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1. Conflict can be dealt with more successfully and less harmfully.
2. Conflict exists at the "crossroads" of where skill level meets the conflict challenge level.  
3. Mediation is a custom-designed agreement creation workshop. 
4. Partners in conflict" or "conflict partners" have come together at the crossroads of conflict.
5. People act poorly, when in conflict.  It will come-out better and sooner, if we give each other some space to be imperfect.

A great example of a mental shortcut that we all use, that gets us deeper into conflict is "You never..!"  Once you recognize "You never..." as a poorly phrased request for someone to do more of something, you'll never hear it the same way again.

"You always..!" is simply a childishly phrased request for someone to do less of something.

• Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting.  
• Forgiving is something we do for ourselves, to release the toxic chemicals in our bodies that drain our life energy.
• Forgiving requires intention and effort.

• Self-forgiveness is mandatory, because until we forgive ourselves we cheat our loved ones and the World out of the best 'us' that we can be.

• We can forgive, again and again if necessary, for not knowing better, doing better, or being better.

Often revenge presents as a willingness to hurt, lower, or reduce ourselves and/or our loved ones in order to hurt another.  

So why are people so enamored with this primitive set of emotions?  Well, because its primitive, hardwired into our deep consciousness.  Why might that be?

Hard-wiring tends to evolve around social benefits.  Revenge tends to revolve around social rules violations.  So when we feel strongly that our rules have been violated, we are more likely to be willing to sacrifice our own well being in order to punish the offender.

In this way, revenge may be thought of as a form of altruism.  But are, can you evolve beyond your primitive instinctive reactions?  This might help...

Stop and ask yourself this question first.  Is punishing this person for this offense - this rules-violation - worth my well being?

[See: Forgiveness]

Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts and psychological distortions that affect judgment and decision making.  Here are a few that affect everyday decision-making.

• Blind Spot Bias: The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people. 
• Ambiguity Bias: The tendency to avoid choosing unclear or confusing options. 
• Attribute Substitution: Making a complex, difficult judgment by unconsciously substituting it by an easier one.
• Conservation Bias: The tendency to insufficiently revise one's belief when presented with new evidence.
• Consistency Bias: The tendency to make decisions consistent with previous decisions regardless of the veracity.  
• Functional-Fixedness Bias: Limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. 
• Reactive Devaluation: Devaluing proposals only because they originated from a conflict partner. 
• Semmelweis Reflex: The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm. 
• Subjective Validation: Perception that something is true if one's belief require it to be true. 
• Zero-Sum Bias: Wrongly judging a conflict as having gains and losses correlated one-to-one. 

How do our mental shortcuts sometimes affect our view of  "others" ?

• Essentialism Bias: Categorizing people and things according to their essential nature, without regard for variations. 
• Group Attribution Error: The belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group, or that group decisions reflect the preferences of group members. 
• Outgroup Homogeneity Bias: Individuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.

Humans are emotional beings, driven by a complex network of neuro-chemical structures.  The amygdala is a small primitive brain, buried deep inside the highly-evolved, decision-making brain, the cerebral cortex.

Everything comes in to us through the very fast-acting amygdala first, because this is the emergency fight-or-flight center.  That's what kept cave-people alive when caught by surprise.

When triggered ("YOU ALWAYS!" or RULE-VILOLATION!), the unsophisticated amygdala has a choice to make: 

1. Pass the thought on to the cerebral cortex for further evaluation, or 
2. DUMP ADRENALINE INTO THE BODY.

You know it.  You've felt it.  You've even seen it on TV, at the end of a foot pursuit.

People act badly, when in conflict.  Here's what you can do.

• Be aware.  
• Shut-up.  Don't say it.
• Walk away, if you can.  
• Go to bed angry.
• It takes about 20 minutes for the adrenaline to be reabsorbed by the body.  Then, you can feel yourself again.

... charging by the insult, lol, because it takes the most time undoing the damage caused by insults in mediation.  Once you realize, insults say very little about the human being insulted, but insults contain hidden confessions and requests by the human slinging the insult.