging and trying to, you know, get around. Eliminate it. Free yourself. Once you free yourself from this emotional pitfall, this hole, this black hole that just sucks, sucks it out of you, you will have all of that energy reclaimed to create bigger, more interesting, spectacular things in your life, in your relationships, in your money, in your health, everywhere. So that's it. I hope you guys have enjoyed this new format. Let me know. I always like hearing from you. Summerlowdreaming.com you can email me anytime. And with that, I'm going to say goodbye. Signing off. Love you all and I'll see you next week for more Flow Dreaming. That's a wrap for today, but if you want to keep things going, then download my free Flow Dreaming apps. That's right, there's two of them. The first app allows you to listen to this podcast anywhere you want on your mobile device, as well as search and favorite episodes. The other app hooks you up with my Manifesting Store, which includes an oracle to help you see what direction you most are in need of right now and advice. You can also sample all kinds of flow dreams and put together a library of your own. So to find these apps, just search Flow Dreaming in itunes or on your Google App Store.