Conflict Resolution Training: Lessons From “The Soloist”

Have you seen the movie, “The Soloist?” It’s based on a true story about Steve Lopez, an LA Times reporter and Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man whom Lopez encounters on the street.

Ayers was a brilliant musician with a great future ahead of him until he started hearing voices in his head that told him the world was an unsafe place. These voices led him to a life on the streets where the reporter encountered him.

We may think we’re very different from Nathaniel but are we really? Don’t we also believe some (certainly not all) of the voices in our heads? Like us, Nathaniel didn’t believe every voice he heard. But he did believe some of them.

Consider the possibility that it’s the voices we do believe, the one’s we’re sure are “true” that keep us stuck.

For example, consider the statement, “Change takes a long time.” Let that one rattle in your mind for a moment. This is a statement commonly held. Almost everyone I encounter believes it.

But is it true or are we, like Nathaniel, believing voices that aren’t real?

Consider instead this voice: Change happens in an instant which, of course, it does. We experience this almost daily when we go from a dreaming state to a waking one.

It’s actually not the change that takes a long time. It’s getting ready to change that takes a long time. How long do smokers wait before they decide to quit? How long do dieters obsess before choosing to stick to a diet? How long do people who “hate exercise” delay before going for a daily walk?

The change happens in an instant. It can take a lifetime to get ready for that change. Some people never do.

Now consider being in a relationship where there’s conflict. How long do we wait before making the instantaneous decision to give up being right? How long do we wait before making the instantaneous decision to forgive? How long do we wait before making the instantaneous decision to listen to what people tell us they need to resolve the conflict?

We define the waiting as “hard” and confuse that with the actual change which is easy.

So watch “The Soloist” and, as you do, imagine that a little bit of Nathaniel is in each one of us and it’s that “Nathaniel within” that keeps us stuck doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.