No More Painful Conflicts

Do you struggle to resolve conflicts with your partner or your children?

You see them doing things that really bother you but you don’t know how to speak up, or you’re arguing a lot, or you just feel disconnected – sometimes you might even wonder, who is this person? I feel like I don’t know them any more…

You’ve tried to talk them, but things don’t change. Worse, you end up arguing or just being ignored. Occasionally things get better for a day or two, but then it quickly slides back to business as usual.

You really want it to be different

You have this gut-level sense that things could be so much better, but you just don’t know how to get there.

I agree! Like anything truly meaningful, relationships aren’t always easy but they can be incredibly rewarding. I want you to:

Enjoy your life at home - as a partner, a parent, or both. Spend time having fun together instead of arguing or feeling worried, resentful or hurt.
Find solutions to conflicts that everyone feels good about and follows through on.
Feel confident that you are making decisions that are in everyone’s best interest - now and in the future.
Maintain open, honest lines of communication.
This is vital for a satisfying and long-lasting partner relationship.
And, if you have children, it’s essential to both keeping them safe and supporting them to grow. Because they think they know everything, and you know they don’t.

Introducing

No More Painful Conflicts

Six months of individualized, hands-on work with you, or with both you and your partner or child.

To help you learn the skills you need so your relationships with those most important to you can be fun and enjoyable.

What’s at stake?

When relationships aren’t working, there’s a LOT at stake: a lot in the present, a lot in the future, and a surprising amount of financial cost to broken relationships.

Here are the five costliest and most painful things that are at stake, and that great communication skills can make a huge difference with.

Long-term health and happiness - for you and your children

The longest-running study of health and happiness has found that the #1 factor in long-term health, happiness and longevity is the quality of your relationships. [1]
Living in the midst of unresolved conflict is very bad for everyone’s health while good, warm relationships protect your health.
Warmth is also one of the two key characteristics of parenting that contribute to children’s life-long happiness. (The other is not being overly controlling.) [2]
So learning how to resolve conflicts peacefully and build warm, caring relationships is the best investment you can make in your own long-term health and happiness - and that of your children.

If you have kids, then greater safety for them during their teen years and beyond
The teen years are a danger zone for your children. Their brains actually change to make them more attentive to their friends than to you.
But friends can be fickle and unintentionally cruel. And those in-person taunts and put-downs on Facebook and Twitter can be devastating. Teen suicide rates are higher than they’ve ever been.
Your children need the stability of solid and loving connection with you to help them weather the storms of adolescence.
But teens can also be among the most frustrating and challenging people on the planet!
So to provide the love and support teens need to survive and thrive, parents need a high level of communication skill.
And the sooner parents acquire these skills and start using them with their children, the better and easier it will be for everyone.

Greater career success for you and for your children

In today’s fast moving and team-oriented organizations, emotional intelligence and communication skills are valued more highly than IQ, and that trend is expected to accelerate in the coming decade.
People without these skills are less likely to be hired, regardless of their other qualifications. [3] And emotional intelligence is the strongest predictor of success in all types of jobs. [4]
People with a high degree of emotional intelligence make more money - an average of $29,000 more year than people with a low degree of emotional intelligence. [5] That translates into almost $1,000,000 (a million dollars) more in earnings between the ages of 25 and 55.
And the major determinant of your child’s emotional intelligence and communication skills is how you, as their parent, communicate with them - because this is a set of skills that can be acquired and improved with practice.
This means any investment you make to improve your communication and conflict resolution skills will contribute to greater success at work and in life, both for you and your children.

