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Coach Paradise: Seek Justice Without Hardening Your Heart

Dear Coach Paradise —
My question is about how to deal with people who blatantly lie and get away with it. I was walking my miniature poodles on a gated farm road last week and was just about to exit the property. I lifted up the heavy chain-link gate, turned around and saw three very large mastiff dogs standing about five feet away from me. One of them had my little white poodle in its mouth and was shaking her back and forth like she was a stuffed animal.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, pulled on the leash and, to make a long story short, my dog — badly wounded — was dropped and escaped up the hill to our house. I managed to exit and shut the gate behind me, scoop up my other dog and run for my life. My poodle had major surgery but is doing well. I sprained my wrist and am doing well. Someone heard me screaming, and when I described the dogs, I was told where they lived and who owned them.
I called the owner, who admitted that she had let her dogs out to run at that time. She asked about my dog and my wrist. She said shed call me later but never did. When visited by a representative from the Humane Society a week later, she denied that her dogs had been out of her enclosure that morning, and added that I could take her to court. I have found out how small-claims court works and plan to follow through to collect damages. How do I avoid getting all wrapped up in revenge fantasies and hating her, not only for letting her aggressive dogs run free, but also for lying? How do I go through with this while staying balanced and calm? Is this possible? How would a coach help me through this? I think I can handle the details — it's more the inner stuff that is bothering me.
Signed,
Attacked and Appalled
Dear Attacked and Appalled,
I am really impressed by how you are trying to figure out some pretty earth-shattering stuff here. "Love your enemies" comes to mind. I must applaud you for being highly coachable, which means that you are the kind of person who picks apart what is going on to harvest the gems and learn whatever lessons are in it for you. This is the kind of investigation that will change the world — one heart at a time.
You seem to have the details worked out. I am happy that you and your dog are doing well. As far as positioning yourself to fight injustice and stand up for your rights while avoiding hardening your heart and being consumed by rage (in effect, becoming the dogs owner), you can do several things to ground yourself.
First, you can remind yourself of what your lifes intentions are — an exercise worth doing. Examples: being a contribution to your community, a loving family member, a successful artist, a healer, etc. Think about which intention comes into play for you in this situation. (To be an ethical person? To be a fighter for justice?) Second, you can do another exercise (youd have to call me for this) which would result in your having a list of qualities that you value above all else, and which describe you in your truest, most heroic state. Examples: loving, honest, visionary, funny, intelligent, strong, etc.
Even without doing the exercise, you can list qualities that you value most in people you admire and know that you possess those same qualities — or at least the potential for those qualities. These two lists (intentions and values) are ways of grounding yourself in who you are and what really matters. You dont need to do anything. This is really about being. Write your intentions and your values down on a piece of paper and refer to them every day, especially when you are about to deal with this situation. This is a very powerful coaching tool that will serve you well in many such situations where you are out of alignment (out of sync, off kilter).
Another technique that I highly recommend is to picture the outcome that you would like. You can use your imagination and deliberately create an outcome that would be consistent with your values. You have choices here. You could be rigid and punitive, or you could soften your heart and include her in the feeling you would like best to surround everyone, while still seeing that justice be done.
You could make it up — picture calling her up and giving her a chance to know that all is well, you would like to avoid going to court and want to give her the opportunity to do the right thing. You can remind yourself that you have no idea of who she is and what her life is like. Lying arises from fear. Pretend you are her and see things from her point of view. In other words, use your imagination to try on how it would feel to live in a positive outcome. Imagining different scenarios will help you to see the big picture, stretch your ways of thinking and put things in perspective. It will also have an impact on what happens.
I hope these approaches help. I know they will if you put them into practice.
I wish you peace and a positive outcome,
Coach Paradise
Editor's note: Coach Paradise (AKA Anne Nayer), Professional Life Coach, is a member of the International Coaching Federation, an MSW clinical social worker/psychotherapist and a medical case manager with 30 years experience working with people of all shapes, sizes and challenges. For further information about her services, call 774-4355 or email her.

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