Transformative Living

Spiritual Pragmatism & Practice

2009-02-23T02:18:00.001-08:00

I have a spiritual practice. Indeed, grammatically I should write I have a few spiritual practices. Why? Well, I am a pragmatic woman.

I want a practice that is given plenty of opportunity for expression in my daily life. Both through stillness and movement. Through silence and voice.

I want a practice that helps me feel good about myself – not just my mind feeling stroked – one where my body feels good about itself somehow. Both emotionally well and physically well.

I want a practice that can hold my paradoxes – that of wanting to grow and transform and wanting complete acceptance of myself all while “letting go”. A crazy-making fully-accepting, releasing of self through the attention to self.

For me this is a felt process of becoming. By felt I mean that I experience it in my body. The body becomes the bridge to Presence, to the transcendent experience. I don’t write “transcendence” because so far I have experienced fleeting experiences. Wonderful and momentary. I unfold gently and with inner wisdom at my own pace. I sense for what is alive in the here and now. I feel at the edge for needs my attention, what is new, fresh and vital. I learn to trust myself. I learn to watch and be with myself in a caring way. I learn to hold all of me with the same acceptance.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from my paths of practice which help me to stay connected to what really works for me. Mindfulness, Focusing, valuing oneself, transformation and peace. This is what I practice – literally. And practice is not the same as “this is what I do and am good at.” It is simply what I pay attention to and what I teach. Mindfulness and Focusing as a way to find one’s own unique path while joyfully watching everyone walk their own paths.

Buddhism

"There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centred on the body.” Gautama Buddha

Focusing & Spirituality

Experience is a myriad richness.
We think more than we can say.
We feel more than we can think.
We live more than we can feel.
And there is much more still.

"You need to stand again in your own experiencing - in your own felt ongoingness, which is that intricate complexity inside of life - to put into the world what hasn't been said yet that you are carrying from your particular experiencing" Eugene Gendlin

“A subtle, bodily feeling with vague meanings that brings new, clearer meanings involving a transcendent growth process.” Elfie Hinterkopf

How do I live each day so that a felt consciousness of living in a Presence can grow and deepen right within the experiences of daily life? The habit of felt sensing (Focusing) is a practical, physical way to open my body's consciousness to the transcendent giftedness of everything, including events that threaten biological life. Living itself can be prayer. Our body itself, which we so identify with mortality, is meant to be our conscious bridge into immortality. It is the body process that creates an experiential faith. The habit of felt sensing gives us the body-feel for how in the practical order we can live connected in this world of gift, no matter what happens to us. Rev. Ed McMahon

You - as a gift to the world

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will never have it. Martha Graham, American dancer and choreographer

Spiritual Transformation

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation. J. Krishnamurti

Peace as spiritual practice

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. Unknown

Technorati Tags: spirituality,Buddhism,practice,Focusing,transformation

The lifeboat called “SS Self-Acceptance”

2009-02-21T00:08:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago I did an exercise from Mark Silver's called "finding your Jewel". This exercise is about finding out what is your unique gift in this world. In business there are thousands of massage therapists, life coaches bloggers, for example, but what is it about you that will attract particular clients.

Mark believes that what our heart most deeply yearns, or thirsts, for is the very same quality that our clients yearn or thirst for.

So, following his guided mp3 I sensed into what my heart yearns for. What came first were all the qualities that I am told are my strengths and that help my clients; clarity, insight, support, intuition.

Then, inviting still more. Going into the more vulnerable heart-felt space the word acceptance came. I yearn for acceptance; just as I am and just as I unfold and grow in the light of life's experiences. Then, inviting still more I knew I hit upon a deep inner truth when the word trust came.

At first, my mind says, "Of course you want trust, who doesn't want trust, how you you live in a world without trust! Obvious!"

Then, more came. I yearn to trust my own heart. I yearn to trust my own judgement enough to be able to hear how other's experience life. I yearn to trust my own reactions and emotions. Not to be swept away by them but to sense into what they are trying to tell me and paying attention to that responsively. Now I know when I have touched in to something essentially true for me when a sheen of tears come and my heart turns. TRUST & ACCEPTANCE.

Now, I have been sitting on this post for a few weeks. Not quite sure what comes next and yet sensing its not quite finished either. And today I saw a quote in Davina’s blog Shades of Crimson.

“Heaven and Earth can never meet as long as you hold even one person outside of your heart.” from Devrah Laval, The Magic Doorway into the Divine.

Davina asked herself “When a person can’t even hold themselves in their heart, how could they possibly attract their dreams?”

When a person can’t even hold themselves in their heart, then what?

How many people do you know who can truly hold themselves in their heart? All of themselves? In Davina’s blog her life coach asks why should she be in a lifeboat if her ship is sinking. This brought Davina closer to the qualities she admires about herself. What about who would, of all your the parts of yourself, would you let on to the lifeboat? Would you accept all of you? Or would you turn parts away? Or would you not even notice some parts that need to get on?

And then who would be left on the lifeboat? Would that actually be you at all? Or just the you you have told to be by your culture, your parents, your school teachers, priests, counsellors, and your inner critic to name just the obvious sources of advice and admonition we receive as we grow up. Would you really be living if all of you didn’t come on board.

I guess this begs the question; what do our shadow parts bring to us as a gift? Do they bring energy, vulnerability, compassion? What is the jewel hidden inside our judgement of them?

When you can’t even hold all of yourself in your heart, then what for all of your life?

Technorati Tags: acceptance,self-awareness,empathy

Thrive not Survive in 2009

2009-02-19T18:26:00.001-08:00

I am hearing so much talk about the how tough times are getting. Underneath all of this talk is a subtle message about reining in our lives: our spending, our expectations, our lifestyles.

However I say NO! Let’s look at this differently. Rather than shrinking we can THRIVE!

No, I’m not advocating new age positive affirmations that will miraculously turn your life around if you say them often enough, loud enough and with great gusto.

Neither am I advocating wildly ignoring the environment around us. We probably will know people who will experience the harsh reality of job displacement or retrenchment, loss of a regular income and the related personal and relationship challenges that come with that.

BUT, what if we perceive 2009 as a year of recalibration rather than recession. This is an opportunity to REVIEW, RECOGNISE, RE-FOCUS, RELEASE, RE-SET & RE-CALIBRATE. We can review the highs and lows of 2008 exploring our journey and the meanings we have made from it. We can recognise where we expend our time and energy and how aligned that is to our what we really want. We can pay attention to what’s working – and what’s no longer serving us. We can re-focus on core essentials and strengths. These essentials give us pleasure, confidence, outcomes, joy and integrity. These are underpinned by our values which become our new focus and motivators. We can release our blocks to action, our limiting beliefs clearing a way for the new and fresh to enter our lives. We can re-set our compass bearings setting a course which takes us to where we CHOOSE to go. We can consistently re-calibrate by committing to staying focused, paying attention to our daily intentions and actions through self-awareness and keeping an open mind to what needs changing or adjusting.

The biggest variable in how this year goes for you is

WHAT YOU DO!

Personal responsibility and taking action is going to be what makes the difference between a year you can celebrate and a year you may wonder what happened – it just slid by or a year you’d rather forget.

Now, I’m not saying that we, literally, bring everything into our lives by our thoughts. Nonsense. People don’t bring earthquakes, hurricanes, accidents, and the like upon themselves. No!

I am saying the only thing we are in control of is our intentions, our reactions and being a living expression of our core values.

And by paying attention to these we can choose to have a certain quality of life, our inner life holds our bearings no matter what is going on with our outer-life. We can choose to have a certain quality of relationships and we can choose to spend more time on the things that make us feel great. If we are doing things that seem unavoidable, like driving the kids to school we have the choice to explore ‘the how of doing that.” We can choose to recognise the underlying value we are meeting (contributing to the kids well-being & safety for example), and from that place we can find plenty of ways to meet those values (form a group to share the driving, pay a teenager to escort the kids on the school bus, move closer to the school so they can walk etc.)

The bottom line is we only have 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. How do we spend them? How do you want to spend them?

How are you spending them now? What percentage either brings you joy or meets your values?

Curious about how to thrive not survive in 2009?

1. REVIEW

What was great? Mapping the peaks & valleys of 2008. Find meaning in what happened.

2. RECOGNISE

What are you already saying “yes” to? What are your “yes” opportunities? What can you say “no” to? Where is your energy being drained or displaced? Where are you expending your time and energy? How much of your time and energy is actually supporting your deepest values and aspirations?

3. RE-FOCUS

What do you want to focus on? Strengthen your strengths through identifying your core values and deepest passions.

4. RELEASE

What do you need to let go of in order to allow the entry of the new? Beliefs? Relationships? Busyness? Habits? Explore and embrace your blocks to transformation. When we listen to ourselves with non-judgmental curiosity what one always finds at the bottom of the barrel is precious life-going-forward energy.

5. RE-SET

Reset your compass bearings for thriving. Making choice-full-conscious decisions for self-care and growth. Once you’ve listened to all the concerns and worries of any specific inner voice then you can begin to listen for what that voice, that part, does want – what it’s passionate about. Experience the sense of wholeness and ease that comes when your joy and passion for living are lined up with the intentions that hold your hopes and dreams.

6. RE-CALIBRATE

Practice a simple technique for consistently checking in with what your body knows about how you are tracking; for me this is Focusing, for you it might be mediation, listening to your inner voice while watching the ocean, surfing, running, dancing. Learn to re-calibrate with sensitivity not reactivity, building your capacity for self-empathy, self-trust and emotional resilience.

Thriving is a choice for life ~ your life.

Technorati Tags: thriving,2009,choices,reflection,Focusing,personal development

Let your whole body breathe

2009-02-14T13:12:00.001-08:00

Have you ever noticed that when you need to breathe most, you actually breathe less? When we are stressed, tired, agitated or angry our breath shrinks into a small space in our upper chest. Just when we are needing to oxygenate our body, to feel alert and yet calm we unconsciously reduce the ability of our body to feel alive.

Letting your whole body breathe acknowledges that our whole body is involved in our well-being and so we need to take care of it too.

You might like to try this exercise in letting your whole body breathe: Start by

noticing your breath - just where you feel it most fully now - where you can feel the in breath and the out breath with ease

allow yourself to feel the fullness of each in breath and the releasing of each out breath until you feel your shoulders relax

now bring your awareness to your nose - feel the cool air entering your nose and the warm air leaving for 2-3 breaths

next, feel your breath at the back of your throat - feel the cool air moving down the back of your throat and the sensation of the air leaving for 2-3 breaths

gently bring your awareness to your chest - feel the upper chest rise and fall with each breath for 2-3 breaths

and then feel your rib cage expand and release in the lower half of your chest for 2-3 breaths

now become aware of your solar plexus - that area just under where your ribs rise and meet at the centre of your body - notice the movement there with each breath for 2-3 breaths

letting your awareness drop down to your belly - sense the rise and fall or expansion and release of each breath and stay there for 4-5 breaths. You may even like to place your hands there.

Now, as you breath in visualise your breath going into the palm of your hands and up your arms to your shoulders on your in breath and back down again and out through your palms on your out breath. Let the air fill your arms and shoulders all the way out to the skin. Breath life into your arms and shoulders.

When you are ready bring your attention back to your hands resting on your belly and feel the rise and fall of your natural breath.

On your next in breath let air fill your hips and buttocks, bring life to your bones and organs all the way out to your skin. Feel the tingling energy of oxygen rejuvenating your cells and filling them with energy for as many breaths as your body needs.

Bring your awareness back to your palms for a few breaths.

Next, let your legs fill with oxygen on each in breath and on the out breath let the breath out through your skin. On each breath let your awareness move down your legs at your own pace until you are breathing in and out of your feet.

Now let your whole body breathe together.

Technorati Tags: breathing,meditation,wellbeing,relaxation

What is spirituality anyway?

2009-02-13T13:29:00.001-08:00

Urban Monk recently posted a reader discussion question asking “What is spirituality?”.

Here is my response, coming spontaneously, sensing into my living experience of it without drafting and editing.

For me, spirituality, is a verb not a noun. It is a paradoxical process of becoming. In order to let go we need to embrace. For example, in order to let go of resentment we need to embrace it with a tender, loving care, come to understand it, sense for its point of view, then it lets go of whatever it is holding onto.

My sense of spirituality is that is not just “the path” either. So far,my main pathways have been my Buddhist practice, Byron Katie (for wonderful and eye-opening reality checks)but most of all Focusing. Through Focusing I come into an intimate,caring, observant relationship with my inner landscape. I can process new living experiences and allow old material to unfold and heal without feeling like I am forcing the process. Through Focusing (www.transformative.com.au) I am increasingly in touch with my own inner wisdom and my self-care and self-trust is growing.

That said, I trust there are an unlimited number of paths which lead to the same place. The place where we feel at ease with ourselves, neither enmeshed nor disconnected. Where we see things as they are and not through the singular filters of our mind thereby morphing the world to fit our story and beliefs. The place where our well-being is as important and no more important than anyone else's. The place where we honour all life and the world in which we live and our body-mind is open and awake, resilient and vulnerable, intuitive and logical, restful and alert, compassionate and wise.

And, “this place” has the quality of flow. We flow and are in the flow. We connect to the flow of life and it flows through us and to us.

Technorati Tags: spirituality,life journey,self-awareness,empathy

Sustaining Change

2009-02-11T11:35:00.001-08:00

Genuine new beginnings emerge from a realignment of ways of looking at the world and a renewal of energy. We often look for external signs to guide us into a beginning, but our inner attitudes toward life, our renewed self-knowledge and our intuition are really the hallmarks of our new beginnings.

Staying on course

By relying on our inner voice to tell us where to go in life, we are likely to have more motivation than if we were to depend on the traditional expectations provided to us by others.

Each day is an opportunity to check the alignment of our new beginning, to bring awareness of what is manifesting in our lives. If we fail to do this, sooner or later we may inadvertently find ourselves reverting to our old ways of living or wondering how we wandered off course with no real awareness of doing so.

This process of checking-in and micro-adjusting our intentional choices to our our ongoing living experience will depend on whether or not we can bring the Witness or Observer to bear on our continuing experiencing and the quality of Presence we bring to our checking-in.

Trusting your Inner Voice through Focusing

In Focusing there's a flow of awareness. What we can sense is how it is now. Yes, that includes the "now" of the past, our memories and the reactions of parts of us to what happened before. And it changes in response to each moment of our living while remaining aligned to our inner truths or essence.

But I hear more than one Voice in there you say. I hear the voice that says do it, the voice that says you should be careful, the voice that says this is the wrong this to do.

We have many voices in us, and they can be in competition to be the one we act on. This can sometimes feel like an argument or even a war inside. These competing voices are often driven by fear, worry, and anxiety -- and there can be a strong inner pressure to do what they say – and this can lead to a sense of overwhelm, disappointment or even the paralysis of procrastination because the voices might be advocating different steps or actions. Something just doesn’t feel right and there doesn’t seem to be a sense of ease. And, of course, this would not be the inner sense of rightness that we talk about in Focusing.

These warring parts are what Barbara McGavin and Ann Weiser-Cornell call "Partial Selves," and they arise from an attempt to resolve a situation of trauma, blockage, or missing-ness. Because they are only partial, they are not going to be able to bring about the resolution they seek—yet they do need to be listened to. But when I say they need to be listened to, I do not mean that we should act on them!

We need to ground ourselves firmly in Presence or our Inner Witness and listen deeply to what they're afraid of and what they truly want for us – we need to hear their positive intent and let them know we have heard that is how it is - for them. One by one we listen to each partial self. Their energy eases up when they get heard. This leads to an inner calming that clears the way for the inner sense of rightness to be heard. Just saying hello to each voice-acknowledging their fear, anxiety etc can bring us into a clearer space and from this space we can sense the next right step.

This next step, sensed from a clear space after listening to our inner voices will feel fresh, intuitively supportive and a relief. The body knows the just right micro-adjustment if we listen.

Just 2 more thoughts...

We each need to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance, directly and fearlessly.

Shakti Gawain

I feel there are two people inside me - me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me everytime, and if I follow her we get along quite nicely.

Kim Basinger

Technorati Tags: change your state,inner voice,Focusing,trust,wisdom,body knowing

2 simple ways you can make a difference in the world

2009-02-06T12:30:00.001-08:00

The Small Things Challenge

Here’s an easy way to contribute.

At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day, while 75 million children worldwide are not in school. By pooling surprisingly small investments, we can help to significantly improve educational access and economic development. It’s called The Small Things Challenge, and it’s a campaign based on the premise that every small action can make a big difference to ensure quality education and economic opportunity for all. We challenge you to join us in becoming a part of the solution. Your help will make a difference. Click here and they’ll donate 25¢ to the cause. Intel wants to rally millions of people. That 25¢ can become $300,000.

Just one click on your mouse and you can donate 25 cents. How easy is that? Dead set easy – so do it NOW! Yep – right now.

Thanks.

Kiva

We Let You Loan to the Working Poor

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

You can create your own personal profile and loan directly or join one of the open groups and contribute as one of their members. Some groups are by location (country, city), some are by affiliation (cat lovers – no not really – but there are 470 pages of groups so it is possible).

Here’s how Kiva describes their process and intentions:

The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals in need of funding - not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs' profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.

Kiva partners with existing expert microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.

I’d love to hear from you if you have other ideas and recommendations that are simple, doable ways we can bring about the change we want to see in the world.

Technorati Tags: donation,contribution,being the change,kiva,one small thing challenge

Six-Word Memoirs

2009-02-05T00:46:00.001-08:00

What a fabulous idea by Diane at the Healing Library.

Six-Word Memoirs

Posted: 24 Jan 2009 11:31 AM CST

Because sometimes less is better?

Six-word memoirs can be found in a book, Not Quite What I Was Planning. They can also be found on the website of Smith Magazine where you are invited to submit your own six words. But I think the best place to first encounter this concept may be at the NPR site where you can watch a slide show of twenty-eight memoirs, all excerpted from the book and paired with photographs and drawings.

Consider these—(three of my own favorites)---

Never really finished anything, except cake. by Carletta Perkins
Nothing profound, I just sat around. by Daniel Rosenburg
Naively expected logical world. Acted foolishly. by Emily Thieler

So many possibilities.
Doesn’t this make you want to play around with writing your own six-word memoir?

***********************************

Mine?

Fought with anger. Lost in irony.

Sought peace. Found acceptance. Everything ok.

Born short. Grew shorter with age.

Only 5 foot tall. Felt six.

Always more. Loves the last word.

Technorati Tags: contemplation,writing,memoirs. brevity,acceptance

Anger: friend or foe? Or both? That depends on you!

2009-02-04T04:12:00.001-08:00

I am facing a situation at work just now in which I feel powerless and, as a consequence, infuriated. Another staff member has taken a unilateral action which detrimentally affects my section, my team and my students and I seem to be receiving no support from management. From my colleagues the only advice I am getting is to let it go because this staff member will “just make your life miserable, one way or another.”

At the moment I have no way of rectifying the situation. To add to my misery, my internal critics are playing havoc with me.

You teach NVC so how about you give yourself some empathy?

Why don’t you practice what you preach?

Why are you reacting and feeling so strongly about this – so much for your meditation, mediation and nonviolent practices.

See, the moment your buttons are pushed you are back to how you have always been – angry and stressed!

Yes, I feel angry. Some of my fundamental values are not being met right now – safety, integrity, fairness, professionalism and service. I am telling myself I feel powerless because I have no independent recourse for rectifying this situation without it creating even more punitive responses. I don’t want to let it go because I tell myself that lets this person “get away with this behaviour”.

So, have I somehow let myself down as my critics are implying. It is true that I cannot get to a state of equanimity. It is true I do imagine all the ways I would “like to get even.” It is true I do not like her behaviours and resent the impact they have on me.

However, I have not sent a reply email to her email for 2 days now as I try and wait until this “rage” inside settles. I have just tried to manage what I can manage within my section with some semblance of dignity. I feel close to tears and notice I am really needing ease and support from my managers – and I feel despairing at getting it. So, the critics may notice that my thoughts and emotions are still in turmoil - BUT – hear is the kicker – I am not acting on them. This is new. This is a step forward. I cannot turn them off and get back into a state of comfort and out of the pain – but maybe the lesson is to learn to just be with the pain. Ride it out without action? Could that be it?

Then, luckily for me, I received this posting in my inbox by Steve Stosny. He writes wonderful blogs on anger. I have copied part of his latest blog below. Maybe we can all relate to it.

Ego and Mental Errors
The recycling of anger to protect the ego introduces a much more complicated instigating factor to go along with the perception of threat, namely a perception of ego vulnerability to loss of value (feeling devalued or disrespected). Brain-stem reflex is enough to perceive the threat of an attacking sabre tooth tiger. But it takes a complex network of mental processes to organize the sound of an assemblage of utterances into meaningful words and then construe them to be a verbal threat to the ego - "She said what?!"