Reduce the risk of separation and divorce
There are times when separation and/or divorce is necessary to protect your well-being or that of your children. Or it’s a decision your partner has made and you don’t get a choice.
But many couples end up separated or divorced because they never learned how to communicate, resolve conflicts, and make decisions together. So they get increasingly unhappy and lonely in the relationship.
And even if you are willing to stay together - for example, for the sake of your children - there’s a high risk that your partner may not be. Because if you’re not happy, they’re not happy.
And divorce is expensive. There are the costs of the separation and divorce process itself: $10,000 to $40,000 and up per family. [6]
But the bigger financial costs arise after separation, when the same income now needs to support two households instead of one. Families can see post-separation cost increases of $20,000 to $30,000 per year. [7]
One case study found the lifetime cost of a divorce for a parent earning $50,000 per year was over $400,000. [8]
This means that any time, money and effort you put into fixing things before they get to this stage are a small fraction of what it will cost if you end up in a hostile divorce, or even in an amicable separation of people who’ve been living together.

Better communication and easier decision-making even after separation or divorce
Whether you stay together or split up, if you have children, you and your partner are still going to need to keep communicating and making decisions that affect your kids for a long time to come.
So it’s really important to learn how to deal effectively with your partner, including how to handle the things they say and do that drive you nuts.
When you learn these skills, you empower yourself to end up with decisions that care for your children, work for you, and that your partner will follow through on.
If you are a parent, this may be the biggest benefit of all for your children, since the decisions you make now can affect the rest of their lives.

You’ve tried so hard – Why hasn’t it paid off yet?

You may have tried many different things to try and make things better – research on the Internet, reading books, or taking webinars or courses. You’ve probably talked to other parents – in person or online – to find out what they think and how they’ve handled things. Maybe you’ve talked to teachers or other professionals to get their advice. But you’re still not where you want to be.

There are four key reasons why you may not have gotten the results you want yet.

No one taught you the specific skills and strategies that are needed to truly resolve conflict.
Even worse, they probably taught you ways of responding to conflict that actually make it harder to resolve.
So now, you not only need to learn new skills, you also have to “unlearn” the old ways!

Learning a new skill requires effective feedback.
When you learn to ride a bicycle, gravity and the ground give you clear and consistent feedback that make it easy to tell when you are doing things “right”.
But you know that the way your partner or your children respond to what you say depends a lot on how they are feeling and what happened to them that day. They are not a reliable source of feedback on whether you are using a new skill “right”.
You need a reliable “outside” source of feedback to help you learn how to tell whether you’re on the right track.

It's really hard to change habits - even when you know exactly what you need to do - especially in challenging situations.
It is so easy to slip back into the old, familiar ways.
To get over the “hump” to where the new behaviours have become your “go to” response takes regular, consistent reminders and checking in.

Resolving conflict requires knowing how to deal effectively with negative emotions - your own and those of the other person.
You need tools that allow you to extract the important meaning that the emotion is conveying, and then release the emotions themselves - because you can’t resolve conflict effectively when anyone involved is upset.

You can get there! What it takes.

I wish I could tell you that you could read a book or attend a weekend workshop and everything would be the way you want it. But you already know it’s not that simple.

It does take time and effort to learn the skills you need to resolve conflicts and have the loving, satisfying relationships you want – but you can do it.

Over six months time, I’m going to help you learn, practice and use 8 different skills that will radically change your relationship. This will not be “classroom” learning, but more like a language immersion that you will put to use immediately. You will be seeing changes in yourself and in your relationship during the six months.

Here are the eight skills I’ll be teaching you, and that you’ll be taking on with confidence.

Simple ways to strengthen your relationships so conflicts are easier to resolve

Even though conflicts are painful, they form a small part of most relationships. And how quickly and easily issues get resolved is dependent in large part on the overall strength of the relationship – the sense of warmth and connection between you and the other person.

So the first thing we will focus on are ways to strengthen your relationships – both with and without words. This will enable life to start getting better now, while you are learning to resolve conflicts more effectively.

How to prepare for peaceful and effective conflict resolution conversations

Most of us fall into one of two unhelpful patterns when it comes to conflict.

1 – You may get so caught up in the moment that it seems like nothing is more important than letting the other person know what’s going on for you – right now! This often feels good at the time, but it rarely produces a satisfactory long-term resolution.

