Everything Is Workable: A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution

Discover how mindfulness can help you resolve the inevitable problems that arise in your personal and professional relationships in this “groundbreaking, creative” guide to Zen-based conflict resolution (Jan Chozen Bays)

Conflict is going to be part of your life—as long as you have relationships, hold down a job, or have dry cleaning to be picked up. Bracing yourself against it won’t make it go away, but if you approach it consciously, you can navigate it in a way that not only honors everyone involved but makes it a source of deep insight as well. Seasoned mediator Diane Hamilton provides the skill set you need to engage conflict with wisdom and compassion, and even—sometimes—to be grateful for it. She teaches how to:

• Cultivate the mirror-like quality of attention as your base
• Identify the three personal conflict styles and determine which one you fall into
• Recognize the three fundamental perspectives in any conflict situation and learn to inhabit each of them
• Turn conflicts in families, at work, and in every kind of interpersonal relationship into win-win situations

Full of practical exercises that can be applied to any kind of relationship, Everything Is Workable gives readers the tools they need to cultivate dynamic, vital, and effective relationships in their personal lives and at work.

DIANE MUSHO HAMILTON is a Zen teacher and priest and was the first Director of the Office of Alternative Dispute Resolution of the Utah Judiciary.  The recipient of numerous awards for her work in mediation, she is also cofounder of Two Arrows Zen, a practice organization with centers in Salt Lake City and in the red rock country of Southern Utah.