Conflict = Energy: The Transformative Practice of Authentic Relating

by Jason Digges

"You know the old saying, 'It takes a village.' Jason's new book shows us how." -- Susan Campbell, Ph.D. author of Getting Real, Saying What's Real, Truth in Dating, and Five-Minute Relationship Repair Authentic Relating provides the framework to transform every aspect of relationships-starting with the one to ourselves. It is truth and compassion together in a journey to become more awake and aware in every relationship. With practice, we can learn to alchemize conflict into clarity, connection, and creativity. Guiding you through a full Authentic Relating curriculum including 32 tools and 12 games, these pages act as a manual to connection. Many of the practices and tools can be used immediately to identify layers of truth and express them in a way that forges deeper bonds and safety with others. This book is dedicated to distilling 20 years of research into the ART of becoming a better human. Join thousands of people and growing on this journey to expand our capacities to listen, understand, and truly connect. "Telling the truth just feels good--and that feeling of relief is the transformation of stagnant into useful and usable energy. Learning to do this in real-time is one of the most powerful skills you can master. Just as alchemists transform metal into gold, we can learn to transform conflict into love." -- Jason Digges (Excerpt from Conflict = Energy)

244 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 28, 2020

Reviews

[Ine]

As ART practitioner, lover and trained in the three levels I can really recommend to dive into this relational practice. With this book Jason takes you on a ride through practice and the theoretical background of Authentic Relating. As he gives clear examples for you to understand whenever he speaks about AR and so does he do this in the book. He shares this feeling of wanting to dive into the practice immediately. Just take a seat and enjoy the journey of authentic relating and as your finished attract your spouse, friends, roommates,... to join you with the games. Fun assured!!

[Robert]

I think this is a valuable book and will reward me with deeper reading and actual practice. I mostly scanned it to get a better idea of what Digges is about and how it comports with practices I'm already aware of. Definitely worth pursuing.

[Bendegúz Zoltai]

Purely authentic.This should be a must-read for all generations in 2020, these practices are one of the focal points in the change that humanity have to make to be able to gain conscious control over the evolutionary tendencies of our species collectively.

[Jerry Liang]

Great bits of wisdom in the book, but I found the presentation to be not memorable nor engaging. Even with my authentic-relating experience, my mind kept on drifting off as I read the book. The ideas and lessons were good, except they kind of slid off of my mind after reading them. It is funny how a book about connection is so difficult to connect with due to the lack of personal or vulnerable stories.

This reminds me of a point I heard from Mark Manson: that most self-help books repeat the same few messages and lessons. They differ in how they are conveyed! This book was filled with great lessons in an in-personal tell-not-show raw format. When reading it, I felt like I was eating boiled broccoli, i.e. it's probably healthy but the process is bland and not pleasurable. I will revisit it in the future though, the lessons are worth it.

[Miranda Bell]

This book had a lot of good advice. This was some of the advice:
- one way to meet conflict - “let me check and get back to you”
- slow down, validate and reflect back to the person what they are telling you and ask if you are getting it right what they are saying.
- tell your perspective and how it impacted you. “This is the story I’m telling myself about what is happening” not blaming the other person.
- lose the idea that this could never happen and meet the present with humility and dignity.
- if someone says something and the whole group is speechless and freezes. For example, “I’m having trouble getting through this workshop because i just learned my close friend died”, the authors suggestion was to speak to it like “it sounds like the group is speechless, maybe the group could find a way to support you” - something like that.

[Nicole]

Amazing. I plan to reread it and take extensive notes. I've done level 1 & 2 of Authentic Relating Training and experienced Circling. These experiences led me to read this book. It is so thorough, clearly written, and inspiring. He clearly explains how conflict arises, and how to approach it in a way that leads to transformation.

I'm intending to come back to it when I have time to see if I can coalesce the information into a form of presentation/workshop to better digest the information for myself and hopefully offer to those close to me who would not read the book or attend the trainings.

[Lucy Yu]

Phenomenal — clear and concise.

[Alan]

Actually my second time through. Filled with good tips to better communicate with people that matter to you.