Sample
Introduction
Welcome to the vast majority of the human race!
Seriously: welcome to the community of people who find themselves in conflict almost every day. With partners, colleagues, children or friends. And, quite often, with themselves.
If you sometimes feel you are wrestling with difficult conflicts, difficult people or even with life itself, then a heartfelt welcome. You are not alone in this. And you are in the right place.
For a long time, I thought I was the only one. Only once I had discovered and understood everything you will find laid out systematically in this book did it become clear to me: I am not alone. More than that: I am not even in a minority. Quite the opposite - most people go through something similar at some point in their lives. My experience was, and still is, that they rarely talk about it - out of worry that they won't be understood, or because they have already heard plenty of well-meant advice that simply didn't work for them.
Maybe you know this too. Someone says: “Don't let it get to you!”, “Just take a break, it'll pass” or “Be the bigger person” - while you are stuck in the middle of a situation where you have no idea how to find your balance again.
In this book, you won't get simplistic advice like that for problems that simply aren't simple. Instead of supposedly quick fixes, we are going to do something different here: we are going to build ourselves a system we can always fall back on whenever life isn't treating us quite as kindly as we would like.
And let me say one truth right at the start: this system does not make life easier. Life remains life. It stays messy at times, unfair, painful or exhausting. What the system changes is how we deal with it. And that makes an enormous difference.
To get there, we first map out what is. For real. No sugar-coating. No papering over problems with easy answers. We take a close look at what actually makes us human beings tick: you, me and everyone around us.
Many of us go through our whole lives without this map. And because we know neither how we ourselves actually work nor how other people work, we keep falling into the same traps - and make life unnecessarily hard for ourselves.
Only once we understand how we really work can tools begin to bite. That is why the tools in this book are not based on how people are supposed to work, but on how they actually do. That is what you will learn first. And that is exactly why the tools can be effective later on and support you in making life easier, calmer and less conflict-ridden.
This knowledge and these tools are complemented by something that asks a little of you: small exercises.
Why? Because no change happens without practice. But don't worry: this is not weight training for the soul. The exercises are small, light and made for everyday life. Above all, they build directly on what you have just understood. You won't be drilling some technique whose point only becomes clear later. You apply immediately what you have just learned.
Sound like a plan?
Then let's begin with what really drives us as human beings. Much of it will feel familiar at first. What's new is usually not the what, but the depth of understanding. And it is precisely this depth that will make the difference later on.
… and it continues from here:
