Let’s admit what conflict resolvers and conflict avoiders don’t want to admit: we aren’t going to be able to depolarize the political divides in our world with short-term wins. We aren’t going to be able to solve climate change by squashing all debate about it and forcing our solution through. We aren’t going to be able to really dig into the

listen to whatever voice is in your head for a moment and try to determine if this is a voice of power, reason, avoidance, or possibility. Then ask it some questions: What’s urgent right now? What’s threatening right now? What could I be doing right now instead of this?

How can I know if these answers are really serving my best interests? What would happen if I did nothing?

Disagreements about information are by far the simplest conflicts to resolve, because there’s a source of truth out there, somewhere within reach.

MISCONCEPTION 1 Arguments Are Bad They’re not bad, but they can be unproductive. We aren’t taught how to argue productively.

How we argue matters. Luckily, this is a solvable problem. We can learn this skill.

SECOND THING TO TRY Talk to your internal voices The voices of power, reason, avoidance, and possibility aren’t the same in each of our heads. It’s important that you take these skeletal descriptions and figure out how they actually sound to you. (Sometimes you can trace the voices back to people in your life; I often joke with friends that

How does the voice of reason get around this problem? Simple: with numbers.

If we pay more attention to how we talk to ourselves, we’ll see that the thoughts and feelings that flow naturally from the spark of anxiety are only our internal voices and not the final say on what we absolutely need to think and feel.