Mindful Conflict - Introduction & 3 Simple Tools

What's the point of meditation & yoga practice if you walk into the living room and lose it at your loved ones? That's what I asked myself years ago. In this talk: *How I began to practice mindful conflict after decades of mindfulness practice. | *What's astounding to me in my work as a therapist. | *How mindful conflict practice benefits your whole life. | *3 simple approaches & homework to begin your practice. | *Hold onto your inner wisdom and peace no matter how the other person is behaving.

Transcript

Okay,

With nothing further,

It is my absolute pleasure and honor to introduce Margo.

Margo and I have known each other now for a year,

Almost a year.

Yeah,

I think so.

Margo did a 12-week program last fall.

Margo developed an incredible program herself that she teaches now,

And I'm so excited.

I get to listen to this presentation now,

So with nothing further,

I'm so thrilled to turn this over to you,

Margo.

I'm going to let you introduce yourself and share with us until the hour.

Thank you so much for being here.

Oh,

You're welcome.

And for doing this.

Thank you,

Azzy.

It's a pleasure.

I'm excited.

So I'm Margo,

Margo Hellman,

And I teach women who love mindfulness how to be calm,

Clear,

And empowered during conflict so that they can hold on to their inner wisdom and peace no matter what's going on,

No matter how the other person is acting,

So they can choose their response and feel good about their response and then create a better outcome,

Whether it's improving the relationship or moving on with your day or feeling better about yourself because you're living up to your standards in these difficult moments.

So I want to tell you a little bit about my background and how I got to this,

And then I want to teach you something.

So I'm a clinical social worker,

And I'm a therapist.

I've been doing private practice therapy for a few decades now,

A couple decades plus,

And I work with women,

People.

I work with people coping with anxiety,

With difficult relationships,

And with illness and loss with some of the worst problems in life.

And it's astounding to me how many people,

No matter what problems they're coming to therapy for,

Bring up issues of conflict,

That it's part of their struggle and it's part of what's making whatever problem they've identified that they need help with,

It's making it all that much harder.

For me personally,

I also experience conflict in my life,

And I remember noticing that I can get up from my yoga mat or get up from doing meditation and feel really good and connected to myself and then walk into the living room or walk into the kitchen and lose it.

And what's the point of that?

And I've been practicing mindfulness also for a very long time since I was in my 20s,

And I think the mindfulness world doesn't talk about this.

The mindfulness world doesn't really,

I love mindfulness.

I think it's really life-changing,

And I'll define it a little bit in a minute,

But well,

I'll define it now.

It's basically paying attention to here and now,

And connecting to this moment,

And this moment always has something good or neutral in it,

And we live over here and the there and then.

So I think mindfulness can be a game changer in life and in dealing with a lot of different issues,

And I think it's remarkable to me that the mindfulness world doesn't talk more about bringing mindfulness into our most challenging moments and our most important relationships,

And I started to practice that for myself,

Realizing that,

Oh,

I can self-soothe during difficult interactions with my husband or with my kids or whenever I need it.

So that is how I got to the work,

And also after teaching mindfulness for years,

Which is really,

It's interesting that I,

It took me a long time to bring it to those,

To those moments where I teach this.

I teach emotional regulation,

You know,

Handling the feelings that come up and mindful listening as a tool.

So I want to teach you a couple of approaches.

There's some,

It's,

There,

You know,

It's,

Mindfulness is simple.

That doesn't necessarily mean it's easy for us,

But sometimes it's something we can grasp and already start as a practice.

Mindful listening is a practice,

Right?

So the ups and downs are part of,

Part of the practice.

I love the idea,

And I think this idea is game-changing,

That your only responsibility in moments of conflict is to be responsible for your own state of consciousness.

Your only responsibility during conflict is your own state of consciousness.

And this is an idea that was kind of rolling around my head,

And then I saw,

I saw a video by Eckhart Tolle where he said words really close to this,

And it helped me kind of clarify my thought.

He said,

He did this three,

He's a spiritual teacher,

So he says,

When you're faced with difficult situations or people,

Make it your primary concern to be responsible for your state of consciousness first.

And I took that,

And with conflict it's like,

Forget the first.

That's it,

You know,

Until the conflict's over,

You're all,

Until calmness has come back,

And some of that might be like the next day.

Your only responsibility is to be aware of what's going on for you.

So that means basically to stop.

We have so much going on with us when there's a conflict.

We want to,

Maybe we want to help the other person calm down.

Maybe we want to convince them of someone,

Something.

Maybe we want to help make ourselves feel better,

Or we want to make it stop.

What we can do is stop ourselves and breathe,

You know,

So stop and look up and use those mindfulness tools,

Which are basically paying attention with our senses,

To notice,

To look up and see that there's something else going on besides the person who I'm kind of tunnel visioned to.

