Conflict – Page 7 – Perpetual Adoration

December 10, 2014

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Turning Conflict Into Personal Growth

I want to share with you a very powerful technique for changing the way you respond to offensive or critical comments. This technique has the potential of turning what is usually a very painful and unpleasant experience into an opportunity for personal growth and wisdom.

July 26, 2014

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Aggressive Behavior, Anger, and Trust

One evening during the summer of 2005, I called one of my clients and asked him if he would come over to my house to fix a problem with my plumbing. His name was Jim, and at that time he was in his mid-50s. We had done business with each other since the early 1990s. I was originally introduced to Jim by another client who owned several rental properties and had hired Jim to work on his properties.

April 19, 2014

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A Reason To Smile

About five years ago, I was attending a weekday Mass at a local church. Halfway through the Mass, two women in their sixties snuck in the side door of the church and ran over to the nearest pew. Both women were wearing gray sweatshirts. The way they scurried over to the pew reminded me of the animated mice you would see in a Disney movie — because the women were short, pudgy, cute, and grinning from ear to ear.

January 4, 2014

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Catching Fire in the New Year

Last week I saw the movie, Catching Fire, with Georgette and two of our daughters, Mary and Teresa. Catching Fire is based on the second book of The Hunger Games trilogy, and picks up where the original movie, The Hunger Games, left off. Following the events of the first movie, the main character, Katniss Everdeen, returns home to her mother and sister.

November 2, 2013

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Relationships, Familiarity, and Contempt

About 10 years ago, an adorer called our home to let us know that he and his wife were not going to be able to cover their holy hour. (For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call him Frank.) At the time of the call, Frank and his wife were in their late 70s. Since no one was home to answer the telephone, Frank left a message on our answering machine.

September 14, 2013

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Fearless

During the summer of 1989, most evenings I came home from work, ate supper with my family, and then sat in a lawn chair in the front yard of our home to read the newspaper. We lived in a quiet, residential neighborhood in Peoria where there wasn’t much traffic.

September 8, 2013

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The Appetite of Fear

Last week I told you about the first auto accident injury case that I tried in front of a jury. I won the case despite being up against a trial attorney who had more than 30 years of experience, compared to my two years of experience. I told you about how I was like a fearless teenager who takes risks he shouldn’t take and jumps into situations he shouldn’t be involved in. Because of my youthfulness and lack of experience, I didn’t have any fear of going up against the older more experienced attorney.

August 31, 2013

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Do You Ever Experience Fear?

The first auto accident injury case that I tried in front of a jury was in 1985, two years after I opened my law practice. Prior to the beginning of jury selection, the insurance defense attorney and I sat down in the judge’s office to discuss the case. When the judge asked us if there was any way we could settle the case, the defense attorney explained that we had attempted to negotiate a settlement, but we were still $3,000 apart.

April 27, 2013

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My Life as a Prisoner

On the Saturday before Easter in 1969, I picked up the telephone and dialed the number for my Uncle Tony Couri’s house. At that time, I was 11 years old. I wanted to ask my cousin Gene Couri, who was the same age as I was, if his family was planning to go to our grandparents’ house for Easter. Gene and I shared the same grandparents, Tom and Effie Williams, and they had invited their children and grandchildren to join them for dinner on Easter Sunday.