CREATIVE CONFLICT RESOLUTIONS » attitude change

Why do you need to watch your beliefs? Let me tell you!

alfaprima — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:33:22 +0000

We go through life moved by a set of automatic beliefs accepted way back in our past when we didn’t know better…Regardless of that, now those core beliefs rule our lives. Now, it’s natural to believe that we are no good at math or that with our looks nobody will feel attracted to us…once our parents told us this was the truth, and we now keep their negative images of us alive.

What if we believe that we have “bad luck”? then everything we plan will have to do two battles: one against reality out there, and the second one to convince “luck” to bend over our desire….making everything a double challenge.

We all have a variety of core beliefs, of which some are empowering (positive beliefs) and others are limiting (negative beliefs). In the US, popular culture tends to push for more positive than negative beliefs, which promotes a feeling that most projects are possible and doable. If we grew up with the people around us telling that only men can do the things we also want to do, then we have again the double challenge: getting to have the opportunity to do those desired tasks and proving that we are as valuable as men at each step….

Every day, in fact every minute we are reinforcing or weakening them. It is an on-going process. Each time we tell ourselves that our plans are within reach, we help them be doable. Even we are influencing each other when we express those beliefs, and sometimes it doesn’t help our loved ones hearing us expressing negative beliefs about their capacities. Why, if they never did this task, how come now they think they can do it? Well, me saying that they will never learn is only a half disguised act of sabotage…Perhaps it’s best to let them try, because even trying and failing, they will know better for the next try.

As a result, we need to be aware of negative, judgmental beliefs popping up in our minds, and work actively to replace them with a more positive approach.

This reframing goes a long way: we can “reframe” failure as an opportunity for a new beginning; and we can see conflict as an opportunity to really know what we want and negotiate better what we need to receive. It’s only a matter of framing these two concepts into the right environment!

Several suggestions follow from this concept:

Find the areas in your life you would change if you could (finances, relationships, work)
Use each subject you have listed as a heading in a new piece of paper, and write why do you believe you can’t;
Review the list of beliefs, find the negatives and turn them 180 degrees;
Have a set of ideas, words and phrases that define the positive framing of each issue.
Put those positive phrases on cards and read them each night before going to sleep.

If you do a periodic revision of your basic assumptions about life in general, and your happiness in particular, you will see that more positive experiences are happening now that you are in control of the beliefs that determine your reality.

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

Technorati Tags: attitude change, backstabbing, critique, Emotional Abuse, feelings, happiness, healthy relationships, negative emotions, rejection, resilience, workplace anxiety

How to deal with emotional turmoil?

alfaprima — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:29:22 +0000

Conflict-seeking people have mastered all your emotional buttons, and they push them with regularity. Here, we want to remember that it takes two to tango.

When you are ready to deny them the drama and adrenaline rush (by behaving calmer and less reactive in stressful situations) they initially react very negatively, almost as if they are going through a drug withdrawal.

In fact it is possible that when you first become calmer, they may escalate the shouting in the short term. If you are patient and persevere in this non-engagement mindset, this will change in the long term.

What strategies can you use with a person who loves to and needs to have a dispute with you?

Never yell back, not matter how upset or angry the other person might be; detach emotionally;
The more their voice goes up, the more you whisper;
If you feel the situation gets out of control, just escape to a safer place (the bathroom, a long walk);
Be a good listener and parrot back what they tell you, but in a softer voice;
Say that you really want to understand their needs;
If you are going to work with him, there must be a calmer environment, so the person has to stop yelling.

So, even when the other person has a volatile tendency to start emotional battles, the issue resides on your capacity to detach and keep your cool. That’s real personal power!

Nora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.creativeconflicts.com.

Technorati Tags: aggression, anger, anger attack, attitude change, confrontation, control, Emotional Abuse, feelings, negative emotions, rejection, respect

What’s your life project?

norafem — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:12:23 +0000

Sometimes, our purpose in life doesn’t appear clear to us.
We are pulled by other people’s needs, demands and urgencies.
Several institutions predicate their dogmas to us as to what kind of project we should follow: church, schools, political parties….

But, where is your own perspective here?

Is there a way to re-discover your life project? A simple, straightforward way to find it again? Well, yes! You need to start by checking your basic needs and how they are solved or unsolved just now.

The most basic activity is to look at your human needs. Remember, we all have different needs of personal security; variety; love and connection, recognition and transcendence.

