Reflections of a Literary Journey

Deep Water Passage

2011-12-31T21:59:00.000-08:00

Another book I enjoyed immensely this year was Ann Linnea's Deep Water Passage.

I don't have any notes from it to mention (the book is current on loan to friends and family).

From Amazon: Chronicles the author's midlife spiritual journey, during which she spent sixty-five days kayaking around Lake Superior--the first woman to perform such a feat--while facing dangerous elements and reassessing her life.

Power and Love

2011-12-31T21:49:00.001-08:00

a placeholder for my notes from this book - an incredible read!

Mustang Sallies

2011-12-31T21:26:00.000-08:00

Mustang Sallies by Fawn Germer

Here are a few of my notes (I didn’t get through the whole book)…

It’s lonely at the top, but, guess what? It’s lonely in the middle and at the bottom, too. It’s lonely when you stand your ground as your true self, but it’s also lonely when you mold yourself into someone who you are not, just to win approval or acceptance.

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Whether you find yourself being challenged to go-alongto-get-along at work, at home, in the community, or in some other place, you will find your center when you remember what it is that made you unique, strong, and passionate in the first place. Tap into that.

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Always go back to your center and your sense of mission. “You have to believe in why you are here,” former Environmental Protection Administration Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told me. “Why are you in this position? Think about it. Why are you doing what you are doing? If you believe in what you are doing, then that’s what it is all about. Keep your focus on that and don’t get thrown off track.”

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You want to know what has become a bigger challenge than getting that seat at the table these days? It’s feeling like we deserve it. It’s holding our own, taking charge, and feeling secure enough to be ourselves. Some of America’s most powerful women executives admit they walked into their offices at the top with a tremendous amount of self-doubt in tow.

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I would rather be off to the side a little. I like to float around and do my own thing, but it sure seems like we keep trying out for the cheerleading squad.”

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Be passionate. This kind of life sure ain’t for sissies. It takes energy, stamina, and commitment. All of that comes from the passion that drives you. You care about what you are doing and who you are. That helps you put up with a lot of grief. It also helps you focus on what matters to you and gives you the creative mind-set to come up with solutions. You live an inspired life.

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Perception is reality, and perception can kill us when other people don’t “get” what we are up to. Our motives may be genuine, but our mission may be so misunderstood or threatening that the only way some people can deal with us is to find a way to distort our objectives or snuff us out.

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“If you are an agent of change, you can’t look to the status quo for validation because you will never get it. That’s why the status quo is the status quo. It doesn’t want to change,” said Alexa Canady,

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A few weeks later, I had the chance to work on a project and pick a partner. I decided to do something daring and pick my rival. When I asked her to work with me, she agreed. Let me tell you something: the two of us working together on a project made us ten times more effective than either of us working alone. We went to an interview together, and the guy we were questioning didn’t have any place to run. When I asked a question, she was thinking of her next one. When she asked one, I was thinking of mine. It was the most gratifying investigative interview experience I have ever had, and it would never have happened if I hadn’t realized that there is real power in turning rivals into partners. The more I have done this, the more I have realized that most of my rivals were other mustangs, and instead of competing against each other, we should have been teaming up.

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Get a group of women friends together and make a point of discussing topics that don’t ordinarily come up. Throw the topic out there, and give each woman up to three minutes to talk about it. Afterward, take a few minutes to synthesize what you learned about yourself and each other. Here are some topics that will get the discussion going on your next outing: During the last 10 years, when have you felt most insecure? What have you done about it? Have your insecurities changed? How much praise do you remember? How much criticism? Do you use your insecurity to make yourself stronger? How? How have your insecurities held you back? When have you been afraid to do something, but charged forward, regardless? How did it feel? How did you rally your strength and keep yourself sane? Who helped you? What did you learn? What motivates you? If it comes down to mission or money, which wins? How have you changed the world already? Is that important to you? Are there ways you can use your skills to have an even greater impact on society? How? For starters, can you commit to giving 30 minutes to an hour a week to further that cause? Name five things you have delayed or sacrificed in the last five years. Was it worth it? Were those sacrifices noticed and appreciated? What did you gain or lose from those sacrifices? Would you make the same decision again?

A’s note: great questions for a woman’s circle.

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Ensler believes the hardest thing women have to overcome is their need for approval. Part of the way you learn it is by being rejected, and surviving—getting bad reviews, having people say terrible things about you, and knowing there are people who don’t like you, and still surviving. Also, check yourself and know why you are doing something. “If you are doing it for approval, you are doomed,” she explained. “If it is for your own soul, politics, and spirit—even if you have to survive the terrible feelings of abandonment by the world—you still have your self intact.”

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Don’t run from the heat, she said. “I have never seen objective criticism as heat. I see it as a gift because it forces you to reexamine something you are doing.

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“First and foremost, you must survive to fight another day.” What good is a mustang who vanishes in her own dust cloud, never to be seen again? This never means selling your soul. It means doing what you’ve got to do so you can get the job done. Change your approach, change your tactics, but don’t change your self.

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“Why are you so worried about being respected by someone you don’t respect?” I asked him. “You know you are smarter. Respect yourself.”

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Who Are You? Leave your title out of this. Come up with 25 facets of the real you, like Marva Collins suggested. Who are you? What defines you beyond your work? Which parts of you do you value most? Which ones would you like to indulge more? Are you living a life that honors the woman you admire in yourself? If not, why aren’t you making changes to bring life to those loves? Instead of losing yourself to the issue of the week, give yourself to the facets of yourself that matter to you. I’m a cyclist, an outdoorswoman, a hell-raising mustang, a friend. I’m a writer and a daughter and I am living the life I want to live. Half the challenge of loving yourself is knowing who you really are.

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Actress Brett Butler, who has had fierce battles with sobriety, addiction, and domestic violence, said she’s gotten to the point where she realizes that all the trials in her life “almost had to happen. All I know is, it cost me all that to be who I am right now. I’d do it again. I pay a lot of attention to feelings like envy or resentment in my own life. I like to pull those out like bad weeds. Sobriety has taught me that, if there is a trait in someone else that I do not like, many times, it is a trait in myself that I have neglected to work on.”

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When you can stop pointing fingers at others and take a long look in the mirror, you’ll find even greater growth. Don’t look for excuses to flog yourself, but make sure you own what you need to own.

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Choosing Battles How do you know when to fight or sit one out? Author Sam Horn said, “If it’s not that big of a deal, I may not say anything. Especially if it is going to go away.” But, she has criteria for choosing battles: Is the matter trivial? 1. 2. Is it a persistent concern? 3. Is the situation innocent or unintentional? 4. What is the background or history of the situation? (Is it your first week on the job, has this been going on ten years?) 5. Can or will it change? 6. Is the timing right? 7. Is it worth the consequences? 8. Will you win the battle and lose the war?

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“The most important thing to remember is to always make an effort to reach out to people and explain why it is you are doing what you are doing, rather than just closing down and feeling they are all after you because you are a woman or this is a dog-eat-dog world. That’s the biggest mistake.”

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I have nothing to gain or lose. Fire me from my job, put me down, do what you want to me. It’s not going to change anything, because if you do or do not like me, fine. I don’t frankly care.

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My self-esteem is so much greater than it was in the past, but not because of the bonus or the movie. It was because of the Hinkley experience that made me appreciate the environment and the gift of health. What made me feel good about myself was being able to be helpful to another person through my work. That made me a better person. You can have all the money you want, but what is truly the mark you leave? It’s the sense of doing something outside of yourself—as a senseless act.

