If you have something you need to get off of your chest, the best advice I can give you is to be confrontational about maintaining your peace. I’m sure coming from me, a female, an African American one at that, to advise anyone to be confrontation may seem like I’m telling you to be aggressive or what they love to call ones that look like me: An Angry Black Female.

Well let me provide a definition to prevent premature judgments. To confront something means to meet (someone) face to face with hostile or argumentative intent. Well ummm did I just shoot down my own hypothesis? Actually no because we all should be familiar with multiple meanings for the same word. So let me enlighten you on the definition I choose to elaborate on. To confront ALSO means to face up to and deal with (a problem or difficult situation).

Do you realize that most people, no matter how mean you think they are, or how confident you believe them to be; most people do NOT confront their kings. I’ll use kings to represent any issue or situation that occurs that makes us feel insecure, that hurts our feelings, that makes us feel disrespected, anxious, confused, less than, used, abused, and overall anything that pisses us off!

These situations can be circumstantial, coincidental, or plain caused by another human. The sad part is that these people will often be those that are closest to us that hurt us the most. And what do we do? We hold it in. We never confront them. Let me say that a better way. We never confront them in the right manner. Long live the king!

We fail to tell them how their actions made us feel. Often times, if we do say anything, we scream out of frustration and never really properly express exactly what that person did to us and how it made us feel. We fall into the trap of over generalizing the issue and if you haven’t figured that out yet, that doesn’t work.

For example, I can recall asking my husband to be mindful of how much dishwashing liquid that he was using. Sure, laugh at me if you want to, but I’m not the only one being petty at home. What does dishwashing detergent cost? $3 at best. It wasn’t about the cost but the fact that he was using a cup at each wash and something about that just wasn’t right! Dammit! So screw you…I said something to him about it.

And I said it nicely too. But you know what he replied back with? “You ALWAYS got something to say! I can’t do anything right to you.”

So what did you think happened next? We fought over dishwashing liquid but really there was another real situation brewing that I totally missed. My husband felt I was being critical towards him and he didn’t feel appreciated. But I missed all of that because of how he expressed his frustration and the incidence he choose to express it on. In hindsight its evident that he had been holding those thoughts and feelings in and exploded on me as a result on an offense that seemed rather minor to me. And petty to the rest of you reading this. LOL leave me alone.

Well the best thing for us to do is to confront those things as they happen. Stand up to the King. Don’t allow them to build up. When we hold them in, we never get a chance to express our feelings and this is never good for our internal peace. Over time, we start to feel resentful and if not careful, bitterness will show up at your doorstep. And bitterness, in my opinion, is the real murderer of relationships, especially our marriages.

Face your king when he shows up. Don’t just sweep those issues under the rug. When done correctly, you will regain your peace and you will feel like a weight was lifted off of you. And guess what else? You will allow the other person a chance to share their side of the story.

Believe this or not, but often times, their side of this story may be totally different then how you perceived it! Yes! Sometimes we do get things wrong. Misunderstandings exist, confusion, mistakes, and assumptions can all lead to us being wrong in our assessment of the situation.

Now how about that. You’ve been mad and holding a grudge for all these weeks or years even and your version of the story was flawed. And we do this with our families more than we’d like to admit. Love ones not speaking over kings that should’ve been slain years ago. Sigh…

Anyone slain in the spirit right now? I think this is enough for now. Part II coming next week. I need to discuss these kings in segments.

Thanks for your attention. Remember you are your own competition.

Competitionof1