On Difficult Conversations

I think about the difficult conversations I had whether at work or in life and realized how thankful I am that I had those conversations even if they were difficult to start and finish. I may not like what happens next but the process of having difficult conversations is truly rewarding if we begin to accept our vulnerabilities and open ourselves to the realities even if we don’t like it.

It’s human nature to avoid danger, so whenever we sense conflict we tend to avoid it, but such avoidance can do more harm than good. Yes, facing the truth can be ugly, and painful, but the reward can be more than what we imagine.

Photo by Adam Thomas on Unsplash

I, too, had many difficult conversations and decisions needed to make. So many mistakes along the way. And even now I still struggle to face difficult conversations — in denial sometimes that there’s something wrong. The elephant in the room still lingers. The negative feelings paralyze me from moving forward.

I write this short piece with a renewed understanding and courage of how can I better face difficult conversations. That I want to approach it little by little and as often as I could until I get better at responding to it. Amor Fati tells me that these are all necessary — accept everything for what it is.

Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy. — Epictetus

Acceptance reduces our struggle. Our imagined troubles can go away if we accept that things happen for what they are and how we respond determines who we are. Difficult conversations and hard truths are what they are and that’s OK.

What’s important is how we make the best of anything that happens to us.