When it comes to construing someone's indirect behaviour (e.g., not putting down the toilet seat) as an ego threat, still more complicated mental processes come into play. These include a theory of mind, which allows us to guess at other people's states of mind (infer their thoughts, emotions, and motivations), the assignment of symbolic meaning to the behaviour, and an attribution of mal intent. The more complicated the mental processes, the more room for error.

The Neurological Imperative: Conserve Energy
In its continuous effort to conserve metabolic resources, the brain makes shortcuts of everything it does repeatedly, including complex mental procedures, at the cost of even higher error rates. Through the inexorable process of habituation, a perception of ego vulnerability, repeated over time, consolidates into a presumption of vulnerability, which requires the continual protection of anger. Also by virtue of habituation, the repeated experience of anger in defence of the ego reinforces its sense of vulnerability. The more you experience anger, the more anger you need to experience.

Inflation
In addition to needing more and more protection from threat, the angry person attempts to reduce the fear and sense of inadequacy (shame) that go with a vulnerable ego, through a process of inflation. An inflated ego is one whose value depends on downward comparison to the value and rights of others - I'm not equal, I'm better! In addition to temporarily making the ego feel less vulnerable, inflation justifies the motivations of anger to prevail and dominate. It also creates a sense of entitlement - I deserve special regard, treatment, or resources - that is certain to cause negative reactions in others and require a response of still more defensive anger. As if that weren't bad enough, inflation guarantees cognitive dissonance whenever reality smacks against the overestimation of intelligence, talents, looks, shoes, or socks - whatever is used to inflate the ego.

Is It Natural?
It's an arguable point whether defence of ego, inflated or otherwise, is a natural function of anger, but defence of ego is certainly a perversion of natural function of anger when it leads us to devalue that which we most value, namely, life, loved ones, and fellow tribesmen. Hence the term, "natural anger," though more accurate than normative terms, also misleads more than it illuminates.

The "healthy" way to experience anger
Normative words neither describe the function of anger nor come anywhere close to what actually happens to us when we experience anger. Yet everyone wants to know about "healthy" anger.

I enjoy giving the following accurate description of what occurs when we're angry to members of the press who naively ask about "healthy anger."

"I am angry (or resentful, impatient, irritable, shut down, cranky, etc.), which means that I am presently in an impaired mental state that reduces my ability to grasp ambiguity and see any nuance of a situation. The adrenalin rush I'm experiencing makes me amplify, magnify, and oversimplify that which has stimulated my anger, while it degrades my interpretation and judgment of environmental cues and renders me unable to see other people's perspectives or to see them at all, apart from my emotional reaction to them. I am probably more self-righteous than right. I am doubtless engaged in a petty ego defence that will make it more likely that I will violate my deepest values than protect them and almost certainly make me act against my long-term best interests. I am less able to control my impulses and tolerate frustration. My fine motor skills are temporarily deteriorated. I should not try to drive, negotiate, analyze an issue, or do anything important, until I have regulated this temporary state that has prepared me to fight when I really need to solve a problem."

Of course, we are unlikely to experience anger in this truly healthy way, without a great deal of practice. The point here is that the use of normative terms to describe anger obscures and distorts what happens in the experience of anger and thereby compounds problem anger - a recurring form of the emotion that makes us act against our long term best interests. To the extent that words are used to justify behaviour that devalues, manipulates, or dominates others, they greatly exacerbate anger problems.

Don't Justify, Improve
The real motive behind the use of normative terms to describe anger is to justify certain kinds of anger and condemn other kinds, as if you have a right to experience some forms of anger but not others. What are mere conceptual problems for therapists and authors who try to distinguish justified from unjustified anger turn into disaster for people who use the pseudo-distinction as a guide for ordinary living. Of course you have a right to be angry and to experience any kind of anger. (You have a right to shoot yourself in the foot, for that matter.) The more important question is this:

"Is my anger helping me be the person, parent, intimate partner, friend, or co-worker I most want to be?"

This question invokes your deepest values, which are the foundation of your ego, as well as its ultimate strength. If your behaviour remains consistent with your deepest values, your sense of internal value increases, reducing the need for ego inflation. With increased internal value, you become less dependent on getting value from others. With reduced dependency as others, you are able to see them as separate people, who, like you, are often blindly and sadly protecting their own inflated egos; in other words, you become more compassionate. You perceive less internal vulnerability and less external threat, which makes you less likely to stimulate reactive anger in others. In short, you make anger less necessary in your life. You begin to see anger as not at all a bad thing but an important signal to get back to your core value.

More later…as it unfolds.

Technorati Tags: anger management,feeling angry,frustration,anger at work,values,NVC,stress

Applying the Teaching

2009-02-01T12:07:00.001-08:00

Like a man floating in water
who dies of thirst, afraid of drowning:
so are those who are learned
who do not apply the teaching.

Like a person skilled in medicine
who can't cure his own disease:
so are those who are learned
who do not apply the teaching.

Like a deaf musician
who pleases others, not hearing himself:
So are those who are learned
who do not apply the teaching.

Like someone on a corner
saying all kinds of fine things,
while having no real inner virtue
so are those who don't practice.

--The Flower Ornament Scripture, trans. by Thomas Cleary

from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

Technorati Tags: practice,dharma

Why self-care is the least selfish thing you can do

2009-01-30T13:52:00.001-08:00

I do not believe we can be truly empathic with others without embodying self- empathy first.

Yes, I have drawn your attention to “embodied self-empathy”.

I have just finished co-hosting a 4 day Focusing residential and two of the trainers-in-training ran a workshop on the caring-feeling presence (from Biospiritual Focusing).

I really got an embodied sense of how my body knows when it is completely and wholly accepting (my words for describing self-empathy) of all of me and I have noticed that since that workshop I have been so excited to bring my attention back to this embodiment. It would come as no surprise to any of you, I am sure, that the more connected I am with this, my embodied Presence, the more able I am to self-empathise beyond words into my deeper pain and living experiencing AND then the more I am able to hold a caring-wholly-accepting presence with others.

In my trainings I integrate Focusing into the NVC training by going to feelings before observations. I use, Ann Weiser Cornell’s saying hello, or acknowledging of the feelings and then a sensing into what our body knows about this. Once these feelings feel heard by my inner self then I find I have the space and inclination to make an observation that is more objective and leads to agreement. Then, later, before making requests I use Focusing to “vision” what my body knows and can show me about how it is when my needs are met. From this space my request is more gentle and less dependent on the other person agreeing to it.

One other way I use Focusing is by using metaphors for some of the feelings. For example, when I feel “disappointed” it may be not such a big thing, when my friend feels “disappointed” it actually feels like a deep pain to her. So if she hears me say I am disappointed she interprets a higher level of pain than I may actually feel. When she tells me she is disappointed I may not realise the depth of her pain. This comes from Gene Gendlin’s TAE process and the differentiation between our public knowing and shared understanding of a word and our own individual bodily knowing of that word in our particular context. A metaphor however, gives the listener an insight into my inner landscape. The other reason I like metaphors is that the listener doesn’t seem to take on board that they are the source of disappointment in the same way.

To be honest I am gradually coming to some sense of realising that my inner relationship with myself is critical to my NVC practice – much more so than I had realised when I started learning and practising NVC. I am moving towards developing a more extensive workshop on connecting with our inner caring-feeling presence and embodying it through a variety of experiential activities. This seems like a wonderful foundational training. The first step towards inner peace. Then, my instinct tells me the listening and expressing in NVC will flow from our inner world.

Still ruminating on this…but here are some of the ways I have heard people describe embodied self-empathy:

caring-feeling presence

radical acceptance of everything

having a good relationship with yourself

self-acceptance

Presence

spacious non-judgment

poignant stillness

Technorati Tags: NVC,Focusing,self-empathy,self-care,relationships,communication,empathy,Presence,acceptance

The habit of rehearsing unhappiness

2009-01-28T12:17:00.001-08:00

This year I have chosen self-care as a choice-full conscious intention and one aspect of this is “not rehearsing unhappiness.” This means

not rehearsing difficult conversations

not imagining what’s going to happen in the future

not ruminating over the past

In other words just noticing how it is now – noticing the planning, ruminating, rehearsing.

I just had a some real examples of of the habit of rehearsing unhappiness and my attempts at transforming this “old-as-I-can-remember” habit.

A leading international teacher left an email asking for a conversation about something she read on my website. All the worst “I’ve been called to the School Principal’s office thoughts rushed into my mind!” Oh no, what have I done? Have I made a mistake? Have I broken a rule? And hot on the heels of these thoughts came visceral feelings of shame, fear, embarrassment, anxiety – literally I could feel tears welling, my heartbeat rise, heat and tension around my heart – followed by a pattern of harsh containment of the emotions and an inner defensiveness.

So I made a real effort not to try and predict, or worry. Each time one of these thoughts showed up I would just acknowledge it, “Hello fear, I can feel you clutching my heart tightly. I can sense how you want to protect me.”

Turned out she just wanted me to word my acknowledgement of her work in a slightly different way and to congratulate me on my website as it was based on the principles of a marketing course of hers I had signed up for & completed. She was also checking if she could refer further course participants to my site as a great model.

The next example came when as I prepared to go back to work after my summer vacation.

For the whole last week of my vacation I noticed a sense of heaviness in the pit of my belly and thoughts worrying about being able to handle the budget cuts that were coming, the pressure for increased outcomes and creating new and competitive ways of delivering our services in a shrinking market. Ohh…not comfy. And no fun to bring work into my vacation.

Serendipitously, I was co-facilitating a 4 day residential course on Focusing on my last weekend and one of my guest presenters ran a workshop on inviting in a caring-feeling presence in Focusing. Oh, so beautiful. To invite this feeling of holding tenderly “all of me”. There are lots of words for a caring-feeling presence but what came for me were the words “wholly accepting”.

I can feel this presence in my whole body and when I connect with it I feel supported, connected to my deepest values and aspirations, ok about my foibles, responsive rather than reactive.

So, to cut a long story short, I started to hold my awareness of “my habit of rehearsing unhappiness” in the tender space of my wholly accepting presence. Such cool relief.

The last part of this that is most wonderful is that I am learning to not try to predict what people will do or say (another little habit). So now I am more able to hear what they are actually saying rather than filtering it through my predictions. As my inner relationship with myself softens & widens in the field of acceptance – it comes as no surprise that my interpersonal relations do the same.

Now, I ask myself,

“Are these thoughts/words/actions bringing happiness or misery into my life?”

“How can I stay connected to my wholly accepting Presence and feel it in my body?’

Two simple and sustainable questions that really wake me up.

They’re working.

Technorati Tags: happiness,questions,stress relief,awareness,mindfulness

Love

2009-01-22T16:16:00.001-08:00

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Technorati Tags: love,renewal,Ursula Le Guin quote

Lead from within ~ self-full leadership

2009-01-19T01:27:00.001-08:00

I invite you to explore your own power as a leader both to yourself and others. Self-full leadership is about connecting with what is going on in you as well as what is going on in others.

Close your eyes and think of a time when you were in a meeting that was going south, or as we say in Australia – going pear-shaped. This might be a meeting at work, a family gathering, a club your belong to. What was going on? What were you feeling? What did you want to see happen? What do you wish you had done? I invite you to write about this for a minute.

The first step to leading from within is to shift to a greater sense of being, rather than doing or saying the right thing.

Be your message.

Once long ago, when asked by a reporter if he had a message he wanted the world to hear, Ghandi replied, "My life is my message."

Our "presence" is far richer and truer

than what we say in words.

Who we are speaks louder, and often influences others more profoundly, than what we say. Our deepest, thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes, and aspirations come through as an unspoken wave of information that others pick up at a level often below their conscious awareness. This material influences others more powerfully than mere words. So in a sense, you are your material, and your life is your message!

What is your message, or your bigger vision? What you say is not nearly as powerful as how you say it and who shows up to say it. So get clear about your motivation and your message before you intervene as a leader or as a participant.

The inner game of Leadership

Now for the doing. Here are some tips to help you facilitate your "inner game" of leadership. A simple acronym we call "FACT" will help recall these actions in real time.

F: Focus - get a clear focus by establishing a positive intent. It's important to find an intention that is both for your own good and for the greater good of the entire group. Then when you do intervene, you do so from a place of compassion and support for everyone, including yourself.

A: Attitude - think about how you want to say what you have to say. To come from a positive attitude, it may help to first internally acknowledge any emotion you have arising in the moment. You may fear the impact speaking out might have on your job if this is a work group. You may fear an emotional reaction from family or friends. You might simply fear the appearance of looking stupid. You may be angry about what's going on. Simply naming and acknowledging these emotions inside and accepting that they are natural and OK will help to diffuse them so that you can use their energy for your next action.

C: Context and Content - with whom do you intervene? At times it may be appropriate to address the whole group; at other times, an individual. Which approach is likely to achieve the best outcome and minimize negative reactions? Consider what you plan to say (content) so that it comes out clear and concise.

T: Timing - where in the meeting should you intervene? Certainly you want to be diplomatic and not interrupt anyone if at all possible.

This may largely be a matter of trusting your intuition by simply asking yourself, "is this the right time to speak?" Don't let your concern over timing stop you, however, if you have strong feelings that something needs to be said. This is particularly true if it appears that time is simply being wasted.

Your Homework:

What are your messages in your internal game of leadership? What leadership role do you have for yourself? How can you be present to yourself and present to others. Spend a few minutes to craft and write down a clear and simple sentence that says it all. Revisit it to refine it and make it more powerful over time.

How do you 'feel' when you know this message is in alignment with your values? How do you feel when what you do is not in alignment with your values? Make a list of the different emotions and feeling associate with being alignment vs. just responding from habit.

What action step is possible for you in order for your process to go to the next level?

Is it possible to stay peaceful in the face of persistently poor customer service?

Technorati Tags: leadership,resilience,NVC,Focusing,groups,conflict,attention

Being with our suffering

2009-01-17T16:06:00.001-08:00

A new friend, Simon, sent me this clip from youtube. It is about 10 minutes long and I invite you to stay with it until the end.

Here Ram Dass interviews Thich Nhat Hanh who skilfully takes us from thinking we are our emotions and this leading to suffering, to being with our emotions with loving-kindness, to impermanence and non-self.

Brilliant, compassionate and useful in day-to-day living.

Technorati Tags: Dharma,Buddhism,Thich Nhat hahn,non-self,impermanence,emotions,suffering,pain relief

Yoga & the metaphor of bending over backwards: life written into our body

2009-01-17T13:34:00.001-08:00

My yoga teacher often refers to back bends as opening our heart and releasing negativity.

While doing moves that bend backward I stretch across the front of my chest while simultaneously allowing my shoulders to drop and relax. I let my shoulder blades fall gently down my back and then I can feel my heart expand and open.

So, while doing back bends yesterday the phrase “bending over backwards” came to my mind. How, when we bend over backwards, metaphorically, we make a real effort. We put our heart into what we are doing, for ourselves or for some one else. When someone bends over backwards for us we certainly feel their generosity, effort as an act of caring or love, a action from the heart.

Each move in Yoga works not only with our physical body, but also with our emotions and where they are being held in our body. By moving into, breathing into different parts of our body, in different combinations we work to release stuck energy. In every yoga class each person has areas of fluidity and stretch and areas of tightness and resistance depending on their life experiences.

Forward bends encourage introspection and are very grounding.

Back bends are exhilarating and allow emotions to surface and release.

Inversions (headstand, shoulder-stand, and handstand) enable us to change our perspective, after all we have turned our world upside down.

Balancing poses promote inward focus and calmness.

Twists help us release what we don’t need (on all levels) and get us out of habitual patterns of movement.

Technorati Tags: yoga,backward bends,emotions and yoga,metaphors

How I found out what I need to do to take care of myself & my relationships when triggered

2009-01-16T03:06:00.001-08:00

I cannot tell you how resistant I sometimes feel to responding empathically to others when I am feeling emotionally overwhelmed and challenged. The irony is that I facilitate courses based on NVC and have this internal expectation that, if I am offering trainings, I “should be” a near-perfect role model. UGH! GRRR!

So, why is it I resist what I know works? Try as I might, my mind simply cannot answer this question. I either go to analysis and/or excuses and/or blame and shame. Either way I stay in the same place.

So, I turned to my tried and true way of getting in touch with my own body’s knowing about what’s going on in there – Focusing. Finding some time to myself I got out my journal and just started to sense inwardly for how my body held “all about resisting being empathic when I am in pain even though I know it works and makes me feel good”.

First comes a weight on my chest and a squeezing feeling – from all sides all around my rib cage. Then an image of string coming out from the centre of my chest and me being pulled forward by the string. I can sense my heels digging in and me leaning back against the pull of the string. Pulling the string are my expectations, my “shoulds” and the perfect model of NVC. Ohh! There’s also a finger wagging, it is near my shoulder and it is saying, “You know the model in NVC, now do it!.”

I acknowledge the pulling and the finger-wagging critic. Just say hello to them. I sense the critic wants me to feel in integrity. Oh, I get that. It wants me to live what I know works and makes me feel good. And when I do that I do feel an inner sense of integrity. A big sigh comes….and the string drops. My feet balance evenly on the ground now.

My attention is drawn back up to my chest again. The pressure has released and now there is pain inside the chest. A kind of soft sadness there. I say hello to that. It lets me know it wants me to pay attention to it first when I am getting stressed, into an argument or disagreement or something happens that feels hurtful. It needs to be taken care of before I can take care of anything else. As I acknowledge that an image and sensation of an aircushion comes around the whole of my chest area and it has the quality of calmness. It provides a safe space for my pain. This feels good. Inside I can see how this space has a few parts of me in there – all responding to the situation differently. I need to pay attention to each part when things are unravelling emotionally – not just the strongest feeling – but all the little feelings too.

I ask this place, this felt sense, what is an action step I can take to bring this wisdom and bodily-felt knowing into my outer world and I get an image of taking time – or space – to take care of me. This feels like a self-empowering and self-strengthening move. I need to take as much time as it takes to get centred, if the situation allows that possibility.

Then this sensation moves up into my throat and I hear words like:

“I notice I am feeling triggered/stressed/confused right now and need to take some time out to get a better sense of what is going on for me. When I have worked that out I will come back to this conversation and from that space I feel sure we’ll be better able to hear each other…”

and a briefer version comes

“For us to better hear each other I need to take a little time out to get some clarity and calm. Can I get back to you once I have done that?

also

I’m finding this situation difficult and I’d like to check what’s going on for me before continuing. Can I get back to you when I am in a better space to be able to hear what you need me to hear?”

Technorati Tags: NVC,Focusing,relationships,conflict,communication,empathy,self-empathy,what to say when you need time out

Say sayonara to striving

2009-01-15T14:51:00.001-08:00

I found this sentence inside a blog written by Susan Piver. She was talking to Stephen Mitchell about the difference between positive thinking and wishful thinking.

Susan wrote,

I asked him if, in his lifelong study of the core teachings of all religions, he’d ever come across this idea. I wrote down what he said, because it was so excellent. Here it is:

The teaching of every one of the great sacred texts is that control is an illusion. When you understand that ultimately you are not the doer, you can step back from yourself. That is the only path to serenity. In other words, letting go of the illusion of control, and realizing that you never had it in the first place, allows you to live in the most dazzlingly intelligent, beautiful, and kind reality that you could ever have imagined—and beyond what you could have imagined.

"All I have to do is relax, to allow the world to dazzle me instead of the other way around."

STOP. STOP READING NOW.

GO BACK AND READ THAT SENTENCE AGAIN AND SAY IT OUT LOUD. TAKE SOME TIME TO PAUSE AND ALLOW YOU BODY-HEART-MIND TO PROCESS THAT SENTENCE.

WHEW!!! What a relief.

An underlying, background striving tension just slips away and long, deep breaths get sucked into my body where the tension used to be. I’m going to make this my modus operandi for a while.

I am Cheshire-cat-curious about what will come!

Technorati Tags: relaxation,control,allowing,curiousity,openness

Take the One Seat

2009-01-14T11:59:00.001-08:00

When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness.

Spiritual transformation is a profound process that doesn't happen by accident. We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing. To mature on the spiritual path we need to commit ourselves in a systematic way. My teacher Achaan Chah described this commitment as "taking the one seat." He said, "Just go into the room and put one chair in the center. Take the seat in the center of the room, open the doors and the windows and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come."

--Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

posted in: Read this Daily Dharma on tricycle.com

You too can receive daily insights and wisdom – just click on the above link.

Technorati Tags: mediation,dhamma,Buddhism,mindfulness

Courage & Connection

2009-01-13T12:58:00.001-08:00

So many messages in this clip of Nick Vujicic.

What speaks to you? How do you feel after watching this?

How can you use both his message and how this has touched you as a catalyst to transform your life?

He has plenty of clips on YouTube if you want to hear more.

