Dealing with the frustration that goes along with challenging conflicts has some similarities to sailors dealing with stormy seas—it is best to utilize a well-rehearsed plan.
For dealing with conflicts, one such plan begins with thinking of the word “DIG.” With a little practice, we can use this word to remind us of a simple way to summarize the conflict even in the midst of swirling frustration.
The letters of the word “DIG” aids us to remember the words, “Desire,” “Interference,” and “Guilt.” Once we recall these words, we use them in a particular way.
First, we state what our desire is in the conflict, then, what is interfering, then, why we believe the other party in the conflict is guilty of doing something wrong. After doing this from our perspective, we then go through the same process from the perspective of the other party.
If we are thoroughly practiced in using this skill, the word “DIG“ not only helps us to create this concise description of the conflict even while in the midst of rising anger, it also helps us remember to dig a little to consider not just the most obvious desire that is involved in the conflict, but also what might be other desires that are involved.
Of course, in simple, low frustration conflicts none of this is necessary. There are times, however, that you will find that when all of those around you are beginning to get lost in a storm, your even-tempered, systematic guidance will calm the waters and lead to inviting harbors.
Conflicts in Which Happiness is the Desire
Now, sometimes when we describe a conflict it takes the following form:
“I desire to be happy, but the other party is interfering. The other party is guilty of making my life miserable.”
The desire to be happy has a special place in the life of many of us. Nevertheless, today I would like to advocate that you think twice whenever you, or the other party in a conflict, describes the desire part of the conflict as “to be happy.”
What’s wrong with Happiness as a Desire?
Describing a desire in a conflict as “to be happy” is too vague. With a little effort you can usually dig a little deeper and find a more specific description. Typically, it is better for a boss to say something like, “I desire that you come to work by 9 A.M. at least 95% of the time than, “I desire that you make me happy.”
Another reason to avoid happiness in your descriptions of your desire has to do with earning respect. If you are like so many of us, you probably want to avoid coming off as shallow or having superficial desires. To explain a little more of what I mean by this, I’m going to discuss a little of what Albert Einstein said on this topic and then present a little parable.
Albert Einstein on Happiness
In a book titled, Living Philosophies: A Series of Intimate Credos, the first chapter is by Albert Einstein. There he states:
The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient for a herd of cattle. (p. 4)
When I read the rest of Einstein’s chapter, I came away with the following image. He kind of viewed happiness as one-half of an oscillation process, with sadness and happiness going back and forth, thrusting his ship forward, and where he chose to steer his ship was in the direction that led to goodness, beauty, and truth.
This is a deeper way to view the nature of happiness, and for those of us who want to be respected for being deep, in contrast to shallow, I think that there may be some value in meditating on this.
To further challenge you to think more deeply about the nature of happiness, please consider the following parable.
The Parable of Probliss
Once upon a green-blue planet, a scientist invented Probliss, a super powerful happiness pill. It made people as happy as anyone ever dreamed of. In fact Probliss was so effective in improving the happiness in people’s lives that a group of psychiatrists developed a plan that would have all of the people on the planet lie down on gurneys in sanitized rooms and then be hooked up intravenously so nourishment and Probliss could be directly delivered into the veins of everyone. If at any point people felt a little less than perfectly happy, all they had to do was press down with a fingertip and wonderful Probliss would soar into their lives creating pure, pure happiness.
Some didn’t like this plan. “What, no music, no love, no friends? Man, that sounds bleak!”
“True, none of that,” said the psychiatrists, “but far more happiness.”
And it came to pass that studies were done. The results proved indisputable–those on these gurneys who were attached to these machines that provided nourishment and Probliss developed far fewer diseases. They lived over ten years longer, and they were less of a danger to themselves or others when compared to those who lived their lives going out in the world without Probliss. Those who chose to live their lives in the old way, were much more likely to die in car crashes, accidental falls, and homicides. People on Probliss never died from these types of causes because all they did was lie on the gurney in a completely sterile, happy, and healthy state.