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Here’s Horn’s theory: First, when you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. Especially, don’t say the “I” word. For example, if someone says, “You are so emotional and defensive,” and you say, “I am not emotional and defensive,” well, suddenly you are. “You can see any denial debate of an accusation will create an argument where we are going back and forth—yes you are, no I’m not, yes you are, no I’m not,” Horn explained. Instead of engaging, reverse the dynamic, asking, “What do you mean?” or, “What makes you say that?” or, “Why do you think that?” Horn said that puts the conversational ball back in their court. If their concerns are legitimate, those questions and subsequent answers will reveal the real issue. You can deal with the issue, instead of the attack. If they are just taunting you, the questions force them to explain themselves.

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Perseverance

2011-12-31T21:18:00.000-08:00

Perseverance by Margaret Wheatley, Asante Salaam and Barbara Bash

Here are a few of my notes…

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. Clarissa Pinkola Estes Writer

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No grand actions are required; we just need to begin speaking up about what we care about. We don’t need to spend a lot of time planning or getting senior leaders involved; we don’t have to wait for official support. We just need to get started—for whatever issue or person we care about.

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This is how the world always changes. Everyday people not waiting for someone else to fix things or come to their rescue, but simply stepping forward, working together, figuring out how to make things better.

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The challenge is to refuse to categorize ourselves. We don’t have to take sides or define ourselves as either optimists or pessimists. Much better to dwell in uncertainty, hold the paradoxes, live in the complexities and contradictions without needing them to resolve.

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Fearlessness, too, has love at its core, but it requires a great deal more of us than instant action. If we react too quickly when we feel afraid, we either flee or act aggressively. True fearlessness requires that we take time and exercise discernment. Then we can move with love into right action.

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When we work from this place of urgency, we set ourselves up for failure. We work very hard, push our agenda, get aggressive when we think we need to, and end up more exhausted than effective.

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We could lighten up—we could go for direction, not destination. We could invite in what the world seems to want for us, what it’s offering us right here, right now. We could enjoy what we’ll see and discover when we take off the blinders of non-negotiable destination.

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Steadfastness is a lovely, old-fashioned word that we don’t hear much about these days. It describes how warriors stand their ground, how they find their position and stay there, unshaken and immovable. Steadfast people are firm in their resolve; they are not shaken by events or circumstances. They stand clear in their beliefs, grounded in their cause, faithful to the end.

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Every day I have to make a choice not to give up. Non-profit CEO

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Perseverance is a choice. It’s not a simple, one-time choice, it’s a daily one. There’s never a final decision.

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We walk around wrapped in our stories, and it only takes a small poke from the outside world to unleash a flood of them in all their velocity. Over time, we become packages of predictable responses. We forget there’s any other way to respond. The good news is that at any moment we can refuse to be triggered in the old, familiar ways. This takes practice, and a lot of discipline, but the next time you find yourself gripped by any strong emotion, see if you can just observe the feeling. Don’t deny it or judge it. Don’t start telling yourself why you’re angry or sad. Just observe that you are. If you can avoid, even for a moment, getting dragged under by your usual storyline, that’s real progress. You’ve succeeded in bringing in just a tiny bit of air, a momentary breath—and in that small opening lies the possibility of freedom. We illuminate the road to freedom each time we make a conscious choice to stay out of our stories. The road gets easier to see in the light of each pause.

A: use in Managing Self.

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Or can we filter criticism and keep it focused as perhaps valuable but bounded information? Can we look for the kernels of truth there that might help us improve? Can we not instantly push criticism away, yet not accept it totally? And can we treat praise the same way, not instantly basking in our glory? Praise and blame are two sides of the same coin. If we are eager to accept praise, then we are equally vulnerable to feel the sting of blame. In both cases, we need to listen with caution and discernment. There are truths in what people say about us, good and bad, but let’s not ever believe that their words define us.

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We can stay where we are and bravely investigate our fear. We can move toward it, curious about it. We can even interview it. What does it feel like? What color is it? Does it have a texture, size, personality? What’s important is to question the fear itself. We’re not asking ourselves why we feel afraid, which is our usual inquiry. We just want to know more about this seemingly frightful creature that showed up in us. Our investigation moves us closer and closer, and then the fear begins to change. Paradoxically, the more we engage directly with it, the less fearful it becomes. It is our curiosity that transforms fear. Most often, it dissolves into energy that we can work with.

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After the first rush of romance in discovering meaningful work, there’s the actual work to be done. The work will, at times, be boring, repetitive, uninteresting, senseless. This is why discipline is so important. If you have a daily regimen— exercise, meditation, prayer, sports, music, writing—you’ve learned to do the same thing day after day. You don’t abandon it when it gets boring. You don’t avoid the repetition. You learn to just do it, because you know that the repetition and boredom eventually serve your goal.

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Propelled by passion rather than by discipline, we end up spent, exhausted, unhappy. And we lose the capacity to persevere.

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Patience is the only remedy for this situation. And compassion. Let’s not judge them as stupid or difficult or obstinate. Let’s redefine our task and challenge ourselves to become gentle guides to the world as we see it, not fierce advocates for our view of reality.

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Being in not-knowing, open and aware, is how we discover right action—the appropriate means for what needs to happen. Right action usually doesn’t match our plans, conceived as they were from outside. But now that we’re inside the situation, curious and uncertain, we’re able to notice what’s here. We begin to see dynamics, people, patterns and information we can work with. We become realistic about what’s available. Now we can focus on working with what’s here, rather than what we thought we needed.

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If we take this approach, in every situation, we discover that the resources we need are already here. We have more than enough to work with. It’s our task to notice this abundance, and then figure out how to work with it appropriately. What’s possible now, given all these new resources we’ve discovered?

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Life is just one big experiment and so are all our efforts and great intentions to impact our world for good. If the solutions to problems—personal and global— were known, they wouldn’t be problems now. Even though this logic seems rather obvious, it’s strange how so many people keep applying old methods and old thinking to these issues, even as they keep failing. It seems we’d rather keep exhausting ourselves with failure than change our minds and admit that new ideas are needed.

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What would it feel like to surrender to the rhythms and dynamics of life? What would it feel like to realize that we don’t really have a choice here—we can either participate with life, or resist it and drive ourselves to exhaustion and failure. Instead of working so hard to actively construct our lives, we could relax with the opportunities that life provides, both the good and the bad ones. People who have this type of relationship with life truly are more relaxed. The seeming loss of control doesn’t create anxiety or feelings of distress. It does the reverse, it creates feelings of ease and clarity—and the capacity to stay.

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When we recognize that our personal struggle is fundamental to being human, that everyone struggles and suffers, we begin to feel less personally victimized. We become more accepting of difficulty, less battered by bad moments.

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Presence is the only way to walk the edge of chaos. We have to be as nimble and awake as a high-wire artist, sensitive to the slightest shift of wind, circumstances, emotions. We may find this high-wire exhausting at first, but there comes a time when we rejoice in our skillfulness. We learn to know this edge, to keep our balance, and even dance a bit at incalculable heights.

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A life of discipline and awareness, where we’ve exercised choice, served others as best we could, learned as much as we could bear—such a life yields a very rich harvest. The fruits of our labors are not to be found in the world, however. They’re inside us, in how we feel about self, the world, life, others. If we rummage around inside ourselves, we might notice that there’s less fear, more curiosity. We might notice that there’s more space, that there’s room for choice, that we now contain a larger repertoire of behaviors.

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Aspiration - You are willing to serve any worthy cause that helps the rest of the world.

The Way of Council

2011-12-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

The Way of Council by Jack Zimmerman and Virginia Coyle

Here are a few of my notes…

Turning into the skid…

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The spiral… four to eight places are set in the centre of the larger circle. When the person who speaks after you has finished, you leave the inner circle and return to your place on the outer one. Then another person from the outer circle takes the empty seat. The talking piece in the inner circle passes in the sun direction.

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Practice non-anticipation diligently. Wait until you have the talking piece to look as deeply as you can at the interactive field.