Can you look at this list and identify where are you still starving? Can you make a list of your frustrated areas? Do you need security or love, variety or recognition? Where is your most important hunger?

Having identified which areas are the most starved, decide if you are waiting for someone to satisfy them. If you are an adult, STOP! and make the commitment to solve your own needs by yourself.

You need to understand that your first priority is not to get hurt, followed by the need to develop and grow with your needs satisfied.

Wrestling the control over your needs satisfaction into your own hands, gives you your power back.

When you have recovered your own personal power, you can begin a conversation with anyone around you from a position of power, and not of subordination, as before.

You know how to find solutions to your needs, and this attitude gives you the most important life project: to make yourself happy!

From here on, your self-esteem is linked to the question:

How much do I care to listen and solve my own needs? How much do I provide security, variety and recognition to myself and to others?

Remember that: Once your own needs are solved, you can give to others….but not before.

Neil Warner

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Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude change, critique, frustration, happiness, recognition, Self-Esteem

Do love and needs satisfaction go together?

alfaprima — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:30:32 +0000

We all have deep needs, which move us to search for satisfaction. We crave security, excitement, love and connection and recognition. How do we go about finding solutions? It has multiple ways, some of them not so fulfilling as others.

And sometimes, due to our upbringing, we understand “love” and “connection” and “appreciation” in way different ways….so different we can get confused when we think we know what makes our loved ones happy.

For instance, what is the meaning that “love” has for your boyfriend? Being loved could mean for him a different experience than yours….if you expect touching, and verbal expressions of love and frequent proximity, for him there could be another set of indicators of your love he is still waiting for. Perhaps leaving him the time and space to recover from work; or accepting that he is not in conditions to smile just now, without guilting or reproaching?

What does it mean to care for another person? First we must really “see through” the eyes of the other. Get out of our own ego driven needs and positions, and look, feel, experience life as the other person.

What is it like to be this person? What is he going through? Why? What does he need? What it that is really going on for this soul at a deeper level? What is behind his perspective in life? How can you really help him and relieve his deeper need – or help him reach his goals? In the same way you expect to be deeply understood, he is also operating from a deeper part of him that yearns to be seen and heard.

How can you let him know that ‘I GET YOU’? What do you need to do to show that you love him? Does he really agree with that? Love has different meanings for each one…it helps if you can tell him what is exactly that you need to feel loved. Perhaps a compliment a day? Perhaps seeing the other person finally initiating sex?

Here, the real key to make this behavior succeed is hidden. It’s not a trade; not an interchange of favors…Do your actions in a space of very clear energy; you have to enjoy making him happy, for you it has to be “cool,” happy and playful and humorous. While you do this gift, you have to enjoy being the best person you can be.

I appreciate Cloe Madanes’ (robinnsmadanescoaching.com) proposal of a 90 days challenge to show real love to your spouse. Does it takes so long to get in synch with his/her needs; to be more sensitive about what are the ways in which she feels loved?

Only after 90 days of this dedication you can conclude that your marriage is over; that there is no love left, and that your spouse doesn’t have what it takes to make you happy. Does it work? It’s an extraordinary effort, but the results are twofold: show that you are doing a serious job at recovering the love and connection of your marriage, and also that you are able to make someone deeply happy and understood. There is no better gift than this!

Neil Warner

Technorati Tags: angry husband, appreciation, attitude change, emotions, feelings, Healthy Marriage, healthy relationships, loneliness, love, negative emotions, recognition, Relationships, respect, understanding

Trying to be Always Right? Stop!

norafem — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:18:53 +0000

If you feel a need to be right, and impose your views, and take over the place of the “expert” in your marriage….well you need to know this is a dead end way.

We enter into relationships by choice… they are very different situations compared with the first one, when we were children and needed to accept the authority of our parents in deciding what was good for us.

It was never too fast for us to grow up and be relieved of the disparity of that parent-child relationship! We wanted to decide by ourselves, and be in charge of solving our own needs very fast. Even experimenting was OK, because making mistakes was our way of learning how to be independent…

So, why is it that we try to reproduce this dynamics with another “equal”, or peer spouse? What on earth is prompting us to try to be the expert, or the authority in our marriage?Are there unsolved issues from our past, which we need to replay now with our new family member, our spouse? Is it that we want revenge from our parents? Or are we trying to be the “always powerful parent” this time, and dominate the other with our reasoning and logic? Here is the rest of a wise recommendation for a healthy marriage!

