Author: mediation-writer

Are you a beginner?

Before you click away and resume doom-scrolling (it’s OK, we’re all doing it), think about it: do you see the world from a place of curiosity, or do you assume, Nah, I’ve seen it all before?

Whether we are five or fifty-five, we can approach life with the mindset of a beginner.

And what exactly characterizes a beginner’s mind?

A beginner’s mind looks at something new with a freshness, knowing nothing and therefore wholly open to listening. A young child, for example, fills their blank slate with wide-open eyes, innocent questions, and mimics the examples laid out in front of them.

But a lot of us have made a few laps around the sun already. Ideally, an expert’s mind knows enough about something to understand that they will never know all of it. Imagine a journeyman carpenter, who’s been sawing wood for 40 years, and has seen their industry evolve from hand tools to power tools over a lifetime. Despite change being uncomfortable, the path to them becoming an expert in their field was one of continuous learning; born of an open mind that isn’t all that different from the apprentice starting out on their first day at the job.

These two mindsets anchor the ends of a timeline of understanding, but there is a third stage that stands between them: that of the intermediate mind. In this place, we know a little about something, but not yet enough to understand how little we don’t yet know. Case in point: the overconfidence that accompanies the terrible teenage years – we’ve all been there.

Alas, the intermediate mindset is an easy one to get stuck in and doesn’t age out of us as simply as the hormones of puberty. Instead, it carries forward into our relationships, careers, and communities.

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Let’s explore the why and what behind the intermediate mindset, so that perhaps we can avoid some of its perils.

Think back to your first job. Did you walk into that kitchen / yard / office ready to cook / garden / spreadsheet without any training? For those of us with a normal level of confidence, the answer to this would obviously be no. With a relatively clean slate, it’s natural to slip into a receptive stance when a manager steps in to share the wisdom of the novel trade.

Two years later in the very same job, advice from the very same coworker falls on different ears. With 730 days of experience, you are no longer a blank slate – and in the midst of their speaking you are already forming a response. Instead of listening, you are waiting for a moment to interject and speak your piece. Maybe the thought is a good one (emphasis on maybe), but either way it occludes your ears from really listening to what’s being said to you.

What changed? Well, now you know better.

Or so you think.

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Spoiler: we don’t always know better.

What’s wrong with a little bit of confidence? you might ask. Nothing actually – the problem lies rather in overconfidence, a place where ideas get hardened and stop evolving. With this rigid mindset, we get in our own way – and condemn ourselves to unnecessary trouble. So, why do we as humans trend in this direction?

On the one hand, we crave certainty – a safe harbour in a chaotic world. On another, our modern world seems to demand it of us – not allowing us to change our opinions without being crucified for it.

And so we double down on that which we know.

In the context of conflict, the intermediate mindset can result in us talking at each other rather than talking to each other. It’s a very real hurdle, with very real consequences of strife and resentment. Though oft unconscious (like the angst of a teenager), this can mean the difference between feeling frustrated or fulfilled in our interactions.

Despite our cravings for certainty, things are rarely so simple. Be wary of black-and-white thinking. Assumptions can get us into trouble and amp up the likelihood of getting defensive. The key to evolving beyond the intermediate mindset is to notice and temper these beliefs with a humble reminder of the truth: that we never know everything. And while that can be scary, it is also very freeing.

With practice, we learn to suspend our viewpoint in order to really bear witness to what’s happening around us. This dynamic of pausing and opening to a wider view is hard at first but over time becomes natural – and it’s from this place of inquiry that we can transform ourselves and our relationships.

Growth happens from the fertile soil of openness and curiosity. Let’s learn how to make it safe for ourselves and each other to change our minds.

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At Mediation Services (in Winnipeg and online), we specialize in facilitating open discussions surrounding family conflict, co-parenting / separation, workplace conflicts, and community conflicts.

In order to speak and be heard, we also need to listen – and this requires a certain degree of openness. Ideally this results in a two-way conversation, but if you find yourself stuck, we are here to help. Send us a message here and let’s see what we can accomplish together.

When working with defensiveness, it isn’t just with what arises within ourselves. Like a bird flying into a freshly cleaned windowpane, we inevitably bump into it out in the world oft when we don’t see it coming.

In the daze that follows, we find our feet; reflexively mirroring the defensive stance we face and reacting in our own way. This behaviour biologically bypasses conscious thought in our brains and, triggered by someone else being triggered, tends to unwittingly escalate a situation from nothing into…well, even more of a situation.