When the interactive field is well defined and expanding, enter more lightly and express yourself fin a way that illumiates the field for others in the circle.

When the interactive field is undefined or dim, enter more vigourously to give the circle additional energy with which to work.

Take the risk of speaking more personally and passionately when others in the circle lack inspiration to speak from the heart.

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Don’t forget that every organization has shadow aspects. Be alert to such patterns as: unacknowledged animosity between two executives, hidden inconsistencies in the treatment of male and female employees, and denial that a company’s products or services are no longer in demand. Otherwise these shadow patterns may arise spontaneously and dominate the agenda.

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Image that we are going to close down the Ojai Foundation, disburse our assets, and bring all our projects to a close. Is there anything you haven’t done or would regret not doing? What do you need to accomplish to feel complete? This is not merely a hypothetical exercise. Shutting down is a real possibility….. the next morning we held a “visionary council” from which the foundation’s purpose and direction emerged more clearly than ever before.

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Every leader has a sacred side and a shadow side. The sacred side governs as a “steward of the realm”, devoted to the well-being and empowerment of the entire community. The sacred leader is willing to face any personal obstacle in fulfilling that intention. On the other hand, the shadow leader is interested in personal power. We may thing we’re devoted to empowering others, but the shadow-leader-part-of-us is out to strengthen its authority and bask in the glow of admiration.

The Seven Whispers

2011-12-03T22:41:00.000-08:00

The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Times Like These by Christina Baldwin

For a reflection on this book see my post here.

Storycatcher

2011-12-03T22:10:00.001-08:00

Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives Through the Power and Practice of Story by Christina Baldwin

Here are a few of my notes…

Perhaps we’re at a party and someone starts to speak about what at first seems like an ordinary anecdote but soon grows into something more important. A Storycatcher notices and says, “Come, let’s sit down on the sofa. I want to really hear you.”

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They established basic ground rules for an ongoing conversation: no opinions, just story; no attempts to change minds, just listening. The group met for three years. No one changed her mind about the issue, but everyone changed his mind about the people involved in the other side of the issue.

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Storycatchers know story has the power to open the heart, even if the mind does not change.

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What would you put in the earth as a treasure for the future to find? Let’s start there. Tell me that story.

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Questions for exploring the spiritual journey:

What moments stand out in childhood concerning religious faith and choices?
How did you discover a direct connection to the mystery of God, inside or outside the buildings, the traditions, the holidays – or the lack of these things?
How and when did you discover an innate linking to the Divine?
What happened in adolescence, in your young adult years?
When you partnered or married, did you choose someone with similar faith and/or values?
What did you decide to observe, or not, in this partnership? What do you want your children – or the children around you – to understand about the spiritual journey?
What aspects of faith do you talk about with other people?
Are you able to have conversations about values and religion inside your family?
With whom are you most likely to share stories of your spiritual life and insights?
Do you practice asking throughout the day: where is spirit in what I am doing right now?
How might you express your own love of God in the world?
What kind of support would you need in order to take conversational risks or actions in your daily life?
What spiritual values motivate your actions?
How do you stay joyful and grateful and keep your heart open to the world’s suffering?
How do you move confidently into action in a world that is always changing? In a world where you never have the whole story?
How do you talk about tension and schism and put it on the table like a candle in the centre of the circle?
What do you want to say to young adults as they face their first griefs in the world?
What do you want to elicit from elders?

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How are you doing with all the tension? I ask… I mean the unrelenting tension that won’t go away, that cannot be solved by ruling party elections, or by switching jobs, or partners, or financial planners, or churches – that tension.

More and more often, I find myself thinking that the people with whom I most deeply belong are those who are willing to carry the ambiguity of the age, those who are learning how to manage tension in a heartfelt, spiritually imbued manner. I call us the Tribe of the Ambiguous.

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Storycatching is at its root an act of refuge, a place to turn, an offering that we will be listened to while we hold our hearts like a talking piece in our hands; and then, we pay it forward – we become the listening ear for the next person, and the next. In this way, the skills of eliciting story, and skills of receiving story, grow among us. Story makes community: communities make story.

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Toke: When I am invited into an organization, someone calls me because they want to amplify something – to make something stronger. The first thing I ask myself is whether or not I want to contribute to what they want amplified. I make choices. I’m not for sale. I work with human beings, not institutions, and I work through story because story is the human part of the organization.

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Invitational Questions to the Art of Hosting:

What if the solutions for our future are hiding in our collective intelligence and wisdom?

What if hosting conversations is the kind of leadership that allows learning to take place?

What comes into the world when we talk about what matters and act on what inspires us?

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Wow, I say, you must have a lot of stories. Tell us about a moment when things looked really bad but turned out well… tell us about a time when somebody made a good decision under pressure…

The Anatomy of Peace

2011-12-03T22:02:00.000-08:00

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict by The Arbinger Institute

Here are a few of my notes… (and some great diagrams can be found here)

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That strategy will be illustrated by a diagram we call the Change Pyramid. We aren’t yet ready to consider the pyramid in detail, so I’ve drawn only its basic structure. This overall structure will help us to discover a fundamental change that must occur in us if we are going to invite change in others.”

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“But I won’t invite my child to change if my interactions with him are primarily in order to get him to change.”

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“But Camp Moriah is a private organization with no authority of the state,” Yusuf responded, “and no desire to create additional problems by trying to bully people into doing what we want them to do. We do not force children to enroll.” “Then you have a problem,” Lou said. “Yes, we certainly do,” Yusuf agreed. “The same problem we each have in our families. And the same problem countries have with one another. We are all surrounded by other autonomous people who don’t always behave as we’d like.”

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Lou then glanced at Elizabeth but couldn’t read her countenance. He dug in once more, keeping her in his sight as he spoke. “So the secret to war is to have a heart at peace?” he asked mockingly, turning back to Yusuf. “Yes, Lou,” Yusuf answered unflinchingly. “And not just in war. It is the secret to success in business and family life as well. The state of your heart toward your children—whether at peace or at war—is by far the most important factor in this intervention we are now undertaking. It is also what will most determine your ability to successfully maneuver your company through the challenges created by your recent defections.”

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“Saladin, on the other hand,” Avi continued, “saw and honored the humanity of those he conquered. He may have wished they had never come to the borders of his lands, but he recognized these were people he was doing battle with, and that he therefore had to see, treat, and honor them as such.”

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“In every moment, we are choosing to be either like Saladin or like the crusading invaders. In the way we regard our children, our spouses, neighbors, colleagues, and strangers, we choose to see others either as people like ourselves or as objects. They either count like we do or they don’t.

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In the former case, since we regard them as we regard ourselves, we say our hearts are at peace toward them. In the latter case, since we systematically view them as inferior, we say our hearts are at war.”

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In other words, we are always seeing others either as objects—as obstacles, for example, or as vehicles or irrelevancies—or we are seeing them as people.

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“Seeing an equal person as an inferior object is an act of violence, Lou. It hurts as much as a punch to the face. In fact, in many ways it hurts more. Bruises heal more quickly than emotional scars do.”

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“This issue of way of being is of great practical importance,” Avi continued. “First of all, think of a difficult business situation—say a complicated negotiation, for example. Who do you think would be more likely to put together a deal in difficult circumstances, a negotiator who sees the others in the negotiation as objects or one who sees them as people?”

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Generally speaking, we respond to others’ way of being toward us rather than to their behavior. Which is to say that our children respond more to how we’re regarding them than they do to our particular words or actions. We can treat our children fairly, for example, but if our hearts are warring toward them while we’re doing it, they won’t think they’re being treated fairly at all. In fact, they’ll respond to us as if they weren’t being treated fairly.”