Once these results came in, the psychiatrists decided that everyone, from now on, would be tied down to gurneys, even if it was against their will. “It was for their own good,” the psychiatrists explained.
Now some men and women did manage to escape into a deep, green forest, experiencing anguish and tears, love and creativity, but not perfect happiness.
The End
Conclusion
And so, whenever you think you want to seek happiness, consider the value that goes along with identifying a more specific desire. You’re still likely to experience some happiness while seeking this newly identified desire, and some sadness too as setbacks tend to occur. These alterations of happiness and sadness are part of the process that keeps our lives moving forward. Choose wisely in what direction you truly wish to head. And learn to appreciate that there are deeper values in life than happiness.
My Best,
Jeff
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
“How’d things work out between Blondie and you?” you ask in a concerned voice upon running into your friend, Dagwood. “Did you manage to resolve your conflict?”
“Yeah, um…well, I’m kinda not sure,” he replies.
When it comes to whether or not a conflict has been resolved, sometimes people feel confused, or they end up engaging in needless arguments about this. Today we spend some time clarifying this issue.
The DIG Conflict Model removes much of the uncertainty about this issue by:
being precise about the definition of a conflict
introducing the concept of conflict intensity
being precise about the point at which a conflict is resolved
introducing the concept of related conflicts
The Definition of a Conflict
A conflict exists whenever the following three conditions exist:
Party A desires an act will occur.
Party A perceives that another party is likely to act in a manner that interferes with the desire.
Party A perceives that the other party would be guilty of doing something wrong if he or she carries out the interfering act.
When using the DIG Conflict Model, we describe a conflict by using the word “DIG” to remind us to identify the three conflict conditions, the desire, the interference, and the guilt. Sometimes a given situation has more than one conflict but people end up getting confused because they think that all of the conflicts are one big conflict. When using the DIG Conflict Model, we clearly describe each of the conflicts separately and systematically. This process dramatically reduces confusion and simplifies finding resolutions to each of the separate conflicts. Sometimes we have to dig to identify all of the conflicts in a situation but the DIG Conflict Model provides us some tools to make this relatively easy (see posts titled DEALING WITH CRITICISM BY DIGGING DEEPER and RESOLVING RECURRING CONFLICTS).
Conflict Intensity
Toward reaching our goal of reducing confusion about whether or not a conflict has been resolved, we have just clarified what it means to have a conflict. We now move on toward this goal by learning about the intensity of a conflict.
The three conditions of a conflict (desire, interference and guilt) are not just present whenever a conflict exists. Each of these three conditions may be present at a very high degree, a medium degree, or a low degree.
DESIRE
As an example, let’s say that in the picture on the right, John desires Mary with all of his might. Asked to rate how much he desires Mary on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the greatest desire he can possibly have, he rates his desire for her a 10.
We asked John a few months later to rate his desire for Mary. Some of Mary’s mannerisms have begun to annoy him, and there are times when he has begun to think of finding a new girlfriend. He still has some desire for her but at a lower degree then when he first met her. This example illustrates how the desire component of a conflict can vary over time.
INTERFERENCE
Now let’s look at an example of how the interference component of a conflict can be present at higher and lower degrees. In the picture on the left, Sue desires to get to a long-eared stuffed animal but Fred is interfering. Sue knows Fred pretty well and she is convinced that once he decides to not let her get something, he usually sticks to it for quite some time. Asked to rate how much Fred is likely to interfere with the achieving of her desire on a 1 to 10 scale, she answers 8.
But let’s say a few months later Fred’s behavior begins to change. He still will interfere with Sue achieving her desire to get something but only for a minute or two. By then he has grown tired of that game. When Sue wants to get her long-eared friend down from the shelf and Fred tries to stop her, she knows that by waiting for a short period of time things will work out fine. Now when asked to rate how much Fred will interfere with her achieving her desire, she answers 2.