It’s not ideal.

How…why…what in the world just happened…? we can’t help but wonder to ourselves when the dust finally settles down.

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So, what exactly happens to take someone from it’s-all-good to red-alert in no time flat? It’s a tricky question that aims to peer beneath the surface of someone’s actions. In past blog articles we’ve explored defensiveness a fair bit, but mostly through a focused look inward at how it manifests within ourselves in the competitive "game of life". When we turn our inquisitive gaze outwards to others however, there is a lot less information to go on and it is hard to discern the potential source of others’ defensive behaviour.

While every situation is different, there are a few defensive patterns to be aware of.

Let’s take a closer look at an example and try to figure out what’s going on.

Act I

Scene 1

SETTING: You’re in a meeting at work. Everyone is sitting around the boardroom table. Things are going fine – the reports are being analyzed and everyone is nodding in agreement about the team’s plan going forward.

YOU: noticing a discrepancy in the numbers being projected on the wall, you turn to your colleague running the presentation to interrupt, "Thomas, is this number accurate?"

THOMAS: swivelling around abruptly to face you, quickly retorts, "Stop attacking me!"

Everyone falls silent. There is an awkward energy in the room.

(END OF SCENE)

And just like that, SMACK – we’ve hit our proverbial windowpane of defensiveness. In the span of a moment, things suddenly went from smooth to sideways.

What exactly happened? Where might this unexpected response have come from?

There are three contexts that trigger defensiveness:

1. Someone has been falsely accused and is defending their good name.
2. Someone is guilty and trying to cover up.
3. There is a grain of truth in the comment or accusation.

In the aforementioned example, can you determine which context your colleague Thomas is acting out of? It is not so clear. If he is innocent, he will act defensively. If he is guilty, he will also act defensively. And in both cases his response will look pretty much the same to you.

It’s one thing to look inwards with some insight into what’s at play, but when looking outwards it’s easy to fall into the dangerous zone of incorrect assumptions. Be mindful of this, and try to catch when you might be jumping to conclusions about the inner workings of someone else.

Shifting from a stance of defensiveness to curiosity, we can keep lines of communication open to try and bring clarity to the situation in order to avoid escalation. Ask questions to try and unpack where others are coming from. Try to hit pause before reacting in heated situations. Take responsibility for your role and any words / body language / actions that may have been misconstrued.

It’s worth noting that the inverse situation is also true: never assume that others can understand where you’re coming from when you also happen to behave defensively (and, going beyond this, in all of your actions). Again, try to be considerate of others by communicating what’s going on beneath your skin – not to absolve responsibility, but instead to give insight to your perspective and lend clarity to living in community with each other.

Either way, the only thing we can control is our own actions.

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Understanding defensiveness is the first step in learning to better work with it because, like it or not, it’s an invisible hurdle that we’re all going to bump into now and again. Life is full of relationships, and different histories and perspectives overlap in this messy experience called the present. Feathers are bound to get ruffled from time to time, but there is always a choice in how we pick ourselves back up and face that which we bumped into. In this, it’s possible to not bump into the same invisible pane (pain?) over and again.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Join us in diving deeper into this (and more!) with our on-demand online course Dealing with Defensiveness. Its curriculum is the result of many decades of work in this space, and through it we offer proven techniques and exercises to better resource you for life’s inevitable conflicts.

Remember: conflict is natural – and we can work with it.

So, how are your New Year’s resolutions going?

It’s a new year; a chance for a fresh start as we fill in the empty calendar. Or…is it really? Whether you were watching the countdown or fast asleep in dreamland, when the clock struck midnight on December 31st did you suddenly become a new version of yourself?

If the answer is yes, there are scientists who would be interested in talking to you. But for the rest of us, it’s safe to say that we remain the same version of ourselves. Sure it is the start of another day, but on a wide enough timeline, there is no real beginning or end. Instead, each moment is a continuation.

Some of us might prefer to leave the past behind: we look forward to tossing out last year’s calendar and putting up a fresh one. But as we walk past the recycling bin in the days that follow, that old crinkled calendar peeks out as a physical reminder of what was. Although we may be ready to move forward, we are still connected to our pasts – whether we like it or not.

There are times when it sure would be nice to truly wipe the slate clean – hit undo on a few things, rewind with hindsight, and try again. But we are inextricably woven into a web of interconnectivity: our actions have consequences, and the best we can do is live with them. Sadly, beginnings aren’t always as fresh as we hope them to be.

