Staying cool during family friction this Christmas

Its funny how the same sets of genes mixed together in slightly different ways can produce radically different people. We might find it difficult to relate to some members of our family because they have a very different view of the world. Its also interesting how the same genetic randomness produces people so similar, with the same insecurities and trigger points. Both of these can make sharing a space for a longer period of time difficult. First, to state the obvious - spend some time working on your calmness, meditating every day. If you are calmer then you’ll be less reactive to what other people say and do. Secondly, we need to tend to our anger with kindness and compassion. when someone says something unkind, we can stop and take a moment to breathe before we react. Its very easy to fire something back immediately but that rarely helps. Walk away if you need to. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that when we’re feeling anger that we don’t speak for 24 hours. That may not be an option in a house full of people but we can look deeply into our anger and use it to understand what the buttons are in us that were pushed by the comment. This is a great opportunity for us to let go of our suffering - if we understand where those buttons are and what drives them, we can let them go and they can’t be pushed in the same way again. Meditating on the roots of our anger will help you to gain this insight. When you’re ready you can tell the person that what they said hurt you. Finally we can make sure that our own words are kind - we can avoid bringing up subjects that we know will create discord and avoid entering into conversations that are likely to degenerate into arguments. We might feel that when someone is sharing an unpleasant viewpoint that we need to fight it, to show them that they’re wrong but changing someone’s mind through arguing with them is really difficult. If anything they tend to dig in, clinging to their viewpoint. If you really have a desire to change someone’s mind and you believe you can have that conversation without getting angry, you can ask questions that lead them toward the assumptions that underpin their beliefs. But this raises the question - where does your desire to change their mind come from? Meditate on that and then see if you still want to.