100 Ways To Live A Better Life – 46. Make Peace With An Old Enemy

That’s more than forgiveness, that’s the actual process of reversing a situation. Make peace with somebody. Turn it into your friend. I’m not saying this is easy, I know it first hand. But I also know it works. Enemies count down, friends count up.

The whole idea of having enemies is overrated. Who needs them in the first place? Why accepting to position yourself as an enemy to somebody else? Power games leads sooner or later to defeat.

Not to mention the amount of energy you spend to keep this whole enemy concept running. Imagine what you can do with all that extra resources you will free. Just by eliminating the “enemy” construct altogether.

Making peace with an old enemy, much like forgiveness, will break in fact your own chains. 

To Make Peace With Enemy Equals There Are No Enemies, Just Friends

I know that just by reading this, you may agree. I mean, it’s common sense. But when it comes to actually implement this, many people fail. It’s one thing to understand that simple arithmetic of one enemy down and one friend up, and a completely different thing to go on the field, face that person and still control all the anger and hatred feelings you still have.

But there is a way to get over this. A way that will make the whole idea of enemies obsolete. It requires a bit of mind shifting, but once you get your head around it, it will be really useful.

It starts from sifting your focus altogether from people and concentrate only on outcomes. Concentrate only on what you’re going to get out of an interaction, and not at the person per se.

Let’s say you’re competing, in business, with somebody else. Unconsciously, you see the other person as an enemy and you start to position yourself as a fighter. Instead of focusing on the other person, focus on the situation.

Why do you think you’re competing, anyway? Because the market is so small, you may add. Because you have bigger production costs than he has. There are all those reasons stemmed from comparison. Try to get rid of that. Try to think in terms of benefits.

So, instead of focusing on the other person, try to focus on the benefits: there are two players in the market, with two products. That means the customers will have the right to exercise their choice. That means you are given a choice too, a choice to improve your product. Not to make it better than the competition, but to make it more suitable for the customer. If you keep looking at the situation this way, something interesting will happen. You will stop seeing the whole thing like a competition. And you will start to really see it as an opportunity. If, in fact, there was only one player in the market, you would have had a hard time finding what the customers really want (not to mention that you wouldn’t care about that too much in the first place, since they already were buying your product). So, this whole competition thing is in fact a very nicely disguised business accelerator. You are getting data from the market faster and clearer. And you can adjust. You know what the customers want and that’s the number one concern of everybody who has ever entered this game called business.

Now you see where it goes?

It doesn’t have to follow the exact thinking pattern. It does have to involve a business situation. Suffice to understand that every potential conflict, every potential enemy is in fact a gateway to a new level. That person is an indicator of something to be gained from that situation, nothing more.

And the moment you focus on what it is to be gained, on what it is to be improved, the whole concept of “enemy” will dissolve, it will literally become obsolete.

Even more: after you manage to do this on a regular basis you will consciously start to dig deep in your personal history and intently browse just to find more and more enemies to make peace with.

Because they are in fact your gateway to a better life.

further reading

How To Be Gentle With People

Why We Screw Things Up




Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.