Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
In our financial lives, whether business or personal, there are situations that come up that appear to create conflict, whether with another person or some circumstance.
Maybe there’s a client that always seems to cause you trouble. Or a boss/coworker you don’t get along with. Or you simply dislike your job.
One or all of these has probably happened to everyone at one point or another. And it’s understandable. Life happens.
But it doesn’t have to. There is another way. Conflict is never required.
This is a deep one, so we’ll take it one step at a time.
Table of contents
Conflict Is Optional
The first thing is that you must realize that you don’t have to put up with conflict. It is optional.
It doesn’t seem like it sometimes, I know. That difficult client pays too well to fire, or you can’t quit your well-paying job to get away from that difficult boss or to escape that job you hate.
So you just put up with it, thinking there’s no other way. And you build up a sort of pain tolerance, in time almost becoming numb to it all.
But that’s not the way to live! You aren’t supposed to tolerate such pain.
The point of conflict is not to learn to tolerate it in some misguided attempt to “become stronger”. Conflict should be a warning bell that something has gone very wrong. It should grab your attention so you can change course as soon as possible.
This is what I mean when I say the mission of Possible Promise Financial is to revolutionize your consciousness around money. So many people believe that money and struggle go hand-in-hand. But they don’t. The struggle is optional.
I want you to imagine, for a moment, a world where money is easy. It comes easily, you manage it easily, and it grows easily.
That is what is supposed to be. I believe that there is always an easy way — an effortless path — to what you want. Other authors have called this Easy World, and I really like that metaphor.
So you must first be open to the possibility that this conflict is optional. It’s your current reality, but it doesn’t need to be — even if you have no idea how that might be true right now.
Whatever problem you imagine yourself to have, no matter how serious it appears to be right now, it is optional. I can guarantee that as much as I can guarantee day follows night.
The Conflict Isn’t Out There
Now here’s the hard part.
The conflict isn’t out there.
Sure, it really, really seems like it. You can point right at the conflict (if it’s a person) or describe it in great detail (if it’s a circumstance).
But that isn’t the true source of the conflict.
The source is within.
No, I’m not saying it’s actually all your fault.
But what I am saying is that the world operates on the law of attraction. What I am saying is that your outer reality is always a faithful reflection of your inner reality.
And that means, quite simply, that if you are seeing conflict out there, it must be reflecting something that is within you.
And the thing is, the more you point at that conflict and complain about it — the more convinced you are that it’s real — the more real you make it.
You get to have your conflict if you choose to. It’ll always be there — and even if the current source of conflict goes away, it’ll just manifest itself through another source, because you didn’t resolve the underlying root of conflict.
But if you’re open to a different way, then take a look at what’s going on within, instead of pointing the finger without.
How to Resolve the Conflict
Actually, a better question might be how to dissolve the conflict, instead of trying to resolve it. Because in reality, you’ll find that that conflict has no more substance than a dream.
It’s not as hard as perhaps my previous words might suggest. I’m not asking you to dig deep into your subconscious beliefs and find some obscure childhood conflict that’s gone unresolved.
No, this is so much easier than that. And yet it’s often so simple that people overlook it.
You merely need to focus less on the conflict you believe yourself to have, and more on the harmony that you’d like to create.
Again, everything is a reflection of you. If you are focusing on conflict, you’ll get conflict.
And the tricky thing is that as that conflict appears more and more real to you, so you’ll give it more of your attention, further perpetuating the cycle.
So as simplistic as it may sound, you merely need to give less attention to that conflict and it will start to dissolve.
Isn’t that just ignoring the problem though?
Not at all. It’s seeing that there’s a better way than to ram your head against a brick wall trying to take outward action to resolve the conflict.
It’s seeing the conflict for what it really is: a mere illusion that can be dissolved as soon as you shift your attention onto the harmony you’d like to create instead.
Getting Specific
I’m going to use the example of a difficult client, but you can just as easily substitute it for a difficult boss, coworker, unwanted job situation, or anything else.
