“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” That quote is attributed to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzshe. Actually, he said, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”
The other day my daughter scratched her cornea and we had to take her to an urgent care center. As the doctor was examining my daughter’s eye, she appeared to be getting smaller. She didn’t want the doctor to look at her eye.
She didn’t want the doctor to put drops in her eye, even if they would make her eye better. She wanted to do nothing. She wanted the doctor to do nothing.
I leaned in and said to my daughter, “You need to take care of yourself and do what the doctor says. Don’t let this make you weaker. You’ll get through this. Let this experience make you stronger.”
I feared that my daughter would become a pain avoider. In my opinion, this is how most people respond in conflict. They get smaller, weaker. They do nothing hoping it will just go away. They become conflict avoiders.
What is the communication style of conflict avoiders? They either start a fight to get their way or go silent.
But neither of these styles actually solves problems. And both will certainly destroy relationships.
We all need to continuously build our conflict muscle. To do this we must develop resilience. Resilience is defined by oxforddictionaries.com as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”
How can you start building your resilience? Get rejected. Seriously. Put yourself in situations where you will be told ‘no.’ Get used to asking for something in implausible situations. The key is to move on to the next “ask” and never be worn down by a ‘no.’
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