But before we slide into despair, there is some good news: the future is yet to be written. If we let go of the idea that new beginnings happen on their own, we can find empowerment in the potential of every moment. While this juncture may not be as fresh as we once hoped, it is also imbued with the potential for us to choose a fresh start. Each and every moment is a chance to begin again – not just when you pin up a blank calendar.

So as we step into the future, we have choice. And those choices are informed by past experience. Some of these old habits and modes of being might be skillful – but others might not. In our aspirations to evolve into better versions of ourselves, the messy entanglements that make up our existence must be taken into account. The past is intertwined with our being – our brains, communities, workplaces, etc – and the only way to untangle the knots is to enter the tangle fully.

Despite conflict being natural, these knots can be messy. At the same time, the relationships intertwined with them bind us to each other in beautiful, profound, and serendipitous ways. The work required by each of us is to tend to these knots as best we can, with skill and care.

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All of that said, the new year is still an opportunity for us to reflect and take stock:

• What did you do last year in your relationships that was beneficial? Let this be encouragement to continue putting effort into the personal work.
• What did you do last year that proved to be rather detrimental? Let this be a compass towards finding appropriate action and minimizing bad habits going forward.

It takes a bit of work to accept responsibility and manage the momentum of the past, but with daily effort we can slowly find big change. Here at Mediation Services, we aim to help with the more friction-y aspects of untangling conflict in life, love, and livelihood.

Sometimes it can feel like we’re stuck in conflicts that are bigger than we can handle. In such cases, reaching out for help is the lifeline we need.

Our office inbox is open and the phone is plugged in, and we’re on the other side waiting to listen and help. Whether you’re in need of assistance from a third party mediator or are looking to learn tools to help solve your own problems, we are here for you.

Relationships can be difficult but they are also integral to living, and so we owe it to ourselves to not give up on them so easily. Find hope in the realization that change is constant and every moment is an opportunity to spark something new.

So: it’s a new year, and you’re sort-of-the-same-old you. Now what?

The nature of life is that the only constant is change. Nothing is static; instead, everything moves amongst that which is around it. From the tiny shifting cells that make up our toes to the wide-reaching impact that our feet have on the ecosystem of our shared planet, these continuous transformations happen on vastly different scales.

But let’s not get lost in the metaphysics. Somewhere in the middle of this overwhelming spectrum of interconnectivity are our direct relationships with others – which ripple outwards in all directions.

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Think about a past version of yourself – the person that you were ten years ago. What were you focused on? What struggles did you face? What were you proud of? And with all this in mind, what has changed since then?

Now consider: What would you tell your younger self if you could go back in time? Sure, there is the temptation to give the wishful answer of some winning lottery numbers, but if we take the question more seriously most of us would want to share some wisdom we’ve garnered since then. And in so doing, spare ourselves the struggle of learning it the hard way.

Perhaps a part of this exercise ignites some discomfort around the ignorance of youth – who amongst us hasn’t done something we’re embarrassed of later in life? Beyond this, it’s worth noting that this contrast between past and present self is indicative that we haven’t been stagnant in life. Rather, we’ve all changed and the lessons learned along the way are healthy signs of growth.

You’re not the same person you were a year ago. Your workplace is not the same place it was a year ago. The world is not the same place it was a year ago. In all of these cases, the path from then to now was anything but straight. Alas, we are stuck fumbling forward into the unknown as the time machine remains a figment of science fiction.

Deep inside, we all know that there is room for self-improvement. Who would deny that they’re a work-in-progress? Yet despite this, when a colleague comes to us with negative feedback about how we can improve we still get defensive. This is a moment of cognitive dissonance; an illogical response that occurs when our internal monologue goes, "‌I know I’m not perfect, but I want you to see me as doing well".

There are two contexts that tend to trigger cognitive dissonance in all of us:

1. When we’ve invested time / money / reputation / effort in some activity or belief that turns out to be wrong or foolish.
2. When something challenges a central element of our concept of who we are.

Cognitive dissonance results in all-or-nothing thinking. As we’ve explored with a bit of Biology 101, it’s really hard in these moments to think clearly and find space to consider what is actually true.

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In the face of constant change, cognitive dissonance naturally arises. And so we get defensive, even if it might not make sense. When this happens, how can we manage it? We remember: this too will change.

Just like change can be a source of discomfort and unease, it can also be the solution to dealing with missteps and challenging situations. We learn, we experiment, we reassess…and that’s human. Perhaps looking back and feeling embarrassed about our past selves is a good sign – it means we are evolving and growing.