Technorati Tags: attitude change, critique, Healthy Marriage, healthy relationships, love

Stop His Emotional Control

norafem — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:09:41 +0000

Do you remember the times when it felt as if everything you did was being watched and scrutinized by your man, all done with a suspicious and angry attitude? As if trying to catch you on something despicable? Making you feel like a berated child?
It makes you feel always unsure of being accepted or loved…walking on eggshells because of feeling tense, confused and utterly lonely… has it happened to you?

And you can’t win, because whatever you do, something will not be perfect and you will fail the grade, and be found inferior. Did we choose a husband or a preceptor with demanding standards for everything? It looks like our loved one has transmogrified in the persecutory entity, always supervising and grading us.

This is not the marriage between equals we wanted!

You know, sometimes we women need to disengage from the notion that his behavior is our responsibility, because something we did or didn’t do is causing his anger. But probably 90% of the times, it will have to do with something inside himself, which makes him feel insecure or threatened…and is covered fast by attacking everything on you.

I know, I know, don’t roll your eyes….you already know how childish he can be, so what’s new? Well, the new thing is to ascribe the origin of his critique not to something you did, but to something inside him!

Like in:

“Oh, you are not happy with the way I just prepared your salad? Well, it being the same salad I do for you every day, what else inside you are you not happy with today?”

Of course, you don’t need to tell him exactly this, but you get the idea…what is needed here is a strong effort to detach yourself from automatically accepting guilt or responsibility for his moods, and inviting him to deal with them by himself, without resorting automatically to guilt you.

This is the first step in a healthy relationship: each one is the owner of his/her emotions, responsible for changing them if they are not of their liking, and should not use the loving partner as a reservoir for them.

Make this principle part of your shared life and you will see that things begin to improve! You will be building your self-confidence and your skills at knowing what part of the relationship dynamics is your responsibility and what is his…and you will nip emotionally abusive behaviors in the bud.

Technorati Tags: abuse, angry husband, appreciation, attitude change, healthy relationships, recognition

Healthy Love Relationships and Strong Self-Esteem

alfaprima — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:54:38 +0000

If you are going to get into a marriage with a passive aggressive person, you’d better have a very strong self-esteem. Which, of course, it is a silly piece of advice, because if you really had a healthy, sound, strong sense of who you are, then you will never put up with a passive aggressive person lousy manoevres!

Let’s assume that you found him too soon in your life, when you were still very young and learning what was your place in the world…and knew very little of the right way to treat human beings, especially when you say you love them. We all know the rules about loving behavior, right?

show support, and be there for the loved one;
say positive and appreciative things frequently (five for each one negative critique);
be upfront when you have a disagreement and find a shared solution;
disclose everything; share all kinds of personal information ;
face each marriage challenge as part of a team, and commit to work together on solutions.

If little or nothing of this is happening, you have to find answers to basic questions, such as:

1.- How can you identify when he is damaging your marriage by his resentful and negative attitude?

2.- How can you stop him and make him fulfill his role of careful and loving husband?

3.- How do you repair yourself from the damages produced by his behavior on your self-esteem?

As easy it can be to identify areas of work, it is more difficult to find effective solutions to solve the challenges. What, really can you do now?

Today, the first thing to work on has to be your self-esteem. No solution can be implemented if you don’t feel clearly that it’s your right to have a healthy, supportive and emotionally satisfying marriage. If you are still confused have to choose between thinking that his behavior is your responsibility, therefore you are the guilty person; or asserting the right to be happy, then now you know that the first task is to strenghten your self-esteem.

After feeling more secure, more accepting of the wonderful person you are, only then you can begin to think on ways of sending the message to your hubby that you deserve better than lame excuses. You want good answers, real support, information sharing and the whole marriage package.

How can you improve your self-esteem? There are several ways to go about, here we will list soon some steps you can take immediately. Just now, remember that you can construct a powerful self-image only if you connect with yourself and the power of your dreams!

Technorati Tags: attitude change, Healthy Marriage, loneliness, love, recognition, resilience, Self-Esteem

How to Be Resilient in Scary Times

norafem — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:10:54 +0000

We are living in confusing times…the news keep bombarding us with information that is worrisome, difficult to act on and in general scary. What can we do to develop what is needed, a sense of resilience?
Where is this sense of inner strength coming from?

Sometimes our strength comes from having a positive sense of self. We know who we are, we accept ourselves as work in progress, without shame or recrimination, and we have a healthy awareness of our skills.