Finding your centre even in times of chaos & crisis

2009-01-12T22:09:00.001-08:00

Often we find it hard to centre ourselves if we are feeling scared, upset,angry, frustrated etc.

My personal experience has been that following the flow of my breath does bring some settling but I don't necessarily end up feeling centred – I think because following my breath in and out of my body is an experience that involves movement. For me, centredness has a quality of stillness, a quality of rest.

The following exercise helps to regulate emotions as we go and find a kind of calm state that anyone can achieve.

Start by becoming aware of your breath and then follow your breath down into your body ... and try to let your focus settle into your physical center, at the bottom of your inhalation. That sense of the bottom of our breath is our centered calm point. You might rest your hand there...at the place where you find the bottom of your breath. And just keep your attention on where your breath bottoms out. If your breath moves, move your hand with it. Keep this place company. You will know when you are centred.

Technorati Tags: meditation,stress relief,getting centered,feeling better,emotional resilience

Focusing On Life & Death – a poem

2009-01-12T19:24:00.001-08:00

This poem On Life & Death touched me deeply. It is written by Agnes Rodriguez. Agnes is a Focuser and Focusing Teacher and a psychologist born in Peru, living in Costa Rica. Agnes says she had deep suffering in her life which she overcame by strong bonds with others. In Focusing, she says she is what you may call a "green shoot" trying to grow and eventually bloom. She does not have not a website yet but if you want more details you can go to www.cefocusing.com which is the website of her friend Kathy McGuire from whom she learned Focusing.

I wrote to Agnes asking for her permission to share her poem saying:

Something has been touched very deeply in me by your poem. I’m not sure what yet…but I can feel some tender movement inside and I know it to be something “true” for me because when I sit near it tears well up from that place there. Now an image comes for those tears. Tears drawn from an inner well of cool, sweet water, my own well just for me, here in this body, in this life yet connected to the one great artesian basin of all.

And my body says “trust your tears”. They flow from and to truth. Your truth. Leona

On Life & Death

Agnes Rodriguez.

Considering life as a whole process

Within an environment

I Am wondering from deep within

How could we preserve our lives?

Life is like a breeze…

It comes and goes…

We can not control it

As with an earthquake…

We do not know what will happen

But perhaps what we need to do

Is just accept the order of the universe

Which it seems looks for balance

Like the tectonic plates

Searching for equilibrium

No matter what we do about them.

Or a volcanic outburst

Which comes

When we do not expect it

Same with terrorism

Which appears in the most

Unexpected ways

Could we control it?

No…

It causes disaster

To our deep regret

But we cannot control it

Nor even neutralize it

With more terrorism

Perhaps we need to find the source

Of the disequilibrium…

And if we find it

Perhaps we may do something

About it

Terrorism as volcanic outburst

Trying to find balance

The volcano will not quiet itself

Until all the forces are settle

When there is harmony around.

Agnes

tea therapy

2009-01-11T16:36:00.001-08:00

I live in Oz but have married a Brit and have to confess the cup of tea has taken on a whole new meaning in my life. It is perfect for any occasion.

Not sure what to write next - have a cup of tea.

A seemingly innocent conversation now teetering on the brink of an argument - have a cup of tea.

Just in from work - cup of tea. Just arrived at work - cup of tea. Just up in the morning - cup of tea. Just before bed – a cup of tea (chamomile of course).

Eyeing up those yummy cookies in the cupboard – have them with a cup of tea.

Bad phone call - cup of tea.

Phone call which is bound to be long from recently “made single” girlfriend - mug of tea.

I reckon we could come up with a wonderful list from tea drinkers about the time tea saved their marriage, saved their sanity or just plain gave them time to "go slow."

How has tea therapy worked for you?

Technorati Tags: tea,cup of tea,slowing down,relaxation,time out,therapy

Reset your rules to serve life

2009-01-10T19:53:00.001-08:00

So…just wondering if you have checked in with your rules since our last exercise on clearing a space in your life around rules?

Have noticed any relaxation in your life? More space or flexibility? I did get some space and then, lo and behold, a whole bunch of less obvious rules surfaced.

I have noticed how many I have! Rules for the road, rules about how a cup of tea should be made, rules about washing clothes, rules about relationships and how they should work. Yep. Try keeping a rules diary for a day and notice how often your view the world through your rules.

When I have a rule about something I notice a couple of reactions come up for me:

I judge something as right or wrong, good or bad, useful or useless etc.
I think about how it should be done differently and how my way is best.
I get worried, get anxious or even feel panicky when I notice my rule is not being followed. I get fearful. And even angry. I feel shame, guilt and embarrassment when I break my rules. YUK!

So, having been overwhelmed by my tsunami of rules I am going to take some time to get a feel for whether they serve my life by asking some basic questions.

Is this rule aligned with my core values? If not, what value are they aligned with? Is it a rule I want to keep?

Does this rule make my life easier or keep me safe? For example, my rules about how to wash clothes does make my life easier. My whites stay white, my delicates last longer and I hang it out to reduce my ironing. My rule about following road rules keeps me safe. My need for safety is prioritised over my need for autonomy and freedom of choice.

Does this rule bring lightness into my heart? If it is aligned with a need or value and it still brings a heaviness into my heart then maybe I need to explore how I give expression or live this rule. I may be fixated on a strategy that is no longer life serving and there may be many other ways to honour my values.

Are there any questions you would add? I’d love to hear how this process goes for you and what changes it brings into your life.

Technorati Tags: rules,values,NVC,making your own rules,questioning rules

Changing Like the Weather

2009-01-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

The first noble truth of Buddhism says simply that it's part of being human to feel discomfort. We don't even have to call it suffering anymore; we don't even have to call it discomfort.

It's simply coming to know the fieriness of fire, the wildness of wind, the turbulence of water, the upheaval of earth, as well as the warmth of fire, the coolness and smoothness of water, the gentleness of the breezes, and the goodness, solidness, and dependability of the earth.

Nothing in its essence is one way or the other. The four elements take on different qualities; they're like magicians. Sometimes they manifest in one form and sometimes in another....

The first noble truth recognizes that we also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon.

--Pema Chodron, Awakening Loving-Kindness

Technorati Tags: Pema Chodron,Dharma,Buddhism,change,emotions,feelings

Your favourite hobby is not a luxury

2009-01-08T11:57:00.001-08:00

2009 is here and the first few heady days of our resolutions have settled into reality. We may have committed to better health, better relationships, better habits...better, better, better.

But, I invite you think about the one thing you LOVE doing. The one thing that makes time disappear and no matter how much time you spend on it you feel invigorated.

So what if it is golf, or wood-carving, or baking or knitting, or restoring cars. It might singing, sailing, cycling or salsa. Our inner critic which judges things good, bad, better, worse, valuable or a waste of time/space forgets to look beyond the activity.

After you spend time this way how are you with the rest of the world? More relaxed? More open and responsive? More engaged? More willing to let others enjoy their way of being in the world?

So, I say, indulge your hobby. Revel in your favourite hobby. And make time and space for it in your life as a priority. Being the change we want to see in the world is not a dour, task focused, "must be for the good of all" affair. The world does not need more heavy energy. Let's add a little sugar to our bowl by doing what we love, and loving how it makes us feel.

Technorati Tags: happiness,hobbies,choices

8 questions & 3 tips for long, healthy & happy life

2009-01-07T22:25:00.001-08:00

Dr Bernie Siegal offers these questions and tips for having a long, healthy and happy life:

Here are the questions he reckons we should ask ourselves:

Do I have a sense of meaning in my daily activities in life? This doesn't mean something huge. I remember seeing a movie in which a guy who worked in a hospital laundry found meaning in knowing how much people value fresh clean sheets and towels when they are sick. Doing his job well was his way to contribute and that was how he found meaning.
Do I express anger appropriately in defense of myself? Do I respond rather than react? Am I aware of what I'm really feeling - is it fear, worry, sadness? Am I able to articulate my needs without blame, judgement or guilt? Do I believe I have the same right as everyone else to express what is going on for me?
Am I able to ask family and friends for help or favours when I need them? Can I give others the opportunity and gift of being able to support or enhance my life? Am I able to sustain these connections through giving AND receiving?
Can I say no to someone who asks for a favour if i can't or don't feel like doing it? Am I able to connect with my needs and say no to the request while saying yes to the person?
Do I make decisions for myself or do I let others make decisions for me (including "fate")? How present do I choose to be in my life? How much do I contribute to how it turns out?
Do I have enough play in my life - things that make me laugh, feel good and lose my sense of time? What do I LOVE doing?
Do I use my feelings to seek nourishment? Do I use them help guide me in what supports my life? If you are hungry do you get upset? No, you go get some food. So you can use your feelings to help guide you towards nourishment for your whole self.
Am I living a role in my life to the detriment of my own needs eg as a mother or breadwinner for example? If you are living a role what happens when the kids leave home or you retire or get retrenched?

Now I recommend you go back to those questions with a pen and paper in your hand and change the word "do" to "how can I?" For example: How can I have a sense of meaning in my daily activities?

Now for the 3 tips:

Find your way to follow your heart - that what feels good and authentic just for you. When you live in your heart magic happens.
When in doubt - be like water. Flow. Change your state (water can be flowing, solid and gaseous; it can be fresh, salty and like rain).
If still in doubt about how to be happy ask yourself, "What would Lassie do?" If you take as much care of yourself as you do your pets you will live a long, healthy life.

Dr. Bernie Siegel changed the paradigm of mind-body medicine and living with cancer with his books Love, Medicine & Miracles, Peace, Love & Healing, Prescriptions for Living and many others. Healer, Yale-trained surgeon, beloved teacher, Bernie embraces a philosophy of living and dying that stands at the forefront of the medical ethics and spiritual issues our society grapples with today. Bernie will share the lessons he’s learned about life and healing from his experience with cancer patients, life and personally struggling to live the message of kindness and love. The questions and tips above were from a wonderful 12 series teleseminar hosted by Dr Carol Robin called Profound Paths to Health, Healing & Happiness.

Technorati Tags: happiness,Bernie Siegel,well-being,choices,health

Rehearsing Unhappiness Report: 5 days into 2009

2009-01-05T18:05:00.001-08:00

"Don't rehearse unhappiness" seemed like a great resolution for 2009.

After all why would I rehearse unhappiness? You might well wonder ...but here are some of the ways I find myself doing just that!

Planning conversations that are difficult rather than waiting to see how they go. I'll say this and that, but then they'll probably say this and that and I am no longer happily sitting on my couch but I am in another time, another place - all in my head.

Hearing criticisms going off in my head at an astonishing rate - criticisms levelled at the system, criticisms levelled at people I know, and last and by no means least self-criticism.

And let's not forget the ubiquitous negative self-talk which comes in many, many forms: Mr Discourager, Ms Doubter, Mrs Fusser, Private Perfecto, Aunty Already Doing Too Much, Cousin Conflicted (should I, shouldn't I) and more...

So...what next? Well, the first thing I want to do is celebrate!

Yes, celebrate because awareness is the first step toward transformation. The next step is to embrace what is. Oh, I notice these things. Ok. That's how it is. Now, from this place of self-acceptance I can open the door to transformation. I can invite a positive energy in where, right now, I hear negativity. I believe that this negative energy is trying to flag something good for us, albeit in a way that is hard to hear.

Let me give an example: Planning ahead for difficult conversations may be flagging a need for safety and competence. So, now that I am in touch with these needs I can explore other, more affirming strategies that will meet these needs. I can, for example, meditate on feeling balanced bringing that feeling physically into by body. I can practice a meditation of loving-kindness so that I tap into my natural compassion for the other person. To meet my need for competence I might list all my key concerns and the needs behind them so I feel I can articulate clearly. I might also try and guess their needs and concerns so I can connect empathically.

Here's another example: I can say hello to my self-criticisms and ask what their positive intent is. That is I can change how I hear the criticism from feeling annoyed or dismayed to hearing the potential it holds. "You should have got that right' might again flag a need of mine for competence. I can acknowledge that and explore the learnings I have gained thereby increasing my competence in that area AND my competence in emotional resilience.

So, as part of my commitment to my Personal Commandment to not rehearse unhappiness I commit for the month of January to:

Translate self-talk that creates unhappiness into the underlying positive intent, value or need.
I will stop myself from verbalizing all criticism. I will bite my tongue, keep it to myself, let it go, move on. And I’ll report back here what the experience was like and where it fits into the scope of simple habits for effective conflict resolution and compassionate communication.

Technorati Tags: unhappiness,criticism,self-talk,negativity,inner critic,doubt,worry,self-care,happiness,self-awareness

Making some space around our rules

2009-01-04T12:20:00.001-08:00

I have been sitting here thinking about what to write next about rules.

Actually sitting and considering my list of rules and wondering a whole bunch of stuff about them:

Where did they come from?

Is that rule good or bad for me?

Who, on earth, thought up that rule?

Do I really believe that?

And I noticed I was starting to judge the rules by another set of internal rules. I started to feel gloomy and like I was being sucked down a rabbit hole. So, I stopped there. I screeched to a proverbial halt in my mind!

"WHOA! Leona! STOP THINKING. STOP ANALYSING. What's really going on here? Oh, yes, I am surreptitiously sorting my rules into a good pile and a bad pile. When I look at the "good" pile I feel righteous. When I look at the "bad" pile I start to beat myself up. Hmmm... What shall I do? Oh, before I even go on I might just say hello to this little pattern of sorting...smiling now...just getting a sense of how often I do this in life!"

O.K. If I can't sort into piles what can I do? I know...I can bring my attention down into my body and sense for how my body holds this rule. How my body holds this information might come to me as a physical feeling, a metaphor, a descriptive word, an image or a sound. At first the sensation may be fuzzy, like you are at the unclear edge of what you body wants you to know. Just wait there with a kind of friendly, curiosity. Take some time to just allow the sensation to form for you. As each of these felt senses come, say hello, must acknowledging that they are there. You don't need to do or change anything. Just bear witness to what comes. As you say hello and bear witness you can then put this sensation in just the right place for it - by this I mean you can clear an internal space.

Rule	Sensation ~ Felt sense
I must work hard.	Kind of heavy feel in my gut and a tightness across my chest
Never leave the photocopier jammed.	Oh, a lightness there and a sense of my hand going out to help someone.
Do not steal (not even stationery from work).	I feel grounded. Like I am solid and stable. This rules feels good for me. The word integrity pops into my head.
I mustn't waste time.	Oh dear, I feel compressed. Like my innards are being pushed down and compacted and there is no space or air in there. I notice I can't breathe deeply.

Clearing a Space:

As you say hello and bear witness you can then put this sensation in just the right place for it - by this I mean you can clear an internal space. You might place in on the floor, in a cupboard, on a shelf, on a chair near you, outside in the backyard, around the corner in the local park, and so on. You can check with it, the felt sense, where would be just the right place or distance for it as you go through your list. You can let it know that you can come back to it anytime.

For example:

"I must work hard" has actually popped itself in the deck-chair on the patio.

"Never leave the photocopier jammed" is sitting next to me, quite close on my left hand side.

"Do not steal" is in front of me and I get a sense of it being a protective rule.

"I mustn't waste time" has actually gone and sat on the patio too.

Coming to a clearer space:

If your list of rules is long you might like to do this process in a few separate sessions. You are not "banishing" the rules but rather allowing them to find the right distance and place from you so that you can say hello to the other rules one by one and get a sense of how it feels in your body for each rule individually. Sometimes it can be hard to tell how each individual rule is held when they are all crowded in, in there.

As you work through your list also notice how your body feels. Go through the same method of describing your felt sense. You might like to find a way to anchor this sense if it is a place or sensation you enjoy. You can ask your body to let you know how you can come back to this place when you need to.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well done. That was quite an exercise and I would love to hear how it went for you. You do need to DO IT not just read about it. Give yourself the gift of coming into a clearer space...we live in a physically, socially and emotionally crowded world. Clearing a Space is a tried and true method for coming back to ourselves anytime, anywhere.

Tomorrow, we will check in with our rules and see which ones need our attention. Which ones still hold energy and how they serve us.

Technorati Tags: rules,relaxation,self-awareness,body knowing,Focusing

Say hello to all your rules in 2 easy steps

2009-01-03T22:21:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I invited you to explore whether rules rule you.

Today, I invite you to get to know your rules. How? Take these 2 easy (but revealing steps):

1. Get out a blank piece of paper and fold it over twice make four squares. In the top left hand quarter write "for myself." In the top right hand quarter write "for those I love." In the bottom left hand quarter write "socially & at work." In the final quarter write "for everyone, anytime, anywhere."

2. Now without stopping to think or censor answer the following questions, quickly writing your responses in the appropriate square. Take as long as you need - and no less than 15-20 minutes. Take this time as you may be surprised how many rules surface if you give them a chance. If a rule fits for you and loved ones write it across the line.

What rules do I have for myself? e.g. I mustn't use bad language. I mustn't tell lies, except if they are white lies. I must be on time. I must do my chores before I relax. I should finish one job/thing before I start another. I must hang the washing out a particular way. I must wash the car on Sundays. I must follow the road rules. I must pay taxes. I must wear make-up when I leave the house. I must exercise 6 times a week. I mustn't eat ice-cream - except on birthdays. I must find out what other people want before I make a decision. I must answer the phone and not screen calls. I must hang up my clothes. I shouldn't have long showers.

Then: What rules do I have for the people I love? e.g. We should be considerate to each other. We should have Xmas together. We should help each other in tough times. We should be able to say anything we want. We should be polite at all times and keep the peace. They should help around the house without being asked. They should call me if they are going to be late. They should consider my needs before they make a decision.

Next: What rules do you have socially and at work - for friends and colleagues? e.g. I should get to work on time. I should always work hard. Friends should meet up at least 3 times a year. If you are busy, work colleagues should notice and help share the load. Friends should be around when you need them. Employers should notice when you are doing a good job. Overtime should be paid and not gratis. Never take the last slice of cake. Never leave the photocopier jammed.

Finally, What rules do you have for "everyone - anytime, anywhere." Do not steal. Do not hurt other people physically. Do not kill. Do not litter. Follow the speed limit and road rules. Children should give up their bus seats for adults.

Phew! That is probably enough for today. Don't toss that precious piece of paper. Tomorrow we will take some more steps to get to know your rules. Today you just said hello to them :-)

Technorati Tags: rules

Do rules rule you?

2009-01-03T00:05:00.001-08:00

What rules do you have in your life? Do you have rules for how you live and rules for how others should live? I have been thinking today about how rules rule my life and I wonder if I need to pay attention to when I, unconsciously, apply a rule to myself or someone else not checking any other following:

Is it true? Or is it just what I blindly follow or believe?
Does this rule connect with my values or inner wisdom on this occasion?
Does it serve me or anyone else?
Is it kind, empathic?
Does it bring greater understanding or restrict my view?

There are plenty of clues to something being a rule:

We use words like ought, should, must, have to
We see things as right or wrong
We can't see it any other way
We get fearful if someone breaks our rule (often masked as anger or indignation)

Byron Katie has some wonderful questions that can help break the tyranny of rules. Try asking yourself these questions when you suspect you are being ruled by rules:

Is it true? What's the reality of it (not how do you think it should be)? Whose business is it?
How do you react when you think that thought?
Can you think of a reason to drop that thought? Can you find stress-free reason to keep that thought?
Who would you be without that thought?

As part of this process you might like to connect with your values which underpin your rules. These are able to hold many ways of being met...so you become able to allow more flexibility and spaciousness in your life.

For example, you might have rule that people should drive at the speed limit because you value safety and predictability. Knowing that you value safety might mean you can pay attention to whether the person is driving in a safe manner for the road conditions rather then the rule of speed.

Or, you might have a rule that people should send cards on birthdays. Under that rule it might be that you value consideration and connection and cards were the way you were taught to believe consideration is shown. Knowing and connecting to your value for consideration you might notice that phone calls, emails, visits are also ways people demonstrate consideration and connection.

You might have a rule that the kitchen must be tidy before you start cooking and when you walk in there to get underway you encounter a mess on the bench. Then you start to feel aggrieved that the last person in there didn't clean up their own mess and how it's such a simple rule to "clean up after yourself." The value that might not be being met could be ease... you notice that, for you, it is easier to cook if you have no clutter. When you get in touch with that value of ease, you might notice that you are less blaming or annoyed with someone who has a different rule about kitchen etiquette. Or you might be able to express your needs without implying they are somehow wrong. You might be able to say something like:

When I start cooking I really love a clear space. I find it brings me a sense of ease and from that space I enjoy cooking. Would you be willing to clear off the bench-top by the time we normally start preparing dinner - say 6pm?

Love to hear your rules and the values beneath them....

Technorati Tags: rules,values,annoyances,frustration,NVC,self-awareness

10 Personal Commandments for 2009

2008-12-31T13:40:00.001-08:00

Gretchen Rubin of the excellent blog The Happiness Project recently did a post with tips for writing your own personal commandments, and it got me wondering: what are my personal commandments or aspirations?

