Make confrontation work for you.

This post was written by Ashley Berges

Confrontation

Ashley BergesWe despise even hate confrontation.

Because we hate confrontation, we stray away from dealing with our problems. Avoiding confrontation causes us to toss and turn all night, be stressed out all day, and when it gets bad enough, the anger you’re carrying around affects every aspect of your life.

For the most part, none of us like confrontation.  We view confrontation as an unpleasant situation that we’d rather avoid at all costs.  We go through our life dealing with people, who we’d like to honestly tell how we feel about their attitude, actions, and/or accountability.  Instead, we choose to not rock the boat.  Throughout certain relationships, we continue to deal with what we feel is a level of disrespect and we suck it up, and we hope the situation will get better or the person will just go away.

Because the situation usually doesn’t get any better and this person doesn’t vanish in thin air, we begin to turn the anger internally.  We’re angry with ourselves for not speaking up and we can’t believe this person is continuing to demonstrate disrespect towards us on a daily basis.  Eventually, the issues begin to pile up and you find yourself seething with anger and resentment.  Depending on your threshold of pain, you continue to wait and hope things will change, but you know in your heart they will not.  You may tell your close friends about what’s going on and eventually you sound like a broken record.  Because this person continues to do thoughtless and disrespectful things day after day, you begin to wonder if you are reading them correctly.  You begin to look for things that signify that you have jumped to conclusions, and this person is really a wonderful person who doesn’t know what they are doing.  We tend to question ourselves in order to subconsciously put off confrontation even longer.

Eventually after discussing this issue with everyone that will listen, you decide to talk to address the issue one on one.  This long deserved confrontation will usually end the relationship because you’ve either had enough, they don’t care, or you realize this person should have never been in your life in the first place.  All of these things could have been figured out months if not years ago.  Instead of going through this losing process, use the Berges 7 to deal with confrontation and to not lose anymore of your time, your mind, and your life.

Berges laws of confrontation

1. Confront others the first time something happens-Don’t wait.  (Called: The Oh heck no.)  The longer we wait in confronting another, the more difficult it becomes.

2.  Don’t let another person decide your fate.  You know they are likely to choose poorly for you. (Fate Robber)

3. Take the relationship out of it.  It may be difficult but realize if you don’t confront now, there may be no relationship anyway.

4.  Know the RIGHT thing is going to happen.  If truth is on your side, you will triumph one way or another.

5.  Don’t be scared to lose the friendship.  If you confront them and they don’t want to be your friend anymore, then they weren’t your friend in the first place.

6.  Your silence = all is good.  Until you speak up, the other person doesn’t know for certain how you feel.  By being quiet you continue the cycle.

7.  Standing up for yourself never felt better.  You owe it to yourself to step up to the plate for you!

ashley berges you rock

 

 

 

 

 



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2 Responses

  1. Moe Maghami says:

    Informative blog!

  2. Mike Ledoux says:

    Agree with this blog.