Conflict your ego and mine

 A couple of days ago, I was in my yoga class and the instructor talked about this topic so close to home for me. She was talking about conflict and how we respond, mostly because of our big egos won’t let us see anything other than proving we are the ones correct. Something that was very interesting to hear was that we only focus on trying to prove our point, our egos won’t let us see, or hear anything else and we show no mercy as we go through this process. And not oily we don’t hear the other side we also feel deeply offended by the fact that we are not been validated as the one who is absolutely right.

This made me think of the way I handle conflicts in my life, and how many times I have try different approaches thinking the outcome should improve, but I continue to fail to stop trying so hard to make the other person see my point of view, which of course I consider correct. . 

My instructor said to not forget the human component to a conflict and that the other side may have some reason to believe they are also right, and if we care for that other human we should not forget they have a heart and they could been hurt by our position.

I think that when conflict happens between people who are very close, it is precisely that love between them that causes the pain, because suddenly there is a breach on what one values vs what the other one does. And how could we be so different that we don’t share such values? How could one not know or see how important that was for the other? 

In an empathy workshop many years ago I discovered that the main reason I constantly found myself in conflict with others was the fact that I have very different values, since I come from a different culture. And while we humans share universal values, there are all this other little differences in opinions about so many behaviors we do not share culturally speaking.

I guess I need to work then on the listening part, I need to stop to convince others my position and rather listen others positions and arguments and remove my feelings from it.

Hard task for a woman like me.