2009

Take care of self-care

Don't rehearse unhappiness

Start from "what is" just now

Lighten up ~ keep things in perspective

Presume the best of people first

Listen within; trust my inner wisdom

Find delight & practice gratitude

Be mindful of my thoughts, words & actions

Write

Be me...the me that feels just fine all over

What are yours?

Use Acupressure to fight worry, depression, impatience, anger, fear & other emotions

2008-12-30T13:18:00.001-08:00

Fight worry, depression, impatience, anger, fear and other emotions

I don't know if this can be called a Mudra as it is a Qi Gong exercise that I learnt a long time ago. The effects and technique are certainly similar. This Mudra can be done anywhere as there is no preparation needed and it can be done discreetly.

As mentioned above your fingers corresponds to the five elements but they also correspond to emotions and the major organs. On the outside and inside (not top and bottom!) of your fingers run the meridians and there are several acupuncture points located here. These are represented by the black dots on the first picture.

By pressing or squeezing the sides of the fingers, according to your needs, you can affect both the emotion and the corresponding organ. This is how the fingers work:

The thumb represents the element earth, the stomach and worry.

The index finger represents the element metal, the lungs, the large intestine and the emotions depression, sadness and grief.

The middle finger is the element fire, the heart, small intestine, circulatory and respiratory systems, the emotions are impatience and hastiness.

The ring finger is the element wood and is connected to the liver, gall bladder, nervous system and corresponds to anger.

The little finger corresponds to water, the kidneys and fear.

So if you are overwhelmed by an emotion, just squeeze the corresponding finger a few times and you will feel better. It works!

Technorati Tags: acupressure,emotions,feelings

Rethinking our New Year’s resolutions

2008-12-30T12:49:00.001-08:00

Technorati Tags: new year's resolutions,plans,goals,values,intentions,mindfulness

I just know that most of us are thinking about our New Year's resolutions today telling ourselves one or more of the following:

"I'm not going to make any as they never stick."

"I"ll make one I think I can hold myself too...I'll exercise 15 minutes per day not 45minutes."

"I'm going to make a life-changing resolution this year! That should do it!"

"I can't make up my mind...what if I make the wrong choice?"

...and so on...

I found this wonderful take on New Year's Resolutions written by Sunada at Wildmind Buddhist Meditation.

Sunada (December 29, 2008)

Many of us start the year with great intentions to establish healthy new habits, only to find ourselves losing steam before too long. Sunada writes about her realization that reframing our goals can help us stay on track and raise our chances of getting to where we want to be.

It’s a new year, and a time when many of us think about fresh starts – like exercising more, meditating regularly, or getting organized. But as we know all too well, just wanting something doesn’t make it so. I’m sure we’ve all experienced times when we lose steam and get bogged down. How do we get around this?

I’m not saying it’s bad to have doubtful thoughts… But it’s when we accept these thoughts as truth that we get into trouble.

One of the Buddha’s basic messages is that we create our own worlds with our thoughts and actions. And by “thoughts,” he wasn’t just talking about our intentional, conscious ones. Those pesky unintended and subconscious ones are just as much a part of the picture. And it’s when we leave them unacknowledged that they can really get us into trouble.

Let’s look at a few examples. When I ask people why they want to meditate more, the answer I typically get is something like, “I want to calm my busy mind.” What we’re subconsciously saying here is, “I have a busy mind.” Stop for a moment and say that sentence to yourself. How does it make you feel? Does it give you positive energy and motivation to change? I doubt it. Instead, it just reinforces that you have a busy mind. Focusing on the problem directs more of our energies toward thing we don’t want. By definition, anything we put our attention to is what fills our minds –and perpetuates in our view of the world.

Other thoughts I often hear express self-doubt and self-deprecation. “My mind is too busy to be able to meditate right.” Or “I don’t know if I can, but if I MAKE myself do it maybe it’ll work this time.” I’m not saying it’s bad to have doubtful thoughts. We all have insecurities, and they will come up in one form or another for all of us. We’re only human! But it’s when we accept these thoughts as truth that we get into trouble. How much are we buying into the idea that this is the way things are? The more we are, the more we’re feeding ourselves negative energy that can only pull us backward.

We may THINK we’ve made a resolve to change. But there’s another side of us thinking subtle … thoughts that sabotage us before we even begin.

A third source of backward pull is a lack of focus, discipline, or prioritization. “I tried to go to the gym this week but other things got in the way.” “My boss made me stay late so I couldn’t do it.” It’s easy to blame other people or causes for preventing us from doing what we intended. But really, I’m the only one who can choose what I do. My boss didn’t make me stay late. It’s me that chose to do it to comply with his request. Or maybe I wasn’t focused enough to get things done sooner. Whatever we do, we need to take responsibility for our own choices. Otherwise, we perpetuate a mindset of helplessness and being a victim.

I’m sure there are other kinds of thoughts that pull us in the wrong direction, but I think you get the idea. These are the kind of subconscious thoughts that we’re allowing to shape our future – one in which we’re at odds with ourselves! We may THINK we’ve made a resolve to change. But there’s another side of us thinking subtle (or maybe not-so-subtle!) thoughts that sabotage us before we even begin. No wonder we get stuck.

Rather than looking at the problem on its own level, how about if we reframe it into a bigger picture of what we aspire toward? So if you want to exercise more, ask yourself WHY.

So what do we do? We can’t just banish negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. And they’re really hard to just “let go,” as we’re taught to do in meditation classes.

There is another way. According to the laws of physics, the only way we can move something forward is by applying more energy in that direction than what’s pulling it the other way. So then, how can we increase the energy behind our positive motivations so that they’re greater than our negative ones?

Rather than looking at the problem on its own level, how about if we reframe it into a bigger picture of what we aspire toward? So if you want to exercise more, ask yourself WHY. What is your bigger purpose behind becoming more fit? One woman I know realized that the reason she wants to be in better shape is so she can run around with her grandchildren. To her, family is really important – something she values deeply for its own sake. It’s part of her picture of herself at her best. So when she thinks about going to the gym, she thinks of how much she loves her grandchildren’s delightful laughter, and off she goes.

We can tell we’re acting with a pure mind when we’re motivated by genuine feelings of kindness and generosity, and a wise understanding of our responsibility toward both ourselves and our world.

The Buddha gave us some clues about the kind of thoughts that help move us forward. He said, “If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never departs.” What is a “pure mind”? It’s the part of us that reveals our essential goodness. We can tell we’re acting with a pure mind when we’re motivated by genuine feelings of kindness and generosity, and a wise understanding of our responsibility toward both ourselves and our world. When we act from that place, we flow more naturally and easily. And happiness flows more easily to us.

It turns out that I want to exercise and meditate more this year, too. But those things aren’t on my list of resolutions. My intention is to continue building a well-integrated life that allows me to find more of that innate goodness within myself and others, and to share it all around. This picture includes my personal Buddhist practice, life coaching, meditation teaching, and singing. All of these things build upon my natural strengths: a love of learning and growing, an ability to connect deeply with people, and an appreciation of the aesthetic and spiritual beauty in the world. By doing what I love, I tap into an inner wellspring of motivation. Going to the gym or getting on the meditation mat is less about talking myself into it, and more about pursuing things I want because they point me toward who I am at my best.

So if you’ve got some resolutions on your list, I would urge you to spend some time reflecting on what your higher aspirations might be. And be as specific as can about what it might look like to live that way. Take your time, and do it thoughtfully. It can take months to get clarity on what you really want. And know that this is an ongoing project. As we evolve and reach new places, our ideas change too. That’s all part of the process. But most important of all, enjoy the ride. In the end, that’s really how we find joy and gratification in our lives.

Sunada not only teaches the online meditation courses at Wildmind, she runs her own business, Mindful Purpose Life Coaching, through which she coaches people toward finding their innate goodness and living in accordance with it.

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Don't set goals for 2009

2008-12-29T13:49:00.001-08:00

Are you getting ready for the New Year?

What does this mean for you?

Out with the old? Releasing thoughts, habits, ways of being in relationships that do not bring joy or happiness?

In with the new? Making plans, setting goals?

I know I often come up with a list of strategies about what I'm going to do but this year I am going to list the values I want to enhance and strengthen in my life first. Why?

Strategies are just ways we think up to meet a set a values. If we choose a set of strategies, or even one strategy, without an awareness of the value that is supporting then we might:

Be restricting our creativity ~ there might 100 ways we can meet a value but usually our thinking mind thinks of only 2 or 3 strategies

Be setting ourselves up to fail ~ we stop exercising as often as we promised and then we give ourselves a hard time about that or make a series of excuses letting ourselves off the hook

Be setting ourselves up to use will-power which can be mentally draining rather than find joy, self-care and purpose in our goals.

So, I invite you to consider which values you would like to pay attention to in 2009 via a touchstone word...

A Better New Year's Ritual

a simple touchstone word

available anytime, anywhere!

Pick a word that will guide you throughout the year.

It will be your touchstone.

It would remind you of living your life at the values level.

This doesn't mean that you don't take action. It meant that your actions are inspired from your values.

YOUR WORD FOR 2009

Look through this list - you may find a word in here or it may prompt you to add one...

Touchstone words
Compassion
Delight
Generosity
Effortlessness
Wealth
Gratitude
Abundance
Creativity
Willingness
Change
Growth
Freedom
Mastery
Kindness
Health
Presence
Acceptance
Courage
Confidence
Self-Love
Action
Forgiveness
Forgive
Release
Trust
Knowing
Patience
Friendship
Fun
Grace
Laughter
Love
Expansion
Exploration
Adventure
Openness
Discipline
Awe
Awareness
Risk
Gentleness
Choice
Spirit
Prayerfulness
Power
Allow
Artfulness
Attention
Beauty
Joy
Focus
Ritual
Heal
Order
Clarity
Pioneer
Peace
Laziness
No
Yes
Deliberateness
Commitment
Savor
Integrity
Listen

Get quiet over the next few minutes. And pick a word for the year.
Just one word. That's all. Then, hold that word in your mind throughout the year, and let your word guide you to take action.

For instance, let's take one of the examples above.

Let's say you are one of the many people who would normally choose "Get Organized." You look around to see clutter and crap all over your life. You're tired of the chaos. So, you think, "I need to get organized. That should be my Resolution this year."

You decide to try picking one word as a touchstone to your intentions and values.

You sit with your clutter. You spend a few days pondering words that will inspire you. You realize in an "Ah-Ha!" moment that you tend to cling to lots of things. You're scared to let go. So you choose the word "Release" because it inspires you in a bigger way than "Get organized."

So, every time you approach your clutter you remind yourself of that word. "Release," you say softly. You start to let the clutter go. Eventually, you realize that you're still holding on to lots more than just physical clutter. You realize that you hold onto resentment at old relationships. "Release," you remind yourself. You realize that holding on is affecting your diet and health. "Release" applies to some of the extra weight you've gained as well. Throughout the year, you can see clearly how much you hold on. "Release" is your touchstone. It grows you throughout the year. It becomes your guiding force, not your harsh standard.
Your clutter became your teacher simply because you shifted your intent towards it. This wouldn't have happened if you'd opted only to "Get Organized."

What word to choose?

One is ideal.

It gives you focus.

If you master that one word to your satisfaction, you can choose another one in June.

Technorati Tags: new year's resolutions,2009,goals,plans,habits,values,change

An Offering & An Invitation...

2008-12-25T14:40:00.001-08:00

I have found a way to make my resources easy to access and share. I will be adding new resources as I write them. Please feel free to share these resources with anyone you think might enjoy them.

I have posted the following:

Exercises:

CALMER Decisions
Unblocking Blocks to Action
Focusing & Meditation
Connecting to Core Beliefs

E-books:

Heart of Communication ~ workbook exploring the fundamentals of Transformative Communication with activities for you to try.
Change how you Communicate to Change your Life ~ e-book with tips and tools for making your communication work for you.

Audio:

mp3 file of a Guided Focusing Session for stress relief and sorting through issues.

My invitation is to let me know how you found these resources -

Is there anything you would change?

What happened when you tried some of the exercises?

How have these resources contributed to your journey?

I LOVE hearing this information...it helps me reflect on what I write and what to write about.

Please enjoy...

Technorati Tags: free resources,NVC,Focusing,learning,workbook,decisions,stress relief,procrastination

40 Motivational Songs That’ll Keep You Refreshed!

2008-12-24T13:20:00.001-08:00

By Ellesse Chow from Goal Setting College

I love inspirational songs. When I used to commute to the office, there was something I would never leave the house without. My pda phone. Not only does it contain my appointments and schedules, it had my favourite speakers’ seminar mp3 and a compilation of upbeat & inspirational songs. Such inspirational songs never fail to bring up the vibes in me and spice up my mornings. A very good monday morning blues killer!...

Upon the request of one of the Goal Setting College reader Chris, I’ve taken the liberty to compile this list of popular top motivational songs for your enjoyment. I’ve even added some of my personal favourites! But remember, even though inspirational music has the power to drive and motivate you, nothing beats the sound of your inner voice.

Something that’s really true to your heart.

Classic Popular Hits

Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
Chariots of Fire - Vangelis
The Final Countdown - Europe
We Are the Champions - Queen
We Will Rock You - Queen
I’ve Got the Power - Snap
It’s My Life - Bon Jovi
Affirmation - Savage Garden
Beautiful Day - U2
What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
I Feel Good - James Brown
I Can See Clearly Now - Johnny Nash
Lovely Day - Bill Withers
Walking On Sunshine - Katrina and the Waves
Live Like You Were Dying - Tim McGraw
I Believe I Can Fly - R. Kelly
You Gotta Be - Des’ree
When You Believe - Mariah Carey/ Whitney Houston
Hero - Mariah Carey
I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
Bad Day - Daniel Powter
Man In The Mirror - Michael Jackson
I’m Alive - Celine Dione
Tub Thumping - Chumba Wumba
Loose Yourself - Eminem
Remember The Name - Fort Minor
Till I Collapse - Eminem
Return to Innocence - Enigma
O Fortuna - Carmina Burana

My Personal Favourites

Orinoco Flow - Enya
Only Time - Enya
True to Your Heart - 98 degrees & Stevie Wonder
Fly - Celine Dione
Now We Are Free - Lisa Gerard
When You Say Nothing At All - Ronan Keating
New Day - Celine Dione
One Day More - Les Miserables
The Prayer - Celine Dione & Andrea Bocelli
Nessun Dorma - Pavarotti *
Time To Say Goodbye - Sarah Brightman & Andrea Boccelli *

* These 2 songs remind me of Paul Potts. And if you haven’t caught the story of this inspiring car phone salesman, check out here. Feel free to add any inspirational songs that you like to this list!

Technorati Tags: inspirational songs,motivation,music,wellbeing

You can choose the path you walk...

2008-12-23T12:07:00.001-08:00

I invite you listen and as you do sense into your own path...what path have you been walking. What path will you choose to walk?

From the movie by Rolf de Heer, The Tracker

Technorati Tags: Archie,Roach,The Tracker,Rolf de Heer

Trust in oneself leads to...

2008-12-22T21:12:00.001-08:00

I did a second Focusing session exploring what more the metaphor of the oak tree held for me...and I was in a field of trees. Each standing alone - branches not touching (as they might in a forest). But, underneath the ground, their roots were interconnected. Not wrapped around each other but touching kind of like fingertip to fingertip. As I write this my heart gets that familiar, yet strange ache. Not painful, and not neutral. Like it wants to cry??? Oh...no - not cry...like it wants to burst open (an image comes of superman bursting open his business shirt to show who he really is). Yes, that's it.

Now asking Gene's magical question...what if that were possible?? ... and what comes is my heart saying "I CAN take care of you...trust ME."

Oh...more comes....about gently learning to sense, to become attuned to, which way the heart is turning...an image of practicing "Whole-body Focusing oriented yoga"...instead of following series of set asanas...just standing and waiting and then following my body's inclination. This is a training in trusting my heart. Listening to my heart. Embodying my heart.

Whoo...goose-bumps come because just yesterday, I was also doing some inner work on finding what my heart yearns for...at first what came was clarity and then came acceptance and then came TRUST. This is the one. Clarity, Acceptance, Direction all come from Trust. Trusting oneself. Coming home to oneself and then living through heartfelt expression. Whatever that is...

Technorati Tags: trust,yoga,Focusing

normality in the face of tragedy

2008-12-21T19:04:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I witnessed the immediate aftermath of a cycling accident, as I, myself, was riding up the road. I don't know the outcome. The last thing I saw was the paramedics doing CPR. How do I continue doing normal everyday things, in a day where I have witnessed a tragedy?

My mind tells me it is not really my business. This question is a question only the mind could ask. My mind seeks to reconcile, to make sense of, to put things, events, people, information in the right places.

But there something much, much more here. It sits in my body both as an ache and a warmth. Something about bearing witness and sensing the grief I feel. As I write this my eyes tear and my heart aches.

My heart does feel this grief because it doesn't seem to know any boundaries between me and that person. It can't distinguish between the any of the pain relating to the accident - no one pain is more permissible or less permissible. My heart feels empathic pain for the injured cyclist, the driver, the direct witnesses, the families and friends. It just knows that pain and suffering exists where moments before it didn't for that small group of people. It gets the shock, it gets the vulnerability, it gets the frailty of our existence.

So, I stay with this bodily felt sense all about bearing witness to the accident and being with, simply, how my heart holds it. Even, now 24 hours later my heart is holding this pain. And an image comes. My heart is like the roots of an oak tree. It is underground, below what the world sees but it is the source of energy for my mind. My heart draws upon living experience just as roots soak up water and nutrients.

My mind, is just like the oak tree above ground. It grows, adds leaves, loses leaves, grows acorns, drops acorns. It is busy and visible. It is the outwardly living expression of the root system.

For me, what is important about this metaphor is to recognise most of the energy moves from my heart to the mind. I can now remember this sensation as a child. Feeling all the pain around me (and the joy) but my mind not being able to make sense of it, not being able to process it. So, I paid attention to the mind...as the heart seemed too vulnerable, too open the winds of change, the vagaries of life. I remember this as a body memory. I can clearly remember choosing where to put my attention and the mind seemed like a safer bet - at the time.

And now, with some mindfulness training, with Focusing and NVC I sense the time has come to bear witness and be with what my heart knows. To give it ascendancy in my life. And so today, I just acknowledge the ache that sits there. Not painful, just kind of raw. And I resist the temptation of my mind to file it, to analyse it and to distract me from it. I bear witness with my heart's journey of bearing witness to yesterday's tragedy.

And, it seems, my heart can do this and still yearn for a bike ride this morning, still hang out the washing, still write this blog. While my mind is desperate to reconcile, my heart is simply prepared to accept.

Technorati Tags: heart wisdom,mindfulness,tragedy,witness

Hallelujah - embracing what is, as it is

2008-12-21T14:06:00.000-08:00

Here is a little snippet of an interview with Leonard Cohen (via Integral Options Cafe) about the meaning of his song Hallelujah.

I invite you to read this while you listen...

On Hallelujah's universal appeal

"We basically all lead the same kind of lives, and the more authentically a song touches on those areas, which is gain and loss, surrender and victory, popular music has to be about those subjects."

On the meaning of Hallelujah

"Finally there's no conflict between things, finally everything is reconciled but not where we live. This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah'. That regardless of what the impossibility of the situation is, there is a moment when you open your mouth and you throw open your arms and you embrace the thing and you just say 'Hallelujah! Blessed is the name.' And you can't reconcile it in any other way except in that position of total surrender, total affirmation.

"That's what it's all about. It says that none of this - you're not going to be able to work this thing out - you're not going to be able to set - this realm does not admit to revolution - there's no solution to this mess. The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say 'Look, I don't understand a f***ing thing at all - Hallelujah!' That's the only moment that we live here fully as human beings."

Technorati Tags: Leonard Cohen,Hallelujah,duality,acceptance,surrender,music

20+ good reasons to meditate

2008-12-20T12:43:00.000-08:00

No doubt, meditation is gaining momentum. When I type in "meditation in Australia" into Google, I get 341,000 results.

Born from the world's great religious traditions, including Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and others, meditation (in many forms) is also practiced by many, many Australians.

Statistics on people who meditate can be found everywhere. Statistics on people who meditate have shown they become less stressed and more calm. Statistics on people who meditate in groups have even shown the crime rate in that particular area drop significantly.

Healthy mind, healthy body

But what can somebody expect from practicing meditation? Well statistics on people who meditate have shown that daily reflection and rumination has dramatically decreased the occurrence of heart disease. Further, in patients previously diagnosed with heart disease, meditation has been proven to lessen the effects and somewhat reverse the disease.

There's a psychological effect, too. According to a report published by the American Psychological Association,

"meditation interventions have a positive, medium-size effect on depression." In addition, a West Virginia University study found that meditation diminishes psychological stress by 54 per cent.

