How to Stay Cool When Conflict Pushes You to the Edge
A balanced perspective to remain level-headed and true to yourself in the heat of the moment
You’re a happy, good person by default — right? When things are going well, you have no problems.
It’s outside influences that cause your mood to fluctuate.
You’re just like an NBA 3-point-shooter.
An excellent shooter in the NBA makes around 40% of their 3-point attempts. These same players report making 90–95% of their attempts in focused drills.
This discrepancy is caused by defence, fatigue and other physical factors.
But once the external factors have caused them to miss a few shots, the external factors bleed into their psyche — leading to much lower results than what they’re capable of.
Sound familiar?
Life is not as simple as shooting 3-pointers with no defence, no fatigue and no outside influences.
We encounter people and events that throw us off course. But unfortunately, you don’t just get thrown off course momentarily. The problem clings on and infects you like a virus.
The person who pissed you off has ruined your mood for the rest of the day.
Now, these negative diseases you’ve caught cause you to be hard on yourself and rude to your partner or to the next poor soul you speak to.
You’re just like the 3-point shooter who let a couple of missed shots ruin their whole game. You’ve let outside influences latch on and colour the rest of your day — turning you into something worse than who you truly are.
So how do we learn to keep our cool, and stay true to ourselves in these moments of conflict?
The Cat Who Hated the Mouse
An original fable by Eren Candansayar
Once upon a time, a young cat lived in a beautiful cottage in the Midwest. His loved life. He got all the food and drink he’d ever need. He loved his owner and he had a lush garden to roam.
There was just one small problem.
A mouse.
The mouse would steal from him, bite his tail, poke him and do whatever it could to get under his skin. And to make things worse, afterwards, he’d always do this annoying little giggle.
Eventually, the cat grew tired of the mouse’s shenanigans and decided to take matters into his own hands. He set up a trap using cheese as bait to finally catch the mouse and stop this once and for all.
But when it snapped shut, and the mouse became trapped and distressed, the cat realised that by becoming angry and trying to give the mouse what it deserved, he lost himself.
It was not in his nature to hurt the little mouse — even though he may have deserved it — and no matter how much something bothered him, he should never fray from his kind nature.
So the cat rushed over, released the mouse and treated his wounds.
And from that day on, whenever the mouse would play tricks on him, he would play along, and when the mouse giggled, he would smile.
How to become an unshakable person
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.
And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Whether it’s another person doing you wrong, or life handing you problems, you have to stay true to yourself.
When someone is tailgating you, pressuring you to go faster — stick to your guns.
When someone is annoying you or lying to you, treat them fairly and kindly — stick to your values.
Because if you reciprocate their actions, and stoop to their level, you’ll start to hate what you’ve become. You’ll feel bitter. You’ll feel foreign. It never feels good to get revenge. And if it does, you should reflect on who you are as a person.
People will be taken aback if you can stay true to yourself when you’re mistreated, or in tough situations. You become a leader. You’re unphased. You’re you, and you can’t be shaken off course.
You decide your reactions. Will you buy into the lowly games of argument and anger? Or will you smile and move on because you don’t care for those silly games?
Again, if bad people and bad situations transform you into an upset, whingy person — you’ll start to despise yourself. You’ll attract negative experiences like a magnet.
But when you stay true to yourself, the bad energy flows over like water off a duck’s back. You’ll continue to be you, and you’ll continue to attract and exude positivity.
Being unshakable is a crucial part of cultivating a more peaceful life.
Sincerely,
eren
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