Update: Realised too late that I should have called this post I’m Dreaming Of A Fight Christmas. Damn. I hate missed opportunities for puns. Especially seasonal ones. Next year…
Well, all you Buddhists, yoginis, and other students of mindful communication – you’re in danger of having an unnaturally peaceful holiday season.
And in danger of putting me out of the conflict resolution business. Before I’m in it, actually.
Want to practice your conflict resolution techniques?
You’d better make sure that there’s some conflict, eh?
Fighting at Christmas doesn’t just happen, you know. It takes planning and effort.
Here are my tips…
1. Plan the perfect Christmas
The first thing is to imagine your perfect Christmas.
Who’s going to be there, how they’re going to behave, how you’re going to feel, how the food is going to taste, what time things need to be ready…
How happy you’ll feel with your gifts, how happy others will feel with their gifts…
Plan to be calm, laughing, efficient, together, relaxed, and mature.
The whole time.
2. Do the Silent Fight
Another bit of planning is to think of all the things your family will say to you, all the critical things, all the disappointment, all the old issues, all the guilt…
Make sure you really have those fights in detail in your head, what they’ll say, what you’ll say, what they said that year, what you should have said…
Then when they bring up the topic in any way, you can be ready to blow up at them at a moment’s notice.
Particularly good times to invest in this practice is when you’re shopping for Christmas food, wrapping Christmas presents or cleaning in preparation for people arriving.
It’ll pay off in unexpected ways.
3. Feed everyone else, but not yourself
Low blood sugar. Helps.
4. Make sure you are always with someone
Time on your own – it’s no good.
5. Decide that this year there’ll be no fighting
Despite doing the Silent Fight, expect to not fight.
Zero tolerance.
Then you’ll notice any opportunity and you can immediately maximise it.
6. Make everything your business
Their feelings, your feelings, their behaviour… everything.
In fact not just your business, but your responsibility.
7. Resist everything you’re feeling
Whatever you’re feeling, try not to feel it.
Don’t worry – resistance doesn’t make the feelings go away…
Resistance leads to aggression popping up all over the place.
Yay – more fights!
8. Expect everyone else to communicate in exactly the way you want them to
If you’ve been reading stuff about non-violent communication, or conflict resolution, it’s really time that everyone else behaves the way you’d like them to.
So, if anyone communicates in any way that isn’t totally emotionally responsible, makes sure you tell them, in no uncertain terms.
9. Make this a test of your ability to stay peaceful
Christmas is the perfect time to implement everything you’ve ever read about mindfulness, conflict resolution and being peaceful.
Go for a perfect score.
It’ll be great.
***
Hope that helps.
Good luck!
See you on the other side… <twinkles fingers>
If you liked this, you might like some of these too...
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
BLARGH.
I am so not looking forward to Christmas.
1. I hate planes, for all the reasons anyone hates planes, and I resent–whether or not it’s fair–that it takes an entire day to get from where I live to where my parents live (and only 1.5 hours of that is actually on the plane–there’s the hours in the airport and then the THREE HOUR CAR DRIVE to the middle of Real America).
2. I’m not going to write about my family because that’s none of the internet’s business. But I am sad and depressed that I feel absolutely impotent to help my family members get what they need (emotionally/socially, not gift-wise), and I also am afraid that I won’t be able to get what I need (sleep/food/yoga-wise) either. Which, as you’ve mentioned above, I can’t predict–I am bringing the mat with me, after all–but it’s the kind of scenario where I don’t get any say in what happens to me from the minute I step into the airport until a week later when I come home again.
Actually the whole “I don’t get a say in what happens to me” may be the root of the matter. Some of it’s selfish, in “does my desire to maintain my yoga practice trump your desire to have an able-bodied young person help the family by cleaning out the attic?” and some of it’s genuinely fearful, in “I can’t control that there won’t be shoes thrown at me, and if past performance is any indicator of future performance THERE WILL BE SHOES.”
Hmmm. I may be on to something there. Bless you, Internet Therapy!
Doesn’t make the plane flight any better, though.
@Blue – it’s my pleasure to host your internet therapy.
Good luck…
Wow – in nine out of ten steps, you described all the members of my family when we’re all on the same place. And it happens any day; every day. It’s practically an art form. At the holidays it’s particularly thick. Dave and I decided “x-mess OUR way” three years ago, and I’ve never looked back.
We do one thing for them: what we call the “family aquarium tap” in which you call the family, talk of things like cats and the weather, and then hang up before they realize they’ve just had a conversation about absolutely nothing. It’s better for everyone that way.
@Casey Ah, the art of having conversation that serves its purpose. You can get a lot of mileage from cats and the weather. X-factor (or in the UK, Strictly Come Dancing) also work.
X-mess – nice.
Twitter: darxyanne
Thank you for the belly laugh!
@Darcy I don’t know what you mean…
Andrew – this is pure geniusness. Made my “holiday season” so much better now! In the same category – “how to be focused on having fun and REALLY connecting to your family, and have it really exhaust you”… I need to read a post on that topic, please.
P.S. Totally subscribed to your blog. Looking forward to cheering along for your process of becoming rich and internet famous!
@Jenia (ZHEN-ia not Jen-EYE-a) I could totally write that post too!
Glad to have you…