What if we could embrace this line of thinking and shift our internal monologue from, "I’ve done it this way for all these years, so why should I change now?" to, "Different world, different time…so different things will work!"

With openness, we can try new strategies and in so doing steer change in a more helpful direction.

Working with our defensiveness

Change is one of a myriad of internal factors that prompt our inner monologues towards a stance of defensiveness. These thoughts in turn spill out as actions, both of which tend to escalate the situation at hand.

In our core online course, Dealing with Defensiveness, we explore our relationship to these sorts of triggers and ways to better manage our fiery responses.

We’re in a massive period of change in the world. Fighting this fact can only lead to suffering for ourselves and those around us, so let’s instead work to improve our relationship with it.

We don’t need to get stuck with our defenses up. Let’s continue to fumble forward together. Be kind to yourself and others, embracing change rather than fighting it.

The time has come once again to flip the calendar to the next year. It’s a special occasion; closing a chapter on whatever has happened and turning our gaze to a new page.

As arbitrary as the Gregorian calendar can feel at times, it’s also an excuse for a fresh start – which we all need from time to time. This sense of renewal keeps us motivated, as working with ourselves is an ongoing process. It is our sincere hope that the education we offer – freely, and in our courses and services – is both timeless and of this moment.

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At Mediation Services, we’ve been busy developing a lot of new content this past year; continuing to embrace technology and how it can support us in our lives and livelihoods. Let’s take a moment to look back at all that has come to fruition.

Year 2022 in review:

• 1 monthly newsletter: a way for us to keep in touch by sharing who we are, offering continuing education, and updating you on the work we’re doing in the local and online community.
• 12 new blog articles: we’ve put a lot of effort here into developing unique, timely, and useful information that’s freely available to all.
• 2 new on-demand webinars: available online when you need them, you can now enrol in Covid Conversations and Dealing with Defensiveness to explore these important topics at your own pace.
• Resuming operations out of our office in Winnipeg after a Covid pause: providing third-party mediation, in-person training, and more. We’re here when you need us, as we have been for over 40 years!

And there’s more where that came from. On all of these fronts, we have big plans to continue forward – including the much anticipated online webinar for Building a Respectful Workplace. We’re excited to share these tools with you and hope you are too.

Thank you for joining us in whatever way you did in 2022. We are passionate about what we do, but we couldn’t do it without you. If you have a heart for it, we invite you to consider making a donation to Mediation Services Winnipeg. You can donate either once or monthly and, as we are a registered charity, tax receipts are available for all donations. Any amount helps and is greatly appreciated.

Wishing you all the best in the coming year and beyond.

The brain is a complicated organ; a piece of organic wetware that stymies those who turn their gaze around to try and look closely at it. But over time, neuroscientists are beginning to uncover a better understanding of its inner workings.

An age old philosophical question goes, "Is the way I act a result of nature or nurture?" In other words, was I born the way I am or am I the result of the environment in which I grew up?

The latest research hints that it is actually more of a two-way and than a mutually-exclusive or. Our biology primes us for learning from our environment, and in turn our biology is programmed by these integrated experiences.

We’ve already explored the idea that conditioned responses are learned in childhood, but with regards to conflict it’s worth looking closer at how exactly our bodies try to keep us safe.

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Let’s consider what happens in the brain when we experience a defensive response.

Our senses provide a window out to the wider world. Hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, tasting…our bodies are physically tuned to detect this information and send the raw signals to a part of the brain called the thalamus. Here, the stimulus is funnelled onwards to one of two neurological pathways:

• Pathway 1 is thinking, which allows us to become aware, feel the emotion, comprehend the meaning, and ultimately choose an appropriate action.
• Pathway 2 is instinctive defense, which takes immediate action to protect us from harm and engages without any conscious thought.

We don’t get to choose which of these paths the brain’s processing will take. As raw information flows into the thalamus, a little bit of it runs by the hippocampus (which stores all of our life’s knowledge, memories, and experiences). In essence, this part of the brain scans what is happening against what has happened before to try and answer the question, "Am I safe?"

If a threat is determined, the hippocampus alerts, "DANGER!": and Pathway 2 is decided upon by the thalamus. The amygdala takes over in a process known as the amygdala hijack, and a flood of hormones is urgently released into the body. Once this happens, our ability to access the slower thinking part of our brain becomes extremely limited (and in some cases shuts down completely so we can’t think logically).

