The development of a new capacity or ability requires practice. As the young musician on the streets of New York was told when inquiring of a native about how one gets to Carnegie Hall, it takes, “Practice, practice, practice.”
We will have to practice if we are going to become masters at conflict resolution.
On this site I will introduce to you ten disciplines which I have found to be very helpful in mastering the skills of Creative Conflict Resolution. It is my hope to go into them in greater depth in a future volume, but for now it is important that you understand that much of what I have to say may not make any sense to you if you do not have a personal experience of what I am talking about. For this reason it is essential that you at least try each of these disciplines. Indeed it is only with persistent effort that you will find the benefits that they promise.
[These Disciplines are spelled out in the Appendix of the book, Just Conflict: Transformation through Resolution. A pdf of the book can be found here. The Appendix starts on page 382.]
There is a series of YouTube videos that introduce the Disciplines. They are available from the links below.
The Mindfulness Disciplines: the first five disciplines are practices which build simple awareness [click the title to follow the link].
- Bothers Me Log
- Anger Workout
- Cultivating Critical Feedback
- Suspending Self-Soothing
- Self Care Routine
The Practical Disciplines: the second five disciplines are techniques to be used in specific circumstance to solve problems and create a desired outcome.
Introduction to the Practical Disciplines
- ACE – Anticipate, Create, Evaluate
- Statement of Accountability
- Apology and Forgiveness
- JustConflict: Framework for Creative Conflict Resolution
- Making Durable Agreements
In the book, Living Deeply members of the staff of the Institute for Noetic Sciences share their discovery that all personal growth disciplines have what they call the “four essential elements of transformative practice.” I recommend the book to those who want to go more deeply into a broad range of transformative practices, but, for now, I just want to highlight the four elements to set the stage for the disciplines of Creative Conflict Resolution.
Intention: All practices or disciplines have a quality of intentionality. We enter into them with an intention to have some quality of our lives be different. If we do not actively will that change, we won’t change.
Attention: We will have to pay attention…close attention…attending to things we haven’t noticed before. We will not create transformation in our lives without focusing.
Repetition: Getting it right once is not going to be the end of it. We will have to do it over and over and over. We will have continue to do it until it becomes second nature…to where it becomes not just something we are doing but an aspect of who we are.
Guidance: We will not know best how to do this all on our own. We have to be able to ask for help and then accept the guidance we are offered. Others have gone before and learned some things which will make this more easily available to us if we simply open ourselves to their guidance. But there is another source of guidance which comes from within. We have an inner knowing which can also guide us.