There's even a physiological benefit.

Just 20 minutes a day of soothing reflection significantly reduces the risk of heart disease and lowers the risk of stroke by 15 per cent, says a study by the University of California. It can also improve your immune response; a University of Wisconsin-Madison study found that meditation increased antibodies by up to 25 per cent.

A Detroit based chemical plant posted the following results three years after implementing meditation:

Absenteeism fell by 85%
Productivity rose 120%
Injuries dropped 70%
Profits increased 520%

According to reports, there have been over 1500 separate studies since 1930. All were related to meditation and its effects on the practitioners.

Some statistics on people who meditate include results like:

Heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and oxygen consumption are all decreased.
Meditators are less anxious and nervous.
Meditators were more independent and self-confident
People who deliberated daily were less fearful of death.
75% of insomniacs who started a daily meditation program were able to fall asleep within 20 minutes of going to bed.
Production of the stress hormone Cortisol is greatly decreased, thus making it possible for those people to deal with stress better when it occurs.
Women with PMS showed symptom improvements after 5 months of steady daily rumination and reflection.
Thickness of the artery walls decreased which effectively lowers the risk of heart attack or stroke by 8% to 15%.
Relaxation therapy was helpful in chronic pain patients.
60% of anxiety prone people showed marked improvements in anxiety levels after 6-9 months.

Not convinced about the benefits of meditation?

Then consider this:

It has been documented that people who use meditation and relaxation techniques may be physiologically younger by 12 to 15 years.

And finally this...

"Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom." - Buddha

Technorati Tags: meditation,health,stress relief,well being

Being with our suffering

2008-12-19T18:23:00.001-08:00

A new friend, Simon, sent me this clip from youtube. It is about 10 minutes long and I invite you to stay with it until the end.

Brilliant, compassionate and useful in day-to-day living.

Technorati Tags: Dharma,Buddhism,Thich Nhat hahn,non-self,impermanence,emotions,suffering,pain relief

The problematic paradox of talk therapy

2008-12-19T13:02:00.001-08:00

In my last post I talked about how some feelings solidify our sense of self and how we get caught up in both the feelings and the story we tell ourselves about them. When we "identify" with our problems we, again, solidify, our sense of self.

Suffering, feelings of discomfort, pain, anxiety, worry, are really nothing more than a disconnect between reality and what we want reality to be. It is the gap between what actually is, and what we think should be. Our expectations of reality are, in fact, our habitual patterns of thinking, our belief systems about ourselves and these, consequently, influence how we relate to experience.

So to work with suffering, to prevent suffering before it has a chance to occur, we need to dive right into the space between reality and our expectations of reality.

So, this alerts me to the paradox of "talk therapy". We go to a therapist to work on a an issue we perceive as a problem in our lives. More often than not we talk about how it feels, what happens and then comes the "why" of it. We dig around in our memories, dig around in the past to try and work our why we do what we do. We can do this from many perspectives: Freudian, Jungian, Gestalt (perspectives within perspectives) and so on. Most of our approaches to our psychological symptoms are based on the assumption that if you go back into the past, somewhere in your personal memory, you will be able to find the root of your present problem. But have we let go of our problem? Have we released the energy it holds in our life? That's not been my experience. it just becomes more and more about me. I learn to see my patterns, I see how the patterns of others have affected me, I become aware of my thinking and so on.

I like the way Michael Stone, a yoga teacher in Toronto, describes our stories:

Narratives are only ideas. As persons in bodies, we are like threads made up of multiple strands, each thread being a story about our likes and dislikes. Some strands are continuous over long periods of time, others like the short bits of wool that are spun into yarn, achieve the appearance of continuity only when seen from a sufficient distance. Practice of yoga postures and attention to breath, give us the tools to find this distance in order to see the distinction between being in the body and resting in our ideas of the body. The more we let the threads of storytelling dissolve the closer we come to the experience of Life. The closer we are to the heartbeat of existence, the less we need the thread of stories.

Speaking only from my personal experience I have found 2 practices which support my letting go of my stories and the illusion of self: Yoga and Focusing.

Why do they lead to release, lead to letting go? They pay attention to our body. Our body is a storehouse for our experience. It records our every living moment in all of our cells, muscles and even our hormones.

Also, when I pay clear attention to my body I become viscerally aware of impermanence and change, of aging, of where I am more stiff today, where I am holding tension, and of the nature of change moment by moment. Even in a single breath I can sense areas of flow, areas of tightness, areas of anticipation; all reflecting the moment-by-moment state of my bodymind. If all of this can happen in a single breath then who is this single self? It becomes increasingly evident that what I am clinging to is simply a process, a verb, living in action. Not a noun - a static object.

So, let's work with the body. Why sit around and talk about how I feel, what my life story is? I am just tracking along the same path. My body, however, can do two critical things. It can show me where I am experiencing stuckness; that is my natural flow of living energy is blocked AND it can tell me what it knows about how to become unstuck and live in my natural flow.

Michael Stone describes scientific underpinnings of stuckness in his yoga journal:

It is said that there are 72,000 nadis in the body. They are an extremely fine network of subtle channels spread throughout the body. Most disease or inflexibility is the result of congestion, blocks or restrictions in the nadi system. The nadis are psychological as well, so when you talk of psychological hindrances, anxieties, neurosis, tendencies or obstacles, we also use the language of the nadis. Psychological knots exist within the nadis in the same way overturned logs or beaver dams interrupt the smooth flow of a river.

I have excerpted some clear descriptions of how yoga can bring release and cut through the illusion of self again from Michael Stone.

All yoga postures are designed to create new patterns of sensation in the body that affect the nervous system and the mind, in such a way that we’re invited to enter into these patterns of sensation as a meditative exercise. But what happens is, the foot behind the head pattern, or the backbend pattern, or the forward bend pattern gives rise to feelings that are uncomfortable, so we do everything we can to stay out of the internal form of the yoga posture, because it challenges the mind.

Our mind is filled with preferences of what feelings you like and what feelings you don’t like. The yoga postures, when done well, are designed to push and pull on you like this. But what they are pushing and pulling on are your stories about yourself, and your stories about the body, and your memories, and very deep and old emotions.

What happens when you enter into the yoga pose with steadiness and ease is that your effort relaxes, and the mind softens. Instead of saying, There is me and my leg, there is just leg, different rotations in the bones, feelings in the muscles, and that just becomes energy. The energy does not belong to me or mine—suddenly the energy is just the natural world expressing itself as your leg. And then, as Patanjali says, the body and universe are indivisible.

Duality is released. The separation of our mind from our body is released. Our stories release.

Once our stories release we can rest with what is, as it is. When there is less separation our heart opens to more of life. We regain our sense of innocent wonderment as we let go of our tendency to filter every new experience through the lenses of old experiences.

Technorati Tags: yoga,therapy,psychology,duality,suffering,mindfulness,happiness

Make yourself feel better - yourself

2008-12-17T22:22:00.001-08:00

The strongest feelings of self are those that make us feel solid, permanent and separate from others. Typically these are feelings which lead to a kind of contraction of our energy such as self-righteousness, anger, self-pity, certainty about an opinion and so on. I can't say they are pleasant feelings, in fact, many of us say we are suffering when we feel this way.

I know I suffer when I cling to how I think things should be. I suffer when I hold on to what I think is my space, my rights, my house...my, my, my...its all the word "my". As I have said before...its all about me.

Let me offer a couple metaphors that have helped me recognise when I am in my "its all about me" state.

One is that I create a metaphorical sense of my own turf and then I fence it. Now, this fence not only keeps me in, limits what I can do and where I can go, it also keeps others out. I start to feel increasingly isolated and also territorial. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Another is the not dissimilar to the Gordian knot. My stories, interpretations, theories, history, excuses, and desires wrap themselves around each other and around me. The knot gets more tangled and tighter and tighter the more I struggle with it.

So, how to reduce suffering of this kind; the kind of our making?

Here are some tried and true invitations from wisdom masters across the ages:

Find one small gate in the fence. Something that you can do to step through.

Call a friend to overcome a bad mood by choosing to have a cheerful conversation.
Go for a walk and rather than dwelling on the problem find one thing that is beautiful, interesting or to be grateful for every block you walk.
Volunteer to help someone...even just carrying their groceries to the car.
Listen to uplifting music, watch some comedies, listen to canned laughter or dance outrageously.
Go out dancing.
Practice loving-kindness meditation or compassion meditation.

This is all about connection. All about seeing the world as being bigger than us and yet a part of us.

Untying the Gordian Knot. The Gordian Knot, seemingly, has no beginning thread and no end thread. Well, as legend would have it Alexander the Great untied the knot by cutting through it with his sword. Cutting through is an underpinning concept in self-awareness practices.

Practice Focusing so that you can hear what your body knows about this experience and how to resolve it.
Take up Insight Meditation - gently noticing your thoughts and feelings as they arise and pass away. In the noticing you gain awareness of the patterns within your own Gordian Knot and can slice through them with the insights that arise.
Keep a reflective journal - notice what you pay attention to, the language you use and how this serves or doesn't serve you. You might also like to keep a journal of your meditation practice.
Try out the work of Byron Katie. Her simple prompts often cut to the quick of any matter.

These practices are about seeing things as they are. When we can accept reality then we suffer less. We stop making up stories and work with what is real and possible. This is not about giving up at all. From a place of acceptance life flows. From a place of resistance it stops. Just the law of nature.

Technorati Tags: acceptance,Gordian Knot,meditation,Focusing,language,exerice,connection,communication,depression,criticism

Instinct, intuition & intelligence

2008-12-15T11:49:00.001-08:00

Ahhh...here is a wonderfully succinct distinction between instinct, intellect and intuition.

Intuition - Knowing without Logic, by Osho

"When the body functions spontaneously,
That is called instinct.
When the soul functions spontaneously,
That is called intuition.
They are alike and yet
Far away from each other.
Instinct is of the body--the gross;
And intuition of is of the soul--the subtle.
And between the two is the mind, the expert,
Which never functions spontaneously.
Mind means knowledge.
Knowledge can never be spontaneous.
Instinct is deeper than intellect and
Intuition is higher than intellect.
Both are beyond the intellect, and both are good." - Osho

In a nutshell:

body «» instinct

mind «» intellect

soul/subconscious «» intuition

So how do we tap in to all of these, intellect, intuition and instinct at the same time to improve the quality of our life?

Focusing! This is the one simple way I get in touch with all, listen to and integrate all three ways of being in this world.

Focusing validates our living experience and assumes that when we listen to ourselves in this particular way, at the interface between body-mind-subconscious we will find the next right step forward in our life. As I have written many, many times, I can't imagine a life without Focusing. My mind can get confused, critical, and carried away. My body can send signals I can't interpret and my subconscious simply operates covertly.

Focusing engages my compassionate, clear mind. It interprets and checks what my body wants me to know and it makes engages my subconscious overtly.

I use Focusing to enhance my meditation practice, to make decisions and to explore if there are more options than my mind can create. I use it at work as a manager to sense into what else is going in any given situation and to improve my practice. You could say Focusing gives me my creative and empathic edge. Essentially, for me, Focusing allows me to integrate instinct & intuition with logic and experience.

With all those benefits you'd think it would be hard to learn! But no! Here is the absolute beauty of Focusing. We are wired to do this - it is just that we have forgotten. You know you see kids do it all the time. They have these flashes of insight, of brilliance that takes your breath away. All we adults have to do is reconnect with that awareness and this is what Gene Gendlin did. He made reconnecting simple and learnable.

You can learn Focusing in 5 or 6 hours - on a course or by phone. Just search my blog for more on Focusing or contact me directly if you are curious.

Technorati Tags: Focusing,intuition,intellect,instinct,Osho

5 Common Sense Keys For Emotional Well-Being

2008-12-14T11:19:00.001-08:00

Here is a wonderful piece not just about emotional wellbeing but also about the power of listening from the Huffington Post, by Anne Naylor. Enjoy.

*********************

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. James Thurber

If common sense was so common, there would be much more of it around. In my experience working with many clients over the years, life transitions and turning points are usually accompanied by emotional upheavals, such as feelings of confusion, chaos, fear, doubt, anger, guilt, resentment and so forth Not trained as a therapist, I do not have the tools to assist a person work through emotional issues. I simply listen. I listen not only to the story being told, but beyond to the greater essence of the person now seeking expression. I look for the seam of gold within, and sooner or later, it shows up. I recognize it and reflect it back.

The seam of gold comes with clarity about what to do next, enthusiasm for the task to be undertaken and unshakable confidence that it will come about. The human spirit when it comes alive is truly inspiring and unstoppable. I have discovered that we are all generously well-equipped to thrive on our journey through life. It can take a wake up call before we are fully aware of our innate strengths and qualities.

The joy and pleasure my work gives me almost goes without saying. To watch a person's face transform and lighten up as they move into the awareness of what they most want in their heart of hearts, with the conviction they can have it, is one of the most precious gifts I get to receive. It is an honour. I believe that the current global turmoil is offering many of us a wake up call to our greater possibilities for fulfilment, to connect with the deeper seam of gold within us, waiting for us to find it.

Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.
Jackson Browne

How do we get to reveal the greater life that is available for us to realize? Negative emotions keep us stuck. Positive emotions liberate us into possibility and opportunity. I believe it is through being as relaxed and as open as possible that we lift ourselves into greater vision and visibility. We can replace the negative emotions with positive ones. It is not that hard to do. It takes willingness.

There are five keys I offer to develop emotional well-being in times of crisis and turmoil:

1. Humour

Limit the time you watch tv news. Watch more comedy. Look for the funny side of life - there is plenty of it about. You might like to create a Playlist of YouTube videos that make you laugh.

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

2. Gratitude

Anyone who has access to a computer has something to be grateful for. It is all too easy to go round looking at all we don't have, or can't have, and sink into feelings of lack and deprivation. Try going for a short walk each day, counting your blessings as you go. Or start a Gratitude Journal and each evening, record at least 5 things you have appreciated, and why you are grateful for them.

A key is to appreciate with gratitude what you find. Everything has value.
Nothing needs to be different from what it is. That's a beginning point.
If you venture forth without accepting things the way they are,
you are in a path of separation and disturbance.
You are going to be off and out of balance.
You will need to come back to acceptance,
which is letting things be what they are
and open to what can become.

John Morton

3. Exercise/Action

Many years ago, I was giving a talk to a Chamber of Commerce group in the South of England. It was a time of economic down turn. Many people were out of work. One woman at the front of the audience caught my eye. She was radiant, bright and enthusiastic. I questioned how come she looked so extraordinarily well. Since she had been out of work, she had been going regularly to the gym, lost weight and was fitter now than she had ever been. She was confident and optimistic that sooner or later, she would find a job that would suit her.

It is much harder to be depressed and pessimistic when you are physically engaged in your life. This could be regular exercise. Or it could be taking action to clear a cellar, bookshelves, clothes closets. You can be creating the space to receive the future life you would most like to be enjoying.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your reactions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. Ralph Waldo Emerson

4. Future Focus

Plan things to look forward to in both the short, and if possible long, term. They do not have to be expensive. Plan a pot luck supper with friends you do not see often. Join a local dance, choir or theatre group and work towards a performance. Schedule a visit to an art gallery, museum or open air market with your family. Through the process of serendipity, you may discover things about yourself, and your future life, that will lift your spirits.

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom. Marilyn Ferguson

5. Language

The language we use can lift or lower us. It is easy to allow ourselves to dip into worst case scenarios, I call them tabloid dramas, which may never happen. By observing the words you use, you may find when you are entertaining limitation, fear and doubt. Experiment using the language of opportunity and possibility. Imagine the good that might be right around the corner, instead of the catastrophes. The words we think and speak condition how we feel, either into confidence or into contraction.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it. Unknown

Technorati Tags: wellbeing,resilience,listening,personal development,chice,decisions

Great work, values & vision

2008-12-13T17:01:00.001-08:00

Great work, values, vision. These themes seem to be popping up in my life at the moment. What do they really mean? How do we and can we give expression to our values in the way we live?

These questions drive my business which is all about proactively creating the life & relationships we desire - personally, at work and in your community. We, specifically, help individuals, teams & organisations get clarity about their vision & values.

This is the "why" of what you do. Remember: Vision without action is only a hallucination.

Once you are clear on your "why" we support you in giving living expression to that vision and your values. Right action is the "how" of what you do.

Right action embraces:

Clarity about your "vision" - know your why & stay connected to it
Integrity - consistently integrating your values in all areas of your life & business
Authenticity - living in alignment or harmony with who you really are
Inter-Connectivity - sensing how each & every action is connected to another action and its impact in the world.

In the next few posts I will explore some of these concepts; clarity, integrity, authenticity and inter-connectivity.

In the meantime this post arrived in my inbox today. Do you think the universe is trying to tell me something?

The Avatar's Advantage

By Tad Waddington, Ph.D. on December 13, 2008 in Smarts

     A traveller meets two bricklayers and asks each what he's doing. The first mutters, "Working for a buck." The second proclaims, "Building a school that will educate children for generations." Both bricklayers are doing the same work, but the work of the second is imbued with more meaning, because it embodies a greater value. It thus gives greater motive force. This embodying a value through action is how people raise their mundane actions to a higher level.

     There are two ways to do this: from the outside in and from the inside out. With the outside-in, you observe a problem in the world and seek to solve it. Noah Webster published his dictionary as a way to create a common language that would unify the people of the early United States. The inside-out approach starts with some form of what the Greeks called arête, meaning virtue or excellence. The more arête you have to work with, the more you can achieve. The inside-out approach to action seeks to apply arête to the world. A musician can't get a tune out of her head. An engineer creates a nifty device. A teacher loves being around kids.

     Whether from the inside out or from the outside in, the value is the why of the action. It is future-oriented. Business strategist Peter Senge said, "In every instance where one finds a long-term view actually operating in human affairs, there is a long-term vision at work. The cathedral builders of the Middle Ages laboured a lifetime with the fruits of their labours still a hundred years in the future."

     Your values are your animating force, because, according to the poet Muriel Rukeyser, "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." In other words, in the realm you care about -- the human realm -- the nature of the world matters less than the stories you tell yourself about the nature of the world. For example, you wash your baby not just so you have a clean baby; it is another way to show that you love your child. Your values should stoke the fires of your soul and provoke your passions

Technorati Tags: values,vision,work,problem solving,creativity,self-awareness,Senge

Building Emotional Resilience using 3 simple words

2008-12-12T21:31:00.001-08:00

Another neat article about emotions & mindfulness.

I will comment at the very bottom on a couple of words that make emotional regulation so much easier.

Proactive Change current newsletter: December 2008

by Serge Prengel

The cool factor: Emotional self regulation & mindful behavior

This past Sunday’s New York Times had an article about “The Cool Factor”. Starting with the observation that, in Obama, “Americans elected a man repeatedly recognized for his uncommon calmness.” The article goes on to explain that calmness can be cultivated.

A lot of my work has to do with “emotional regulation”, or, as I prefer to describe it, “mindful behavior”. In this newsletter, I will first include some excerpts from that article, and then go on to briefly discuss how this type of “mindful behavior” differs from the traditional concepts of “self control” and “willpower”.

1. Excerpts from “The Cool Factor”, by Kate Zernicke, New York Times, November 30, 2008:

… Calm, as applied to No Drama Obama, often comes linked to the modifier “preternatural.” But the calm temperament is not so superhuman, nor is it entirely the gift of the chosen few. It can be cultivated, even as the world cleaves around us…

… “What studies have shown us is that there’s great plasticity, even though people are genetically built in ways that make them respond anxiously or not,” said James J. Gross, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of its psychophysiology laboratory. “Genetically identical people can give very different outward impressions because they think differently, they regulate their emotions differently…”

… Researchers estimate that about half the variation in our personalities reflects our genes, based on studies comparing, say, adopted siblings or fraternal and identical twins. The rest is shaped by environment, though how is harder to know…

… Many researchers argue for two ways to think about calmness: you are calm, or you learn how to be. Imagine two people with equally high measures of neuroticism dealing with the same irascible boss. One gets yelled at and leaves the boss’s office perfectly composed; the other gets yelled at and flees to the bathroom in tears or storms out and kicks the wall. The difference is that the first person has learned to regulate.

People tend to think that the confrontation produces the reaction; if you’re faced with an irrational rant, who can blame you for falling apart? But researchers in emotional regulation tease out a factor in between: how we think. Between the “a” of the antecedent and the “c” of the consequence, they argue, is the crucial “b,” for belief, which in the case of the person melting down might sound something like: “My boss hates me, everyone hates me, I’m a total failure.” That is the opportunity for emotional regulation…

… “Even if you’re someone who is initially anxious, you can develop tricks and strategies, so someone on the outside would say: ‘Her, anxious? She’s awesome at cocktail parties, she’s great at public speaking,’ ” Professor Gross said. “They wouldn’t understand that if you didn’t have those strategies, you wouldn’t be able to do those things.”