Our potential for either a thoughtful or reflexive response is determined by our unconscious perception of safety, which depends upon our knowledge, memories, and experiences. In other words, our reactions are a result of both nature and nurture.

When you get defensive, where do you feel it in your body? Maybe it’s a tight chest or flushed cheeks. Or perhaps the stomach flip flops or the head starts buzzing. Or, if you’re particularly fortunate, it could even be all of the above.

Pathway 2 is so quick that we are not even aware when we begin to feel defensive. First signs of such a response show up in the body, so it’s really important for us to know what particular feelings arise for each of us. Noticing these sensations is the key to recognizing what’s happening. The sooner we do, then the sooner we can change course and gain access to the thinking part of our brain once again.

If your life is at risk, by all means: run! But the reality in the modern world is that most of us get defensive when we’re not about to die. This reflexive response becomes a real problem in solving issues in relationships.

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It is important to understand that the hormones associated with the amygdala hijack circulate in our bodies for anywhere from 20 minutes to a full hour – and if something or someone else escalates the situation, then even more flood our systems.

While we can’t stop this physiological reaction, we can recognize it for what it is and do our best to adjust. By quickly taking actions that will allow us to gain access to the thinking part of our brains, we can choose a much better response.

The first step is recognizing what’s happening – by noticing the rising feelings we’ve already mentioned. Then, we try to find a constructive way to respond. For example, sometimes the best thing we can do is to ask the person we’re interacting with if we can revisit this tomorrow. This will give your system time to reset so that you can think straight, and not think / say / do something you regret.

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We don’t choose to be defensive, but we can work with it so we don’t stay in the state quite so long.

Understanding our biology can be a relief; we can recognize that sometimes our actions are less-than-rational because of the nature of the human mind. However, it does not absolve us of responsibility. In fact, this knowledge emboldens us with an opportunity to better see ourselves and the way we interact with the world.

Primed with both biology and lived history, it’s easy to see how conflict naturally arises and can be escalated by defensive reactions. But it’s also clear that it doesn’t need to be this way – we are empowered to resolve conflict.

A client shared with us this reflection after completing our online Dealing with Defensiveness course:

I thought I was going into this course to learn how to handle defensiveness in others, and I did! But I have learned so much more about myself and my own defensiveness. Here’s hoping that I can use it to develop, and in some cases, restore relationships that are so very important to me.

Let this work on your personal development spiral outward and into your home, workplace, community, and beyond. At Mediation Services Winnipeg we offer a myriad of educational resources online and in-person that focus on working with the potent space that is conflict.

We are more than our biology. With a little bit of effort we can work to accept responsibility and build deeper and more trusting relationships.

In sports, there is a saying that goes: "The best offence is a strong defense.“ For those of us who aren’t ardent fans of the local sportball team, the gist of it is that protecting yourself from the other team’s attack is the foundation of winning.

And don’t we all want to be winners?

So too do we get trained in the game of life because, let’s be honest, we’re also told that living is competitive. Born as fresh slates, we diligently run drills through childhood – be quick with the tongue to avoid punishment, make up a story to avert blame, twist the facts to avoid embarrassment…all the while learning how to "win" as individuals amidst our caregivers, schoolmates, and strangers.

And we trained well – learning to spot perceived attacks from a distance and reacting with honed instincts. But emerging from a childhood gauntlet of bullies and bystanders, we all eventually step out into the world as adults.

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Our pasts aren’t ever really left behind. All of these developmental experiences come along with us into adulthood, forming a foundation for what comes next. So when a colleague does something that gets our hackles up, our defensive prowess can unwittingly kick in. Before we know it, we can find ourselves slipping into our well-practiced signature moves. It’s in our biology.

This is defensiveness: a reaction that is dispensed without any conscious thought in our brain’s valiant attempt to protect us from harm. The good news? This is a biological response rooted in a fierce commitment to our survival. The bad news? Sometimes our brains scream, "Danger!" when we’re not really at risk – and then things get complicated.

As we get older and (hopefully) more mature, we ought to consider asking ourselves, is this reaction actually appropriate? Like we’ve explored before, conflict doesn’t have to be a competition.

A defensive stance tends towards escalation. Is this truly the direction we want to steer things? What is more important to us: having the last word, or finding resolution amidst conflict?

If we perceive an attack where there actually isn’t one, our defensive stance kicks in. Be it from a conditioned response stemming from the game of life or a deep-set aversion to something like embarrassment, this unreasonable response actually creates bigger problems than whatever might have ignited it.

