Disciplines for building mastery in CCR

a summary and elucidation of each of the ten disciplines

There are ten disciplines that we teach as a part of building mastery in using the techniques of Creative Conflict Resolution.

Ten Disciplines

1- Keeping a "Bothers Me" Log: Spend five minutes every day writing down what is bothering you at the moment or has bothered you since your last session.

2 - Using an Anger Workout: Spend at least five and not more than twenty minutes every day doing a physical activity that is safe while you encourage yourself to feel your anger and any other negative emotions as fully as possible.

3 - Cultivating Critical Feedback: Develop and strengthen relationships who those who know you and can tell you things about yourself that you may not be able or willing to see about yourself.

4 - Suspending Self-Soothing: Identify those things that you do that soothe your anxiety but which do not solve the problems which generate the anxiety.

5 - Self-Care Routine: Make a list of all of the things that you do every day to take care of yourself. Then be specific about when you do those things (as this in "the time that I go to bed"). Then notice when you don't do what you have already decided is good for you and identify how you talked yourself out of doing what is in your own best interest.

6 - Anticipate, Create, Evaluate - ACE - Anticipating conflict: Take the data from the journal of things that bother you and identify a list of recurring conflicts that you can predict will happen again. Create a plan for what you want to be able to do whenever that conflict arises. Implement the plan. Then evaluate how well the plan worked and anticipate the next event and plan for how you want to act then.

7 - Creating Statements of Accountability: Identify the choices you have made that were harmful to others, be specific about the harm that was done, and identify the patterns of choices that you make that lead you to that bad choice. Be able to state the ways that you are currently addressing those patterns.

8 - Making Apologies/Building Forgiveness: Address the harmful choices of the past by: naming the choices that did the harm and identify whose choices they were; know fully the consequences of that choice; do all you can do the clean up from that harmful choice; and address the patterns in your life now that support or allow for that choice or ones like it.

9 - Utilizing the Framework for Creative Conflict Resolution: Using the full framework identify the event that alerted you to the conflict in such a way that everyone agrees that that is what happened; know fully the effect on you of that event including how it is like other patterns of conflict in other significant relationships; be able to state clearly what it is that you need the conditions of your relationship with others to be like in ways that do not require them to be other than who they choose to be; and act in a way that gets you at least some of what you need without trying to get the other to change.

10 - Using the Negotiated Time Out- the Conflict Resolution Meeting: Create an agreement with your partner to suspend the fights that you both lose and come to an agreement about what you will do instead. Elements of the agreement include; how will we indicate a time out, what will we do during the time out, when will we return to the issue, and how will we deal with it when we do.

Mark Lee Robinson

6454 Alamo

St. Louis, MO 63105

314-863-2363

©Center for Creative Conflict Resolution - 2005