Years ago, I presented a Tongue Fu! seminar about conflict resolution and put up a slide with my adaptation of Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote which said, ‘No one can make us mad without our consent.’
A woman raised her hand and said, “I agree because I’ve lived through it. I’m a surgical nurse. I work with a neurosurgeon who’s the most abrasive individual I’ve ever met. He’s a brilliant doctor; and he has zero people skills.
Last year, I was a fraction of a second late handing him an instrument in surgery and he berated me in front of my peers.
On the drive home, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. When I got home, I sat down at the dinner table, told my husband what happened, pounded my fist on the table and said, ‘That doctor makes me so MAD.’
My husband had heard this before and said, ‘Judy, what time is it?’
I looked at him, wondering what that had to do with anything. ‘7 o’clock.’
‘What time did this happen?’
‘9 o’clock this morning.’
He said, ‘Judy, is it really the doctor who’s making you mad?’
I sat there and thought about it. I realized… It wasn’t the doctor who was making me mad. The doctor wasn’t even in the room!
I was the one who had given him a ride home in my car. I was the one who set him a place at my dinner table.
In that moment, I decided that never again was that doctor welcome in my home or in my head.”
A lot of what happens in life, we can’t control. However, we CAN control how much time we spend dwelling on it and how we deal with it.
ACTION
How about you… Are you letting someone else live in your head rent-free?
Read the conflict resolution style descriptions below and reflect on which style was modeled for you growing up?
Do you use the same style that was modeled for you when dealing with conflict today?
How can you assert yourself in the moment so you don’t carry the conflict with you?
Ask yourself (or others who may be venting to you) “Do you want to be heard, helped, or hugged?”