GUILT
Finally, let’s look at an example of how the guilt component of a conflict can be present at higher or lower degrees. In this picture on the right, Mike comes home from work and sees his wife and some guy in each other’s arms passionately kissing. Mike’s first reaction is that his wife and this guy are guilty of doing something terribly wrong. If he was asked to rate just how guilty they were, he might say 10. But let’s say that moments after he first sees this kissing scene he notices that there are four other people in the room all holding a script for a play.
His wife quickly withdraws from the embrace of the male stranger and warmly greets her husband. Then she says, “Honey, I got the part I tried out for. We’re all here rehearsing.”
Now Mike recalls that his wife did have plans to go this morning to a play audition. He doesn’t like the fact that his wife usually gets sexy, passionate parts, but he had agreed to marry her anyway.
Once Mike understands that his wife was rehearsing her part in a play when he had walked into the house, he still feels uncomfortable about what he had seen, but he now recognizes that his wife and the male stranger are not as guilty as he originally thought. If asked to rate how guilty they are, he may say 2, or even a zero.
In the DIG Conflict Model, the higher each of the three components are rated, the higher the intensity of the conflict. Sometimes when a conflict’s intensity had been very high, if it is no longer as high, people think the conflict has been resolved, but not according to the DIG Conflict Model.
The Point that a Conflict is Resolved
According to the DIG Conflict Model:
Whenever Party A perceives that a conflict exists, it will be resolved from Party A’s perspective when Party A lowers his or her rating of any of the three conflict conditions to zero.
An example of a resolved conflict will be provided in the next section. But first, let’s take a look at what a related conflict is. Then we will be familiar with four important aspects of conflicts–its precise definition, its degrees of intensity, the point that it is resolved and that some conflicts are related to other conflicts. Then we will see how this will help us to avoid many misunderstandings that lead to needless confusion and arguments.
Related Conflicts
The best way to understand what is meant by a related conflict is by considering the following parable:
The Parable of Jack in the Restaurant
A dad takes his wife and five-year old son, Jack, to a restaurant. Jack’s meal comes first, a nice big plate of spaghetti and meatballs. After Jack quickly shovels into his mouth a couple of forkfuls of his dinner, the dad says, “That looks pretty good, Jack. Do you mind if I have a little taste of the tomato sauce? If I like it, I might want to get something with it next time we come.”
“NO, DAD! I just have enough for me!”
This is frustrating to the dad and he perceives that he has a conflict with his son because he desires a taste of the sauce and perceives that his son is interfering with his desire. Additionally, he believes his son is guilty of being selfish.
As he thinks about what to do about this conflict, his wife and he receive the meals that they ordered.
About fifteen minutes later, the dad still desires a taste of the sauce, but not quite as intensely as before because his hunger has subsided. He then glances over to Jack and notices that there is about half of his original portion of spaghetti left on his plate and the pace of his eating has slowed up quite a bit. His son’s desire to eat his spaghetti has also become less intense.
“Jack,” the dad says softly, “do you still mind if I have just a little taste of your sauce?”
“Sure, you can have some, Dad. I’m starting to get full.” And with that, Jack slides about a third of the remaining spaghetti on his dad’s plate while making sure that there is an ample amount of sauce along with it.
In the fifteen minutes that the dad first desired a taste of the sauce, the situation transformed from a clear conflict situation to a non-conflict situation because the dad has achieved his desire to taste the sauce. But wait! A minute later, the dad, still a bit bugged about something, suddenly realizes he still does have a conflict with his son. He tries to summarize it by using the DIG Conflict Model. “I desire that Jack not be selfish,” he thinks to himself, “but his actions at dinner suggest that he will continue to interfere with this desire if I don’t do something about it, and he’ll continue to be guilty of being selfish.”
This conflict, although related to the earlier one, is different for it has a different desire. The original conflict’s desire was about getting a taste of the tomato sauce. That conflict was resolved when the dad got a taste of the tomato sauce. If asked to rate how much he wants to taste the sauce right now on a 1 to 10 scale, he would say zero. This new conflict’s desire is about Jack not being selfish. Thus it is different enough to be thought of as a new conflict with perhaps a distinctly different set of approaches required to address it.