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COLLUSION: A conflict where the parties are inviting the very things they’re fighting against

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“And I would wager a mighty sum,” he continued, “that your respective organizations look like this as well—with workers recruiting colleagues and others with the tales they tell, leading to organizations that are divided into warring silos, one group complaining incessantly about another, and the other returning the same. Until finally, your organizations are filled with people whose energies are largely spent on sustaining conflict—what we call collusion—and who therefore are not fully focused on achieving the productive goals of the organization.

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“True,” Yusuf agreed. “But you see, no conflict can be solved so long as all parties are convinced they are right. Solution is possible only when at least one party begins to consider how he might be wrong.”

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“When I choose to act contrary to my own sense of what is appropriate,” Yusuf continued, “I commit what we at Camp Moriah call an act of self-betrayal. It is a betrayal of my own sense of the right way to act in a given moment in time—not someone else’s sense or standard, but what I myself feel is right in the moment.

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He looked around at the group. “A choice to betray myself,” he said, “is a choice to go to war.”

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“So notice,” Yusuf continued, “when I betray myself, others’ faults become immediately inflated in my heart and mind. I begin to ‘horribilize’ others. That is, I begin to make them out to be worse than they really are. And I do this because the worse they are, the more justified I feel. A needy man on the street suddenly represents a threat to my very peace and freedom. A person to help becomes an object to blame.”

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“Justification has some telltale signs,” Yusuf began. “I’ve already mentioned a few—how we begin horribilizing others, for example. In fact, that sign is a subset of a whole category of signs that you might think of as exaggerations. When our hearts are at war, we tend to exaggerate others’ faults; that’s what we call horribilizing. We also tend to exaggerate the differences between ourselves and those we are blaming. We see little in common with them, when the reality is that we are similar in many if not most respects. We also exaggerate the importance of anything that will justify us.

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THE BETTER-THAN BOX View of Myself Superior Important Virtuous/Right View of Others Inferior Incapable/Irrelevant False/Wrong Feelings Impatient Disdainful Indifferent View of World Competitive Troubled Needs me

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THE I-DESERVE BOX View of Myself Meritorious Mistreated/Victim Unappreciated View of Others Mistaken Mistreating Ungrateful Feelings Entitled Deprived Resentful View of World Unfair Unjust Owes me

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THE MUST-BE-SEEN-AS BOX View of Myself Need to be well thought of Fake View of Others Judgmental Threatening My audience Feelings Anxious/Afraid Needy/Stressed Overwhelmed View of World Dangerous Watching Judging me

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THE WORSE-THAN BOX View of Myself Not as good Broken/Deficient Fated View of Others Advantaged Privileged Blessed Feelings Helpless Jealous/Bitter Depressed View of World Hard/Difficult Against me Ignoring me

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“Although it may be true in such cases that you didn’t perform the outward service you felt would have been ideal, you still retained the sense or desire you had in the beginning. That is, you still desired to be helpful. My guess is that there were probably a number of other things that needed to happen, and you just couldn’t do this additional ideal thing. Am I right?” Carol nodded. “And that’s life,” Yusuf shrugged. “We quite commonly have many things that would be ideal to do at any given moment. Whether or not we perform a particular service, the way we can know if we’ve betrayed ourselves is by whether we are still desiring to be helpful.”

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Which is to say that we construct our boxes through a lifetime of choices. Every time we choose to pull away from and blame another, we necessarily feel justified in doing so, and we start to plaster together a box of self-justification, the walls getting thicker and thicker over time.”

==========

we invite you to ponder what boxes you are carrying, and the nature of your predominant self-justifications. “I also invite you to consider how your box—this warring heart that you carry within—has invited outward war between you and those in your life.

==========

“While it’s true we can’t make others change, we can invite them to change. After all, didn’t Mei Li help to change Jenny?”

==========

“First of all,” Avi began, “you need to realize something about the box. Since the box is just a metaphor for how I am in relationship with another person, I can be both in and out of the box at the same time, just in different directions. That is, I can be blaming and justifying toward my wife, for example, and yet be living straightforwardly toward Yusuf, or vice versa. Given the hundreds of relationships I have at any given time, even if I am deeply in a box toward one person, I am nearly always out of the box toward someone else.”

==========

“This all sounds fairly basic, but most people who are trying to find their way out of conflict and bitterness never think to do it. Finding themselves stuck in bitterness, it never occurs to them that they have access to unbitter places in every moment.

==========

You need only to identify the relationships, places, memories, activities, book passages, and so on, that have that kind of power for you, and then remember to search them out when you feel war rising within you. When you’ve accessed such a place—an internal vantage point where peace remains—you can begin to ponder your challenges anew.”

==========

If they had been able to find their way to an out-of-the-box place, they could have pondered their situations anew by asking a series of questions.” Walking to the board and beginning to write, he said, “Like these:”

What are this person’s or people’s challenges, trials, burdens, and pains?
How am I, or some group of which I am a part, adding to these challenges, trials, burdens, and pains?
In what other ways have I or my group neglected or mistreated this person or group?
In what ways are my better-than, I-deserve, worse-than, and must-be-seen-as boxes obscuring the truth about others and myself and interfering with potential solutions?
What am I feeling I should do for this person or group? What could I do to help?

==========

“Exactly,” Yusuf replied. “And that is why I cannot tell you the precise thing you need to do. Only you, whose life it is—who knows the offenses, the missed opportunities, the petty un-kindnesses, and so on—will know. I couldn’t have told Avi that he needed to write a letter to Hamish, for example. Only he could have known that. Likewise, he may not have known enough about my life to suggest that I should seek out Mordechai Lavon. And notice, it is not just the sense of what to do but the desire to do it that’s at issue. That desire has to come from within,” he said. And then he added, “As it already has for you, Lou.”

==========

So the key to staying out of the box once you have found your way out is to do what you’re feeling you should do. It is to act on the out-of-the-box senses you are having.”

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RECOVERING INNER CLARITY AND PEACE (FOUR PARTS) Getting out of the box

1. Look for the signs of the box (blame, justification, horribilization, common box styles, etc.).

2. Find an out-of-the-box place (out-of-the-box relationships, memories, activities, places, etc.).

3. Ponder the situation anew (i.e., from this out-of-the-box perspective). Ask

What are this person’s or people’s challenges, trials, burdens, and pains?
How am I, or some group of which I am a part, adding to these challenges, trials, burdens, and pains?
In what other ways have I or my group neglected or mistreated this person or group?
In what ways are my better-than, I-deserve, worse-than, and must-be-seen-as boxes obscuring the truth about others and myself and interfering with potential solutions?
What am I feeling I should do for this person or group? What could I do to help? Staying out of the box

4. Act upon what I have discovered; do what I am feeling I should do.

==========

“But how about other kinds of conflicts?” Pettis asked. “Conflicts with more history to them, for example, or conflicts between many people. A single heart at peace won’t necessarily solve those.” “No, you’re right, Pettis. It won’t. But notice what it will do. Being out of the box will allow you for the first time to see the situation clearly, without exaggeration or justification. It will position you to begin to exert influence toward peace instead of provocation toward war. While you are correct that a heart at peace alone won’t solve your complex outer problems, those problems can’t begin to be solved without it.”

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THE PEACEMAKING PYRAMID (see here for a diagram)

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LESSON 1 Most time and effort should be spent at the lower levels of the pyramid.

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LESSON 2 The solution to a problem at one level of the pyramid is always below that level of the pyramid.

==========

“This lesson also runs counter to our normal reflex. When our correction isn’t working, we normally bear down harder and correct more. And when our teaching is going poorly, we often try to rescue it by talking more and insisting more. That is, we drone on in an attempt to correct the problems we have created by droning on!”