Either the other person does the same and you may both feel better temporarily. But you don’t actually take the time to talk things through to a truly workable solution, so the same issue keeps coming up.

Or the other person shut downs or leaves (physically or mentally), so even if you try to come up with a solution that works for both of you, they will tend to just agree to whatever you say to get the conversation over with, but they won’t be truly committed to following through later.

2 – Your brain may shut down so you literally can’t say anything. Or you may feel a kind of panicky feeling that you have to just have to get away.

You promise yourself that you’ll bring the issue up later when you can do it in a calm and reasonable way – but you keep putting it off. Until you are really angry and then it just explodes out of you. Which is kind of a relief in the moment, but later you feel so guilty that you promise yourself that you won’t let that happen again. But it does.

The secret to freedom from these patterns is knowing the key things to prepare so that you’ll be equipped to deal with whatever happens during a conflict resolution conversation.

How to start a conflict resolution conversation

So many of the common ways of starting these kinds of conversations get things off on the completely wrong foot – “You never come home on time” or “I wish you wouldn’t interrupt me when I’m telling a story to a friend, like Marcie tonight” or “When I see you finish your juice, put the glass on the coffee table and walk out of the room, I feel frustrated because I want collaboration.”

The end result is that you have to spend unnecessary time and effort just to calm the other person down enough to have a productive conversation.

Here you’ll learn a simple yet radically different alternative that will make it surprisingly comfortable and easy for you to raise even a difficult or sensitive topic – and for the other person to hear it – so that you’re both prepared to reach a successful resolution as quickly and easily as possible.

“Roadmap” for a successful conflict resolution conversation

After more than 20 years of research and practice, I’ve found that successful conflict resolution and decision-making conversations go through six major phases.

In this part of our work together, you’ll learn:
– What those phases are,
– How to recognize which phase you are in at any point
– What’s the most effective thing for you to do in that phase, and
– How to know when it’s time to move on to the next phase.

So that you can peacefully and effectively use anything that arises to guide the conversation to a successful resolution.

How to deal effectively with “negative” emotion - in yourself and other people

When you are angry, frustrated or even feeling guilty, other people tend to “hear” you in a way that makes them want to resist you, argue with you, or get the heck out away from you – no matter how carefully you choose your words.

And you also can’t effectively resolve conflicts if the other person is in the grip of their own negative emotions. Either they won’t be reasonable, or they’ll say anything just to get the conversation over with – but then not do what they said they would.

You’ll learn how to extract the wisdom from your own emotions, and present that information in a way that makes it easy for other people to hear, so they’ll want to support you.

You’ll also learn how to help other people let go of their own negative emotions so they can engage in productive conversation. And how to recognize the signs that warn you when this skill is needed.

So you won’t waste time and energy trying to make a decision or resolve a conflict with someone who isn’t ready or able to do that yet.

How to find a solution that works for everyone - even when it initially seems impossible

Your partner wants to play golf on Saturday and you want them to clean out the garage. Or you want your child to do their homework and they want to play video games.

Sometimes it seems like your only options are to try and make them do what you want, or give in and let them do what they want. Is there another option? Yes!

I’ll teach you a simple, step-by-step process that will help you find solutions that work for everyone – even when it initially seems impossible – and a couple of additional tips to help unravel particularly knotty conflicts.

How to help ensure people follow through on their agreements

As you know, just because someone agrees to do something when you’re talking about it doesn’t mean that they’ll actually do it when the time comes.

Maybe they “forget” or are “too busy”. And you feel so frustrated! You spent all that time reaching an agreement and now it feels like that was just a waste of time.

In this segment, you’ll learn how to dramatically reduce the risk of broken agreements before they happen.

And what to do if an agreement does get broken to radically increase the chance that people will follow through next time.

Optional addition: Discover the most powerful things you personally can do to improve your conflict resolution skills

Most of us have 2-5 unrecognized communication “blind spots”. Places where we think we’re using the right skill in the right way at the right time, but we’re actually not.