Now that the dad has clarified in his mind what the new conflict is all about, he begins to reflect upon possible resolutions. “Perhaps I expect too much from a five-year old boy. There is still plenty of time to teach Jack to care about others, and as he matures, he may just naturally become more altruistic. Perhaps it might help if I tell Jack some stories, from time to time, about heroes who act in unselfish ways even when they are hungry or are struggling to meet other needs. And if I model altruistic behavior for Jack with my own behavior, this too can help. As I think on this some more it occurs to me that maybe in the future if I would like to have a taste of Jack’s food, it would be wise for me to wait until he is at least half done with it. This way, if Jack was in a particularly irritable mood because of his hunger, he will have some time to take care of his own hunger desires and to calm down a bit.”
A conflict is related to another conflict when at least one of the three conflict conditions of the original conflict is similar to at least one of the conflict conditions of the other conflict. In the parable about Jack and his dad, initially the dad had the following conflict with his son— I desire a taste of the sauce and perceive that in attempting to get a taste, Jack will create a loud disturbance in the restaurant. Additionally, I believe Jack is acting selfish. A few minutes later, the dad, recognizing he has resolved his first conflict but now has another conflict, says to himself, I want Jack to not be selfish, but his actions at dinner suggest that he will continue to act selfishly if I don’t do something about it. It’s wrong to be selfish.” Both the initial conflict and its related conflict are connected because both of their guilt conflict conditions are similar (Jack is guilty of being selfish).
Discussion
We have now become familiar with four aspects of a conflict–its precise definition, its degrees of intensity, the point that it is resolved and that some conflicts are related to other conflicts. Familiarity of these four aspects of conflicts help to avoid some unnecessary confusion and arguments.
For example, let’s say a young woman named Sally had a very high intensity conflict with her boyfriend. A week later she now finds that it is much less intense. She may think, perhaps it has been resolved. How can she decide?
She can begin by describing her conflict when it originally surfaced using the DIG Conflict Model. Then she can rate what the degree of each of the three components (desire, interference and guilt) had been on a scale of 1 to 10 . Then she can rate each of these three components as they are currently perceived. If none of the three components are at zero, she would recognize that she still has the same conflict with her boyfriend, but it is just at a lower intensity.
This process clarifies in her mind that she still has some work to do if she really wants to fully resolve the conflict. It also draws her attention to each of the three specific components of the conflict.
If you practice using this process, in time you will discover that this simplifies what remains to be done and opens avenues that may lead to problem solutions. For an excellent illustration of this, see the post titled THE ABCs OF POWER AND THE GUILT CONDITION.
Now, let’s change our Sally example a bit. This time she goes through the process of clearly defining her conflict and rating the degree of each of its three conditions. She discovers that she actually did resolve her original conflict, but it has turned into a related conflict. She now has a clear way to understand what has happened. Moreover, as with the Jack in the Restaurant parable, the process of defining precisely what the new conflict is can point her to some solutions she might not have otherwise considered. Recall that Jack’s dad, once he clarified in his mind what his related conflict’s desire is–reducing his son’s selfishness–found it helpful for coming up with ideas about how to teach his son to become more altruistic.
Well, I hope you find in this week’s post some food for thought. May you all have a week with some peace, some excitement and moments of wonder.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
As you can see, eventually the conflict is resolved.
But a few days later, the two have another conflict.
Again and again other conflicts spring up between these same two individuals. These recurring conflicts come about with a distinctly higher frequency than usual for two people in the types of situations in which they live and interact.
When we see two people having an unusual amount of recurring conflicts, at some point we might want to dig a little below the surface to figure out why.
Using the DIG Conflict Model to Help with Challenging Conflicts
From time to time on this blog, we have been using the word DIG to remind us of a simple way to briefly summarize any conflict. The letters in the word “DIG” reminds us to look for a desire, what is interfering with achieving the desire, and if someone feels that the person who is viewed as interfering with the desire is guilty of doing something wrong. We also noted earlier that the word “DIG” is a useful memory device because sometimes we have to dig below the surface to understand a conflict (see DIG FOR THE CONFLICT and DEALING WITH CRITICISM BY DIGGING DEEPER).
