Conflicts need not to be won, only acknowledged as such.
What is conflict, really? How much our time and energy is spent avoiding it? Are we missing the opportunity to live more fully because of our fear of conflicts that may arise as a result of our actions?
Conflict exists to call attention to a situation that needs to be addressed.
It exposes when we are resisting what is. When we fail to see the truth of the matter at hand. Redefine conflict as a neutral event. It's a situation, an area of concern.
When the conflict arises, realize that it's simply a call to action. There's no need to assign blame or fault, in fact doing so only creates a wider gap between conflict and resolution. We all want the same thing - peace and harmony.
I didn't ask for this, but here it is, and like it or not, it needs to be addressed. A conflict ignored only grows stronger. Like a crying baby needing to be held, it's scream gets louder until we pick it up. Often, just acknowledge the existence of it will resolve it.
That which resist, persists. Avoidance only creates more tension as the duration increases. The sooner we address it, the less effort it often demands.
Those who go through life avoiding conflict ultimately life lives of quiet desperation. Unspoken words. Use PubWriter to index your conflicts. One by one, as you expose your areas of concern, you will feel lighter. A new sense of freedom will lead to new potential for your life. In this way, calling attention to the areas of conflict in our life becomes more important than anything else.
Sorry to bother you, but we have a situation. I need to bring to your attention that ____.
Example: Sorry to bother you, but we have a situation. I need to bring to your attention that your last renters ran over the curb again and took a new chip out of the concrete that we would like you to have patched. I am ordering a flag to put up on the weekends in an effort to avoid the ongoing issue. I wanted to mention this right away in the event you need to hold a portion of their deposit to cover the damage.
The only conflict between life and death is in our imagination. Since resolution is the absence of conflict, and as long as we are living, there's no conflict with death. It's not until death reveals itself that conflict arises. Since death however is not debatable, there is no conflict except the one we create in our mind. When someone dies, our conflict with the reality of their death causes tension to that which doesn't even exist (in this case, life).
But if you try sometimes, you get what you need.
The majority of our suffering stems from wanting what we don't have.
Wanting what we can't have sets us up for extended form of suffering.
Tension is the result of conflicting priorities.
Conflicting priorities are the result of not having a single desired outcome in that moment.
It's not that we all have important projects you want to work on, it's that we fail to allocate our time and resources to attend to them.
We all take on more than we should.
Most things take longer than we think they will.
Those who learn to let go of what they can't have and accept what they do live with greater peace.
Is saying yes to requests your default setting? It need not be. If you truly consider your prior commitments, and you recognize the time needed to complete the tasks associated with your promises, when will you find the time?
Your inability to say no will inevitably steal time from important areas of your life.
I've made myself accessible to hundreds of authors. After spending 10+ years in sales and customer service, my default reaction to a request is an enthusiastic yes.
But in always saying yes, have I filled my day with the needs of others? Is there something more important I know I ought to be working on? Something that can make a bigger impact and help more people?
I have a quote on my desk that reads:
If you don't build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.
However I realize that in a large way, helping others build their dream is what has enabled me to build my own.
As your day begins, who sets the agenda? Perhaps you've heard the phrase "Plan your work, work your plan." And one of my most successful bosses lived by that motto. So as you plan your work for the day ahead, be sure it is you who is creating the plan, not someone else.
It demands that (1) you have a plan and (2) you say no to everything not in alignment to that plan.
Setting milestones
Both money and time are man made metrics. We can live with two perspectives: 1. We'll never have enough, 2. We will always have enough.
The word to focus on defining better is enough.
I believe the greatest fear for many of us, whether or not it's a real fear, is to run out of money before we die. To live in poverty. To be without the security of friends, family, and all the stuff that makes our lives comfortable.
The truth is we will always have enough. All you need to do is reflect back on the days you've lived through already. Have you ever not had enough? You didn't starve. You haven't been homeless. You've had friends. You've had as much as you've ever needed.
All you've ever needed is all I've ever had. All you'll ever have is all you'll ever need.
Define life in this way: Life exists to provide what life demands from it.
You will never be asked for more than you can handle. Life will never ask you for more than you can give it. If it ever does, it's kills life. The primary objective of life is to live.
All you truly need to BFYD is to accept life for what it is.
To deny life, exactly as it's been given, exactly how it exists, is a failure to acknowledge the gift of our own existence.
Here's the thing... Life's too short to fret about what is out of your control. Too short to fret about others. Too short to compare yourself to others, to internalize the opinions of others, or question your worth.
The fact you are living is validation that life is good. If your opinion is that life is not good enough now, when will it every be?
Consider this: Happiness stems not necessarily from the work you do, but who you do it with. Surround yourself with people that you like, and you'll like what you do.
I've been thinking a lot about why I, and so many people I know, feel this ever present weight of pressure of unfinished business.
Even when your life seems to be conflict free, do you feel an ever present weight of pressure related to incompletions?
