Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87191 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Crum's optimistic how-to stresses that conflicts are not games, which have winning or losing as their outcome; a conflict is a dance of energy, and if you embrace it in order to work through it, learning and growth occur naturally. Cofounder of the Windstar Foundation with singer John Denver (who wrote the book's foreword and supplied its photographs), Crum has adapted the Japanese martial art of aikido to what he calls the Aiki Approach to conflict resolution. Mental exercises for centering, photos of aikido postures and graphs of mindsets accompany this self-help manual. Examples of conflict-solving by business people, artists, politicians and others illustrate key points. Crum's New Age jargon is annoying ("Accept your correctedness"; "choose to cocreate"). His method seems to consist of equal parts positive thinking and Oriental wisdom, with aikido as the guiding metaphor. Prentice Hall Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

An insightful, interesting and useful book!
The Magic of Conflict does an excellent job of reframing conflict in way that makes a lot of sense. For example, when discussing the nature of conflict Thomas Crum states:

"It's not whether you have conflict in your life. It's what you do with that conflict that makes a difference."

There are many other useful concepts in the book. For example, Crum recommends focusing on finding your "Center" and using it to handle situations in life. Crum's definition of "Center" is authenticity. In other words, when we come from our center we are in touch with who we really are.

Crum also talks about fear and how to deal with it. He points out that fear is becoming stuck in time and worrying about a possible future occurrence, which may be based on a (real or imagined) past experience. He suggests handling fear by stepping out of the remembrances of the past and return to the present moment.

Well thought out and written, this is an insightful, interesting and useful book. The methods this book discusses are easy to understand. They take some time to apply, but are well worth the effort. Overall, a great read!

The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking

The Magic of Conflict
Thomas Krum's Magic of Conflict is a fresh, new and very effective approach to life in general. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to continually applying his methods of flowing instead of the standard fight, flight or freeze responses to stress.

excellent
if you want to bring the aikido out of the dojo and aiki into daily life, this is the perfect book...