==========

“If I am correcting and correcting but problems remain,” Yusuf continued, “that is a clue that the solution to the problem I am facing will not be found in further correction. Likewise with teaching. And if I learn and learn, even going so far as to revise my opinions, but problems persist, perhaps what I need to do is go out and engage with others personally. Maybe I need to increase my efforts to build relationships both with those I am dealing with and with others who deal with them.

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LESSON 3 Ultimately, my effectiveness at each level of the pyramid depends on the deepest level of the pyramid—my way of being.

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“My effectiveness in everything above the lowest level of the pyramid depends on the lowest level.

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the way-of-being diagram tells us that almost any outward behavior can be done in either of two ways—with a heart that’s at war or a heart that’s at peace.”

==========

So while the pyramid tells us where to look and what kinds of things to do in order to invite change in others, this last lesson reminds us that it cannot be faked. The pyramid keeps helping me to remember that I might be the problem and giving me hints of how I might begin to become part of a solution. A culture of change can never be created by behavioral strategy alone. Peace—whether at home, work, or between peoples—is invited only when an intelligent outward strategy is married to a peaceful inward one.

==========

“This is why we have spent most of our time together working to improve ourselves at this deepest level. If we don’t get our hearts right, our strategies won’t much matter. Once we get our hearts right, however, outward strategies matter a lot. The virtue of the pyramid is that it reminds us of the essential foundation—change in ourselves—while also revealing a behavioral strategy for inviting change in others. It reminds us to get out of the box ourselves at the same time that it tells us how to invite others to get out as well.”

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“From within the box, passions, beliefs, and personal needs seem to divide us. When we get out of the box, however, we learn that this has been a lie. Our passions, beliefs, and needs do not divide but unite: it is by virtue of our own passions, beliefs, and needs that we can see and understand others’. If we have beliefs we cherish, then we know how important others’ beliefs must be to them. And if we have needs, then our own experience equips us to notice the needs of others.

==========

“may we remember the deeper lesson as well: that your, and my, and the world’s hoped-for outward peace depends most fully not on the peace we seek or the wars we wage without but on the peace we establish within.

==========

“It means that however bleak things look on the outside, the peace that starts it all, the peace within, is merely a choice away. A choice that changes everything. You already know this, as you are already beginning to feel differently about your children.

A Little Book on the Human Shadow

2011-12-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly

Here are a few of my notes…

He knew that “if any help was going to arrive to lift me out of my misery, it would come from the dark side of my personality.”

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It’s an old Gnostic tradition that we don’t invent things, we just remember.

==========

So I maintain that out of a round globe of energy the twenty-year-old ends up with a slice.

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We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.

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Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.

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But projection is a wonderful thing too. Marie Louise von Franz remarked somewhere, “Why do we always assume projection is bad? ‘You are projecting’ becomes among Jungians an accusation. Sometimes projection is helpful and the right thing.” Her remark is very wise.

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The issue is not so much that we do project but how long we keep the projections out there. Projection without personal contact is dangerous.

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If we put our sexuality into the bag as a child, obviously we lose with it a lot of energy. When a woman puts her masculinity into the bag, or rolls it up and puts it into the can, she loses energy with it. So we can think of our personal bag as containing energy now unavailable to us. If we identify ourselves as uncreative, it means we took our creativity and put it into the bag. What do you mean, “I am not creative”? “Let experts do it”—isn’t that what such a person is saying?

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Yet it is precisely through this expensive, damaging, wasteful, inaccurate form of mud-slinging that we eventually come in touch with the mud that the crow found on the bottom of his feet.

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When one “projects,” one is really giving away an energy or power that rightfully belongs to one’s own treasury. A man may give his “feeling side” or “relationship mode” away to his wife. Then he is rid of it, and when a feeling problem with the children comes up, he naturally lets her handle the problem.

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We’ll call the first stage of projection then the state of mind in which shadow material, well handled by trained conspirators, comes to rest outside the owner’s psyche, and seems likely to remain out there somewhere.

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But sooner or later one of the projections starts to rattle, in the lovely word Marie Louise von Franz uses. Something doesn’t quite fit any more, and we hear a rattle. We’ll call this rattling the second stage.

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I’ll call the third stage that state of mind in which the distressed person calls on the moral intelligence to repair the rattle.

==========

Let’s recapitulate the stages I’ve suggested briefly. To start with, the man’s witch and the woman’s giant are out there, and that feels fine. Many qualities are projected. Nora gave her hero to Torvald, and he gave his childishness to her. Then the machine started to wobble a little, and Nora found out that sometimes Torvald was a hero and sometimes he wasn’t. Nora then planned with her moral intelligence a crisis for Torvald in which he would prove triumphantly to be a magnificent hero. It didn’t work. So the desperate effort in the third stage to refit the hero mask, search the memory for witch dangers, fight with all women against negative patriarchs, achieves its aim only for a short time.

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What is the fourth stage? Suppose that one day, exhausted, one gives up for a moment the struggle to make the mask hang onto the other person. At that moment the eyes break contact; we suddenly look into ourselves and see our own diminishment. We recognize how diminished we have been for years. I would call the fourth stage the state of mind in which we feel the sensation of diminishment.

==========

It’s clear that the fifth stage in this long process amounts to the state of mind in which we retrieve the giant, retrieve the hero, retrieve the witch, retrieve the wicked child, retrieve our brutal national character; and the whole process of retrieval could be called eating the shadow.

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When the person begins to bring in rejected or projected authority, for example, and eat that, Saturn enters, and our passion deepens, and melancholy, always a mark of Saturn, and of retrieved shadow, brings its sorrow in, and its opening to the spirit.

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It is proper to ask then, “How does one go about eating the shadow or retrieving a projection, practically?”

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Using language consciously seems to be the most fruitful method of retrieving shadow substance scattered out on the world. Energy we have sent out is floating around beyond the psyche; and one way to pull it back into the psyche is by the rope of language. Certain kinds of language are nets, and we need to use the net actively, throwing it out. If we want our witch back we write about her; if we want our spiritual guide back we write about the spiritual guide rather than passively experience the guide in another person.

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People who are passive toward their projected material contribute to the danger of nuclear war, because every bit of energy that we don’t actively engage with language or art is floating somewhere in the air above the United States, and Reagan can use it. He has a big energy sweeper that pulls it in. No one should make you feel guilty for not keeping a journal, or creating art, but such activity helps the whole world.

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He observed that our psyche in daily life tries to give us a hint of where our shadow lies by picking out people to hate in an irrational way. Suppose there is a woman in the town who seems to her too loose and too sexually active, and she finds herself thinking of this other woman a lot. In that case, the psyche is suggesting that part of her shadow, at least, lies in the sexual area. She has to notice precisely whom she hates. That is the path of attention. Suppose that she hates the current president of the PTA; and if you ask her, she’ll say that the woman is fakey, can’t be trusted, is too successful, and so forth. The psyche might be telling her that part of her shadow lies in the power area. She has unused and unrecognized power impulses, which she has put into the bag. Otherwise there wouldn’t be such heavily emotional contact with that other person. So, following the path of attention, one notices where the anger goes, and precisely whom we become obsessed with.

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The metaphor is this: if we maintain eye contact with that person, we can damage him or her by our anger and hatred. If we break off eye contact and look down quickly to the right, we will see our own shadow. Hatred then is very helpful.

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Paying attention to what one likes or hates in literature helps also.

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It is possible that one of the reasons that all of us dream so much is that the dreamer wants to remind us of the amount of shadow that we haven’t absorbed.

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Well, it’s as if there were some kind of game being played here between the ego and the shadow. When permissive educators come in and tell children to express their anger, it’s like giving the shadow side fifteen balls and the structure side none.

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It is said that inside our body there is a vast gap—perhaps thousands of miles across—between the power chakra in the stomach and the heart chakra in the chest.

