If you want to resolve the conflicts in your life, here’s a belief you should adopt: Your way of seeing the world is accurate and inadequate. We are all like a horse with blinders. What we see is only a portion of what’s really out there.

I remember my wife telling me the story of her mother who had cataract surgery and, after the surgery, proclaiming with wonder, “Look at the trees. They’re so green.” Of course, the trees had always been green. She just had never seen them so clearly.

In another instance, I attended a seminar in which the presenter held a coffee cup between two people facing one another and asked them to describe what they saw. One described a cup without a handle while the other of course, described a cup with one. Obviously, they were seeing the same cup from different perspectives.

In police investigations, eyewitness testimony is, often, the most unreliable. All the witnesses describe something different.

The way we see the world is accurate and inadequate. We’re only seeing it from our perspective.

While this may seem obvious, conflicts persist because people don’t act based on this obvious observation.

The other day, my wife, Carol, and I had invited neighbors over for dinner. I was working all day and wanted to complete what I was doing. Carol was cooking all day and getting the house ready.

As dinnertime approached, Carol remembered that a friend of our neighbor’s was visiting them and she wanted me to call and invite the friend. I refused saying I was busy trying to finish something.

Carol was angry and accused me of thinking I was “too important” to help. I was angry and told her she “didn’t understand” the importance of what I was doing.

As in every conflict, we both believed that our view of the other was accurate. The belief in the truth of one’s perceptions of the world is the basis for almost all conflicts.

Fortunately, after 36 years of marriage, we both had learned that harmonious relationships depend on giving up the need to be right about one’s perceptions. After glaring at one another for a few moments, we both laughed at the absurdity of what we were arguing about and hugged. I called to invite the friend and walked the dog (which had to be done before the neighbors arrived). Carol set the table and finished the cooking. We both gave up our need to right.

In a relationship, don’t give up getting your needs met. The whole point of having a relationship in the first place is because it fulfills at least some of your needs. But you will have to give up your need to be right at times.

Unfortunately, people will “fight to the death” (sometimes, literally) rather than give up the need to be right about the way they see things. Conflicts that could be settled in a matter of moments don’t get settled in a matter of years. I know several people who haven’t talked to close relatives for years over some slight (real or imagined) that occurred literally decades before.

Many conflicts can be resolved in a matter of moments if you will simply laugh and see that while your perception of the world is accurate it is also inadequate. When you give up your need to be right about your perceptions, conflicts are often easily resolved

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? LJBARKAN@THEPIVOTALFACTOR.COM

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Reprinted by permission of the author, Larry Barkan: http://www.conflictresolutiontraining.net