Getting to Yes with Yourself by William Ury

Author:William Ury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

ACCEPT THE PAST

“When I think of what Craig has done to me, I feel furious,” said one client of mine enmeshed in a business dispute to me during a moment of candor. “So it gives me pleasure to attack him. If I settle our dispute, what will my life be like without my private war?” He was so focused on the past and on the pleasure of revenge that he had lost sight of his true objectives in the negotiation and in life.

As a mediator in family feuds, labor strikes, and civil wars, I have witnessed the heavy shadow of the past and how it can create bitterness, resentment, and hatred. I have listened for days to blame and recriminations and who did what to whom. I have observed how easily the human mind gets bogged down in the past and forgets the present opportunity to end the conflict and the suffering.

Holding on to the past is not only self-destructive because it distracts us from reaching a mutually satisfying agreement, but it also takes away our joy and even harms our health. And it affects those around us who are our biggest supporters in life. Watching us hold on to the past and poison our present takes away their joy and well-being. It is a loss for everyone. If we truly realized how much it costs us to hold on to the past, how self-destructive it ultimately is, we might not wait so long to let go.

In the dispute above, once my client was able to let go of his temptation to dwell on the past and to settle his differences with his adversary, he told me he was a different man, feeling much lighter. Even his young children had noticed—and probably worried about—how much their father had been consumed by the conflict. When it ended, they saw, clearly relieved, a noticeable change in their father: “Daddy is not on the cell phone all the time,” they told their mother.

Letting go of the past can be truly liberating. In a speech at the UN, former U.S. president Bill Clinton recalled a question he once asked Nelson Mandela: “Tell me the truth: when you were walking down the road that last time [as Mandela was released from prison], didn’t you hate them?” Mandela replied: “I did. I am old enough to tell the truth. I felt hatred and fear but I said to myself, if you hate them when you get in that car, you will still be their prisoner. I wanted to be free and so I let it go.”

Here was a man who had spent twenty-seven years in prison and had every reason to be bitter and angry. The great and unexpected gift he gave to his compatriots was to help them let go of the heavy burden of the past so that they could get to yes and begin to build a free South Africa for all. By learning to accept and forgive his former jailers, Mandela inspired thousands of others to forgive too.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.