I’ve discovered that the fastest and most powerful way to identify these blinds spots is for you and I and the other person to get together in my studio or by phone or Skype, and for you to have a real conversation with them, doing your best to use the skills we’ve been working on.

This enables me to quickly notice where there’s a difference in understanding between you and me about a particular skill, so that we can identify a different and more powerful way for you to respond – one that works for both you and the other person.

This enables you to leave with both a resolution to the conflict with the other person, and some powerful new tools, precisely customized to your unique strengths and learning edges.

Don’t worry if you don’t think the other person would ever agree to this – in this program you’ll learn some radical new approaches that will dramatically increase the likelihood of them saying “yes” by the time we get to this point.

Why I do this work

The quality of our closest relationships – with a partner or with a child – are so key for the happiness and success of everyone involved.

And so many people struggle, not because they don’t love and care for one another, but simply because they don’t have the communication skills needed to express and hear that love and and care when conflicts arise.

And those missing skills affect the lives of people and families down through generations.

It’s so tragic, when it’s so readily fixable.

My Story

As a child, I was both lucky and disadvantaged when it came to conflict.

I was lucky because I grew up in a family where, no matter how intensely we fought – and it could get pretty loud and mean – at the end of the day, disconnects were always resolved, and we felt loved and accepted for who were were.

It was only as an adult that I appreciated what an incredible gift that was. I love that I’m able to give that experience to the people who work with me.

At the same time, I was disadvantaged because I didn’t learn the skills for how to get along with people who had learned to communicate in other ways.

I’d argue with them the way I’d learned at home. But then, instead of making up, people left and relationships were permanently damaged.

I wish I had known then what I know now – my life would have been so much easier! And so would the lives of the people who had to deal with me…

I want everyone to have the benefit of knowing these skills for as many years of their lives as they can – because it makes such an unbelievable difference every time we interact with other people, especially when we don’t agree.

My Story

As a child, I was both lucky and disadvantaged when it came to conflict.

It was only as an adult that I appreciated what an incredible gift that was. I love that I’m able to give that experience to the people who work with me.

At the same time, I was disadvantaged because I didn’t learn the skills for how to get along with people who had learned to communicate in other ways.

I’d argue with them the way I’d learned at home. But then, instead of making up, people left and relationships were permanently damaged.

I wish I had known then what I know now – my life would have been so much easier! And so would the lives of the people who had to deal with me…

How it Works

There are two parts to this work:

A series of regular private sessions, usually two hours every other week for 6 months (both weekday and weekend options are available).

This format works because you’re learning a new language and new skills, and you need continual repetition.

In each session, we’ll reinforce the skills you’ve learned so far, you’ll learn one or more new skills and together we’ll apply them to a real-life situation of your choice.

In between sessions, you’ll be practicing and applying these skills to your day-to-day challenges

At the next session, we’ll celebrate your progress and I’ll support you to learn from your experience, so you’ll be even more accomplished in using the skills in future.

One private day-long session (6 hours on either a weekday or a weekend) on the topic of dealing with negative emotion.

You’ll learn the steps for shifting “negative” emotion to positive. And I’ll support you to apply them to a challenging situation of your own, so you can experience for yourself the powerful difference they can make.

You’ll also learn how to make this shift “stick” over time.

I chose this two-part format, after working with clients for years, because it balances the cost/time commitment you’ll need to make in a busy life, and is still effective for your learning.

So that by the end of our work together, you’ll have both learned the skills and resolved some of your ongoing conflicts.

Also included in the program:

Handouts that include step-by-step instructions for each skill, and explanations of when, why and how to use them, with space to add your own personalized notes, so you can easily review these examples later.

Written notes from your sessions, showing how you applied each skill to a specific challenge in your life.

These notes are also a great reference to use when you have the real-life conversations you want to have.

Three Options for Learning this Work

Which of the following best fits your situation?

One:

Choose this option if you have one or more unsatisfactory relationships but there’s no one big conflict, things just need to get better overall.