In an earlier post, I discussed two digging tools that help us to find ways of improving our style of providing criticism and resolving conflicts (see WHY IS CRITICISM SO HARD TO BEAR?). There, I mentioned that it is helpful to stay mindful that when people are criticized, their desire to be liked and to maintain their freedom may become threatened. By keeping this in mind, we can often come up with less threatening alternative styles to engage people during our disagreements. During recurring conflicts, these tools for digging can be very helpful.
Today, we are going to look at three other digging tools because they are especially helpful when we notice that we are dealing with recurring conflicts.
Three Digging Tools Especially Helpful for Resolving Recurring Conflicts
The three digging tools we will focus on today are in the form of questions:
1. What desire might be motivating the conflict?
2. What other desires might be motivating the conflict?
3. Why do the people involved in the problem have this desire in this situation?
To familiarize yourself with this aspect of conflicts, please consider the following Beetle Bailey comic:
From this comic, we might get the impression that Sarge views this situation as a conflict he is having with Beetle, a conflict that we might describe from his perspective as follows: Sarge desires Beetle to wait in a certain spot and interfering with his desire, Beetle wants to wait in a different spot. Sarge believes that if Beetle doesn’t follow his order, he will be guilty of insubordination.
Suppose we ask Sarge if, from his perspective, these two sentences capture a conflict he is having with Beetle, and he replies, “Yes! That lazy bum is trying to goof off again!”
At this point, something strikes me over the head, urging me to dig a little deeper than the two-sentence conflict description Sarge has said captures his conflict with Beetle. It seems to me that Sarge and Beetle seem to be having far more conflicts with one another than is usual between a sargent and a private under his command.
Hmmm. To begin digging into this conflict, I put my tools out there where I can easily get at them. In bold letters I write out the following three questions.
1. What desire might be motivating the conflict? 2. What other desires might be motivating the conflict? 3. Why does the party have this desire in this situation?
As I begin to think about this a little more, I wonder if the desire that I identified in my first attempt to describe the conflict is the best that I can come up with. Is this really about Sarge’s desire to have Beetle wait in the exact spot that he has pointed to?
In this situation I don’t see how Sarge thinks Beetle is likely to behave in a manner that is interfering with what Sarge says he desires. Beetle just asks if he can wait sitting in the shade. Sarge knows Beetle well enough by now so that he must realize that once he orders Beetle to wait where he tells him to wait, he isn’t likely to be insubordinate. Moreover, it wasn’t any problem for Sarge to figure out how to get Beetle to wait where he wanted him to wait. All he had to do was bark orders at Beetle, something he’s done numerous times. Perhaps Sarge has some other desire that is part of the reason he is getting so worked up here.
My memory scans over the other recent conflicts I’ve seen happen between Sarge and Beetle. I recall, over and over again, situations that had Sarge perceiving Beetle as lazy.
I also recall seeing many times over the years Sarge becoming furious about Beetle’s laziness.
OK, so in most of the situations that conflicts spring up between the two, laziness is an issue.
Let’s pretend, for instructional purposes, that I can explore with Sarge whether or not we can reword the original conflict description as a recurring conflict.
“Sarge, I’m gonna describe your conflict a little differently than before because I don’t think the original description is as good as we can make it. If you don’t mind, let me know if it is more or less accurate. Earlier I described it from your perspective as follows: You desire that Beetle wait in a certain spot and Beetle interfered with your desire when he indicated that he wants to wait in a different spot. You believe that if Beetle doesn’t follow your order, he will be guilty of insubordination. You agreed that it is pretty accurate. But what if I describe it instead like this: You have a desire to have privates under your command that are energetic go-getters, and after Beetle was assigned to your outfit you have found his laziness has been interfering with this desire. You believe Beetle is, and will continue to be, guilty of laziness.”