To quote Theodore Dreiser, the American novelist:

"Our civilization is still in the middle stage. Scarcely beast, in that it is no longer guided by instinct. And yet scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason."

In a modern world where we do not face risk of death as urgently as our ancestors did, we need to be mindful that our ancient biology might not be perfectly attuned to current ways of being. Sometimes our perception of safety is inaccurate, and this can provoke disproportionate responses to the actual situations we face.

Feelings are not facts.

For most of us, our home is no longer the open savannah; instead, it is within dense cities and towns. We learn to adjust to the changing environment. And we can help each other with that.

Developed from over 40 years of conflict resolution experience, mediation specialist Janet Schmidt is your guide in our core online course Dealing with Defensiveness. She shares practical teachings from her own life and work, from which you can explore how to better work with your biology in the modern world.

Whether you are continuing the lifelong work of managing your own triggers or wanting to learn how to deal better with someone else’s, this course provides a foundation for mutual understanding and being more skillful in relationships.

We all deal with defensiveness, so why not learn to do so with a little more ease?

Holiday season is upon us. Thanksgiving already came and went (how’d that go by the way?), but Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus…whichever ones you choose to celebrate, it’s fair to say there’s more on the horizon. One thing they all have in common: they each come with a sudden spike in socializing.

For most of us, these seasonal get-togethers come with a set of challenges to our social skills even in the best of times: So…what’s happened in the past 365 days since we last had this same conversation? And this year – emerging from Covid – they probably won’t be any easier: So…about that comment I saw you make on Facebook and happen to disagree with…

There’s a time and place to talk about the Covid elephant in the room, but there’s also lots of times and places where it’s probably not appropriate to get into it. Being mindful of when we choose to speak up is just as important as the words we use (a dinner party with a bunch of innocent bystanders might not be the best place to begin an impromptu public mediation session, for example).

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Too often, disrespect and disparagement can infect the conversations we have with others. We’ve all been on the receiving end of it and, whether we like to admit it or not, we’ve all been on the giving end of it too (maybe consciously, or in a quick retort). The thing about speaking is that there isn’t a simple undo button, and so it is in our best interest to be careful with our words.

Have you ever written an email, saved the draft, sat on it to cool down, and then ended up not sending it? Ah, if only all conversations had that option of restraint. With a little practice and self-awareness, it is possible to improve on our tone and delivery. Here are some universal guidelines that can help us get a little closer to our better selves in our day-to-day and holiday socializing alike.

Consider these questions before opening your mouth to speak:

1. Is it true?
2. Is it kind?
3. Is it beneficial?
4. Is it necessary?
5. Is it the right time?

These questions are a way of looking deeply into whether what we want to say is necessary at this time and whether it will really serve. Is this the moment when our words are needed to turn a situation around for the better? Or might our feedback be received as bullying, disrespectful, or disempowering?

It is to our benefit to look at situations from a wider point of view. From here, we can then take responsibility for our part in the difficulties.

As much as we’d like our words to always be skillful, the reality is that the need for these questions is perennial; versions of them span from the moral foundations of religions around the world to sandwich boards reminding customers to be polite at the coffee shop down the street.

When we care about something deeply our emotions can get our tongues flapping before we take a moment to think. These touchstone questions are worth coming back to time and time again, so that we don’t experience the lingering taste of regret after a dinner party. In a sense, they are another good way for helping us to create space for wise action when reacting to what’s in front of us.

Speaking up is important, and doing so skillfully is an art we ought to embrace.

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Let’s remember to stay grounded. Don’t take things personally. Don’t make assumptions. Maintain good internal and external boundaries. Make and keep clear agreements. Renegotiate agreements, if necessary. Keep things in perspective. And work with the following qualities: vulnerability, accountability, self-responsibility, trust, connectedness, and fearlessness.

While this is a lot to keep in mind, it’s also doubly important in this collective moment. A lingering effect of the pandemic is that our social muscles have atrophied, so be patient with yourself as you rebuild yours one rep at a time.

And of course, try to be patient with others. If they do come across as more blunt than you think polite…try to remember the last time that you unintentionally put your own foot in your mouth and give them the benefit of the doubt. We’re all in this together, and unnecessary fanning of the flames is not what we need right now.

Save the tough conversations for the right time. At Mediation Services, we can help you create a safe space for exactly that: fill out an intake form to request help from a third-party mediator in your family, workplace, or community conflicts.

Or, take it into your own hands with one of our online or in-person training sessions on conflict resolution.

Because sometimes it’s better to put your fork in your mouth than your foot.