This option includes the private day-long training session plus 6 months of ongoing training and support. The investment is $3497 (plus applicable taxes) or 7 monthly payments of $499 (plus tax).

Two:

Choose this option if you have what I’ve described under option 1 above and there’s also one major topic that’s been a sore point and could be a breaking point in one of your relationships.

This option includes the private day-long training session and the 6 months of ongoing training and support for one person, plus support to have a conversation to address that one major topic, including support for you to:

Prepare for the conversation.

Have the conversation to find a solution that works for both of you.

Run a follow-up session to check that the solution is “sticking.”

Debrief the experience to solidify what you learned, appreciate your unique strengths, and identify the most powerful things you personally can do to improve your conflict resolution skills and your relationship.

The training, dialogue and check-in process typically takes 8 months. The investment is $3900 (plus applicable taxes) or 8 monthly payments of $497 (plus tax).

Three:

Often in these situations one person is really motivated to get help and one person isn’t, in which case you are often better off going with option 1 or option 2, rather than trying to convince the other person to participate.

But sometimes both people are in alignment that yes, we need to get help, and that’s what this option is designed to support. Because when both people are truly willing to learn and work together on their relationship, things can get better much faster and with greater ease for everyone.

This option includes the same 6 months of training and support for each person as the two options above, using a combination of joint training that allows you to learn and practice together, with just the right amount of individual training on topics that (experience has shown) work better done one-on-one.

PLUS support to have a conversation to resolve a key issue between you, including support to:

Prepare for the conversation.

Have the conversation to find a solution that works for both of you.

Run a follow-up session to check that the solution is “sticking.”

Debrief the experience to solidify what you learned, your unique strengths, and the most powerful things each of you can personally do to improve your conflict resolution skills and your relationship.

The investment for this 8-month two-person option is $4997 (plus applicable taxes) or, if paid monthly, $646 (plus tax) – $323 each (plus tax).

It’s So Important – So Worth It

Just a single day of mediation for a single conflict could easily cost over $5000.

In contrast, with any of these three options, you’ll be collecting the rewards in all of your relationships, at work and at home, for the rest of your life.

And if you have children, they and your grandchildren will also receive life-long benefits from knowing how to prevent and resolve conflict and collaborate effectively with others, without giving up or giving in.

Interested? Let’s talk…

If what you’ve read here appeals to you, let’s have a conversation to talk about your unique situation. There are two steps to this:

Fill out the form below to tell me a little bit about your conflict. That will help us make the most of our time together.

Once you submit your answers, you’ll be sent to the booking page where you can see an up-to-the-minute picture of my calendar and book yourself in at a time that works for you. There will be no fee for this session. I recommend you allow up to an hour, to ensure all your questions are answered.

Not ready to have a conversation, but have a question for me about this program? Click here to send me an email.

Whether you choose to speak with me or not, I wish you relief from your struggles so you can enjoy your most important relationships to the full!

After pressing “submit” you will automatically forwarded to the booking page.

Footnotes

[1] What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness
Return to the section I was reading above

[2] http://www.spring.org.uk/2015/09/happier-people-are-raised-by-parents-who-do-these-two-things.php
Return to the section I was reading above

[3] https://www.fastcompany.com/3059481/7-reasons-why-emotional-intelligence-is-one-of-the-fastest-growing-job-skills, citing the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report and a 2011 Career Builder Survey of more than 2,600 hiring managers and human resource professionals).
Return to the section I was reading above

[4] http://www.talentsmart.com
Return to the section I was reading above

[5] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241998
Return to the section I was reading above

[6] https://www.commonsensedivorce.ca/legal-fees-vs-mediation-costs
Return to the section I was reading above

[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-rosenfield/divorce-cost_b_1753189.html
Return to the section I was reading above

[8] http://www.divorcesupport.com/divorce/The-Cost-of-Divorce-with-Children-113.html
Return to the section I was reading above