Love vs Conflict

Conflict and the emotions that conflict causes are probably the biggest things that keep us from living bigger lives and advancing to the next level as a society. Conflict keeps us so busy battling each other that we don’t have the time or energy to work on making ourselves better.
With this being an election year, the biggest conflict we see on a daily basis is Obama vs. Romney or Democrat vs. Republican. There are a lot of people who invest a lot of their energy into this conflict and you can see it all over Facebook. It’s absolutely insane.
We’re also in college football season and that provides another great example – sports rivalries. I went to school at Georgia Tech where your favorite teams are expected to be Georgia Tech (of course) and whoever is playing against the University of Georgia. Some people invest so much of their energy into these sports rivalries. I think we would be amazed at what could happen if they reinvested half of that energy on improving their lives instead.
I don’t think competition is a bad thing because it can be a very good thing if used properly.  Doing your best and encouraging your teammates to do their best are things that improve everyone. The competition has to end with the game though.
I was a NASCAR fan and I think the 1998 Daytona 500 is a perfect example of how a contest should end. Through out the race every driver is doing their best to win the race and Dale Earnhardt won. When he drove his car onto the pit road the crews from many of the other teams were lined up to congratulate him on his way to the victory circle. I’d never seen that happen before and it was amazing.
There are many other forms of conflict that affect us every day, like man vs woman, Christian vs Muslim vs Hindu vs Wiccan vs …  Have any of these conflicts ever improved any lives? I mean other than those who know how to capitalize on them to make a dollar? I don’t think so.
Instead of conflict and all of the emotions attached to conflict, feel love and respect. You will feel better and so will everyone else. You can test it right now. Think of a conflict that you participate in – the upcoming election, a college rivalry, whatever. Bring up the emotions that you feel when something goes against your team or for the other team. You can feel the negative energy. Now let that go and replace it with love or respect, like for a well-executed play. Now you can feel the positive energy of a good emotion. You will probably notice that this feels a lot better than the feelings of conflict.
Work on doing that every day, replacing conflict with love and respect. It won’t be long before it becomes a habit and you will generally feel a lot more positive than you do now.
Wayne Woodworth

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