It's a tension that seems to always exist. Like an itch you can't scratch.
Where does it come from and has it always been there?
Will the feeling ever go away? It seems that our retired friends are just as busy, if not busier than ever before. Consider one possibility is that the older we get the more we start to feel the end of the race is closing in and if we don't do it now, we'll never do it.
What if you discovered that all of conflicting priorities you worry about are in fact out of your control?
Every priority reflects a conflict of interest to something else.
In any given moment, you only have one true point of awareness. Whatever your attention is on, is a conflict to everything else demanding your attention in that same moment that's not in your field of view.
The greatest conflict of interest is between life and death. Death itself is a direct conflict of interest with life. The only time the conflict will cease is when death takes life. The objects each seeks are polar opposites. But they actually have a unified objective - to be free of each other. Partial won't do. You can't be partially alive anymore than you can be partially dead. You are either dead or alive. There may be a dimmer switch on life, but it's still life.
I'll get it to ASAP. As soon as I get all the other ASAPs one. When will that be? Before I die (BFID).
Which ASAP wins out?
The squeaky wheel?
The kinder of the two?
The lesser of two evils?
What we actually enjoy doing or what we don't, yet feel obligate to do?
We were not born to be idle. In fact, being idle is considered by many in our culture to be lazy.
What really drives items on my daily punch list are deadlines. ASAP is not a date. And without a deadline, we never find the time.
So what's the ultimate deadline? Our death. Like it our not, we are all working on a deadline. Even the word dead line is worth contemplating.
Meditation however continues to gain acceptance. As a 3+ year daily meditator myself, I can personally say that much of the time, I still struggle finding true stillness. It's also call pure awareness, or bliss. I know what it is because I have experienced it many times. But it's that stillness I am drawn to more and more. The more I get, the more I want.
All of this makes me wonder, are conflicting priorities an illusion? A self-induced stress maker?
Many of us are driven my the almighty dollar. As the cost of living continues to rise everywhere, how much of our life is consumed by the drive to earn more? How much will ever be enough? Do you want more money or do you need more money?
What's driving the need to earn more?
I would challenge you ask a hard question:
Would you do what you if you weren't getting paid to do it?
Here's what I see as the nasty booby prize of retirement:
The reward of retirement, is in being able to do the things we want to do without what we do to be tied to earning money to do it. But if you spend most of your life doing things you don't really enjoy, just to make a buck, what makes you think you'll be able to recognize what you do?
If you can't live a life you enjoy now, what makes you'll live one you enjoy later?
I am trying a little experiment. It's called my BFID list.
The only priorities are defined by things I can state with confidence I want to do before I die. If I found out that I'd die tomorrow, what would be first on my list?
As I scan my ever growing list of todos, how many of them are the result of: * money * love * people obligations (meeting the needs of others) * thing obligations (meeting needs of things)
You get to live life on your own terms. It's ultimately at your own discretion what you do.
As my parents are now past 75, I feel a heightened sense of urgency.
Never before have we had so many choices. From the moment we awake, the decisions we make each day are relentless. We fear making the wrong decision, as small as the decision as to what to order for lunch, for the fear we could have had something better. FOMO is a real issue, as every decision has a trade off. You can order desert, but the trade off may result in our
OK... so WTF? These are wants. What do I NEED?
The question is very simply: What am I willing to give up to get them?
To want what others have is not authentic. All your authentic self ever wants is who you already are. To be anyone else is tension.
Anytime we choose to want something we don't have, we are agreeing to give up something we do.
Anytime we choose what we don't have, we are agreeing to give up something we do.
When we want what we don't have, we give up something we do.
Wanting what we don't have requires that we give up something we do have.
If wanting what you don't have requires that you give up what you do, would you still?
Wanting what we don't is where the conflict of interest begins. There is tension.
To drop the weight, simply stop wanting what you don't already have.
However because we are so drive by our desires, we feel it's almost in our DNA to want what we don't have.
If this is the case, breaking the chain of wanting what you don't have is not an easy transition.
What do I really want? What's the ONE THING?
Peace.
Inner peace. Tranquility. Love. Sanctuary.
Just saying the words can help take you there.
BE S.T.I.L.L.
Sanctuary, Tranquility, Inner Peace, Love, L___
Peace is defined as 'being free of tension.'
When will that happen?
At death.
So for this reason, I do not fear death.
But rather, I fear an attachment to life.
I fear an addiction to wanting what I don't already have.
And then I discovered I already held the key to the one thing I always wanted, peace.
If peace is the absence of tension, then all I needed to do was release anything that I didn't already have.
Once you release the tension, caused by the conflict of:
We suffer unnecessarily because there's an inner conflict between who we think we are and who we actually being.
or Conflicts of Interest?
You will always have conflicts of interests when you fail to recognize the conflicting priorities that are thrust upon you.
The primary objective of life is to live, not to thriving. Thriving is great, but don't expect it.