Managing Conflicts with Wisdom and Grace

In this episode of Peaceful Life Radio, hosts David Lowry and Don Drew discuss effective strategies for managing arguments and disagreements. They emphasize the inevitability of drama in life and the importance of finding calm in the midst of it. Key points include avoiding reactivity, actively listening, setting clear boundaries, and understanding triggers. They explore ways to handle arguments before, during, and after they occur, aiming to maintain healthy relationships and achieve higher consciousness. Practical tips such as taking breaks, focusing on the issue at hand, and making sincere apologies are offered to help navigate conflicts more peacefully.

00:00 Welcome to Peaceful Life Radio
00:26 The Reality of Drama in Life
01:14 Arguments and Relationships
03:54 Effective Strategies for Arguments
06:03 Understanding and Managing Triggers
11:49 During the Argument: Staying Focused
19:10 After the Argument: Moving Forward
21:52 Final Thoughts on Peaceful Arguments

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Transcript

David Lowry: 0:29

Hello everyone and welcome to Peaceful Life Radio. I'm David Lowry and with me is my good friend Don Drew.

Don Drew: 0:35

Hello everybody..

David Lowry: 0:37

Don, here we go. The year is going on and our best of intentions are falling by the wayside.

Don Drew: 0:47

Yes, Yes. We've already we've talked about making New Year's resolutions and I have somewhat avoided it this year, but

David Lowry: 0:53

I've still got the New Year's resolutions underway. But what I'm thinking about is when we want to have a happy, peaceful life, sometimes we think, Well, this year, I'm not going to argue with anybody. I'm going to eliminate all drama from my life. You ever say that? No more drama. No more drama. But guess what? Drama is a part of life. And one of the things that I've studied in this area that I've learned is that you've got to be able to find the eye of the storm whenever drama comes along. Sort of like the tornadoes and the hurricanes. There's actually a peaceful place in the middle of the storm.

Don Drew: 1:31

Before we get going there, let's ask our listeners to please like, download and share our podcast. We want everybody to know about this. We want to be a help to people who are trying to find peace everywhere. Before we launch into this discussion of arguments, I want to say officially that if you can believe it, David and I have actually had arguments in the past.

David Lowry: 1:52

Yeah, a few.

Don Drew: 1:53

Yeah, we were both Deans at the same university at the same time with different pots of money arguing over. So

David Lowry: 1:59

That's right.

Don Drew: 2:00

I sure we had plenty

David Lowry: 2:01

I think I remember a sumo contest with a mud pit on the side.

Don Drew: 2:07

David always won. He's a skilled arguer.

David Lowry: 2:11

Don is treacherous. That's all I want to say is that you gotta be ready. Don, when we're in a fight, one of the things we have to do is, learn how to fight well. I'm not talking about, like, how to destroy the other person, but arguments are going to come up. Disagreements are going to come up, and I think one of the reasons Don and I are good friends is first of all we just like each other, we have a healthy respect for each other, how we live our lives and what we're all about, but I think we also learned how to work through our difficulties, just like any good friend should do.

Don Drew: 2:45

Yeah, I agree.

David Lowry: 2:46

And Don, I have known people who, whenever they have a difficulty with someone, they just write that person off and go to the next person. And you can do that, but it's a shame, you know?

Don Drew: 2:57

Yeah. Typically, I find when people are like that, they are in a win-lose mode. They're going to win the argument. And if they don't appear to be able to win the argument, then as you say, they just move on or run them over or do something like that. Arguments, generally speaking, are between people who have some kind of a relationship; otherwise, they wouldn't be arguing over anything. And we believe here at Peaceful Life Radio that relationships are extremely important. So, arguing and learning how to argue productively or how to disagree at, it'd probably be a better term, how to disagree productively and work through that is really what we wanted to spend our time on today.