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Joseph Campbell describes the two opposites as two horns; and if we get hooked on either, we die. Baker Roshi remarked that in Zen the student tries to imagine a third possibility. It goes like this.

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The women, bravely, allowed rage, humiliation, jealousy, and anger to be expressed, but she concluded that expressing shadow material by itself doesn’t help.

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Secondly, Marie Louise suggests that we regard our anger as a person and talk to it. Rather than acting as a conduit for our own anger, and focusing it on another person, one turns one’s face and body to the anger itself, and asks: “What do you want from me? What do you want of me?” That is honoring the anger, just as we honor everyone whom we turn to face.

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The shadow energies seem to be a part of the human psyche, a part of its 360-degree nature, and the shadow energies become destructive only when they are ignored.

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Standing in the Fire

2011-11-22T23:59:00.001-08:00

Standing in the Fire: Leading High-Heat Meetings with Clarity, Calm, and Courage by Larry Dressler and Roger Schwarz

Here are some of my notes (I reached the clipping limit for this book – so many good gems!)…

Our fires start when challenging issues flare up in groups and mix with fuel from our own issues. Still, the lessons learned from the Mann Gulch fire ring true for us as well: You never know when a fire will ignite or shift direction. What has worked for you in the past may not work now. Successfully standing in the fire often means inventing new tools and techniques in the moment. Fire can even be your friend if you respect it and know how to use it. Ultimately, successfully standing in the fire is about developing a mindset—a way of thinking and feeling—that enables you to be calm, curious, courageous, compassionate, and flexible. Without this mindset, you are lost.

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Learning to stand in the fire means doing internal work. It is a discipline and a journey. The path differs for each of us, and there is more than one way to stand effectively. We need a guide to help us explore when and how we lose our balance, help us learn how to regain it, and help us develop ways of showing up with groups so we are more likely to remain calm, curious, compassionate, and courageous. That guide is what Standing in the Fire delivers.

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In these high-heat situations, the truly masterful change agents draw on something else—something that most leaders have invested little time and effort to cultivate. That something is who we are being while we are working with the group.

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It is the convener’s way of being—an attitudinal, emotional, physical, and even spiritual presence. It is a specific kind of presence that others experience as fully engaged, open, authentic, relaxed, and grounded in purpose.

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Since the earliest human societies, leadership has involved the act of convening—bringing diverse individuals together to pursue a common purpose. Whether you think of yourself as a process facilitator, executive leader, organizational development consultant, mediator, clergy member, educator, community organizer, or change agent, your job involves skillfully convening others in a way that helps them discover and mobilize their shared wisdom and energy.

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The second kind of energy can be accessed only if we can ask ourselves, Who do I want to be right now? This question ignites the energy of deliberate choice and wise action.

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Too often, no action was needed at all. What was needed was a facilitative leader who could serve as a steady, impartial, purposeful presence in the room, holding the space of the conversation with good humor, resoluteness, and compassion.

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We need fire to progress, but we also need to help people channel its heat. That’s the job of fire tenders—people who know how to bring out the life-generating, creative potential of group fire.

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The policy of suppression ultimately led to the demise of the company. In order to create organizations and communities in which people feel safe speaking their truth, we need leaders who are both skillful at process and who possess the capacity to remain self-aware, open, and fluid even as others struggle with dissent, confusion, and fear.

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As we develop greater mastery, we learn to recognize dissent and confusion as old, familiar friends. We welcome inconvenient surprises as useful fuel, and we come to view group breakdowns as the natural precursor to breakthroughs.

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You may see a challenging question from a group member as an insult to your authority, while another sees it as an invitation into dialogue. Still another may see it as a politically motivated move. It all depends on your habitual way of seeing things. The key is to be willing to hold your default beliefs and assumptions up for inspection, never assuming that they are the only truth in the room.

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Our ego fuels our need to win, to be right, to be superior. The ego is the part of us that equates our worth with our reputation and achievements. So when something about a meeting begins to go off track, and group confusion or an impasse makes the hoped-for outcomes less likely, we fear we won’t live up to our self-image. When we don’t know what to do as things become messier, we feel self-conscious and embarrassed about asking for help. We feel psychologically at risk, and this can trigger a kind of fight-or-flight response. In these moments, unless we can acknowledge that the image of ourselves we have constructed is an illusion, we remain in our own fire.

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Regardless of how hot the fire gets “out there” in the meeting, we have the ability to control our own thermostat. The fire does not determine how intensely we experience the heat. We determine that.

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The ability to choose our own internal state in the face of external heat is the essence of intentional, high-integrity leadership. It dictates whether we will be able to offer calm presence and wise action when they are most

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We can learn to see, hear, and sense the intense heat in groups without taking it on ourselves. We don’t need to be impervious or above it all. Nor do we need to avoid having our hot buttons pushed. Our buttons will get pushed. Our personal vulnerabilities will appear as they show up in the group’s dynamic, like a mirror into our psyche. But we don’t have to act on them. Nor do we need to suppress them.

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When you are leading groups, what causes you to feel defensive, impatient, or anxious? What internal narratives and beliefs are connected with these feelings? What are the unrealistic or perfectionist expectations you have of yourself as a meeting convener? In what situations do you begin to feel stressed or vulnerable because you are not living up to those expectations?

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As you go about your daily and weekly activities, notice which interactions have heat and what form it takes. Where are you noticing high levels of passion and conviction? Where do things appear to be contentious or personal? When do you notice the absence of fire in group interactions? Notice your judgments and emotions as you observe and participate in the heat of daily interactions.

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We must become fire tenders—people who can stand in the face of incendiary conflicts and perplexing challenges and help others hold the tensions, emotions, and uncertainties long enough to arrive at new insights and common ground.

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A common misconception is that we need to keep the peace in our institutions by suppressing anything that is controversial, loud, emotional, or potentially polarizing. Anything that might spark a conflict is discouraged. But attempts to prevent or suppress uncertainty, conflict, and emotion produce what fire experts call a “fuel buildup”—a condition that contributes to large, highly destructive fires.

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Masterful fire tenders have many ways to stand effectively in the fire: As the fire forces them to face their own self-limiting ways of thinking, emotional hot buttons, and ego, they stand with deep self-awareness. When others become mired in remembrances of past failures and predictions of impending disaster, they stand in the present, grounded in the here and now. Adroit fire tenders will not allow judgments and biases to cloud what they see and choose to do from moment to moment. This is the stance of receptivity, or “open-mindedness.” In the face of confusion and uncertainty, masterful fire tenders remain in service to the group’s purpose, standing with clarity about what they must stand for in the moment. As surprises and disruptions occur, great fire tenders respond with the fluidity, spontaneity, and grace of a dancer. When individual or group dynamics become distasteful or uncomfortable to witness, consummate fire tenders find a way to sustain compassion, standing with a wide-open heart.

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They commit to a lifelong journey of self-understanding and personal practice. They don’t aspire to a state of perfection. Their goal is simply to bring their full, most conscious, and deliberate self to each interaction in order to serve as an instrument for positive change.

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The path to becoming a truly effective instrument of change is in the conscious tending of our own fires—attending to what is going on inside us in order to clearly see and intentionally assist in the unfolding of what is happening outside us.

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Can you recall a time when your beliefs, assumptions, or emotions got in the way of working effectively in a high-heat situation? What did you learn about yourself?

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Stand with self-awareness Stand in the here and now Stand with an open mind Know what you stand for Dance with surprises Stand with compassion

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Self-awareness is the foundation for wise action.

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With more self-awareness I might have recognized myself shrinking back, named what was happening, and quickly huddled with the meeting chair to discuss the implications of the mayor’s unanticipated presentation. (Amanda’s note: reminds me of guardian and host in Circle.)