(This is the end of the excerpts from the article.)

2. Does this type of “mindful behavior” differ from the traditional concepts of “self control” and “willpower”?

First, it makes sense to acknowledge the similarities between “emotional regulation” and “self control”. In both cases, the approach is proactive:

- You observe how you tend to react;
- You decide that this is not how you want to behave;
- You make the effort to change what you do in order to get to the desired result.

However, there is a major difference between the traditional concept of self control through willpower, and a mindful approach to self regulation. It is about how emotions are handled.

The phrase “keep a stiff upper lip” captures the traditional approach. Emotions are seen as dangerous, and are best handled by being repressed. It’s not just that you don’t express dangerous emotions, you train yourself not to feel them. The stiff upper lip reflects the straightjacket that restrains your emotions. You may appear calm, but you’re certainly not cool.

A mindful approach to self regulation does not in any way ignore emotions, even difficult ones. To the contrary. You get more in touch with a bodily felt sense of your emotions. You become more able to notice the difference between feeling an emotion and acting it out.

You experience that there is more to you than the emotion that had seemed to be overwhelming. There’s a bigger container, within which the difficult emotion is contained, not repressed. You develop more resilience, i.e. the capacity to contain difficult emotions. As a result, you have more “bandwidth”, more inner resources, to handle the actual crises that trigger difficult emotions.

You develop a more integrated sense of self. A sense that your emotions and will and intellect are harmoniously integrated, instead of the jagged experience in which they too often seemed to work at cross purposes. Grace under pressure.

******************************************

Now here is my contribution to these 2 great articles; there are a couple of simple words to remind yourself that you are more than your emotions. If you can remember to say these then you will find your emotional resilience strengthening and you will find you have more space to choose a response (as opposed to just reacting from habit and hurt).

1. Say "Hello" : If you can learn to say hello to whatever is going on it will settle.

"Hello anger and hurt, I can sense you there, tightening my shoulders and squeezing my guts."

"Hello fear, I know you are there in my shakiness".

2. Use the words "something" and "it"; this acknowledges that whatever emotion is attracting your attention, it is not you, nor the only emotion.

"I sense something there like anger."

"Something in me is feeling upset right now."

"Something is feeling fearful and it needs reassurance. It wants me to be safe."

All 3 of these simple words create the space we need to be with the situation responsively and so develop emotional resilience.

They also give us moment to pause and take a breath.

Technorati Tags: emotional resilience,Focusing,calm,temper,anger management,mindfulness

Finding Great Work in any situation

2008-12-12T15:29:00.001-08:00

I have a rule of thumb. If something (an idea, a person, a book or a course etc) comes into my life twice in a 48 hour period and 3 or more times within the week, I STOP and PAY ATTENTION.

This not totally random - otherwise I might be paying attention to billboards or the latest "trendy" idea. It means, that it comes in at just the time I am asking a question or making a decision.

For example, this week I have been wondering about my work. My day job is satisfying and incredibly stressful. I work for a vocational training organisation as a Head teacher which means I manage a department. My job is two-thirds management and one third teaching. I have been noticing that the adjectives I use to describe it are getting progressively less enthusiastic. I still LOVE teaching with the same passion as the first day I started. And I notice the systemic stuff is where my pain is...the admin, the organisational frame and the current structural change going on.

My other job is my small business, Transformative Living which is a coaching, training and facilitation service based around the key practices of NVC and Focusing, Mindfulness and mediation. Often, family ask me why I do both. However, the time and energy I put into Transformative Living is not "work" work. I lose my sense of time. The effort feels exhilarating. Whatever I do feels like progress even if it doesn't work because I am learning, clarifying and getting closer and closer to my own authentic message.

However, given the current climate of change and restraint I find two tensions arising in my life.

At the outset of an economic recession do I really want to be considering giving up a full-time permanent position? Also if we are going in to a recession will clients disappear too, as their economic circumstances become less stable and more constrained.

Just giving up my day job and building my small business. Saying no to what I don't love and yes to what I do. Taking the plunge and trusting that I will find a way to make it work. At the moment it seems like so long as I straddle the two neither are getting my full Presence.

I have also noticed a yearning to really support my staff to do more than just "ride out" or "rail against" the current structural changes going on in my day job. I noticed I want my responses to be more than they currently are...we have to find a way, there's nothing we can do about it, we have to tighten our belts etc etc. In other words,

"this is out of our control so just knuckle down and get on with it - please don't come to me with your pain as I am in pain too."

So, I took myself off to a coaching course. Being SUPER busy, on Thursday, I took a one day course all about Great Work and Coaching for Busy Managers.

There were so many things I loved about this workshop, reconnecting with what I know to be GREAT work, looking realistically at how much of my day job is GOOD work and even BAD work. It reminded me of why I have stayed in my job - for the GREAT WORK moments. And whether I need to take the plunge and suggest we do GREAT WORK sessions in my section and with my managers to authentically see how we all fit together beyond our "roles and responsibilities".

I started to sense that I can do my LOVE work even in my day job by shifting my attention to the GREAT WORK and exploring strategies for reducing the work that takes me away from that.

Then, when I stumbled upon this post the very next day, Friday, by Mark Silver, I have to say I feel as though I am being more than called to pay attention.

The Truth: Making a Living Requires Work

There’s a popular idea floating around that says: God/Divine/Source wants you to have it easy. Just stay happy, stay focused on your dreams, and everything you need will come to you.

This is a misunderstanding of a profound spiritual teaching. The Sufis talk about it like this: You have been promised ease around your sustenance.

The problem? This is a teaching of the heart, not the ego. For the ego, “ease” means easy, no work, lying around on the beach while the cash flows in.

For the heart, however, “ease” means something entirely different. What brings ease to the heart is when your work (1) benefits others and has meaning, (2) hurts no one and doesn’t accumulate what is referred to as “sin” or “karma,” and (3) is honest. If you earn a living while accomplishing those three, even if there is some hard work involved, your heart will be at ease.

It’s no sin to work hard at your business. Your business is supposed to bring ease to your heart, but it isn’t necessarily going to be easy.

So, it seems to me, I am getting a message loud and clear that GREAT WORK for me is about the process. In my day job how can I bring my presence to how people are feeling about change, their fears and anxieties and be with them as they tap in to their own GREAT WORK? How can I offer my coaching skills as we negotiate the new territory of our workplace which is so different to the old?

AND, what does this mean about the clients I love working with in my small business? Who am I meant to do my GREAT WORK with? I was working on this very topic yesterday…exploring what my “gift” is as a coach. My mind made a neat list of my strengths but something didn’t sit quite right with that. So I did some Focusing and realised that what I have to offer as, a coach, is where I have had to pay attention in my own life to be the change I want to see in the world. My vulnerabilities are actually my gift as a coach. After all, procrastination has never been a problem for me, so I could “solutions coach” someone coming to me with that as their key issue. “Well, it’s easy for you” might be a reasonable refrain from my client.

But how much deeper, more empathic and sensitive, more heartfelt is my coaching when someone comes to me with a challenge I, too, have explored or am exploring. I know how it feels, I know the fear or anxiety or self-doubt. We coaches often tell people their problems are potentially their greatest gift.

The whole reason I spent so much time learning and practising NVC and Focusing, Mindfulness and mediation is because connection, compassion, empathy, patience, trust and forgiveness have been so bloody hard for me. In the past, and still, up to a point, I would rather feel half alive than feel vulnerable. I would prefer to chop off my right arm than ask for help. I rail against unfairness, injustice and dishonesty - not that it changes anything. I am really railing against reality and my own judgments. I prefer logic over emotions (oohh... so messy and unpredictable) and really, to be brutally honest, I like things to go my way. Oh dear. However, this has been wonderfully fertile soil for my personal development and this very soil has nurtured my small seedlings of authentic living.

My edge was, and still is, how to stay connected with others even when times are tough, how to see things as they are rather than as I want them to be or think they should be, how to know and trust myself inwardly, to trust my experiencing and check in with what my body-mind knows. How to resolve conflict beyond just compromises...to generating connection and understanding. I am, by character, an impatient, fast thinking, impulsive, judgemental woman. And as I practice Transformative Living I find it curious that the very things I love coaching and teaching are the very things I found by acknowledging my vulnerabilities and they, in turn, find the precious gem in those vulnerabilities.

Focusing, Mindfulness and NVC are transformative because they find the gift inside the pain, the gift inside the judgement, or the gift inside whatever it is we want to change and when we accept this gift we are able to offer this precious and unique gift to others.

And so it can be for coaches too. Rather than coaching from our accomplishments maybe there is something profound and world-changing about coaching from our vulnerability. Coaching from the heart, rather than the ego-mind.

Its counter-intuitive and authentic.

Technorati Tags: Great Work,work,jobs,coaching,NVC,Focusing,self-awareness

12 Steps for Compassionate Living

2008-12-08T13:37:00.001-08:00

Millions of people credit the twelve steps for their recovery from addiction to alcohol and other substances. You may not have personal or professional experience in this area. So, you may wonder, how are these steps relevant to us?

Perhaps we have realised we have been addicted to a particular way of thinking and communicating that is demanding, or judging or blaming. Or perhaps we have been addicted to a particular pattern of behaviour to get our needs met, all the while wondering why it only works some of the time and why it doesn't feel so good.

Perhaps you have realised that doing the same thing is only going to get you to the same place. And you are ready for something different and NVC or compassionate communication is one of the ways you can create the life you want.

The original 12 steps are not a list of instructions specific to substance abuse or addiction. They describe a path toward self-discovery and personal growth. This is what I find very inspiring.

So please enjoy reading this wonderful take on the 12 steps and NVC:

Twelve Steps for Compassionate Living

by Bar Lowerberg, Santa Cruz, CA

1. We recognized that without compassion and empathy in our lives, we experienced disconnection from our selves and from one another.

2. Came to believe that a Divine Energy Source exists in each of us that connects us with our needs, values, and the joy of natural giving.

3. Made a commitment to view life objectively, honestly, and open-heartedly with curiosity and wonder.

4. Desired to stay connected to ourselves by acknowledging our feelings and needs.

5. Embraced the expression of our feelings and needs transparently to ourselves and with one another.

6. Made requests that serve life in meeting our needs.

7. Endeavoured to compassionately accept our selves and others.

8. Seeing our past from the eyes of compassion, we made a list of all persons who may have been stimulated when we put our needs before their needs.

9. Shared our regrets with those people whenever possible, except when to do so would not serve them or others.

10.Continued to be mindful when we said or did something that did not meet the needs of others and shared our honest regret.

11.Embraced a life of compassion, contribution, and gratitude arising from the Divine Energy Source within. Learned to mourn needs not satisfied and celebrate needs met.

12.Having experienced the transformative power of compassion and empathy, we sought to share these gifts with others and to practice their application throughout our lives.

Technorati Tags: change,12 steps,compassionate communication,NVC

Measuring Empathy

2008-12-07T23:48:00.001-08:00

This is really interesting. That which seemed immeasurable can now be measured? Listen and learn. Direct download link at the bottom of the intro.

from Neuroscene on Sun, 30 November 2008

Social Neuroscience: Measuring and Quantifying Human Empathy

One of the most exciting areas of neuroscience involves the exploration of the biological and physiological underpinnings of human social interaction. And as researchers discover more and more about the critical role that mirror neurons appear to play in our lives, the relatively new field of “social neuroscience” is rapidly becoming the central front from which we examine how the brain influences social behavior, and vice versa.

In this podcast, we speak with Dr. Carl Marci who is the Director of Social Neuroscience for the Psychotherapy Research Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Marci is involved with some of the most advanced research that focuses on measuring and quantifying the human emotion of empathy.
Be sure to listen in on this podcast where we discuss a promising new development in the one of the hottest areas of neuroscience today.

Direct download: NeuroScene_Podcast_Dr._Carl_Marci_113008.mp3
Category: Cognition -- posted at: 5:27 PM

Technorati Tags: empathy,neuroscience

7 steps to transform our labels

2008-12-07T11:59:00.001-08:00

by ianpeatey on December 7th, 2008 who writes a blog called Quantum Learning.

The labels we attach to ourselves and to others have a nasty habit of getting in the way of seeing the human being lurking underneath. The purpose of labelling is to create some order or structure and help us identify things quickly and easily.

This doesn’t work too well with people.

Trying to create something static and fixed out of a creature who, by nature, is a complex and ever changing creature is fruitless. Unless we are clear what lies beneath the label. Try this exercise to have a deeper look at how this labelling may be influencing your life. It’s designed to look at labels you (or others) attach to yourself although you could easily adapt it to look at labels you attach to other people.

The exercise takes about 10 minutes and you can do it as many times as you want with different labels. As you follow each step notice and listen to whatever reactions come up for you. Read more...

Technorati Tags: labels,NVC,self-empathy,self-awareness,beliefs,expectations,judgements

Happiness is contagious: study

2008-12-07T02:02:00.001-08:00

I remember my mother saying if you want to be happy, mix with happy people. If you want to stay married, mix with happily married couples. Folk wisdom? Read on...feel free to comment on your experiences.

For me, I feel as though I grew up in the era of cynicism (The 1980's and 90's). In some twisted logic I sense that cynicism was considered an antidote to vulnerability. Actually what is was was an antidote to connection, compassion and recognising how vital interdependence is to our emotional, social and even global survival.

I am so relieved "happiness" is now ok and even cool. Relieved for the world and relieved for my children. Happiness, tempered with awareness leads to resilience, hope, and a belief that our future matters. What we focus on is what we see in the world...

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor – Fri Dec 5, 5:08 am ET

Reuters – Carnival revellers participate in an afternoon parade in Ipanema neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, February …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Happiness is contagious, researchers reported on Thursday.

The same team that demonstrated obesity and smoking spread in networks has shown that the more happy people you know, the more likely you are yourself to be happy.

And getting connected to happy people improves a person's own happiness, they reported in the British Medical Journal.

"What we are dealing with is an emotional stampede," Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a telephone interview.

Christakis and James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, have been using data from 4,700 children of volunteers in the Framingham Heart Study, a giant health study begun in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1948.

They have been analyzing a trove of facts from tracking sheets dating back to 1971, following births, marriages, death, and divorces. Volunteers also listed contact information for their closest friends, co-workers, and neighbors.

They assessed happiness using a simple, four-question test.

"People are asked how often during the past week, one, I enjoyed life, two, I was happy, three, I felt hopeful about the future, and four, I felt that I was just as good as other people," Fowler said.

The 60 percent of people who scored highly on all four questions were rated as happy, while the rest were designated unhappy.

CONNECTIONS EQUAL HAPPINESS

People with the most social connections -- friends, spouses, neighbors, relatives -- were also the happiest, the data showed. "Each additional happy person makes you happier," Christakis said.

"Imagine that I am connected to you and you are connected to others and others are connected to still others. It is this fabric of humanity, like an American patch quilt."

Each person sits on a different-colored patch. "Imagine that these patches are happy and unhappy patches. Your happiness depends on what is going on in the patch around you," Christakis said.

"It is not just happy people connecting with happy people, which they do. Above and beyond, there is this contagious process going on."

And happiness is more contagious than unhappiness, they discovered.

"If a social contact is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15 percent," Fowler said. "A friend of a friend, or the friend of a spouse or a sibling, if they are happy, increases your chances by 10 percent," he added.

A happy third-degree friend -- the friend or a friend of a friend -- increases a person's chances of being happy by 6 percent.

"But every extra unhappy friend increases the likelihood that you'll be unhappy by 7 percent," Fowler said.

The finding is interesting but it is useful, too Fowler said.

"Among other benefits, happiness has been shown to have an important effect on reduced mortality, pain reduction, and improved cardiac function. So better understanding of how happiness spreads can help us learn how to promote a healthier society," he said.

The study also fits in with other data that suggested -- in 1984 -- that having $5,000 extra increased a person's chances of becoming happier by about 2 percent.

"A happy friend is worth about $20,000," Christakis said.

His team also is examining the spread of depression, loneliness, and drinking behavior.

(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Jackie Frank)

Technorati Tags: happiness,personal development

Wisdom Book

2008-12-06T19:22:00.001-08:00

watch and contemplate...

Youtube video on wisdom

What would you say about wisdom?

Technorati Tags: wisdom

Listening 2: a poem by Rumi

2008-12-05T22:33:00.001-08:00

Listen and feel the beauty of your separation,

the unsayable absence.

There is a moon inside every human being.

Learn to be companions with it.

Give more of your life to this listening.

As brightness is to time,

so you are to the one who talks

to the deep ear in your chest.

I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears

when that one steps near and begins to speak.

Rumi

Technorati Tags: Rumi,listening,inner voice,wisdom

Spiritual Basis of Nonviolent Communication

2008-12-03T23:51:00.001-08:00

A Question and Answer Session with Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.

Is spirituality important in the process of Nonviolent Communication?

I think it is important that people see that spirituality is at the base of Nonviolent Communication, and that they learn the mechanics of the process with that in mind. It’s really a spiritual practice that I am trying to show as a way of life. Even though we don’t mention this, people get seduced by the practice. Even if they practice this as a mechanical technique, they start to experience things between themselves and other people they weren’t able to experience before. So eventually they come to the spirituality of the process. They begin to see that it’s more than a communication process and realize it’s really an attempt to manifest a certain spirituality. So I have tried to integrate the spirituality into the training in a way that meets my need not to destroy the beauty of it through abstract philosophizing.

What does God mean to you?

I need a way to think of God that would work for me, other words or ways to look at this beauty, this powerful energy, and so my name for God is “Beloved Divine Energy.” For a while it was just Divine Energy but then I was reading some of the Eastern religions, and Eastern poets, and I loved how they had this personal, loving connection with this Energy. And I found that it added to me to call it “Beloved” Divine Energy. To me this Beloved Divine Energy is life, connection to life.

What is your favorite way of knowing Beloved Divine Energy?

It is how I connect with human beings. I know Beloved Divine Energy by connecting with human beings in a certain way. I not only see Divine Energy, I taste Divine Energy, I feel Divine Energy, and I am Divine Energy. I’m connected with Beloved Divine Energy when I

connect with human beings in this certain way. Then God is very alive for me. Also talking with trees, talking with dogs and pigs, those are some of my other favorite ways.

How did you develop Nonviolent Communication?

Nonviolent Communication evolved from my attempt to get conscious of what this Beloved Divine Energy is and how to connect with it. I was very dissatisfied with clinical psychology because it is pathology based and I didn’t like its language. It didn’t give me a view of the beauty of human beings. So, after I got my degree I decided to go more in the direction of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.

I decided to look at this side and ask myself the scary question, “What are we and what are we meant to be?” I found that there was very little written about this in psychology. So I took a crash course in comparative religion because I saw they talked more about this question. And this word “love” kept coming up in each of them.

I used to hear the word love as many people use it in a religious sense like, “You should love everybody.” I used to get really annoyed at the word love. “Oh yeah, I’m supposed to love Hitler?” I didn’t know the words “New Age Bullshit” but I used what was my equivalent then. I tried to understand better what love means because I could see it had so much meaning for so many millions of people in all of these religions. What is it, and how do you do this “love”?

Nonviolent Communication really came out of my attempt to understand this concept of love and how to manifest it, how to do it. I came to the conclusion that it was not just something you feel, but it is something we manifest, something we do, something we have. And what is this manifestation? It is giving of ourselves in a certain way.

What do you mean, “giving of ourselves”?

To me, giving of ourselves means an honest expression of what’s alive in us in this moment. It intrigues me why every culture asks upon greeting each other, “How are you?” It’s such an important question. What a gift it is to be able to know at any given moment what is alive in someone.

To give a gift of one’s self is a manifestation of love. It is when you reveal yourself nakedly and honestly, at any given moment, for no other purpose than as a gift of what’s alive in you. Not to blame, criticize, or punish. Just “Here I am, and here is what I would like.” This is my vulnerability at this moment. To me, that is a way of manifesting love.

And the other way we give of ourselves is through how we receive another person’s message. To receive it empathically, connecting with what’s alive in them, making no judgment. Just to hear what is alive in the other person and what they would like. So Nonviolent Communication is just a manifestation of what I understand love to be.

Nonviolent Communication came out of your desire to manifest love?

I was also helped by empirical research in psychology that defined the characteristics of healthy relationships and by studying people who were living manifestations of loving people. Out of these sources I pulled together this process that helped me to connect with people in what I could understand is a loving way.

And then I saw what happened when I did connect with people in this way. This beauty, this power, connected me with an energy that I choose to call Beloved Divine Energy. So Nonviolent Communication helps me stay connected with that beautiful Divine Energy within myself and to connect with it in others. And certainly when I connect that Divine Energy within myself with the Divine Energy in others, what happens then is the closest I know of what it is to be connected to God.

