Conflict Resolution Training: It’s Time To Change Our “Human Nature”

Folks, it’s about time for “human nature” to change. Whose “human nature?” Yours and mine.

Have you noticed that the news today is basically the same as it was yesterday, a year ago, a decade ago and a hundred years ago?

Perhaps the “news” of your life is the same as it has been for decades. I spoke with a woman the other day who hadn’t talked to an uncle for 16 years because she thought he had criticized her hairstyle at a family gathering when she was 12.

It seems that we are stuck in a time warp of conflict and recrimination.

I was listening to a radio show and the host facetiously said, “Let’s kill all the judgmental people.” While you may laugh at this, it accurately reflects the reason the world is as it is. In fact, it accurately reflects why all our personal “worlds” are as they are.

Consider that we will stop the fights in our life if we will stop fighting. We will feel less judged if we will stop judging. We will resolve our conflicts if we give up having to be right.

We act as though our conflicts are “out there” with the other people in our lives and, if they would only change, our world would be just fine.

The transformation in our thinking about “human nature” will occur when we stop putting “human nature” out there with other people and realize that it is our human nature we are speaking of and our human nature is endlessly malleable.

“You can’t change human nature” is exactly accurate if we think of human nature as only what other people possess. We can always choose to change our own human nature.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke about the man who goes to his doctor because he has a terrible pain in his head. The doctor asks him when the pain started and the man answers, “When I began hitting myself in the head with a hammer.” The doctor asks the patient, “Why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer?” The patient replies, “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

We laugh at this joke because we recognize how close it hits home. We “know” we can change our behavior any time we choose, yet we keep hitting ourselves in the head with our version of a hammer. But the joke is on us. We act as though it’s the other person who is wielding the hammer.

Unlike in the joke, however, it may not immediately feel good when we stop hitting ourselves in the head. Anything we’ve been doing for a long time will be missed. We’ve become comfortable feeling a particular way and we don’t feel good when we stop. In fact, we miss that feeling because we no longer feel like ourselves. Or, put another way, we miss what we’ve come to identify as our “human nature.”

But if there is ever to be any hope for changing our lives and changing what we read in our newspapers, we‘ll have to be willing to accept discomfort in exchange for peace.

Put another way, we can stop hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer anytime we choose.