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Each moment in the fire is a teacher if we stand in front of the mirror. How do we stay alert to our mental, emotional, and physical states during high-heat moments? The capacities that enable us to maintain a high level of moment-to-moment self-awareness while standing in the fire are self-observation, whole-body sensing, and reflective processing.

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Self-observation involves asking ourselves a basic question: What’s up with me? The purpose of the question is to name thoughts and feelings that may be percolating only at the periphery of our consciousness but are having an impact on how we show up in our work.

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When we get triggered, the reaction shows up first in our bodies. For this reason, physical sensations can carry important information. Specific emotions generate particular patterns of sensation in our bodies. These somatic reactions are noticeable before the emotion is.

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Here are additional reflective questions that help us examine our inferences and perceptions: What belief or perspective (about others, myself, the situation) do I feel attached to right now? Is this belief supported by the facts? Do the facts also support alternative ways of seeing this? What are the implications of this being true? What will it mean to me if this is not true? What is my motivation for being right about this? In what way does this belief strengthen or undermine my ability to show up at my best right now? In what ways does this belief enable me to help the group achieve its purpose?

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Some reflective questions that enable us to heighten our awareness when we are triggered include: What just precipitated this emotion in me? What is the story I am telling myself to justify or maintain this emotion? Am I meeting the group’s needs or my own in this moment? If being in this emotional state isn’t in service to the group, what is keeping me from doing something about it? When I am in this emotional state, which of my gifts do I deny the group?

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When you notice yourself feeling impatient, fearful, disconnected, or resentful, what are the beliefs at work? What unconscious “shadow” beliefs have you become aware of over the past year? What impact have they had on your work in groups? What physical sensations are your “early warning signals” to the possibility that you have been triggered in a meeting? What do these symptoms indicate you might be feeling? What early experiences in your life make you particularly vigilant (even subconsciously) and easily triggered by certain group dynamics or group member behavior?

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Make a list of the kinds of people, events, or situations that trigger a strong emotional reaction in you. Describe the precipitating event, the emotion that is triggered within you, and the kinds of behaviors you are prone to when acting on this emotion. Next to each hot button, make a note about any beliefs you have that support the emotional response. Think back to any life experiences during which the justifying belief might have been developed or reinforced. Finally, identify alternative ways to interpret the precipitating event that might result in a different emotional response.

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Standing in the here and now is less about staying in the present moment and more about continuously bringing ourselves back to the present as we notice regret and worry attempting to commandeer our consciousness.

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How do you experience the difference between thinking about your next move in a meeting and worrying that something bad is going to happen? How about the difference between reflecting on the past as a teacher versus dwelling in self-criticism or blame? What makes stillness a challenge for you when things heat up in your meetings?

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Choose a setting, preferably one with people in it. It can be your local coffee house, a park, or perhaps a dinner party. Experiment with immersing all of your senses in what is happening in the moment. First extend each of your physical senses into the space. What are you seeing and hearing? What are you feeling on the surface of your skin? What do you smell and taste? As thoughts and interpretations of what is happening come to your mind, simply notice them and move your attention back to your experience in the present. Now notice whether you are picking up on an emotional energy. Don’t try to analyze it or put words to it. Simply feel what is in the air. Just feel it. What was it like to immerse yourself deeply in the moment? How challenging was it to quiet your mind and simply let your senses experience the here and now? How might this serve you in your leadership and facilitation?

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I’m not listening with the idea of deciding whether they are right or wrong, but trying to see the way they construct their world. —Roger Schwarz

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At times, the facilitator is the only person in the room who is not closing down, rejecting alternative ways of seeing, and losing hope of what might be accomplished. Our ability as facilitators to hold an unwavering stance of not knowing— while maintaining a sense of inquiry and optimism—is often the critical factor enabling a group to move beyond conflict and distress.

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When we stand with receptivity to what is unfolding in the group, we must be willing to release our hold on our own certainty and say these three words: I don’t know. Receptivity requires of us a willingness to experience the discomfort that occurs when there is a gap between our “truth” and that of others. Fundamentally, standing with this kind of openness involves deciding that it is more important to be of service than to be correct or comfortable.

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Standing with an open mind as we face the fire of conflict involves creating space for contradictions to coexist. This means learning to live with our discomfort and uncertainty. The educator Parker Palmer describes this as patiently “holding the tension of the opposites.”3 He says that we need to learn to resist the urge to resolve them too quickly, allowing those tensions to “pull us open” into new insights and paths of action.

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Humility is not the “aw shucks” self-deprecating, falsely modest, submissive stance that many of us associate with the word. Think of humility as the sustained embodiment of a basic belief: What I see and know is only a part of the total picture.

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It is liberating to walk into a volatile group situation knowing that we do not have to be smarter or more capable than everyone else in the room. We become alert and open to the counsel of those around us. If we are open and wise enough to ask the opinions of the group, their intuition, courage, and clarity can be the difference between harnessing the power of group fire and having things burn to ashes.

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One way I remind myself about humility is to bow when I enter a meeting room. A jazz drummer and spiritual teacher named Jerry Granelli taught me this. Jerry explained that the bow represents our humility before the larger world and the group. It is what martial artists do before entering the dojo, the place of learning.

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The bow is hardly noticeable to anyone else, but it is a powerful way to remind myself that I am in the presence of people who possess their own hard-earned expertise, innate wisdom, shared aspirations, and the courage to gather to do difficult work.

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Curiosity begins when we value not knowing. This mindset is the key to creativity and discovery. Instead of looking for evidence to support our opinions, we look with fresh eyes. Instead of defending our interpretations, we ask questions. The more we learn to live with not having the answers, the more curious we become and the more we can respect and welcome the struggles that groups face.

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When we can face the fire of people challenging our competence and expertise with a spirit of receptivity and inquiry, we change the spirit of the whole room. When we can stand with curiosity and optimism in a room filled with self-righteousness and cynicism, we are doing the transformational work of fire tending.

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In what kinds of circumstances do you tend to feel a sense of self-righteousness, defensiveness, or superiority? When were you able to tap in to your own curiosity in the face of disturbing or confusing contributions from participants? Do you find it easy to hold possibility in a room filled with people who are expressing cynicism, fear, despair, or resignation? What helps you to be the steward of possibility in such moments?

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Tune in to your most despised radio or television political commentator, the person whose views really get under your skin. Sit down and listen for thirty minutes and notice what you feel. Listen to your judgments. Feel the emotions and physical sensations that well up. Now get curious about what this person thinks and why. What if you didn’t try to prove those opinions right or wrong? If you really wanted to understand what makes this commentator tick, what questions would you ask?

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When we are leading, comfort and convenience can’t be our compass points. We need a way of orienting ourselves that is connected to something more compelling than self-protection and more inspiring than self-ambition.

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Your guiding intention for any meeting consists of your answers to the following questions: What am I here to contribute in the world? What principles guide my work? Who am I here for? What does the group want to achieve? What is and is not my job in this meeting?

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Our principles are our highest, most firmly held beliefs about how we want to work in, and walk through, the world.

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Here is a partial list of the principles that ground my work and that help me when I begin to feel anxious or lost. These are not ideas I invented. They have been given to me by many teachers over many years. Surprises are a given. If I could predict them, they wouldn’t be surprises. The specifics of any plan I go in to the meeting with are likely to become obsolete. The wisdom is already in the system—I simply help to create conditions through which the group’s wisdom might be revealed. Hearing all the voices, including those with fewer numbers and less power, is essential to a creative and inclusive process. When people act out toward me in anger or fear, it’s almost never about me. It’s not personal. To the extent that I can embody peace and receptivity, I can be a catalyst for transformation in the room and in the larger world.

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In advance of any meeting, I ask myself, Who am I here to serve?

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We have to keep in mind that who we are here to serve is not always the same as who hired us. Sometimes who we are here to serve is not even in the room.

