I have never thought that I am good at ‘confrontation’…..but recent events have convinced me otherwise. Mainly friends telling me that I’m being silly I do it all the time so of course I am.
But I think I normally ignore these comments because I always think confrontation sounds like a bad thing, the word just conjures up unpleasant imagery in your mind doesn’t it?
A bad image something a little like this?
But I think that’s because sometimes its attached to unpleasant topics that often need to be discussed. I think lately I’ve been feeling confident, not in myself, and certainly not in my ability to debate with someone else, but confident to just be brave, to put myself out there, to ignore or shed my fears of rejection and just say how I honestly feel. Because that is conflict resolution 101, and it nearly always seems to pay off. It’s terrifying but once you get yourself in the habit of just being honest it becomes second nature.
I used to be terrified to even approach my closest friends with something that was even the slightest bit negative, but now I have no qualms in telling them ‘hey what you said the other day it kinda hurt me’ because you know what I’ve seen that 99% of the time that person is so surprised that they’ve made you feel a way that they’re so apologetic and in turn I’ve had friends feel brave enough to approach me and I’m always so thankful that they feel they can talk to me! And the 1% they fight you on your confrontation, I’ve still been glad because telling the truth and putting how I feel out there is really kind of liberating.
“You cannot change what you refuse to confront”
So we can moan, and winge and be very British about our situation but what has become so gleamingly apparent to me is that things will never ever change if you don’t confront the issue. So whilst it might be scary to confront something or someone, is it not even more terrifying to accept a reality where that something will never change? To sit back and be content with accepting this situation instead of mustering up the courage to do something about it?
When you think about it, does it not seem ludicrous to attempt to be content with no solution to an issue because you fear a bad reaction. Your content to hedge your bets so strongly that things don’t go your way that you refuse to confront it.
I understand it, because I’ve been there and I’ve been that person. But recently I’ve found it harder and harder to be that person, to the point where I find it impossible to sit, idle and let a situation deteriorate when I know I could say something or confront something.
We want to bring about change, and the after-effect of that is confrontation. The everyday running of the charity requires confrontation. Debbie as Managing Director has to keep us all accountable and each of us has our own department with a list of jobs to keep each other accountable for. We soon learnt that if we sat back and didn’t sometimes nag, that things wouldn’t get done, we had to confront each other, tell each other to get a move on and meet the deadline, else everything would soon fall apart.
But also there’s some bigger things to confront, the whole reason we our a charity to change disabled kids lives all over the world. To make that change we have to confront the areas of injustice in the world, we have to seek out those places of inequality and impoverishment and its hard. Its heart-breaking, gut-wrenching stuff to look at the conditions that some of the kids we help have to live in, the situations live has rendered them to endure. But when we confront it, when we let it break out hearts that little bit we can immediately start making a change.
So whatever situation it is for you, whether it be an area of hurt with a friend, an internal conflict causing you pain, or an area of injustice in the world. What barriers are you putting up to confrontation?
It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact I’m a firm believer that it’s a good thing, if we use it to make a change and it is always up to us if that change is positive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TDu42cnB0zs
“Say what you wanna say, and let the words fall out, honestly I want to see you be brave!”
Be brave today. Take that step, talk to that friend, confront that issue, make that change today, why wait????Change can start right here, right now and it can be anything and everything you want it to be!
ANDYS BEAT! 