How To Resolve Internal Conflicts and Live In Peace With Yourself

Usually, when we think of being in conflict, we think about our boss, who vented their frustration on us last week, about how our spouse has hurt our feelings, about our child, who is going through a difficult age or about an insolent shopping assistant, who has been plain rude to us.

But there is another type of conflict – one that is going on in our head. Inner conflicts may be less obvious than open confrontations with other people, but they are actually a lot more frequent and a lot more damaging for us in the long run.

Do you notice these inner daily contradictions about whether or not you should do or say something? Are you always sure about decisions that you have made or do you feel doubts afterwards? Have you been in a situation when your mind tells you to do one thing, while your heart ignores all the logic and tells you to do the opposite?

If yes, then you are not alone. We all sometimes feel torn between doing what we want to do and what we “ought” to be doing.

Psychologists say that there could be several different causes of our inner battles:

Preconceived Notions.

Sometimes we stubbornly hold onto our beliefs and judgments even though there is considerable evidence that they are wrong. In this case we feel torn between desire to defend our beliefs and accepting the necessity to face the facts.
It is easy, if not to avoid, then at least to minimize the number of inner conflicts caused by preconceived notions by keeping your mind open, which basically means not getting too attached to your opinions, ideas and predictions. Making a mistake or being wrong about someone or something does not make you ignorant. Being wrong and stubbornly looking for evidence that you are right – does!

Abstract social values.

It is not always easy to do the right thing. Especially when it is unclear what the right thing is. I wish that when we are taught to “be generous”, “compassionate”, “forgiving” there were specific instructions on how we should act in real life situations and detailed explanation of which moral and ethical values are more important and which ones can sometimes be “sacrificed”.

Let me explain myself…

Imagine that your friend is very upset and asks you if you can come over. The problem is that you have promised to have dinner with your family. What are you supposed to do? Tell your friend that you cannot be there for them? Cancel dinner with your family and hear the disappointment in your mother’s voice, because she has been cooking all day and was really looking forward to seeing you?

There you go! You have your inner conflict, because neither alternative is perfect.

I guess, there is no win-win solution that will satisfy both sides. But it helps to accept that you cannot please everyone and listen to what your heart is telling you.

Uncertainty when making an important decision.

It is simple to decide what we want to eat for dinner (at least it should be), but when it comes to making serious work or personal life decisions, we may feel stuck. And the more we think and reason with ourselves the more we get ourselves stuck in our web of arguments.

I recently read about one curious study on this topic. Psychologists have discovered that when we have plenty of time to make a choice and are given an opportunity to change it even after it has been made, we feel less unsure and less satisfied with our final decision than if we had been told to decide right away.

Do not second-guess yourself! Listen to your intuition! Weighing up all the pros and cons is not always the best way to choose the right course of action.

Conflict between values and anti-values.

We all have a set of our personal ‘core’ values that serve as a base for our personal identity. Values determine our life style, our beliefs, our social, political and religious preferences, and our self-image.

Anti-values are negative values that we try to avoid at all costs, because they make us experience fear, anger, anxiety and frustration. Values, just as anti-values direct our behavior and become our strongest motivators. When value and anti-value come into conflict, we feel dissatisfaction, tension, and resentment building inside.

For example, you might be really unhappy at your job, because you perceive it as monotonous and even useless (while your core values are diversity and giving). But every time you think about quitting or looking for a different job, there is some inner resistance that keeps you from taking a final decisive step. One of the possible reasons for such resistance can be your undesire to face an open confrontation with your boss, who actually enjoys working with you. In this case your core values – diversity and giving come in conflict with your anti-value – avoidance of conflict, which prevents you from making any changes in your career.

The only way to resolve such conflicts is to identify them first. This is not so easy to do, especially because in most cases our values and anti-values are deeply buried in our subconscious. In one of my future posts I will talk more about value and anti-value conflicts and share a few powerful techniques with you that professional coaches use to help their client gain better understanding of their actions and overcome inner doubts.

Tags: find inner peace, inner conflict causes, internal conflicts, Positive Thinking, resolve inner conflicts, values