Customer Reviews

Just Conflict: Transformation Through Resolution

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Conflict is not something that should always be avoided; sometimes it needs to be embraced as a powerful tool. "Just Conflict: Transformation Through Resolution" is a guide emphasizing the power of conflict and how facing it head on can be a beneficial aspect for all parties in involved. Conflict, when solved through nonviolent means can lead to positive change and teach valuable life skills. Stating that any conflict can be resolved and the only limit is creativity, "Just Conflict" is an inspiring and motivating read that shouldn't be missed.

As a counselor, I find myself using Mark Robinson's theories about conflict again and again, especially as I work with couples. As promised, Just Conflict delivers thorough maps for understanding and transforming ourselves in relationships. The maps include ways to conceptualize our conflicts, worksheets for keeping track of our own triggers and thinking and vignettes that could come from our own kitchens. This book creates hope within me and has me imagining the world Mark Robinson envisions where we actually welcome our conflicts knowing that resolutions consistently make our relationships better and deeper. And this is true even if the conflict is an inner one, a battle within ourselves where the wisdom of Just Conflict works just as well.

Mark Lee Robinson has distilled over twenty years of clinical practice as a pastoral counselor and has written a book that is not only theoretically sound, but practical as well.
In some ways, almost every therapeutic intervention shares a number of common features. For example, we are asked to carefully scrutinize our actions, enlist accountability partners, and strive to keep our eye on the Big Picture, all the while taking baby steps along the way.
Robinson includes those injunctions, but he also offers some step by step techniques that are unique and original, at least to me. For example, he advises that we hsould keep a brief "What bothers me" log or notebook. The are several purposes of this discipline: First, it helps us filter out what 'really' bothers us from what 'sort of' does and allows us to use our energy wisely. In my experience, it also was a goad to action, a means to take care of a few nagging issues that while not exraordinarily troubling, nonetheless were burrs in my saddle.
Ultimately, Robinson offers a helpful toolkit for helping to grow the the inevitable conflcts that we face as human beings.

Robinson's unique, his philosophy goes far beyond the standard "lets all listen to one another, make compromises and get along" approach. Its an easy to understand and implement system that straight up saved my marriage. For that I am grateful because nothing else we tried was working. The icing on the cake was the books positive impact on how I run my small business. Conflicts occur every day in most everyone's life, some minor some major - Robinson has dealing with them down to a science, one that really works.

Mark Robinson has an evolutionary approach to conflict that sheds light on how we can grow as people as a result of how we deal with conflict in our lives. Robinson beautifully weaves integral theory throughout the book in an easy-to-understand way (no prior experience required). Beautifully done!