David Lowry: 3:34

And I want to say from the outset that whenever we give these ideas to you, we know that you know a lot of these, if not all of them. But you do need to be reminded of it. And you do need to have it put into a framework so that you can say, Yeah, this makes more sense to me how I might do it this way. And also want to say to you that, when you know more about the ways you should go about presenting your points of view and listening to others and maybe having a decent argument as opposed to a destructive one, you're going to have more of a higher consciousness about you. Sadly, that means you're going to have to be the one to manage the conflict in a way that's respectful because not everybody knows how to do this. But you can learn how to do this, and you can become skillful at it. And it doesn't have to be a take no prisoners, die in the war situation.

Don Drew: 4:24

David, why don't you walk us through some effective strategies to help keep calm in an argument?

David Lowry: 4:29

We're going to start. Don, by talking some things before an argument, if you have the opportunity of doing this before.

Don Drew: 4:36

Fair enough.

David Lowry: 4:36

Sometimes you can prepare for an argument. If you can, that's a good thing, because sometimes arguments just crop up, and the next thing you know, it's like, how in the world did I wind up here? I thought things were going along great. The next thing you know, we're fighting for our lives. So I want you to keep in mind three primary goals. No reactivity, listening, and peacefully and respectfully saying what you think is important to say.

Don Drew: 5:02

Okay, what I think I hear you saying is that when you are in a conversation with somebody and it's turning into a disagreement, it's important to listen to the other person's perspective and try and understand it first before making assumptions about what they're meaning or saying. Would that be accurate?

David Lowry: 5:23

You be the one to listen first, and you must do it without reactivity.

Don Drew: 5:29

And that's important because the relationship matters.

David Lowry: 5:32

The relationship matters, but Don, if it would work the other way, I would tell you to do it the other way. If, being reactive, reactive means that you're talking loud and angrily, you're showing a bit of emotionality. Maybe you're yelling or being unreasonable and saying hurtful things and swearing and things like this. If all of that actually worked, I guess we'd all do it, but it doesn't work. And you might as well just learn right here, right now, even though you may want to do all that stuff, you may want to throw a tantrum. It's not going to get you anywhere. It's going to destroy stuff. So we say low to no reactivity is required. And then of course, keeping things peaceful and respectful in the way you talk, that ought to make perfect sense. It's a part of low reactivity. Makes sense?

Don Drew: 6:19

Yeah. So, we're talking about before the argument now, but arguments also have middles and ends as well. Correct?

David Lowry: 6:26

That's right. There is a life cycle to an argument. It helps to realize, okay, I'm at the beginning and not the end.

Don Drew: 6:33

Let's talk about triggers for just a moment because quite often when we're in a conversation, it's getting heated, it's leading up to an argument and so on. Something is triggering us. How do we manage that? How do we get on top of those triggers?

David Lowry: 6:45

The thing about triggers is this. We know we have them, and every time we fall prey to them. It's like saying, if you see the color red, don't do X. And you know, okay, I'm going to see the color red, I'm not going to do X. But then I show you the color red and the next thing you know, you're just, wildly reactive and doing all the things you go, There I go again! That's what a trigger is. A trigger is something that bypasses your rational way of thinking and causes you to behave in a way that you really didn't want to go there. We don't have to allow our triggers to get the better of us. We're always going to be a little difficult to deal with when somebody triggers us. But if we catch ourselves in the trigger, we can rein it in. Or sometimes we can realize, hey, maybe this person's intentionally trying to trigger me and Say I decide if I'm going to trigger, not you. Here's a trigger, Don, that gets me alot If I feel disrespected. If I feel disrespected, sometimes I find myself getting really reactive. Snippy in my remarks, a little more accusatory, sarcastic. But I'm not solving the problem, am I? I'm just reacting in this loop of behavior. And you know what? The person may have no idea that I took it as disrespect. They may have been innocently saying something that I interpreted as disrespect. And that's the thing about a trigger. The other person has no idea necessarily that they're doing it to. We're just talking about an ordinary type of argument where people suddenly overreact to things that really shouldn't have caused them to do that.