How do you prevent Ego from interfering with your connection with God?

By seeing Ego as very closely tied to the way my culture has trained me to think, and trained me to communicate. And how the culture has trained me to meet my needs in certain ways, to get my needs mixed up with certain strategies I might use to meet my needs. So I try to remain conscious of these three ways that the culture has programmed me to do things that really aren’t in my best interest, to function more from Ego than from my connection with Divine Energy. I have tried to learn ways for training myself to be conscious when I’m thinking in these culturally learned ways and I’ve incorporated these into Nonviolent Communication.

Then you believe that the language of our culture prevents us from knowing our Divine Energy more intimately?

Oh yes, definitely. I think our language makes it really hard, especially the language given to us by the cultural training most of us seem to have gone through, and the associations “God” brings up for people. Judgmental, or right/wrong thinking is one of the hardest things I’ve found to overcome in teaching Nonviolent Communication over the years. The people that I work with have all gone to schools and churches and it’s very easy for them, if they like Nonviolent Communication, to say it’s the “right way” to communicate. It’s very easy to think that Nonviolent Communication is the goal.

I’ve altered a Buddhist parable that relates to this question. Imagine a beautiful, whole, and sacred place. And imagine that you could really know God when you are in that place. But let’s say that there is a river between you and that place and you’d like to get to that place but you’ve got to get over this river to do it. So you get a raft, and this raft is a real handy tool to get you over the river. Once you’re across the river you can walk the rest of the several miles to this beautiful place. But the Buddhist parable ends by saying that, “One is a fool who continues on to the sacred place carrying the raft on their back.”

Nonviolent Communication is a tool to get me over my cultural training so I can get to the place. It’s not the place. If we get addicted to the raft, attached to the raft, it makes it harder to get to the place. People just learning the process of Nonviolent Communication can forget all about the place. If they get too locked into the raft, the process becomes mechanical.

Nonviolent Communication is one of the most powerful tools that I’ve found for connecting with people in a way that helps me get to the place where we are connected to the Divine, where what we do toward one another comes out of Divine Energy. That’s the place I want to get to.

Is this the spiritual basis of Nonviolent Communication?

The spiritual basis for me is that I’m trying to connect with the Divine Energy in others and connect them with the Divine in me, because I believe that when we are really connected with that Divinity within each other and ourselves, that people enjoy contributing to one

another’s well being more than anything else. So for me, if we’re connected with the Divine in others and ourselves, we are going to enjoy what happens, and that’s the spiritual basis. In this place violence is impossible.

Is this lack of connection to Divine Energy responsible for violence in the world?

I would say it this way: I think we have been given the gift of choice to create the world of our choosing. And we’ve been given all of this great and abundant world for creating a world of joy and nurturing. To me, the violence in the world comes about when we get alienated or disconnected from this Energy. How do we get connected when we are educated to be disconnected? I believe it’s our cultural conditioning and education that disconnects us from God, especially our education about God.

Walter Wink writes about how domination cultures use certain teachings about God to maintain oppression. That’s why Bishops and Kings have often been closely related. The Kings needed the Bishops to justify the oppression, to interpret the holy books in ways that justified punishment, domination, and so forth.

How do we overcome this conditioning?

I’m often in between people in a lot of pain. I remember working with twenty Serbians and twenty Croatians. Some of the people there had family members killed by the other side and they all had generations of poison pumped into their heads about the other side. They spent three days expressing their rage and pain to each other. Fortunately we were there about seven days.

One word I haven’t used yet in speaking about this is the word “inevitability”. So many times I have seen that no matter what has happened, if people connect in this certain way that it is inevitable that they will end up enjoying giving to one another. It is inevitable. For me my work is like watching the magic show. It’s too beautiful for words.

But sometimes this Divine Energy doesn’t work as fast as I think it should. I remember sitting there in the middle of all this rage and pain and thinking, “Divine Energy, if you can heal all this stuff why are you taking so long, why are you putting these people through this?” And the Energy spoke to me, and it said, “You just do what you can to connect. Bring your energy in. Connect and help the other people connect and let me take care of the rest.” But even though that was going on in one part of my brain, I knew joy was inevitable. If we could just keep getting connected to our own Divine Energy and to each other’s.

And it happened. It happened with great beauty. The last day everybody was talking about joy. And many of them said, “You know I thought I was never going to feel joy again after what we’ve been through.” This was the theme on everybody’s lips. So that evening the twenty Serbians and twenty Croatians, who seven days earlier had only unimaginable pain in relation to one another, celebrated the joy of life together.

We gain this connection to each other by knowing God?

Here again I want to stay away from intellectualizing about God. If by “knowing God” we mean this intimate connection with Beloved Divine Energy, then we gain every second as experiencing heaven.

The heaven I gain from knowing God is this inevitability, to know it is inevitable, that no matter what the hell is going on that if we get to this level of connection with each other, if we get in touch with each other’s Divine Energy, it’s inevitable that we will enjoy giving and we’ll give back to life. I’ve been through such ugly stuff with people that I don’t get worried about it anymore, it’s inevitable. If we get that quality of connection, we’ll like where it gets us.

It amazes me how effective it is. I could tell you similar examples between the extremist Israelis, both politically and religiously, and the same on the Palestinian side, and between the Hutus and the Tutsis, and the Christian tribe in Nigeria. With all of them it amazes me how easy it is to bring about this reconciliation and healing. Once again, all we have to do is get both sides connected to the other person’s needs. To me the needs are the quickest, closest way to getting in connection with that Divine Energy. Everyone has the same needs. The needs come because we’re alive.

How do you get enemies to recognize that they need to give to each other?

A: When you get people connected at that level it’s hard to maintain those “enemy” images. Nonviolent Communication in its purity is the most powerful, quickest way I’ve found to get people to go from life alienated ways of thinking where they want to hurt each other, to enjoying giving to each other.

When you have a couple of people facing each other, Hutu and Tutsi, and their families have been killed by each other, it’s amazing that in two or three hours we can get them nurturing each other. It’s inevitable. Inevitable. That’s why I use this approach.

It amazes me how simple it is given the amount of suffering that has gone on, and how quickly it can happen. Nonviolent Communication really quickly heals when people have experienced a lot of pain. This motivates me to want to make it happen even more quickly because the way we’re doing it now still takes a while.

How do we get this done more quickly with the other 800,000 Hutus and Tutsis, and the rest of the planet? I would like to explore what would happen if we could make movies or television shows of this process, because I’ve seen that when two people go through the process with other people watching, that vicarious learning, healing and reconciliations happen. So I would like to explore ways to use the media to get masses of people to go quickly through this process together.

Have you encountered any cultural or language barriers to this process?

A: This amazes me how few and how little they are. When I first started to teach this process in another language I really doubted that it could be done. I remember the first time I was in Europe I was going to go first to Munich and then to Geneva. My colleague and I both doubted that we could get this through in another language. She was going to do it in French and I would be there for her to ask me questions if something came up. I was going to at least try to see if we could go through translators. But it worked so well without any problems, and I find the same thing everywhere. So I just don’t worry about it, I’ll do it in English and you translate it and it works very well. I can’t think of any culture that we’ve had any problem with other than little things, but not with the essence of it. Not only have we had no problem but also there are repeated variations of people saying that this is essentially what their religion says. It’s old stuff, they know this stuff, and they’re grateful for this manifestation, but it’s nothing new.

Do you believe a spiritual practice is important for practicing nonviolence?

I recommend in all workshops that people take time to ask themselves this question, “How do I choose to connect with other human beings?” and to be as conscious as they can about that. To make sure it’s their choice and not the way they’ve been programmed to choose. Really, what is the way you would choose to connect with other human beings?

Gratitude also plays a big role for me. If I express gratitude when I am conscious of the human act that I want to express it for, consciousness of how I feel when the act occurs, whether it’s my act or someone else’s, and what needs of mine it fulfills, then expressing gratitude fills me with consciousness of the power that we human beings have to enrich lives. It makes me aware that we are Divine Energy, that we have such power to make life wonderful, and that there is nothing we like better than to do just that.

To me, that is powerful evidence of our Divine Energy, that we have this power to make life so wonderful, and that there is nothing we like more. That’s why part of my spiritual practice is just to be conscious of gratitude.

How basic is this need to give to one another?

I think the need to enrich life is one of the most basic and powerful needs we all have. Now another way to say this is that we need to act from the Divine Energy within us. And I think that when we “are” that Divine Energy that there is nothing we like more, nothing in which we find more joy, than enriching life, than using our immense power to enrich life.

But when we are trying to meet this need of ours to “live” this Divine Energy, trying to contribute to life, there is a request that goes with it. We have a request for feedback from whichever creature whose life we are trying to enrich. We want to know in fact, “Is my intention and my action being fulfilled?” Was there fulfillment?

In our culture that request gets distorted into our thinking that we have a “need” for the other person to love us for what we’ve done, to appreciate what we’ve done, to approve of us for what we’ve done. And that distorts and screws up the beauty of the whole process. It wasn’t their approval that we needed. Our very intent was to use our energy to enrich life. But we need the feedback. How do I know my effort was successful unless I get feedback?

And I can use this feedback to help me know if I am coming out of Divine Energy. I know that I am coming out of Divine Energy when I value criticism as much as a thank you.

—Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.

Technorati Tags: NVC,spirituality,God,nonviolence,needs,values,violence

It's all about Me!

2008-12-03T13:18:00.001-08:00

I recently received this gem of insight from a dear reader :

"As I’m reading through your workbook, I notice something that seems to be an innovative expansion of traditional NVC teaching. I LOVE your step of visioning. In the way I learned NVC, I understand the importance of “owning” my feelings and needs, and taking personal responsibility for my own reactions to another person’s triggering behavior. But when I’d express myself the way I learned to do, I always had an uneasy feeling that there was a negative tone to my communication. I was only able to avoid that when I let go of trying to include my negative feelings, and just held onto an awareness of needs, wants, what matters to me/you, and talked more about that. When the positive, life-advancing energy of needs was in my heart, whatever came out of my mouth (even if it was “technically” un-NVC-like) was usually helpful. Reading the way you described the process of visioning and ways to communicate the feeling you WANT to have about a need that is fulfilled, well I believe most people could quite easily connect with that. But many people aren’t eager to connect with someone’s negative feelings. And it’s all about connecting, even before communicating, as your blog? so clearly says."

I completely get what she is saying about the classic structure seeming to have a negative tone – and I suspect this may be because we are still focused on how the other person has not met our needs. That is, we have “found” the need which stimulated the feeling BUT we, implicitly, have connected to it being unmet BY THEM. Of course it is so easy to do this because that is the cultural background of our thinking.

I was just trying to think of an example and one popped in my mind from work. I have been in a simmering conflict with a colleague this year. I have identified my needs as being for cooperation and transparency. Then when I sense into that a bit more … I realise beneath transparency is a need for trust. I really value trust in my life. And then sensing some more into my body I notice that I am telling myself I have a need for trust and she is not meeting it. Ahhh. I am wanting someone else to meet my need. So…going back in I stay with my need for trust and I connect to all the places in my life where it is important to me and I see my patterning. WOW!!! What an important need for me. No wonder I am so triggered in this conflict.

Seeing the patterning I can now connect how it is in my body. How I hold all of this. And as my attention moves inward my image of the other person meeting this need through actions I deem trustworthy recedes. I realise I cannot “make” other people trustworthy (by my standards) but I can learn to trust how I will respond to any given situation. The crux is my deepest need is to be able to trust myself – that I will act in alignment with my values. I had thought if I could get others “to be trustworthy” then I would feel safe and my need for trust would be met. Now I sense, no surprise, that the more I learn to trust how I will respond in different situations the less I need “others” to be trustworthy.

Now I know why NVC, Focusing and Mindfulness are my greatest passions. These practices reconnect me with my values and actual living experience (not my thinking about or interpreting of my experiences), help me bring self-awareness into my daily life and provide a framework for living these changes in my world.

Technorati Tags: focusing,NVC,trust,self-awareness,responsibility,feelings,needs,projection,conflict

Why will-power wilts

2008-12-02T13:52:00.001-08:00

Do you hear yourself saying:

"I should change BUT..."

"I really have tried before and failed SO..."

"It is all too much ANYWAY..."

You have you tried all kinds of ways to change or improve your life but something seems to get in the way and sabotage your good intentions? Does your will-power wilt?

My biggest battle of the wills is inside my head. Do it-don't do it! back and forward they argue trying to convince me to act in a certain way, to set and achieve goals. And they can be persuasive:

You know you want to!

You deserve it!

Just one won't hurt!

Life is meant to be enjoyed!

You will be disappointed if you do.

What about the agreement to...

and so on.

The trouble with will-power is it is based in the brain; it doesn't necessarily invite the heart and body in on its decisions. Consequently, it uses up tremendous amounts of energy rather than drawing upon its own innate energy. No wonder we get exhausted by it and ultimately resentful towards its agendas for us.

You cannot win fighting against yourself...you need more than will power and resolutions.

You need to embrace what is, listen within & follow your heart which knows the right direction for change for you. I explore embracing change as a process from within in my SMART Transformations program and coaching.

And...I thought you might enjoy this piece from Ann Weiser Cornell. If you want to subscribe to her newsletter go to www.focusingresources.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Helping You Live with Presence and Flow
December 2 2008 - #12

A reader asks: "What is the difference between willpower/determination to stop some behavior vs. Self-in-Presence kind of reminding me me to stop it?"
What do you think? Do we need Self-in-Presence to give us reminders to change our behavior? Read on!

The Difference Between Will Power and Self-in-Presence
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It happens like this: you've decided to change your life. You've noticed that some habit or behavior is not serving you.
You declare: "OK! I'm just not going to [for example] eat foods that contain processed sugar any more." (This was my reader's example...)
But you know from long experience that IF this turns into an inner power struggle, where one part of you has to exercise control over another part of you... it doesn't turn out well.
The "will-power" part of you gets more and more controlling and anxious as the rebellious part of you grabs the chocolate chip cookies, saying (if it bothers to speak at all) something like: "Hey, it's the holidays!" or "Just one won't hurt."
And you know that the way through this Tangle is to get into Self-in-Presence and acknowledge both sides, the part of you that wants to eat the cookies and the part of you that doesn't want you to. They each have a story to tell, they each have Wanting and Not-Wanting to relate.
In that process you'll very likely be contacting older and deeper places as you discover that this whole issue is about much more than cookies. It may be about things like comfort, autonomy, the ability to soothe yourself, and so on. As you listen non-judgmentally as Self-in-Presence, not trying to make any part right or wrong, something fundamental begins to shift.
And yes, it does take time.

If you have to "control" yourself, you're not in Presence
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But here's the big question: After all that Focusing and inner listening, what happens the next time you're confronted with a plate of cookies? Does Self-in-Presence need to give you a nudge? Remind you of your decision not to indulge in sugar?
I would say no.
If you have done a thorough job of listening to the part that wants to eat the cookies and the part that doesn't want to, then that is now YOU, the whole you, standing there looking at the plate of cookies. You're no longer divided; your action springs from that wholeness. There's no need to remind or nudge, because who would be the one reminded? It's all you.
This is where you get to say "I," as in "I've decided on no sugar these days."
There still might be a part of you that would dearly love to grab a cookie, but it's no longer in the driver's seat. You can say a loving Hello to it and walk it across the room to enjoy the fire in the fireplace.
If you feel you have to "control" a part of you and rein it back from indulging, you've got some more Focusing to do. Oh, boy!

Technorati Tags: goals,willpower,Focuisng,decisions,choices,habits

Get out of your personal bubble

2008-12-01T12:12:00.001-08:00

Want to get out of your personal bubble...you know the one...where we think we are the only person who is lonely, afraid, stressed, struggling and so on?
The same bubble also causes us to compare ourselves to others. We or they are better, faster, skinnier, healthier, nicer, more intelligent, more successful.
And then there is the flip side of those judgements: we or they are more rude, angrier, less self-aware, more delusional, stuck in patterns, fuzzy thinking, disorganised etc etc

How can we burst this bubble?

Try this exercise anytime, anywhere; the more often the better. You can do this exercise at airports, in the grocery store, on the train platform, watching T.V., at the beach and when you are driving.
It should be done on strangers as unobtrusively as possible - in other words - try not to stare. Try to do all five steps on the same person.
Step 1: With attention on the person repeat to yourself:

Just like me, this person is seeking some happiness for his/her life."

Step 2: With attention on the person repeat to yourself:

Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life."

Step 3: With attention on the person repeat to yourself:

Just like me, this person is has known sadness, loneliness, fear and despair in his/her life."

Step 4: With attention on the person repeat to yourself:

Just like me, this person is trying to fulfil his/her needs."

Step 5: With attention on the person repeat to yourself:

Just like me, this person is learning about life."

Love to hear how this exercise affects you!!

Technorati Tags: meditation,metta,loving kindness,compassion,wellbeing

in praise of stillness

2008-11-30T11:00:00.000-08:00

How can we experience stillness and rest?

When we completely rest our body, energy and mind in each moment, we have everything we need to experience peace within ourselves.

His Eminence the 7th Dzogchen Rinpoche, Jigme Losel Wangpo, reveals how we can experience clarity and peace by simple resting our body, energy and mind.

Our mind is like a candle flame, disturbed by the winds of our emotions. When the candle flame is still, the radiating light allows us to see more clearly. In the same, way, when we calm our mind, quieten our thoughts and rest, clarity and confidence naturally arise in our lives.

Modern life is stressful and busy. In praise of stillness is one step on from in praise of slow. We rarely rest our minds and meditation is a wonderful tool for doing so.

Physiologically, silence is a quietening experience. Not speaking rests our voices. In Tibetan Buddhism, it is said that when we talk too much our energy increases. When energy increases, it destabilises the natural balance of the body.

We can rest our internal voices through single pointed awareness or concentration. You can do this by concentrating on:

your breath
your movements; yoga, tai-chi, dance, surfing
repeating a mantra silently
focusing on a symbol, candle, mandala

This concentration can also be done off the cushion:

raking or sweeping

concentrating on a craft activity; needlework, painting, carving, sculpting and so on

ironing, washing, mending

I invite you to take a day (or even a half day) and give yourself a rest by performing mindful actions in silence. You may choose to sit in silence or you may choose to paint your fence in silence. Whatever you choose - just be with your experience moment by moment in your body allowing your mind and voice to rest.

Technorati Tags: meditation,rest,mindfulness,ease

in praise of slow

2008-11-29T18:40:00.001-08:00

We live in a fast world. Fast food, fast cars, fast Internet connectivity. We multi-task and rush from one event to another. We have the One-Minute Manager and one-minute relaxation. We have speed dating and speed dialling. We squeeze so much living into our days I wonder if we are really living at all?

This insanity infects large parts of daily life. Road rage, shouting those "I'm on the train" messages into mobile phones as you try to fill otherwise dead minutes, annoyance at the person with an extra item in a supermarket queue, all are more prevalent now. Such stress is the almost inevitable result of long days spent juggling obligations to family, friends and your boss. How many conflicts and misunderstandings arise because we don't have the time to explain something fully or listen carefully? How many times do we miss an opportunity to connect with a loved one because we are in a hurry or our mind is elsewhere?

Are we rushing ourselves to an unhappy life and an early death? The Slow movement says you should slow down, put the emphasis on quality, not quantity, and most of all, be happy now, not later.

Slow is gradually overcoming its pejorative connotations. Where once it was associated with failure - slow progress, slow decline, a slow student - the current push is to redefine the word so that it inspires people to use their time well, to lead considered lives.

So...I enjoyed this take on slowing down when we are in conflict too.

Is it time for a slow conflict movement?

Posted: 29 Nov 2008 03:00 AM CST

What’s one of the most frequent questions audience and Conflict Zen retreat members ask me about navigating conflict at work and home?

How to do conflict resolution right … more quickly?

Now, I’m no fan of hanging out in a difficult conversation because I like a slow pace. But I don’t buy the premise that, even in a multi-tasking, fast-paced American life, hurrying through important conversations is the right goal.

The question was on my mind again while reading Robyn McMaster’s recent post, Prodding your patience?.

“We are addicted to speed,” according to Carl Honore, “to cramming more and more into every minute. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock, a dash to a finish line that we never seem to reach.”

What Robyn terms “roadrunner days” can lead to increased cortisol levels in our bodies. And why should we care about cortisol? Because cortisol shuts down learning, contributes to anxiety attacks, and is associated with depression.

I think it’s time for a conflict resolution version of the slow food movement. We’ll call it the slow conflict movement. The slow conflict movement will have these tenets:

No hurrying through important conflict to get it over with. The most important conversations in our lives deserve our attention.
Slowing down conflict means not missing the gems we don’t hear when we’re hurrying.
Slowing down doesn’t mean dawdling. It means doing it right, at the right pace.

How and when do you slow conflict down?

