Conflict Resolution Part Three: Giving Up

"Never ever give up."  We've all seen this poster.  It's true, you know.  Never ever give up.

Giving up is the third way that we can approach conflict resolution.  We've tried fighting for what we believe in, we've tried weathering the storm and hoping that the skies will clear in time. When these don't work, it's natural to want to throw in the towel.  Things have gotten hard, there is no end in sight.  We stand at what we believe to be the brink of failure and run away.  This is the method of a coward.

Whenever we are faced with the need to make a decision, our brain goes through a rapid fire series of questions to populate an internal, decision making matrix.  This is where we weigh our desires, concerns, curiosities, and fears.  The culmination of these pieces produces our want. From there our want leads us to make our decision.  Perhaps we will say, "I don't really want this."  That is fine.  Sometimes, even often, we decide that we don't want something.  But let's say we do want something.  For the sake of argument, let's say that we want to write a novel.  We get 75 pages in and we realize that we should really have somebody else take a look at what we've written.  Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of self confidence and are petrified of criticism.  We've found ourselves in quite the quandary. We want nothing more than to write a novel, but we are too afraid to let anyone read our work. We take the easy way out. We stop writing and forget about it.  We gave up.

Giving up and running away can be used interchangeably.  Giving up is when we let a non-legitimate concern keep us from following what our heart tells us.  There is never any reason to allow this.  Every time we feel the need to give up, we should take that as sign to strengthen up, dig our trench, and get ready to fight. We are blessed with the opportunity to work hard to get what we want.  It's a sin to not take advantage of that because of our fears.  Never let your dreams waste away because of your fears -- that is far from the path to happiness.  Giving up leaves us only with feelings of guilt and regret. And who wants that?