The new year’s conflict resolutions

That’s the title of a contribution I accidentally found in the web. It surely meets best intentions. Those rules of conflict resolution sound like an agenda. Is it an agenda to happines and health? Wishing health and happiness at least was the purpose of that article (look here: Article). I do wonder how obeying rules can become a reason for happiness. Maybe it does if I become happy to fulfill my additional burden or if I am not burdened enough. The rules proposed to be obeyed by people voluntarily are:

1. This year, I will approach conflict rather than avoid it.
   Remark: Isn’t it always better to avoid a conflict in a way that it even doesn’t come up? An avoided conflict is a won conflict.
2. This year, I will give up blaming others.
   Remark: To not blame others might be a deescalation. But somethimes it needs an escalation where blaming shows what’s going wrong.Surely there are other ways to tell. But please son’t suppress your feelings. Let them out where they cannot cause damage. Friends are good for that by the way.
3. This year, I will make amends with people and not let things fester between us.
   Remark: That means fighting? Why not: I know my needs and I can adjust them with others.
4. This year, I will be present and purposeful about bringing peace to all aspects of my life and those around me.
   Remark: The hope is that peace will not be forced by war since the peace after war just is a missing war. Peace starts inside everybody of us. If I have act of war in mind peace will have problems coming up. Thus I try to even not think of war and to keep poeace in my mind.
5. This year, I will take responsibility for how I contribute to interpersonal disputes and learn from my errors.
   Remark: Good idea
6. This year, I will endeavour to let bygones be bygones. I will be more forgiving knowing that the other person does not have to acknowledge or accept my forgiveness for me to move on.
   Remark: Who should be interested in what happened in the past? Dalai Lama said: there are two days in a year where nobody can do anything. Yesterday and tomorrow. The past doesn’t rule the future. So it might be better to say: I do not care for things which went wrong in the past. I care for how they run correctly in future.
7. This year, I will not judge and be hard on others, or on myself.
   Remark: What does it mean? not to be hard on others or myself or being hard on others or myself. Both sounds hard. What’s about generosity? I will be more generous with myself and the others.
8. This year, I will take care of myself, as only a healthy me is resilient enough to manage conflict.
   Remark: not sure if I need to be healthy to resolve conflicts.
9. This year, I will enjoy being curious about others and myself, and value the importance of respecting other people’s opinions even if I don’t agree with them.
   Remark: Curiosity comes up when I know what I do not know and when I want to understand. Hence it might be more helpful to say: I like to understand.
10. This year, I will listen with my heart and learn from the stories of others.
    Remark: Head, heart and stomach are talking in different languages. Waht’s about: I will have inner dialogs, where I adjust what head, heart and stomach tell me first before I react.

Oups, there have been 11 rules instead of 10. So its more than the Decalogue. The idea of some good conflict resolutions is copied and forwarded already several times where people are invited to even add more rules. Too many rules are as bad as no rules. Maybe we can reduce it to something that everybody can afford and obey:

Next year I will be more carefully dealing with information. I will avoid interpretations and assessments where the facts are insufficient to allow an oppinion. Other opinions do not worry me. What worries me is if they cannot be discussed. I will take care to talk about before decision making. I trust that then everything will be good for satisfying the needs. I am aware about my intrinsic value. The measure for that is only me. I therefore easily can share esteem without envy, worry or everything that let me fall back in a zero sum game.

I think this resolution covers all the rules above. Maybe the way is a bit different not that much looking on the outcome but on the inside. The result should be almost the same. Please allow me another advise:

Don’t forget to rule consequences when your rules will be missed. And never forget:

Life could be so easy if we do not make it too complicated 🙂