Don Drew: 8:26

I think a lot of us react in that way, David, when we feel like we're being disrespected. For me, one of the main triggers that will get me every time is when a voice is starting getting raised. Loud noises and things of that nature build emotional intensity and I find myself matching that very quickly. If I don't catch myself I'll start to elevate my voice as well. That's when I'm really getting a problem. So if somebody starts arguing very loudly that triggers me and it makes me want to fight back.

David Lowry: 8:54

And I'll tell you a trigger that I've heard people say and I think it gets a good number of people. And rightfully so, and that's when they think that they've heard something that's dishonest or a lie. They think, Somebody's lying to me. Somebody is not telling me the whole truth here. That triggers a lot of people, and basically gives them permission to either end all relationship with that person or to stop being reasonable with them in an argument. What I'd like to say is that we need to expect that things are going to be said and done that trigger us. Somebody will probably misstate or overstate the truth. They may use hyperbole or exaggerate well beyond what they should. Sometimes people outright lie and they know they shouldn't and we know they shouldn't. But that doesn't give us permission to stop working on the problem at hand. Now, sometimes if we can't come to an agreement upon what's true and what's not, we may not be able to proceed any further because at some point truth matters. But we shouldn't be surprised, if our five year old tells us a lie. We shouldn't be surprised if our teenagers lie to us. The sooner we understand that people, when they feel threatened, do that sort of thing, that tells us what we need to know. It tells us that we still have something to work out.

Don Drew: 10:12

Yeah we're still talking about what happens before for the argument. And what I'm hearing is the more we understand our triggers, the more we're able to get on top of them and to take what most of us would want to do in an argument, which is to take the high road, right? And so by being aware of those triggers, it helps us control our response to an argument. And that knowledge helps us be prepared for arguments in the future when they come.

David Lowry: 10:38

Yeah, and there's this old study called inoculation theory. It's McGuire. It goes way back in time, but basically if we in our mind, prepare ourselves that people are going to behave disrespectfully, maybe they're going to stretch the truth a bit, maybe be reactive to us, if we can just tell ourselves ahead of time, this is going to happen, especially at the beginning stages of an argument, that helps us inoculate ourselves when it actually happens. You have to know there's a life cycle to a fight, And you can't skip the steps. We have to go through that whole cycle of argumentation. I mean, You're going to have to do this dance. You may not have signed up for it or wanted it, but you're in it and it's got to happen. And if you can just say, okay, we're at the beginning stages, I'm going to hear nonsense. I'm going to hear crazy stuff. I'm going to hear things that are irrational. I'm going to hear reactivity. It's like, Yeah, I expected that.

Don Drew: 11:32

We can also determine ahead of time what we will and won't tolerate in a conversation. Sure. Like for instance, the respect you mentioned. I won't continue an argument or a discussion or whatever with somebody who's obviously being disrespectful or shouting at me or something, I just will not continue the conversation when it gets to that level of intensity. I know that about myself, so there's a boundary, if you will, that I set in advance, and it doesn't matter who I'm arguing with. There's a point at which I have to say, I'm not going to participate at that level.

David Lowry: 12:04

Sure. And we all need to know what that boundary is for us and respectfully and peacefully enforce the boundary. We can say, Look, it appears our tempers are too high and that we can't talk respectfully here. Let's revisit this later. I'm out.

Don Drew: 12:19

Let's let's talk about what happens during the argument.

David Lowry: 12:21

All right, we're fighting now.

Don Drew: 12:23

Just as important.

David Lowry: 12:23

It's just as important. The thing I think is really important for us to do is just to remember that You don't actually have to keep this thing going if you don't want to. You can take a break. I need to reflect on what's being said, or I am uncomfortable with what I'm hearing, or I'm not sure what I want to say just yet. You have the right to enforce a timeout. I need Five or 10 minutes and I'll come back and we'll revisit this again. One of the things I learned as a mediator was that when things get heated, it's okay to, once stuff has been put on the table and we can tell that there's sufficient charge, it's okay to say, we need a small break. We will come back and continue what we've been saying. We'll pick up where we left off. Let's give ourselves 10 minutes, please. There's no reason why we can't do that in our own arguments.

