In the last Shape Shift post, the Princess story framework was shared, showing how it is a beautiful way of resolving conflict, inviting you to examine the way you see the conflict – your worldview – and the way others see the conflict – or their worldview perspective.

In conflict, as you tell your story from the Princess perspective, very often you are waiting for a Prince to come along and rescue you from the Dragon or whatever your dilemma might be.  You want someone else to solve your problem for you.

The Prince you are waiting for could be a third person.  It could be a boss who you want to solve a problem with a coworker.  The boss could also be the Dragon and you want another job or someone higher in the organization to provide the rescue.  Or maybe you are waiting for a friend or family member to play the role of the Prince.

Alternatively, you could be waiting for the Dragon to turn into the Prince and thus provide the rescue.  When you want the Dragon to be the rescuer what you really want is for the Dragon to admit that they were wrong, you are right and offer you an apology vindicating your Princess perspective.  Usually you have to wait a long time for this to happen, and it rarely ever does.

It doesn’t often occur to you that perhaps you are the one who might be wrong – or may not be right.  Even if you are right, that doesn’t necessarily make the Dragon wrong.  Or, perhaps it is you who needs to offer the apology.  Remember in the Dragon’s perspective of this same conflict, they are the Princess and you are the Dragon.

Ultimately, what is helpful is to transform into the Prince and rescue yourself.  Why?  In doing so, you reclaim the power that you traded for sympathy and make yourself stronger.  As you recognize all three roles within you, you come closer to wholeness within yourself.  The things you are looking for to make yourself complete are never found outside of yourself, they are always found within.

In the same way, your rescue cannot come from outside of yourself.  If it does it is only temporary.  In order to be truly effective, it must come from within.  If it comes from external sources, the problems which precipitated the need to be rescued will only come back around in the same way or in some other variation and everyone one of us has had experiences which speak to this.

In order to transform yourself into the Prince, the first step is often giving up the need to be right.  When you have the need to be right and you want other people to validate that for you, you are entrenched in your position or your own point of view or worldview.  It is very difficult to acknowledge there may be other perspectives that are just as valid as your own.  Giving up the need to be right doesn’t mean you aren’t right and it also doesn’t necessarily mean that the other person is right.  But giving up the need to be right opens up space and opportunity to expand the story.

The need to be right does not stem from factual truth, it stems from emotional truth.  It is the emotional truth that drives the conflict, not the factual truth.  The way you act reflects this kind of thinking: “I feel that you hurt me in some way and I want you to apologize for that hurt.  If you don’t apologize, I will show you what it feels like by acting in a way that will create the same hurt in you.  Once you know what it feels like, then for sure you will apologize to me.”

This strategy rarely ever works because so much of what it tries to do is implicit not explicit.  “I want an apology but I will not ask for it or explain why I want it – because you should already know that.”  Trouble is, that other person cannot read your mind, as much as you may think they should be able to.  And often, they are too busy reacting to your reaction to decipher what your encoded message means.  Thus, the conflict escalates.

Stepping out of the need to be right, even if you do so begrudgingly, is a very effective way to de-escalate the conflict.  As you acknowledge what you may have contributed to the conflict, very often the other person will also begin to acknowledge their own role.

It is really easy to get people to agree to the idea that they would prefer their relationship or their interactions to be different and better – preferably if the other person changes!  As much as you may think differently, that Dragon has no more interest in perpetuating the stress and anxiety that goes along with the conflict than you do.  As you take charge of the situation and take the initial steps to a new form of relationship, you begin the process of transforming into the Prince.

You can do this from any perspective.   Earlier in this article, the scenario of the Dragon being your boss was posed.  For many people this seems like an impossible situation because the boss is the boss and if they engage in conflict with their boss, they fear losing their jobs.  I recently had a client in this very situation.

My client and his managers were meeting with my client’s boss.  The boss royally dressed down these department managers for a good hour, deflating and demoralizing everyone.  My client felt just as demoralized as his managers and he felt helpless to respond.  After a few days and a lot of thought, my client asked for a meeting with his boss to discuss that situation.

He told his boss that the points the boss had made were valid points and that steps needed to be taken to rectify the situation.  He also told his boss that his approach had been totally demoralizing and had the exact opposite effect – de-motivating staff to want to rectify the situation.  Much to his surprise, his boss apologized to him.  Then he asked if my client would like him to meet with his staff to apologize to them – which he did.

Later we evaluated what happened in the original meeting.  I asked my client how he could have handled that situation differently.  He said that he could have stopped his boss, asked his own managers to leave and then had the conversation with his boss one-on-one, later bringing the staff back in after some appropriate course of action had been decided.  His original response was the best he could do at the time given the unexpectedness of the situation and his own reaction to it.  The point in evaluating it is to build a repertoire of alternative responses to possible future scenarios so that there are choices more readily available.

My client could have stayed in his Princess story of what a terrible boss he has.  And certainly there is room for improvement in the boss’ management skills.  However, his boss’ behaviour is largely out of my client’s control.  When he began to focus on what was in his control he effected a change in his boss’ behaviour that he couldn’t have imagined.  The first thing he did was acknowledge what was valid in his boss’ message.  It turned the tide and created movement that enabled a resolution to be reached.

And remember that conflict is not always overt.  That is largely the problem with it.  We try to avoid it and yet we stay stuck in our Princess stories.  Whenever you find yourself thinking that someone else needs to change or do or say something you are in a Princess story and you are held hostage by it.  By thinking of the story from the Dragon’s perspective, or of what you contributed to it or of what is within your control to change, you begin the transformation process.  The only true way to resolve conflict is to transform yourself.  That White Knight in Shining Armour really is you!  Loving how fairy tales are reinventing themselves.