How To Overcome A Disagreement

In our society, most people associate strength of character with standing your ground and proving your point. Don’t ever let anyone get the best of you! When the truth is, it takes much more strength and courage to put your pride aside and genuinely aim to resolve a problem in a healthy, positive manner.

Practice makes perfect and here are some easy steps to follow.

1) Release Your Anger! Go home and vent! A lot! Vent your problem to your most trusted person, but before you do let this person know you just want to talk to someone who will listen. You don't expect the problem to be solved. Listening to yourself will help you organize your thoughts. If you do not have anyone to vent to, I would suggest taking a piece of paper and a pen or an audio voice recorder and just let it all out.

2) Bring Back Some Good Feelings! Once a little of your anger has been released, go out and have some fun! NO WORK TALK! Take your kids to Chucky Cheese (if that's fun), or go to a loud bar and watch the game. Just do anything that will help take your mind off work and get your happy thoughts back into your mind. Working out is also a good idea. Aim to release some of your negativity. Too much negativity clouds your judgments.
Tip: Doing some cardio like an aerobics class, dance class or kickboxing sometimes can count for step 1 and 2. It depends on you.

3) Open up your heart! Go home and find a quite place without distraction. Grab a pen and paper and write down everything you are grateful for. These things can be general or specific. This is called the Grateful List. This is important because it will help you lean towards forgiveness and understanding.

4) Brainstorm your solutions! After your mind is no longer completely consumed with negativity, you can now work on forming some positive solutions. Grab a piece of paper and write down everything you would like to talk about. Organize your thoughts.

5) Help the other person! I would suggest approaching the person you are opposing with the intention of only hearing his or her point of view without saying any of your own thoughts. By doing this, you are helping the other person relieve some possible resentment or anger for you (if there is any) and then you can come to a solution on a later date. This is important because it also lets them know they can safely talk to you and that will help overcome the disagreement once you both can safely talk to one another.

About the last step, more often than not, when I do this I discover that the anger that resides in that person really does not have anything to do with me, but involves their own personal stress that they are releasing on me negatively.

Your goal is to be heard when both you and the other are in a better state of mind. You have the right to be heard just as much as the other person.

This is also very important! Make sure you have true intentions of coming to a positive solution! That may sound funny, but many people enjoy the drama and really do not care to resolve.

Now, after reading all the above content, wouldn’t you agree it takes a lot more energy and strength to resolve an issue? Don’t worry! The result is much more rewarding than the latter.