A little while ago, here, I wrote (again) about Healing Without Freud or Prozac by David Servan-Schreiber. It was the book that changed my life and I even bought it for some people who answered the blog, and I actually got some wonderful feedback.
I learned many, many lessons from that (some of which I even still apply today), but perhaps the most memorable one for me was the trick to help with conflict resolution and the simplest and easiest, most beautiful thing to learn from such a wonderful book.
To be better at conflict resolution is the ability to see it, walk away, and count to whatever number you think is appropriate, usually anything from 3 to 10.
Almost always, when you do that and come back, it looks different from when you left, but of course, as with all of these beautifully simple remedies, it's easier said than done.
It's like a muscle, though. I was explaining this to Callum the other day in the midst of a conflict, I think.
You get better at it as you practise it.
When I have to have difficult conversations, usually at work, people who see those conversations comment that I seem to be good at it.
I have had the necessity many times to have difficult conversations, but I've also tried to reflect on them with the David Servan-Schreiber style of conflict resolution, and so now I can almost take the break in the middle of the conversation instantaneously to see it and not rise to the situation when I'm being provoked.
It's a little bit like what professional cyclists call 'micro recovery' when they're able to recover while they're peddling the bike just by peddling a little bit less. You get better at it when you start to do the 3 to 10 seconds, and then you can do the one-second in a conversation and see the lie of the land and not react, and almost always, the results are better.
Again, as with all these things, it is better to start now if you want to be better a little bit later.
Blog Post Number - 4029