And notice my breath,

You know,

Notice that my body is over here and there,

Over there.

And I love the practice of softening the belly in that moment.

Like that,

It's kind of,

You can think of it as three steps of looking up,

Noticing your breath,

And softening the belly.

And I have a strong sense that we cannot behave angrily when with a soft belly.

You know,

If you think of,

If you imagine yourself getting uptight,

Well that there's a word uptight,

Right?

Or angry,

I think your abdomen immediately tightens.

So that's a practice.

Or those are two acts,

Two,

There's like three different practices there.

One is just this idea that there's nothing for me to do right now besides be,

Tune into myself.

And maintain that connection.

Because if the other person's upset,

They can't hear me.

Now I was working,

I teach healthcare professionals different kinds of things.

And I was working also about coping with end of life and also coping with anger,

Angry people.

And I was teaching a bunch of nurses.

One of them told this story that she's with a family and the family's very upset.

And they're angry at her because they didn't get something or other.

I don't remember what it was.

And she's like,

It's right there.

You know,

So even something so concrete,

They couldn't hear her,

They couldn't see her.

And usually what we're trying to convince a person in the midst of conflict is not that easy to point out,

Right?

There it is.

So let,

Putting that aside and we'll get to it later,

You know,

You'll get to whatever you need to do later.

So you're only responsibility is your own state of consciousness.

Stopping any other thing you've got going on that you have to do.

And this idea of connecting to mindfulness by looking up,

Using your eyesight,

Using the sensation,

Noticing your breath and softening the belly.

And that creates a space for listening.

And mindful listening,

I believe the practice of love and kindness.

It's maybe the biggest chesed or kindness we can do when we're involved in any interaction.

When we're trying to fix something and solve something,

We're not listening to the other person.

And we're also not listening to ourselves.

Mindful listening is about first listening to yourself in a way,

Or I don't know first,

But maybe like back and forth,

You know,

You're listening to the other.

In order to bring yourself to that moment,

You're also noticing what's going on with you.

You're being a compassionate presence in that moment,

Instead of,

You know,

Trying to figure out what the next thing you're going to say is or defending yourself from the other person's ideas.

And it's a compassionate practice towards the other person and also towards yourself.

Since often when we're angry at someone else and very upset,

There's some kind of nasty voice towards ourselves going on as well.

There's often some kind of anger or frustration with ourselves going on as well.

So being able to hold our own experience and attend to the other person and also attend to the current moment.

So we may,

You know,

And picking whichever one of those we can do.

So maybe the other person is acting in a way that makes it too hard to really listen to them well.

Listen to them well.

So then be listening to what you're experiencing in that moment.

And I want to leave you with one more idea that mindfulness gives us,

Which is,

Mindfulness is about noticing the here and now.

And in listening,

It's particularly powerful because so often we are reacting to the other person,

But we're not really reacting to them.

We're reacting to our thoughts and interpretations.

So I always use this idea of,

You imagine you're cooking spaghetti in the kitchen and someone walks in and says,

Oh,

Spaghetti again.

So I'm going to leave you with a little bit of homework if you want to take it on.

Okay.

Think to yourself of three different thought reactions a person might have,

Or you might have,

Depending on how you're feeling that day,

Or what else is going on with you,

To whatever that person,

To that person who just said,

Oh,

Spaghetti again.

And think of that,

Those different thoughts that you may have in reaction and how that's going to affect your feeling and how that's going to then affect your behavior.

So mindful listening is a practice of being with ourselves and noticing the difference between what that other person is saying and what I'm doing with it in my mind.

And if I could check with them,

Maybe I'm absolutely right about what I'm interpreting in my mind.

Maybe they're furious at me and I know they're furious at me,

Or maybe they had a bad day and I know they had a bad day.

But what leads to my reaction is more what my thoughts are about what they're saying than actually what they're saying.

So that's a little bit about mindful listening and being calm and clear during conflicts.

You said what leads to my reaction is my thoughts about what they're saying or doing,

Not what they're saying or doing.

And I think that's really,

Really powerful,

The idea that we're really creating our realities with the thoughts and the thoughts that we're bringing our attention to.

I wrote down so many things when Margot was speaking.

She said,

You are only responsible in conflict.

Your only responsibility in conflict is your state of consciousness.

Really powerful.

This moment always has something good or neutral in it.

That sounds like a really powerful re,

Sort of like a shifting practice.

Like if we're feeling like we're going a certain way and we want to bring ourselves back to notice the good or neutral.

And there was so much here.

Margot,

Thank you so much for sharing with us.

Thank you for being our speaker this meeting.

Really,

Really an honor and a pleasure.