365QOD- Day1124

Fear of Confrontation

“If the biggest fear you have is an honest conversation with the person closest to you here are tow questions to ask yourself:

 1) Regardless of how much it might cost you to have the conversation, what does it cost you not to have it? 

2) What would you go out and do as a prelude to your courageous conversation so that when you do have that conversation, you’re talking about something you have already checked out rather than asking for permission to explore it.”- Life Reimagined

Even though this quote is about talking with a person closest to you it does not have to be.  In my world it could be about any difficult conversation.  A difficult conversation is that that could potentially end in conflict.

Second part of the quote gives us advice to go out and check out whatever is the issue before the conversation.  In other words, be informed before you engage the other person.

The first part of the advice given by the quote is to ask yourself ‘what does it cost you not to have it?’  Most of us are by nature non-confrontational and would prefer not to have conflict.  And most of us do not consider the cost.  The cost of delay is stress.

Even though it is hard to quantify stress apparently our mind can quantify it enough to not want to engage.  Unfortunately the mind wrongly predicts that the cost of stress is less than the confrontation cost now.  I believe that if you had a way of measuring it than the delay and stress outweighs the emotional cost of having the confrontation.  As the old adage advises,"A hero dies once, a coward a thousand times."

Today’s question is:

“What is it costing you not to have difficult conversations?”