When Everything Feels like a Debate
Why the wisdom perspective is so different…
I am a novice at understanding the art and science of numerology, but I’m told this is my #2 year. The 2 symbolizes so many things in my life right now and the infamous numero dos is all about partnership. A deep connection with other human beings, moving together for a certain time and purpose on a parallel path.
With partnership inevitably comes disagreement, which might seem like an opportunity to haggle or vie for positioning. That type of competitive energy used to appeal to me, but doesn’t so much anymore. What if instead I make a conscious decision to approach disagreement like a beautiful dance with specific steps?
Step 1: listen deeply to understand the other person’s perspective and needs
Step 2: respectfully express what you need, want and feel
Step 3: communicate (listening and expressing) as long as needed with the goal to find a solution that leads to the highest good for all involved
So many messages in our society tell us ‘win at any cost’, but truth be told the cost to our relationships and to our own well-being is much too high. Competition was necessary at one time for our survival as a human species; now it’s actually hindering our ability to expand to a different level of consciousness.
Competition often brings to mind fighting and scratching and clawing. Being in resistance to others and to the situation, trying to make something happen. Being in opposition just to be in opposition. Climbing the ladder, working to get ahead or to be ‘the best’. Debating to drive home your viewpoint, even to the point of making others wrong. Again, we have the opportunity to step back and recognize much of our competitive nature derives from thousands of years of biological conditioning that tells us:
COMPETE OR DIE!
Dialogue brings a completely different energy; it engages all ideas as valid from a particular perspective and seeks to find common ground. Instead of striving to be right, we’re accepting and even embracing our diversity. We can agree to disagree.
This is often easier said than practiced.
I still occasionally find myself engaging in debate rather than dialogue, but now it’s more a matter of how long it takes before I become aware and shift into a different mode. What respectful dialogue requires from us is a great deal of self awareness. What intention and motivation am I coming from?
Did I ask for agreements about how we will treat each other even when the dialogue becomes emotionally charged? Am I taking responsibility for my own actions, my own words, for how I impact another?
What if one person comes with the intention to be in partnership and the other is not able/willing to meet them there? Because we can’t change someone else’s behavior or mindset — how do we choose to show up?
One of the tools that I learned by studying with Alan Seale at the Center for Transformational Presence is the ‘wisdom perspective’ or what I’ve come to call ‘the compassionate observer’. It’s a learned skill that takes time and awareness to cultivate, to feel natural and to become a new habit.
It looks something like this:
I’m in a situation where another person says or does something that triggers me.
I have a strong emotion about what’s happening, I become angry or frustrated or deeply disappointed. I allow this emotion to arise and just feel it inside of me. It’s okay to feel how I feel. It’s okay for the emotion to be intense, it’s even okay that I’m not sure at this point what to do with my feelings — I just sit with it.
Sitting with it may require me to take a break from the other person and the situation to allow it to diffuse rather than to amplify.
While I am in this solo space: in my mind and in my heart I consciously choose to step to a outsider’s perspective. I can even literally walk my body to another part of the room to shift the energy.
I ask, what if I were simply a compassionate observer of this event?
I contemplate, what’s the reason this is coming up for me right now? What message might I need to pay attention to? Is this a life pattern that I need to look at? What inner work might be coming up because I am so triggered right now?
Often in going through this process, I find myself actually grateful I was triggered. In gratitude that another person acted like a mirror to show me something I really needed to see about myself, which may have remained my blind spot had this not occurred. Many times after stepping into the wisdom perspective I find humor or a deeper sense of self-love or increased compassion for others.
Once I’ve become the compassionate observer and identify where I need to grow, I’m ready to re-engage with the other person. It’s vitally important to re-engage because this is where true learning and growth takes place. What happens next is that I speak differently, I come from a more loving place, I have very little need to be right, I honor their perspective. I have even completely changed my viewpoint at times.
The result?
What’s built between us is greater trust, respect, safety, connection and together we can open doors for infinite possibility…
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