100. How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships Before It's Too Late with Jayson Gaddis

The Fit Mess

Don’t lie, you know you avoid conflict.

Conflicts in our closest relationships are scary because so much is at stake—if the conflict doesn't end well, we could lose our marriage, our family, or our job. Most common guidance on conflict resolution focuses on resolving the conflict while overlooking the dynamic of the relationship that created it. But that common guidance doesn’t work, because that old cliché, it’s not you; it’s me, well it’s actually true.

In this episode we talk with Jayson Gaddis. He is a global leader on interpersonal conflict, a popular podcaster, and founder of The Relationship School, an organization dedicated to helping individuals, couples, and teams get to the bottom of their deepest conflicts. Gaddis shares the street-level relationship skills that are not taught in school and he demonstrates exactly how we can get to zero—which means we have successfully worked through our conflict and have nothing in the way of a good connection.

His book GETTING TO ZERO: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships, explores how looking inside yourself opens the door to see why conflict emerged in the first place, along with how to take responsibility for your role in the conflict and even grow through it. Gaddis also offers tools to calm yourself and the other person when in conflict, explains how to listen better and how to speak better, and shares tips for if you get stuck or people won’t meet you halfway.