“Yes, that is a much better description of my conflict with Beetle than your original description.”
“I thought it might be. Beetle has been in your outfit for years. Specific conflicts arose. To deal with his laziness I’ve noticed that you have yelled at him, given him KP duty that required that he peel potatoes up to his ears, and used all manner of threats and physical attacks.
Beetle at least listens to your orders, though sometimes taking them a bit too literally. But, nevertheless, he is never blatantly insubordinate. Although Beetle continues to be lazy, you found that with a little assertive hollering (“I SAID WAIT HERE, AND I MEAN RIGHT HERE!”) he usually complies even if he has to stand in place while a steam shovel comes roaring by.”
“Yeah, but he keeps acting lazy. It’s driving me BERSERK!”
“I can tell it’s starting to really get to you.”
“You’re telling me!!!”
“This last conflict you had with Beetle was resolved with so little difficulty that it really didn’t qualify as a conflict or even a problem. And yet, Sarge, you remained angry. And this kind of troubling interaction with Beetle has been happening in one situation after another. Something else has to be going on.”
“Sarge, I noticed that in each situation that you get angry with Beetle Bailey, it usually has to do with his laziness.”
“You’re right about that!”
Once Sarge clearly understands the nature of his recurring conflict, he is in a better position to seek out a resolution. Before he understood this, when he would complain to his fellow sergeants about Beetle not doing this or that, they would ask, “Well, did you get him to do it?” When Sarge would answer yes, they would shrug, and say, “At least he’s not insubordinate.” But now Sarge tells his fellow sergeants, “See if you can help me with this problem. I want privates under my command to be energetic, hustling team members, and after Beetle was assigned to my outfit I’ve found his laziness has been interfering with this desire. Beetle continues to be guilty of laziness. Any of you have any ideas to fix this?”
“Well, I had a recruit once by the name of Bob,” says one of the sergeants, “and he was the laziest bum I ever saw in my life. Well, what I did was, I told this here Bob, the next time you do anything that strikes me as lazy, I’m gonna put you on KP duty until you go a whole two weeks without my catching you acting lazy. Then I’m gonna let you off KP duty until I catch ya being lazy again. We’re gonna keep doing this until you stop being lazy. Anyway, it worked like a charm.”
Now I’m not saying this plan is ideal or that it will work every time. I simply lay it out there as a part of a parable designed to give you an example of a recurring conflict and to suggest that by digging a little to better define a conflict, we are oftentimes better positioned to seek more specific, helpful advice.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Dealing with the frustration that goes along with challenging conflicts has some similarities to sailors dealing with stormy seas—it is best to utilize a well-rehearsed plan.
If we are thoroughly practiced in using this skill, the word “DIG“ not only helps us to create this concise description of the conflict even while in the midst of rising anger, it also helps us remember to dig a little to consider not just the most obvious desire that is involved in the conflict, but also what might be other desires that are involved.
“I desire to be happy, but the other party is interfering. The other party is guilty of making my life miserable.”
Typically, it is better for a boss to say something like, “I desire that you come to work by 9 A.M. at least 95% of the time than, “I desire that you make me happy.”
Another reason to avoid happiness in your descriptions of your desire has to do with earning respect. If you are like so many of us, you probably want to avoid coming off as shallow or having superficial desires. To explain a little more of what I mean by this, I’m going to discuss a little of what Albert Einstein said on this topic and then present a little parable.
The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient for a herd of cattle. (p. 4)
Once upon a green-blue planet, a scientist invented Probliss, a super powerful happiness pill. It made people as happy as anyone ever dreamed of. In fact Probliss was so effective in improving the happiness in people’s lives that a group of psychiatrists developed a plan that would have all of the people on the planet lie down on gurneys in sanitized rooms and then be hooked up intravenously so nourishment and Probliss could be directly delivered into the veins of everyone. If at any point people felt a little less than perfectly happy, all they had to do was press down with a fingertip and wonderful Probliss would soar into their lives creating pure, pure happiness.