Don Drew: 13:13

Okay. So, here's another thing that happens to me sometimes is we're talking, it starts about an issue, but it expands quickly into a lot of other stuff. We start dredging up old hurts and what you said last week and so on and so forth. And it gets really messy and nasty and we're no longer arguing about the issue we're arguing about a whole world of issues and past arguments and

David Lowry: 13:39

I know.

Don Drew: 13:40

that's kind of a problem, isn't it?

David Lowry: 13:41

That is a problem, and it's so tempting to bring up all the old past and hurts again and revisit them because, quite honestly, one of the reasons that we're in an argument is probably there's some history behind it. Sometimes there may be seven or eight problems all wrapped into this thing, and it's come to a head, and, as the saying goes, and here we are. It's really impractical to think you're going to solve all seven or eight of those issues when things begin to turn southward. But we can, if we want to, stay focused. on the topic. The cooler head should say something like this. Look, I know that there's probably a lot of issues that we need to address one by one. Could we agree to talk about this? Right here today whatever the issue we want to identify is it's better if you identify one thing than lots of things.

Don Drew: 14:34

When you talk about identify, in arguments we want to describe what the issue is in objective terms and not so much in reactive terms, right? And that's where this cooling down period where this focusing on the topic becomes extremely useful because that keeps us centered on the area of disagreement. We started the podcast today talking about that you and I had disagreements and arguments when we were deans, because we were both convinced that what we were responsible for was important, that we needed those resources and sometimes in a resource pool one of us could get more or less of what we wanted and so our arguments were legitimate. They had real consequences and so forth. And we both argued passionately for it. But we were able to stay focused on the topic, right.

David Lowry: 15:22

This is important. The more we can make it objective, the better it's going to be. Objective means what is the issue that we're talking about? And can we avoid bringing in personalities? Can we describe the issue before us in objective observable terms? Let's say you're a supervisor and you have an employee coming in late after nine o'clock. You could go to that employee and say, What in the world is going on with you? You're always late. And we've had it around here. But a better way would be to focus on the problem. Employee, we have a nine o'clock start time. This week, I've counted three times that you were late. Monday, Wednesday, and today, Friday. What is this about?

Don Drew: 16:08

Help me understand.

David Lowry: 16:09

Help me understand. And that doesn't take the employee off the hook, but you are objectively describing. If you could get even more specific, you could say, Monday you came in at 9 20. Wednesday you came in at 9 15. And today it's 9 30. Our start time is at nine o'clock. What do I need to know? And there could be something you really do need to know. The next one is something that I think you're really good at is active listening. Why don't you tell us about that?

Don Drew: 16:38

I don't know that I always agree with you on that. We may have an argument on that one. But I do, I am aware of how important it is to hear somebody out first. There was Stephen Covey is known for saying first seek to understand, then be understood. And I think it's an important thing to carry through in any argument or disagreement. In order to understand somebody else, what their point is, what their argument is, you have to listen first. There's a lot of other assumptions. Are they actually describing their position. Well, that's where questions come in. Ask more questions. Okay. Are generally speaking when we talk about arguments, the emotionally charged and when we get emotionally charged, we disengage that thinking part of us that does these things right. So we have to have a way of reminding ourselves to slow down. Listen better. And that means doing things like not interrupting. Okay? I've listened to arguments before. I've had arguments before where interrupting became the norm for that argument. And when you're constantly interrupting, that's a bold sign that nobody's listening to anybody in that argument and we're not getting anywhere.

David Lowry: 17:47

You're so right. Interrupting can cause a lot of pain and suffering because when people don't feel heard they get even more upset and angry. Even if we don't agree, at least hearing their point of view, Is important to understand their point of view. This past year, I had to go to a mediation session with an attorney of all things. And the mediator's very skilled and gives us all time to express ourselves and to talk about the problem from each of our viewpoints. Suddenly, we all get a more comprehensive picture of what we're talking about, then we had going in. And it's very, very helpful.

