100 Ways To Live A Better Life – 25. Avoid Fighting


Fighting is the biggest energy leak of your being. Trying to prove another guy wrong is so against your true nature. You’re here to acknowledge life’s wonders, not to prove someone’s wrong. They’re not wrong, just have different opinions. And that’s part of life.

I was so judgmental when I was younger. Anytime I saw something wrong I had to “stand up” for it. Which most of the time lead to a fight. I also took pride in proving others wrong. “I was right, you know!” What a huge, worthless and ridiculous waste of time…

Fighting is the best food for your ego. You know, that part of you which can be hurt and humiliated. The more you grow your ego, the more you’ll experience hurt, humiliation, fighting and sorrow.

Just let go. Maybe you’re right. It’s more than enough that you know it in your heart. 

How To Avoid Fighting

Why do we feel the need to fight, in the first place? Why do we feel the need to prove other people wrong? And why do we feel the need to do it with such power?

The answer to this is fear. We are fighting because we are afraid. Afraid of loosing something, most of the time.

Deep down in your skull, just on top of the spine, there is a part of your brain, called “the limbic” brain. This brain is responsible with survival. Its basic function is to react to life threatening stimuli. And every time it identifies such a situation, it gives you only two choices: fight, or flight.

That part of the brain is fundamental. If you can read this thing in this very second, it means your limbic brain did a good job protecting you from the innumerable dangers of this world.

But if you limit your life only to survival, you’re not really living.

Just in front of your skull, there is another part of your brain, called the “neocortex”. It grew “on top” of the limbic brain and it’s responsible with more subtle emotions. Or what we usually call “living” or “enjoying life”. This part of the brain gets triggered when we feel affection, attraction, when we communicate.

If you can think at the image of your girlfriend or boyfriend an then feel something warm inside your chest, it’s because your neocortex gets triggered.

The only question about fighting is: which brain do you choose? With what part of your being you respond? Are you choosing the limbic brain? Is this really a survival situation? Or is it just a normal manifestation of the environment with a very low degree of danger?…

Whenever we fight we use the limbic brain and we put the neocortex on hold. We’re not communicating anymore, in a strict sense. We’re protecting ourselves. We’re in the “fight” phase from the “fight or flight” impulses.

Because, deep down, we really think it’s a survival situation. In 99.99% of the cases, it isn’t. But we think it is. Somewhere in the back of our minds, an old situation is revitalized, an old wound is touched and, in a split of a second, we move from the top of our heads, where we used to stay in order to communicate and feel empathy, to the back of the brain, where all we need is to reject that stimuli. To fight.

Because we can’t tell the difference between what’s real, in this very moment, and what’s inside our minds. We can’t discriminate between memories and reality. We get caught in our own web of illusions.

So, every time you feel that energy rising, breathe. Count your breathes. Look at the person in front of you and try to understand something very simple: that person is just a shape, colored and moving. It doesn’t even mean anything on its own. In a sense, it doesn’t really exist until you decide it’s real. It’s just something.

So, when that energy arise, when you feel that threat coming out from the inside, look around and evaluate. Is the person in front of you really threatening? Is it really a fight or flight situation?

If yes, just do whatever it takes to survive. Fight for your life.

But if it isn’t (and in 99.99% of the cases it isn’t), just breathe. Let it be. Move on.

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