Stop blaming and start being! We attract what we are. We attract who we are. If you don't like something in your life, look only at who you are. Who you are is why you choose the friends and situations in your life. Who you are is why you choose poorly, or fail to choose wisely. Stop being a victim! When you blame others you are effectively proclaiming that you are only response to stimuli. But you are much more than mere response to stimuli. When you blame others, you are affirming that you have no power, and your existence is only a reaction to the power of others. But, you are powerful, if you choose to be. You can choose to be proactive, assertive and self-defining. You can choose better relationships, better jobs, better places to live, better uses of your time and better ways of treating yourself. Go look in the mirror and have a talk with your real boss. Find a new and better leader within yourself, for yourself. Lead your life with love and friendship; self-love, and as your own friend. Lead with honesty, total integrity, compassion, patience and tolerance — toward yourself! If you live with values for yourself, then you become of great value to all who know you. It starts with you. Quit waiting for others to give to you; it is not going to happen. You are all powerful, take control of your life's situations rather than being a passive bystander.
One technique to practice calm in conflict is to imagine a small fountain pool, like a bird bath, in the center of your stomach. Imagine yourself at peace and the waters in your inner-pool are calm and reflecting the world around you clearly. As you become upset, ripples begin appearing on the surface and little drops stream over the edge. The reflection, which represents your understanding, becomes less defined and somewhat distorted. As you grow in anger, fear, dread or nervousness the water begins slopping over the sides onto the floor. Your understanding is completely distorted and the more you try to control it, the more you seem to lose control. When you are facing conflict try to keep the surface of your inner-pool of emotions calm and steady. Your inner-calm is your safe haven in moments of challenge. Look upon the troubled waters of the other person, and simply have understanding — nothing more. In your serenity there is a clarity, strength and correctness that is beyond the petty scuffles of the moment — a greater truth — it is the truth of who you are; beautiful, calm, secure, open, willing and safe. Try to avoid allowing your adversary's conflict-energy to bump into your energy; remain separate and unentangled. See the moment for what it is — a test and an opportunity to practice being a good communicator and to further refine yourself. Much of life is merely a practice. When you begin looking at each challenge as practice you shift from being a reactive victim of circumstance to a victor in a rehearsal of opportunity. Every small run-through is preparing you for tougher challenges. Start practicing today and you will become stronger and more confident through each moment of challenge.
The goal of calm and non-response is not to suppress your natural emotions, but to be able to flow with them and even marshal those emotions when needed. For example, anger can be a beautiful and useful tool. The fire of anger can serve you as a tool of survival, as a remover of obstacles, as a dramatic and effective psychological or theatrical punctuation of communication, and as a useful force of destruction when we decidedly need to wreck things in our lives with a controlled implosion. The problem is when anger controls you, instead of you controlling it. Much of this practice is learning to disentangle your emotions from the static charge of the other person's emotions. It can be very difficult to not be swept away in someone else's rush of troubled energy. When we feel controlled or influenced in this way we can become resentful, which fuels our dysfunction. We sometimes avoid difficult people, but we often do it because we know we cannot control our emotions in their presence! In this sense we are putting those people in control. The way you put yourself in control around difficult people is by learning how to maintain your objective calm in the midst of their emotional upheaval. Be mindful and don't let your emotions get out of control!
If petty and meddlesome people stress you out try to begin looking at their slights, insults and jabs as a form of training. Being insulted offers you an opportunity to practice having a non-response internally by remaining calm. It's a practice and it takes time, but it is very possible to learn this skill. Start with small slights and attacks and when they occur — steady yourself by setting the intention and by saying to yourself, "Alright. This person is giving me an opportunity to practice having a non-response internally." Just the context of this practice as an opportunity will begin to help. Then continue practicing with each incident while exploring yourself and trying to better understand your feelings. Through this private intention you will begin to see ugly and coarse behaviours in others as helpful, and the practice can even become empowering instead of dreadful. The deeper you move into this practice the more you will begin to realize that the terrible feelings you once believed were caused by others originate from you and truly belong to you. Fear, anger, nervousness, dread and that awful fight-or-flight feeling will all slowly be replaced with calm, confidence, coolness, and eventually compassion.
Learning to master inner-calm and non-response to what seems like negativity is a life practice. When you release yourself from the need for approval and control you can stop punishing yourself and others. The fulcrum of resistance is in your mind where you pit yourself against the weight of the external. Release yourself from the struggle of emotional exertion that goes nowhere. No one can make you feel anything; you are completely responsible for how you feel. Until you quit participating in your pain, cooperating in your abuse and engaging in the contest, you will always be a part of other people's games of torment and inner-suffering. Next time someone comes after you to fight, ask yourself in that moment, "who am I, and who do I choose to be?" Choose calm. Choose serenity. Choose independent confidence and sanity. Once you detach from conflict through non-engagement, you rise to a state of empowering calm awareness, empathy and safety.