Let’s imagine that you have a difficult client that tests your boundaries and nitpicks your work. You constantly feel on the defense with them.
Of course, as you expect them to react the way you know they will, so you’re drawn into an endless loop where they must behave exactly as you expect. And, in turn, you must react exactly as they expect you to.
Because you’re not alone in this. You’ve attracted each other, each offering something the other was expecting.
The best thing for you to do firstly is to simply be open to the possibility to an effortless solution to all this.
You might not know what that is right now, but just knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way, because the very existence of a problem necessitates the simultaneous existence of an easy, effortless solution, is all it takes for the problem to start to unravel.
Don’t give unnecessary mental energy to this client. When you aren’t directly interacting with them, don’t worry or fume or anything else, because that just gives added energy to the situation.
Instead, start to imagine the harmony you want to have. If you can’t imagine it with this specific client, simply imagine how you love when clients are easy to work with and appreciate what you do for them. Imagine how they pay you well, on time, and without complaint.
As you remove that negative attention from the problem client, and instead imagine the kind of client relationships you want to have, things will begin to transform.
They can transform in one of two ways: either that client will actually become easier to work with, or else they will no longer be a match to you and so will leave of their own accord.
Either way, as soon as you stop being a match to conflict, any existing conflict must fall away in the easiest way possible.
Respect Your Boundaries
None of this means that you shouldn’t have boundaries or that you have to say “yes” to everything a client asks of you for fear of being disagreeable.
We often have such an aversion to saying “no”, and sometimes all the more when we start to work with the law of attraction, because we’re taught that what we resist, persists.
But “no” doesn’t have to be an act of resistance. It is merely a statement of fact, of the boundaries you have decided to create for yourself.
We add the defensiveness into the act of saying “no”, and in adding that defensiveness, we can create undesirable reactions in others.
But defensiveness isn’t inherent to “no”.
If someone asked you if you could fly, what’d be the answer? “No”, obviously. It’s just a statement of fact.
And if a client asks you if you can do something outside the scope of your contract, “no” is just as much a statement of fact. It isn’t negative, it isn’t confrontational, it doesn’t have to be said with defensiveness. It simply is.
I recently had a client come to me with out-of-scope work. I gently but firmly said “No, that is not part of our contract, but I’m happy to do it for an additional fee.”
They decided against it, but then a week later came back to me with another request. And you know what they said this time? They said to send them an invoice for whatever it’d cost. They recognized my boundary and now respected it, and it resulted in more business for me.
If I had agreed to the first request, I’d end up feeling resentful and taken advantage of. Then when the second request came along, it’d just compound the issue. I would have created a huge conflict for myself.
But by deciding on my boundaries and sticking to them, I avoided that whole mess and actually made a profit instead.
Create the Harmony You Desire
Your financial situation is meant to be easy. Any conflict you perceive there to be is simply a product of your continued focus on it.
So stop giving it your focus, and instead decide to live from a place of ease and harmony.
Decide that anyone entering your reality will treat you in the way you desire and will respect your boundaries, and it will be so.
Decide that your financial situation will be as abundant and easy-flowing as you need it to be, and so it must be.
You get to decide the kind of reality you want to experience.
It merely takes a turning of your focus and a shifting of your thoughts.
Brandon,
Another great article! Love the easy world references and the point you showed about how boundaries don’t have to be “pushing against” but can simply be statements of fact (without any negative emotions). I’ve found this to be very true. I had a situation at a job once where I decided, nope, no more. I wasn’t pushing against, I just decided that was what I wanted and was that. Brought a lot of peace and was the right decision for me.
Hi Namaste,
Thanks so much for your comment, and I’m glad you enjoyed the post.
Yes absolutely. Many people are uncomfortable with setting boundaries but it’s so important. I heard Byron Katie talk about this once and she was so clear on it. No is just no — it’s for me and who I am, not for the other person. Your job experience is perfect — once you clear up all the negative emotions, sometimes what is left is just a plain “no, that’s not for me”.