Making room for magic

What is so hard about conflict is that you think it is a win-lose proposition.

If you are to be the winner, you have to double down on your position.

Or if you end up as the loser, it’s because you had to give up something.

The problems with this approach are many:

• You rarely foster connection with the other person

• You never truly gain an understanding of their perspective, because you’re too afraid to ask

• You miss out on creating magic

I maintain that a win-lose view of conflict is actually a lose-lose view.

Both of you lose out on deeper connection, greater understanding, and discovering new possibilities.

The process of discovery is scary, though.

You have to let go of the known in order to make room for the unknown.

Photo by Simon Berger on Pexels

What’s known is your perspective, what matters to you, and that assumptions you are making about the other person.

When you double down on these things, you miss out on making room for the unknown, which can lead to magical discoveries.

You don’t have to necessarily give up your perspective or what matters to you.

But you do have to make room for the other person’s perspective and what matters to them.

This can feel threatening, because how can two opposing perspectives co-exist?

They can, though, and when you can expand to allow for TWO things to be true at the same time, you’ll discover this new reality.

Then you can drill down.

Within every perspective is a strategy that you think will achieve a certain goal.

When you can drill beneath the strategy and ask “what will this do for you?” a few times, then you uncover what really matters.

And this is what’s worth fighting for, not the original perspective.

But if you can do this for the other person as well, then you can help them fight for what truly matters to them as well.

Imagine that, rather than allowing conflict to be a fight against another person, you can transform it to be a fight FOR them, for what they hold dear.

When you have an understanding of what truly matters to you in this situation, and what truly matters to THEM in this situation, now you have the makings for a win-win.

“How can we work through this so you get what matters to you and I get what matters to me?”

All kinds of possibilities open up when you ask this question, possibilities that you were never considering when you were in double-down mode.

So you truly do have to give up the known in order to make room for the unknown.

And herein lies the magic.

What’s a relationship that could use a little magic in your life?

Love,

Audrey