This needs to be combined with a sense of a network of souls around us who recognize us as a valued member; who are willing to lend support and acknowledgment at any time. We are no strangers here to our inner circle.

And then, we need to know where do we want to go, what is our life purpose…Having a sense of mission validates our existence and gives meaning to a lot of daily decisions we need to do. In our personal narrative, we have to see this small, private story of us linked to a wide tapestry of other stories which are making together the meaning of our times. No life is lost, ever….and every action of ours confirms that we are part of a collective endeavor to survive and prosper.

Perhaps in this moment, what we need the most is a sense of the collective “we.” The pieces of an individualistic view of myself are fighting to keep control of my mindset, and of yours…but at this precise time, nobody will be able to survive in isolation. Fear? yes, of course, there is fear…but the old fear of the other as the enemy, the opponent, the competitor is being replaced by a shared fear of all the diverse circumstances surrounding us. From global warming to financial collapse to shocking degrees of joblessness to pandemic threats, all are coming at us at the same time.

Is it time to leave our individual, protective shell? You bet! Is it time to learn cooperative skills and stop doing passive aggression and other forms of abuse and control? Indeed!

Of course we all need time to do the transition and deal with our particular, internal demons…the only thing clear now is this: the longer you continue attached to old ways of thinking (type: “my survival over others”) the less resilient you are.

Are you still in love with your old mindset? Begin doing some steps to push the change inside: talk with your neighbors, begin a small project shared with others…whatever will get you out of your shell is a good step. Keep telling yourself: “As more aware I can be, it will help me organize and survive better…no need to hide or deny any longer”

And, of course, being part of some online community is also helping you to develop new connections. Make your thoughts heard just by answering this post, or making a comment with your reaction…Thanks!

Technorati Tags: attitude change, connections, healthy relationships, isolation, loneliness, recognition, resilience, Self-Esteem

Learning to Forgive Raises your Personal Power

norafem — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:21:51 +0000

This is the time, of course, when we review our lives and focus on improvement areas. This is a very healthy exercise which helps us understand our weak points so we plan how to overcome them.

What about the hidden ballast of resentment that we carry around? as a concealed cost of relationships, it goes with us everywhere and manages to give new connections the old flavor of suspicion and mistrust. What if new people get to hurt us like the ones in the past? Those people who were so nasty to us in the past?

This reveals that when we are stuck in some hurt stories, keeping a careful damage scorecard, we are unable to forgive. This takes away part of our life energy and wastes it in a ceaseless reenacting of the past.

Why -you can say- wasn’t forgiveness a part only of religion? How can we now consider it a healing technique for our personal wholesomeness? How can that be?

Dr Fred Luskin has articulated a path to forgiveness, which guides you to recover your inner peace. For starters, it is important to know that it does not necessarily mean reconciliation with the person that hurt you, what you are after is to find peace. Forgiveness can be defined as the “peace and understanding that come from blaming that which has hurt you less, taking the life experience less personally, and changing your grievance story.”

First, you have to stop denial and know exactly how you feel about what happened to you and be able to articulate what about the situation was not OK.

Then, you need to recognize that your power is in controlling your responses to the attack. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not from the action or hurt you received in the past. Probably you were expecting too much from a person or a situation?

Remember that there is always a choice: you can choose to feel hurt as a victim, or to decide that the attack is only revealing the nature of the attacker and his need to hurt someone. You can select not to feel hurt, and only have pity for the attacker.

Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to be immune to any attacks; you know your personal value and nobody can challenge that. If you still feel resentment towards an important person from your past, begin to do some breathing exercise. When you exhale, think of releasing any emotional connection (either anger, dependency, despair) with such person.

Think in terms of releasing the negative emotions and inhaling pure and clean energy.

Remember that a life well lived is your best revenge. Instead of focusing on your wounded feelings, and thereby giving the person who caused you pain more and everlasting power over you, learn to look for the love, beauty and kindness who have been able to create and be joyful of your life.

The practice of forgiveness has been shown to reduce anger, hurt depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of hope, peace, compassion and self confidence. Practicing forgiveness leads to healthy relationships as well as physical health. It also influences our personal attitude which opens the heart to more kindness, beauty, and love.

Thanks to Dr Luskin: http://www.learningtoforgive.com/steps.htm

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Technorati Tags: attitude change, emotions, forgiveness, healthy relationships, negative emotions, release, victim, victimizer