Technorati Tags: patience. slow,multitasking,stress relief,conflict

Build Trust & Mutual Understanding through Interactive Focusing

2008-11-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

How to Focus Using Interactive Focusing

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Interactive Focusing deepens and broadens relationships. It assumes you can already find a body-felt sense. Click the link if this 'body-felt sense' is new or unclear for you.
Interactive Focusing allows you to touch into your direct experience in the presence of another person. Through your direct experience in the safe, empathic, accepting and compassionate environment which you create together, you become aware of, and share your inner truths to build trust and bonds of intimacy.
Focusing is more than being in touch with your feelings and different from body work. Focusing occurs exactly at the interface of body-mind. It consists of specific steps for getting a body sense of how you are in a particular life situation. The body sense is unclear and vague at first, but if you pay attention it will open up into words or images and you experience a felt shift in your body.
There are no sacred instructions. Don't rush, take a breath first. Approach yourself and the other person in modesty and sincerity. Allow that which is unspoken to speak.

Steps

Part One: The Focuser's Story
- A.
  - Focuser:Tells a reasonable part of her story, always touching into the bodysense.
  - Listener: Listens from the bodysense and offers reflective responses throughout the story-telling.
- B.
  - Focuser: Resonates the reflection for accuracy, to see if the inner experience shifts, to see if more comes. Gives Listener feedback, e.g. "I need more time with that," "I’d like to hear that again," "Yes…," "No, it’s more like…," "There’s another part I need you to hear…."
  - Listener: Reflects the feedback to acknowledge the correction and to let the Focuser resonate it, e.g. "So it’s more like…," "It’s not…, it’s…."
- C.
  - Focuser: Checks to see if she has come to a resting place with this part of her story.
  - Listener: Also, can check with the Focuser to see if this part feels complete.
Part Two: The Double Empathic Moment aka The "Golden Moment"
- D.
  - Focuser: Invites the Listener to go inside to the bodysense to form the empathic response: How does the Listener get that it is for the Focuser from the Focuser’s internal frame of reference. At the same time, the Focuser checks inside to get the edge of where she is with her own story and to be gentle with what is there for her.
  - Listener: Goes inside: Takes time to let a bodysense form. Listens inside as if she were the Focuser. How might all that feel for the storyteller?
- E. (Note: Usually the Listener goes first with the empathic response.)
  - Listener: Offers the empathic response: The metaphor or image that has formed. It is usually brief and more poetic, capturing the essence of it.
  - Focuser: The Focuser resonates the Listener’s empathic response to see if it fits and gives feedback if needed, e.g. "That really captures it," or "It’s more like…for me."
- F.
  - Focuser: Offers what came when she went inside to get how it is for her now in this new moment.
  - Listener: Gives reflective responses.
- G.
  - Focuser: Quiet moment to savor how it feels to share oneself and feel empathically heard.
  - Listener: Quiet moment to savor how it feels to hear and take someone into your space, empathically.
Part Three: The Interactive Response The pair switches roles
- H.
  - The Focuser becomes the "new" Listener. Asks what got touched inside the "new" Focuser by what she just shared.
  - The Listener becomes the "new" Focuser. Checks inside to see what got touched by the first Focuser’s story.
  - They follow A-G above so the Listener has a chance to tell her story and feel empathically heard.
Part Four: The Interactive Closing — The relationship check
- I.
  - Focuser and Listener: How do I feel about you now that we have shared all of that?
  - Focuser and Listener: How do I feel about myself after sharing all of that with you? How do I feel about us?
Summary: The Interactive Focusing Model Short form for Dyads (Pairs)
- Part One: The Focuser’s Story
  - The Focuser tells her story
  - The Listener gives reflections
  - The Focuser resonates and gives feedback if necessary
- Part Two: The Double Empathic Moment
  - Full Empathic Response by both the Listener and Focuser
- Part Three: The Interactive Response
  - Exchange roles and repeat Part One and Part Two
- Part Four: The Interactive closing, The Relationship Check
  - How they now feel about each other and
  - How they now feel about themselves.

Tips

Interactive Focusing requires that the participants get in touch with an unclear issue that is carried in their bodysense or 'felt sense'. See the link below to http://www.wikihow.com/Focus-and-Get-a-Felt-Sense
It requires that there is a listener using reflective responding as their listening modality. But it further requires that the full experience is one that is created jointly and dependent on a balanced participation by both.
Because it is a mutual experience, certain safeguards must be in place. Interactive Focusing has developed into a practice of empathy and compassion in a safe environment, and Interactive Focusing has become the mode for developing empathy, acceptance and compassion in a safe environment.

Things You'll Need

A quiet place with somewhere comfortable to sit
Experience with your body felt sense
An hour or more
Focusing partner
Empathy and willingness to listen

Related wikiHows

How to Focus and Get a Felt Sense

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Focus Using Interactive Focusing. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Focusing on YouTube

2008-11-25T14:56:00.001-08:00

Thanks to the work of Nada Lou and Simon d'Orsogna we now have some clips of Gene Gendlin talking about Focusing on YouTube.

How to Focus and get a Felt Sense instructions

Watch Gene talking about Focusing 1

Watch Gene talking about Focusing 2

Enjoy!!!

Technorati Tags: YouTube,Focusing

Choose connection before communication every time

2008-11-24T00:00:00.001-08:00

In NVC we say connection, connection, connection. The primary goal of NVC is connection with ourselves and connection with others. Then communicate.

I have to say this can sometimes get lost in the NVC formula of observation, feelings, needs, requests. The structure or syntax is just a tool for holding the greater imperative of connection. Connection can be silent. Connection can be compassionate, empathic, and curious. Connection is a choice and it is a conscious choice. From a place where you are connected to your own feelings and needs and where you can empathise with the feelings and needs of the other communication is productive and heart warming.

You may be thinking..."sure, but what about when the other person is angry, sulking, accusing and so on? How can I connect to that?"

You don't connect to their emotion or their tragic expression. You connect to what is alive in them...what needs are they trying to meet - albeit in a way that is almost guaranteed to fail. Except, lucky for them, this time you have made a choice-full, conscious decision to hear behind the words and listen to their heart.

Steve Stosny says all this below in this wonderful piece about helping marriages and all relationships I would say - friendships, acquaintances and business.

Marriage Help (Stop worrying about what to say.)

By Steven Stosny on November 23, 2008 in Anger in the Age of Entitlement

What I hear the most in counseling people about relationships is, "What should I say..." when he or she does this or says that.

My pat response is, "Don't worry about what to say; focus on the emotional state you are in and the emotional state of your partner when you say it."

The classic miscommunication in marriage occurs when she says something like, "Honey, we need to talk." I've written elsewhere about why this well meaning approach goes awry. The point here is, whether she forces him to talk or not, the likelihood is great that they both end up feeling disappointed and disconnected. The pain of disconnection from someone you love lies at the heart of every argument, cold silence, and resentment you endure in your intimate relationships.

Emotional disconnection is the biggest single factor in divorce. Most divorcees say they just "grew apart," largely because they "couldn't communicate." This is sad because the problem was not about communication. It was about disconnection. Marriage partners are not disconnected because they have poor communication; they have poor communication because they are disconnected. In the beginning of the relationship, when they felt connected, they communicated just fine. They would talk for hours on end. And they communicated well throughout their relationship, whenever they felt connected.

Connection depends on attuning emotional states, which is extremely difficult to do with words. Emotional states attune through interest and caring - one has to be interested and show sympathy for the other, who must, in turn, be receptive to interest and care at that moment. Interest and care, like all emotional states, are conveyed far more by facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice than by words.

The chronic stress of disconnection in marriage, which is a cause of poor communication more than a result of it, stems from a slight difference in the way the sexes experience fear and shame. This subtle difference is inherent in the dilemma, "Do we talk about the relationship or not?" The real reason women usually want to talk about it--beneath the resentment and frustration--is disconnection makes them feel anxious and isolated. The real reason men typically don't want to talk about it is that her dissatisfaction with him makes him feel like a failure. His shame is too great to allow him to understand her anxiety, and her anxiety keeps her from seeing his shame. When they try to alleviate their feelings of vulnerability in opposite ways--by talking and not talking--all they end up sharing are disappointment and heartache.

This is tragic and unnecessary because they really want to feel connected and they know how to do it. In the beginning of their relationship, she regularly exposed vulnerable feelings (expressed her concerns and worries), and he responded with gut-level support. She fell in love because she felt safe being vulnerable, which made her feel emotionally connected to him. Her belief that he would be there for her quelled all her anxiety. He also fell in love because he felt emotionally connected. She made him feel more or less successful as a lover, protector, and provider, which reduced any threat of failure or inadequacy; she believed in him.

Their best chance of saving their marriage is to return to that state of mutually soothing and empowering connection. This requires understanding each other's core vulnerabilities and learning how to negotiate them with binocular vision--a dual perspective based on holding both points of view simultaneously.

Because communication is far more about emotional demeanor, body language, and tone of voice than choice of words, regulating your emotional state as you try to communicate is a crucial skill in modern relationships. (If you need help developing emotional regulation skill, ample information is available here. However, you probably do not need to undertake a whole regimen to develop emotional regulation skill, which requires learning new habits. Try this first. Instead of starting discussions with complaints, approach your partner with:

• A desire for connection (This is actually the goal of wanting to "talk about it.")
• Curiosity about his/her perspective
• Mindfulness that he/she is someone you love and value
• Appreciation of the assets your partner brings to your relationship
• The belief that your partner is a reasonable person, who, if you convey value and respect and give enough information, will at least acknowledge the importance of what you say, even if he/she disagrees with it.

If you can do the above, almost anything you say will be successful and will eventually lead to a compassionate and loving connection that goes beyond words.

Technorati Tags: communication,marriage,NVC,connection,negotiation,arguments

Don't presume...ask!

2008-11-22T18:07:00.001-08:00

How many times in life have we missed an opportunity, created a misunderstanding or just plain got it wrong because we presumed we knew what someone meant, was thinking or their motivation?

Don't presume - just ask!

There plenty of questions you can ask but I suggest there are 3 themes which can cover most situations.

For example, you notice someone at work is complaining about a project they are working on and just not making any progress. Rather than presuming that they:

Can’t do it; that is don’t have the skill, or

Don’t want to participate and contribute; that is they recalcitrant, passive-aggressive or any other label you’d like to give them, or

They are just not a team player...etc etc

You can choose to ask questions that connect:

"What’s going on for you around that?”

“What’s important to you in this?"

You can find out about their world as they are experiencing it. This doesn’t mean it is the same as your world or that you have to agree. Just that you now have more information to work with and fewer presumptions based upon your own experiences and psychology.

Ask questions that clarify:

"What is it you need me to understand?"

"What do you notice?”

“What do you take from that?"

"Can you tell me more?"

You can use clear observations to find points of agreement. You can hear nuances and detail. You can hear what matters to them. You can get information you missed or angles you hadn’t thought of. You can expand your perceptions and field of awareness.

Ask questions that go to the next level - that is beyond their current strategy to underlying values.

"So are you really needing (and guess at their underlying value or need)?"

“Is x,y,z really important to you in this situation?"

You can find out what is driving a particular strategy. Often we choose one or two, familiar strategies to meet our values and then experience frustration when things don’t go our way. Once you know the underlying need or value then a wider range of strategies become available. What are Values? They are what is important to us; not something we want or would like to have, but something we literally need in your life to be true to ourselves. Values are personally derived and we live them in our public lives too so it pays to be curious about values.

My life has changed since I learned to ask better questions more often. I feel more connected to my colleagues, family and friends. I feel more comfortable going for clarity and there is less confusion in my life and mind. I am getting more curious. Life is getting more and more interesting as I explore the infinite multitude of ways we humans experience, interpret and choose to live our lives in each moment.

Technorati Tags: questions,NVC,connecting to others

Get behind wants, desires & distractions to your real needs

2008-11-22T13:04:00.001-08:00

Here is a wonderful take on

distractions in meditation

retail therapy

desire

If you are intrigued as you read the start of this article click on read more to get the whole story. It is a great read; I found it empathic and useful for my daily practice.

Mark Twain: “Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol…”

Bodhipaksa (November 21, 2008)

Bodhipaksa explores the relationship between hats, iPods, desires, and needs. And also figures out what the Pali for “Palm Pilot” is. Oh, and he also offers a radical approach to dealing with distraction in meditation.

“Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.”

In a piece called “What Is Man?” Twain wrote: “Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.”

Twain argues that when you find yourself desiring, say, a hat, it’s not actually the physical object that you want but something else: perhaps something like the admiration you’ll get from your friends for having such a fine hat. If it turns out that your friends don’t like the hat and think it makes you look stupid, then it’s likely that you won’t think the hat is so splendid after all. The hat hasn’t changed, but its meaning has.

We need to learn to identify what our needs are (and the insights of Nonviolent Communication are very useful here), and we need to learn or find ways to meet our needs. But I believe that this approach to meditation offers a powerful tool for finding inner peace, and for letting go of the idea that there is some “thing” we need that will bring happiness. Happiness comes not from having the right things, but from having the right kind of relationship to our experience.

Click to read more »

Technorati Tags: desire,distractions,meditation,NVC,needs,symbols,judgements

Master your Mind ~ Master your Life

2008-11-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

I remember my first encounter with meditation was with TM (Transcendental Meditation) when I was 15 years old and my mother thought it would serve the family well. Aside from thinking it all a little weird I did give it a try on and off over the years and found it relaxing and curious. I didn't gain any insight into my mind states however and so I just carried on in my own little bubble of delusion that my thoughts and feelings were "real" and needed to be acted upon. No prizes for guessing the emotional chaos and internal anxiety that ensued until one day I really did, get thoroughly bored with myself.

And then, I decided I would master my mind rather than it master me! I started a Vipassana mediation practice. Oh, my little monkey mind swung from flimsy branch to flimsy branch, into the future, back into the past only momentarily touch the solidity of the stable trunk of the present moment.

Gradually, consistent patterns emerged in my awareness. I began to find the mental stability to settle with them and get to know them. In getting to know them I became able to see how much of the pattern was carrying my history, how much was reactive (dependent on the situation or my current mood), how much was coloured by beliefs and not what was actually occurring, right here, right now. I began to see my meditation practice as a befriending of all of me. And it wasn't until I learned Focusing that I really started to hold my own heart with compassion and acceptance. Through the art of Focusing I became able to listen deeply to each and every part and the beauty of its needs. I was neither enmeshed nor merged and I found a deeply intuitive, centred core called Presence.

Now, when I sit I invite my body to re-connect with my Presence. I invite my body to let me know how it is holding my life right now in all of its structures and processes. I invite my mind-body into this present moment freshly with each breath and when I notice a persistent thought or sensation etc I use Focusing to welcome it and explore what is alive there. Then, when I have the felt sense of it, and a small release comes I go back to present moment awareness while letting that part know I can come back to it in a Focusing Session.

I have written about this process at length and you can read about it here.

In the meantime I invite you to enjoy this article by Katherine Ellison which eloquently describes some of the science and benefits of meditation.

Mastering Your Own Mind

By: Katherine Ellison

It remains a radical notion in the West that benevolent states of mind such as concentration, kindness and happiness can be developed with practice. Apart from a growing "positive psychology" movement, many of whose leaders are in fact strongly influenced by Buddhism, Western scientists are still largely oriented toward healing the mentally ill, rather than improving the lives of the functionally OK. Recollect Freud's humble goal: to transform hysterical misery into common unhappiness. Western science is content to believe that each of us has a more or less genetically determined set point for well-being—and that happiness and love happen to us.

The Buddha framed things differently. He taught that our default mode may be to suffer, but only because of ignorance. We can transcend our lot by learning to quiet the mind in meditation—not merely to relax and cope with stress, as the popular notion of Buddhism holds, but to rigorously train oneself to relinquish bad mental habits. Rather than being an end in itself, meditation becomes a tool to investigate your mind and change your worldview. You're not tuning out so much as tuning up your brain, improving your self-monitoring skills.

"You stop being always projected outside. You start looking in and seeing how your mind works, and you change your mind, thought by thought," explains Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, scientist and French interpreter for the Dalai Lama. "The French intellectuals don't like this. They say, 'Let's be spontaneous; passions are the beauty of life.' They think that making an effort is not nice—a silly old discipline—and that's why we're such a mess. But many modern people understand the notion of getting fit with physical training." So the idea of developing mental skills with meditation is gaining ground.

The Nod From Neuroscience

Encouragement for this new way of thinking comes from an unusual ally. Neuroscience is furnishing hard evidence that the brain is plastic, endowed with a lifelong capacity to reorganize itself with each new experience. "We now know that neural firing can lead to changes in neural connections, and experience leads to changes in neural firing," explains UCLA psychiatrist Daniel Siegel. Violinists' brains actually change as they refine their skill. So do the brains of London cabbies, whose livelihood depends on the sharpness of their memory. Likewise, through repeated practice in focusing attention, meditators may be strengthening the neural circuitry involved in the voluntary control of attention.

One Tibetan lama told Wallace that before training, his mind was like a stag with great antlers trying to make its way through a thick forest; the animal got snagged on branches time after time. But after many years of practice, his mind was more like a monkey in a jungle, swinging freely from vine to vine.

Such adepts are the Lance Armstrong's of meditation, says Davidson, whose pioneering brain scans of monks provide tantalizing evidence that emotions like love and compassion are in fact skills—and can be trained to a dramatic degree. Studies also suggest that the monastic life is not a requirement; even brief, regular meditation sessions can yield substantial benefits. Nor is a belief in Buddhism necessary. "I'm convinced that you can make a huge difference in your life if you start out with even 30 minutes a day," Ricard says. "By maintaining the practice, there is a trickle of insights. Drop by drop, you fill a jar."

Psychology Today Magazine, Sept/Oct 2006

Technorati Tags: meditation,relaxation,TM,Focusing,brain plasticity,happiness,well-being

10 things science says will make you happy

2008-11-22T02:44:00.001-08:00

10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy

in YES! magazine
by Jen Angel

Scientists can tell us how to be happy. Really. Here are 10 ways, with the research to prove it.

Click on each item or hover over each number to see the 10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy.
[Buy or Print poster version below.]

YES! MAGAZINE INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC, 2008. Photo by Niko Guido, istock.

In the last few years, psychologists and researchers have been digging up hard data on a question previously left to philosophers: What makes us happy? Researchers like the father-son team Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener, Stanford psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, and ethicist Stephen Post have studied people all over the world to find out how things like money, attitude, culture, memory, health, altruism, and our day-to-day habits affect our well-being. The emerging field of positive psychology is bursting with new findings that suggest your actions can have a significant effect on your happiness and satisfaction with life.

Here are 10 scientifically proven strategies for getting happy.

Technorati Tags: happiness,wellbeing

Empathy deficits

2008-11-21T12:37:00.000-08:00

Is this a new phrase in our lives? It is certainly one that is gaining currency - no pun intended :-)

We have all heard of a budget deficit, a trade deficit and a attention deficit. Now Barack Obama is calling us to pay attention to how we treat our fellow human beings by using this phrase often enough to mainstream it. He has been calling our attention to this deficit for many years:

President Barak Obama by jay west photography

2004-11-20 - Sen. Barack Obama O Magazine
Text Source - Local Copy - Empathy Section
I often say we’ve got a budget deficit that’s important, we’ve got a trade deficit that’s critical, but what I worry about most is our empathy deficit. When I speak to students, I tell them that one of the most important things we can do is to look through somebody else’s eyes.”
Sen. Barack Obama, O Magazine (Nov. 2004)

and there is a lot more...

2006-06-02 - U. Massachusetts Boston Commencement

My third piece of advice is to cultivate a sense of empathy - to put yourself in other people's shoes - to see the world from their eyes.

Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world - one that makes you understand that your obligations to others extend beyond people who look like you and act like you and live in your neighborhood. I know that, especially on this campus, so many of you have been serving at homeless shelters and high schools and youth centers and job placement organizations all over the Boston area. And I hope this spirit of service lives on long after you leave here.

But as you continue on in life, it's not always easy. In the years to come, you will encounter all kinds of obstacles in the way of empathy. You will find people who, out of fear or need for power, try to divide us and deny what we have in common. You'll hear that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they're all lazy or weak of spirit. That the immigrants who risk their lives to cross a desert have nothing to contribute to this country and no desire to embrace our ideals. That the inner-city children who are trapped in the nation's most dilapidated schools can't learn and won't learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else's problem to take care of.

2007-05-19 - Southern New Hampshire Univ Commencement

The world doesn't just revolve around you.
There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit - the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us - the child who's hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.
As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There's no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You'll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what's going in your own little circle.
Not only that - we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses.

There are still more empathy practices that are not yet mentioned by Barak Obama. Here are some more to consider:

self-empathy

empathy to overcome enemy images

converting judgements into empathy

the healing power of empathy

silent empathy

Technorati Tags: Barak Obama,empathy,change,empathy deficit