Don Drew: 18:25

Yeah. And using phrases such as, tell me more, or the one I used a minute ago, which is help me understand, or is there anything else you want to say? These kinds of phrases help extract or bring more information from the person with whom we are having the argument. Helps us understand them better. And then of course we can use words more carefully. Use I statements to express our feelings instead of using a lot of you statements, trying to assume that you are understanding what the other person is trying to say.

David Lowry: 18:56

But the thing is, when you give a person the opportunity. to tell you more when they're angry, they will. And it lets out a lot of negativity and charge.

Don Drew: 19:06

Yeah. And also it gives you more information. I mean, quite often when we're arguing, we want to get our point out there. So we make the sharpest point that we can and leave out a lot of other things, like, context, reasons why we feel so strongly that may not be apparent to the other individual. It's really easy for arguments to turn bad. There's some things we can do on the front end to get ready to be able to argue better. There's some things that happen during the argument where we can have a better outcome but quite often when we're finished arguing, we walk away and maybe it worked out, maybe it was good, maybe it was bad. But there's some things we can do after an argument as well. What does that look like?

David Lowry: 19:42

Absolutely. There's this book called After the Fight, and I have learned so much from that book. One of the things I learned is that everybody's going to fight. It's what you do after the fight that determines whether or not you go forward as friends. After the fight, there's several things. One is if apologies need to be made, don't be afraid to make it. Say, listen, I know when we were discussing all this, I raised my voice, I got overly excited. I'm sorry about that. Just your willingness to admit that you can get carried away. That's one thing you can do.

Don Drew: 20:17

Yeah. We just talking about self reflection here. Okay. And thinking about how we responded and whether or not we were fair in the way we treated the other person, or whether we really listened to them or whether there's more information that needs to be gathered. It's very possible that the argument ends and it didn't end well. That doesn't mean you can't go back. At least hopefully it means you can't go back to this person. Because remember we said the relationship is the prime concern here.

David Lowry: 20:42

Let's say that your partner say you're not doing enough around here. You need to fix dinner at least half the time, or you need to be helping cleaning up the house, or you need to participate more with the children or whatever gets brought up. And in the argument, you didn't go back and agree to any of that or say anything. But maybe after the argument, you could say something like, I heard what you said and I'm going to remember to try to do more. I do want to help out more. If you want me to cook this week, when is a good time for me to do that? And if you can, reaffirm the things you agreed to do or that you're now willing to do after reflective thought.

Don Drew: 21:19

The truth is, we can learn from our mistakes, right? It is possible to learn from our mistakes and to do better. I remember this one argument my wife and I had one time after the cooling off period, and we were kind of gaming, what happened and why we got crossways with each other and so forth. And she said to me, ask more questions. I've carried that with me going forward. I try to be more aware to ask more questions when and that assume necessarily so much about what she's saying or what her point is. She shows me the same respect and it really enhanced our ability to communicate.

David Lowry: 21:55

Ask more questions is a great thing. Here's another one that I learned from my growing up is when the argument's over, it's over. And when I, that doesn't mean that all the issues have been solved satisfactorily to everybody's desire necessarily. But once you've decided that we're going to let this go, let it go. It's over. Move forward. Don't keep bringing it up. Don't rehash it. You don't have to keep holding it over somebody's head. Let it go.

Don Drew: 22:22

So staying calm in an argument is a skill that takes practice, right? There's things that we can do, things we can learn about ourselves, ways to control ourselves and so on. And to be a better communicator, ask more questions Listen better. We can do these kinds of things and by consistently applying them and these techniques we can navigate disagreements with greater ease and maintain healthier relationships, which is what we really want in the end.

David Lowry: 22:49

We want everybody to have a calm and peaceful life. We know that you're going to have arguments from time to time. But it is possible to argue fairly, friendly, and calmly. And if things do get a little out of hand, go back and revisit them and make things better. Remember it is something that you can develop over time. It is a skill.

Don Drew: 23:08

Very good. Well, listen everybody Thank you for listening to us at Peaceful Life Radio your place on the internet for finding more peace in your life.