People can only have power over you if you are seeking to have power over others. You are only plagued with stress in moments of common petty conflict because you are arrogant, and believe others are transgressing by having unfavorable thoughts about you. Another person's thoughts about you are outside of your jurisdiction; you have no authority. You have fantasies about you being right, and about them being wrong, or that there is an injustice or an attack. Sometimes a perceived attack can seem very real, when it is really just your insistence or resistance. When someone is attacking you, they are coming to you for advice. How you react advises them. What advice will you give them? They likely may not know they are seeking advice, but you advise them nonetheless. You can teach an attacker many things through your response. Your boundaries may teach them they are not permitted to treat you disrespectfully. Your permissiveness may teach them to continue hurting you. Your calm and wise response may make sense to them many years later as they grow and heal. Perhaps your example will be steps in their ascension to respect and virtue. Has anyone ever helped you in your ascension to virtue? Perhaps you have been cruel or said something mean and someone responded to your attack with kindness or calm, which later caused you to feel bad or ashamed about your actions. That was someone giving advice to their attacker — you. When you wrestle with foolish people, you tie them tighter into the knot of their ignorance, hate and disrespect. But kindness and openness create an atmosphere where people feel safe to learn and change without judgement. Kindness teaches kindness; self-respect teaches self-respect. This is part of the meaning of "actions speak louder than words" or "leading by example." You are instructing everyone at every moment with your every action; in this way we are all role models. You are much more than merely a response to external stimuli. By choosing to have a calm response to what seems negative, you bring clarity and balance to your message. People not only learn from what you say, but how you say it. Each reaction we have helps us inspect ourselves by revealing parts of our own nature to ourselves; it is never about others. And remember, when you are speaking to someone else you are really speaking only to yourself. Everything you say to someone else is for your clarity, not theirs — you are presenting yourself, to yourself, for yourself at every moment.
A great deal of defensiveness stems from the need to be right and frustration over not being able to control. This is why defensiveness is a component of suppressed violence within oneself; it is violent to wish to control others. We only have a defensive response when we are trying to protect some inner-territory or some belief. The earthquake of discomfort you feel moving inside of you when someone insults you is your own insecurity. Defensiveness often has little to do with what another person has said, but rather with your ego. It is only your weak, approval-seeking self that is throwing a tantrum for agreement. Most upset is a fear of rejection. Defensiveness and emotional tumult is often a fear response because of your need for acceptance and ruthless control of the territory of your safe fantasy world. Real strength only comes from vulnerability, not toughness. Only true vulnerability can set you free from the anxiety of painful insecurity. Openness is free and flowing — it is a dance, while being closed-off is protective and unmovable. Negative feelings can only exist through your resistance. As you quit resisting they diminish. When you emotionally stand aside from the attack, negative feelings pass by you like a charging bull. When you realize that the defensive feeling you have is a response to your resistance, you are free in that moment.
Learn to love being told you are wrong or being insulted. Every insult is an opportunity. Being insulted offers you an opportunity to practice decency and having a non-response internally. When we are easily upset it is because we are internally unstable and unrefined spiritually. Any defensiveness is a sign of failure. You can't move forward if you are defensive. If you do not like a certain behavior in others, look within yourself to find the roots of what discomforts you. The conflicts we have with the outside world are often conflicts we have within ourselves. Criticism is no threat to your self-esteem or identity, but rather informs you. You can't see clearly through defensiveness. You can get to a place where you see clearly; that place is zero defensiveness. Take any concept you believe in deeply and say out loud, and with full conviction, that your dearest belief may be totally flawed. Say, "There is no doubt that I could be wrong." If you cannot do this, then you do not possess the idea, the idea possesses you. Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are. An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in their understanding of things. The best practice is to be around people who absolutely disagree. Grace in conflict is a study in love.
When someone is vicious toward you they are giving you a glimpse of the pain they carry in themselves. Viciousness is suffering. The way you engage someone's pain either reinforces their pain or helps to release it. Be gentle when you can. If you are strong and safe within yourself, then be patient and teach your virtues by your calm example. Try to be less reactive. Try to be very kind to yourself and others. Start with one deviation from your negative and reactive habits. Instead of assuming, which creates pain and suffering for everyone, be open, curious and expect cooperation. Learn to be light. Have you ever tried to catch a tiny feather floating in the air? It's very hard to do. When you try to grab a tiny floating feather, it just flies right around your hand! The more violently you grasp, the faster the wind carries it away. In your heart and disposition, be as light as a feather and when they reach for you — you will blow right by their grip; you will effortlessly float to safety. Be as light as that feather. Have a smile of calm in your heart. Be peaceful. When you walk in peace you will literally see attackers shattering themselves against your inner-calm. They will defeat themselves.
Conflict is a natural part of existence. Life is a struggle for survival for every organism at every level. Everyone must "fight" for something at times, although some struggle more than others, and often unnecessarily. Force will sometimes get you through a challenge, but usually not without hurting and depleting yourself in the process. Brute physical, intellectual and emotional conflict often causes a great deal of collateral damage. There are gentler and more graceful ways to interface with natural conflict. As you spiritually mature you will begin to look at conflict in less self-centered ways. You will realize that engagement is an option. There is an enlightened way to flow with, in, and through conflict. Learn to resist but do not be un-moveable in your resistance. Resist like the water. Flow. You don't have to win. You don't have to be right. You don't always have to teach the corrective lesson. Sometimes you can teach the lesson of patience and non-engagement. Be wise. Sometimes it is best to stand back from conflict and allow other elements in someone's life to do the hard work for you. Time is a masterful teacher. Silence is a masterful teacher. When we want to talk, we can instead listen, and let our attentiveness to another's need to speak, be our silent statement. But whatever you do, always do it in love and not anger, and in compassion, not contempt.
