Optimal Outcomes: Free Yourself from Conflict at Work, at Home, and in Life

An award-winning conflict consultant offers a new path to take when agreement and collaboration seem impossible, and teaches us that when conflict resolution fails, we can achieve conflict freedom instead—even without others’ cooperation.A founding CEO and his top salesperson are engaged in a heated clash over her compensation package.A working couple are locked in a battle about domestic duties.A progressive community organization that promotes “love and justice” is struggling with nasty political infighting.In all these cases, every attempt to talk it out has been unsuccessful. Are some disputes doomed to remain unsolvable?Dr. Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler argues that when conflict resolution doesn’t work, you can free yourself from conflict instead. A veteran conflict expert and practitioner, Jen has helped her clients—including that CEO, couple, and community organization—find outcomes that were far better than they’d hoped.Where can we turn when our attempts to resolve conflict fail? Optimal Outcomes provides the vital next steps. Most approaches emphasize collaboration. People are supposed to sit down, calmly talk through their differences, and find a solution together. But what about situations where the conflict is so intense, so deeply emotional, or so complicated that people can’t even stand to be in the same room? In the most emotionally fraught situations, talking often makes the situation worse-- not better.Grounded in Jungian psychology and Buddhist practice, The Optimal Outcomes Method helps people change their mindsets and stop engaging in behaviors that aggravate conflict, such as taking too narrow a view of the situation, blaming others, and acting aggressively in the heat of the moment. Jen teaches readers how to step back from a conflict, no matter how fraught, and figure out what’s really causing it. She shows us how to ease tensions and free ourselves, even without others’ cooperation.