Outsmart Chaos 130: Conflicted
Learning Where to Place Attention
I’ve had a word for the year.
So far, the year has been defined by a different one.
Conflicted.
There’s news in my city that leaves me conflicted.
There are changes at work, teammates laid off, others promoted, that leave me conflicted.
There are situations at home, progress mixed with frustration, growth accompanied by real pain.
There are people I respect who vacated things I thought were important.
The feeling keeps surfacing in conversation. And the longer I sit with it, the more uncomfortable the realization becomes.
Much of my conflict isn’t circumstantial.
It’s internal.
When I trace the tension, I find the same thread running through it:
I’m not being respected the way I think I should.
I’m not progressing the way I think I should.
I’m not seeing results on the timeline I think I should.
That word keeps showing up.
Should.
And beneath it, pride.
Not the loud kind. The quiet kind. The kind that assumes my expectations are the correct measure of reality. The only reality. The kind that interprets delay as injustice and resistance as failure.
But when I step back and apply a different lens, something shifts.
When I deliberately fix my attention on what is true, honorable, just, pure, and sound, the picture changes.
Progress is present.
Growth is happening.
Good work is being done - even if it doesn’t flatter my timeline or validate my ego.
Conflict thrives where attention is undisciplined.
What I’m learning is this: peace isn’t the absence of complexity. It’s the result of moral clarity about where I allow my mind to dwell. When attention is trained toward what is good and constructive, conflict loses its power to dominate the narrative.
This doesn’t eliminate hardship. It reorders it.
And leadership, whether at work or at home, often comes down to this quiet discipline:
Choosing what governs your inner dialogue when circumstances refuse to cooperate.
Conflicted moments are inevitable.
But what they produce depends on what you feed.
RZLTE | Strength under pressure. Clarity through chaos.
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Great introspection! If we all could remember these thoughts, chaos and conflict would become more manageable and even productive!