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you need to be firmly rooted in what the group says it wants to achieve. In the midst of confusion and conflict, your ability to connect quickly with the group’s purpose is essential to knowing what you stand for.

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“Venezuela was on the brink of a bloody civil war, and I was told I would have fifteen minutes with Chavez and members of his Cabinet,” Ury recalls. Just before the meeting Ury went to the garden courtyard of his Caracas bed and breakfast to reflect on his guiding intention. “As I sat there in the garden, I decided that I would sacrifice my opportunity to give advice and instead just listen to Chavez. I also decided that my focus would be on the children of Venezuela—preserving their ability to grow up in a peaceful country.

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Our commitments not only guide us in what we say yes to but also inform us when we need to say no to others and to ourselves. As a result of the commitments I make to myself, I more often say no to my own defensive tendencies. I say no to leaders who want to hold meetings in order to create the illusion of inclusion rather than the real thing. I say no to my own desire to stick with the agenda when something else is emerging that the group wishes to address.

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In what situations have you maintained your integrity and authenticity despite the pressures to abandon yourself? In what kinds of situations do you tend to choose caution and comfort over making the right move? In these moments, is there a higher principle you let go of?

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What are you committed to that you would not compromise in your work? in your life?

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Find a quiet place to sit with a partner. Provide your partner with these three questions: (1) Who are you? (2) What have you chosen to stand for in your life? (3) What are you here to contribute in the world? Ask your partner to spend ten minutes asking you each question. During each ten-minute period your partner’s only role is to listen very carefully to your responses and then pose the same question again. He or she should make no commentary or attempt to probe deeper. After ten minutes your partner should move on to the second question, and then ten minutes later to the third. Take an additional thirty minutes to describe to your partner what you learned. What were the more superficial, ego-driven, or socially acceptable answers you had to break through to get to deeper, more authentic statements about yourself? What was empowering about this? What was scary? What did you learn about what your higher purpose is and is not?

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I have had to accept the law of the trickster. A creature in many shamanic traditions, the trickster serves as a rather sneaky teacher. Just when we think we are on the road to achieving our goals, the trickster throws us a curve ball, a snowball, or a fur ball—something completely unexpected that we have no idea how to catch, let alone hold on to. In the context of meetings, the trickster might appear in the form of a participant who acts in ways you label “illogical” or “inappropriate.” The trickster can also appear in the form of events or circumstances (perhaps a snowstorm or the illness of a key participant) that disrupt a well-honed plan. The trickster very often appears in the form of a key insight the group stumbles upon, an insight that needs more time— time you don’t have.

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When we get surprised, it’s easy for us to dig in and become rigid, self-protective, or positional in our thinking. Each response is an indicator that we are attached to something. That something is often a belief about what should be happening. We should be able to assure the outcome of this meeting and spare participants discomfort and distress. If a plan is good, we should not have to change it. People should be more logical and less emotional. They should communicate concisely and show up on time. We should be able to quickly put things back on track when they get messy.

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Here’s a useful exercise: During the course of your daily routine, notice when you become impatient or lose your sense of perspective.

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In order to stand and move with the flow, we need to examine our attachments—the beliefs that we want to hold on to and the things we feel entitled to. Whether or not we admit it, many of us are attached to being liked and being viewed as an expert. We want to be needed. As mentioned earlier, we also become attached to certain expectations of how people should act and how things should go in our meetings. When these attachments get in the way of our adapting, they hinder our effectiveness as leaders and facilitators.

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To let go is to hold these beliefs and expectations lightly and be willing to release them when it serves your guiding intention. Letting go involves first recognizing the things to which you feel attached, naming them, and then loosening your psychological grip. One facilitator we interviewed discovered he was once strongly attached to his agenda. “The more I tried to convince them of the rightness of my agenda,” he said, “the more they resisted. Finally, when I realized what I was doing and expressed openness to refining the agenda, people’s resistance dropped away.”3

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Building our capacity to play means learning to view chaos, confusion, and conflict as partners rather than foes. To be playful is to approach our role with lightheartedness. We can take the work seriously, but we don’t have to take ourselves too seriously.

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One belief that has helped me become much more playful in my work facilitating high-stakes meetings is the notion that there is no “one right move” in any given situation—that many options will work.

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Rather than become resentful, anxious, or distracted by surprises, we need to learn to dance with them—to invite these uninvited guests into our meeting and welcome the creative possibilities they offer.

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When has surrendering to the realities of difficult people, behaviors, or circumstances enabled you to adapt in ways that served the group? What strongly held beliefs and expectations about yourself tend to undermine your ability to be flexible? Who are the tricksters in your life—the people and events that have taught you about flexibility and have revealed your patterns of rigidity, judgment, and control?

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To what do you feel attached? To what part of your public image (say, neatness) do you feel strongly attached? To what material things (for example, books) do you feel strongly attached? To what comforts (maybe a hot shower each morning) do you feel strongly attached? To what daily or weekly routines (a morning bagel perhaps) do you feel strongly attached? Give up one of these for a week. If being neat is important, stop combing your hair before you go out. If you are attached to hot showers, turn up the cold water for a week. Notice what emotions and beliefs come to the surface. In the process, notice what other attachments you discover. For the weeks that follow this exercise, keep three lists: Things I need to believe about myself Things I need to do Things I think should happen

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As change agents working in emotionally volatile situations, our goal is not to extinguish or become impervious to unpleasant feelings. Our goal is to learn to feel human fear and heartbreak without defaulting into a fight-or-flight mode.

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We know our hearts are closing when: We feel superior to others We feel numb to what is occurring We feel judgmental, impatient, or irritated with ourselves or others We are unkind or even hurtful toward ourselves and others We dismiss or ignore certain people We silently label people with words like inappropriate, manipulative, or dumb We decide we know someone’s motives, character, or competency We are intimidated by or deferent to certain people These responses diminish the kind of safety and trust we hope to create in our meetings. Amanda’s note: lots to reflect on here.

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The repression and denial of emotions can become a form of learned apathy. The Greek word apatheia means “nonsuffering,” or the inability to experience pain. Though it sounds like an appealing state, cloaking our hearts has profoundly negative consequences. Anesthetizing ourselves to the world of emotions requires a huge amount of energy and disables us from understanding what is truly happening in the room.

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Our hearts close against others mainly because of our projections. We are projecting when we assign our qualities, moods, and motives to other people. What we reject in ourselves, we reject in others. What we admire in ourselves, we admire in others. We use projection to keep us blind to certain parts of ourselves we don’t want to see. We might think “That person is playing politics” as a way to deny the part of us that is politically motivated or manipulative. We might decide “This is a very angry and dysfunctional person” as we deny the anger in ourselves. If we are not aware that we are projecting, the stories we create about others can quickly carry us into negative stances like distrust and arrogance.

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The Hebrew word for compassion is rachamim, which shares the same linguistic root as the word rechem, meaning “womb.”1 In this light, “compassion” suggests the human connection and tenderness associated with motherhood. It is a connection that transcends physical separateness and that even in the most difficult times enables us to draw on our capacity for forgiveness and kindness.

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When I came back into the room, I watched my colleague inquire into the fears and doubts of those expressing skepticism. Soon others began to express similar worries. I remembered my own struggles speaking up to people in authority and was able to share some of those with the group. Within an hour, people seemed excited to get on with the training. They’d felt reassured that all of their fears, hopes, and concerns had been heard. I had acknowledged their humanity and in doing so, remembered my own.

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Learning to stand with compassion is a lifelong endeavor. Just when we think we are the embodiment of open-heartedness in our life and work, a new, challenging person walks into the room and reminds us of those aspects of ourselves with which we still struggle.

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Emotional openness means opening our hearts to difficult as well as pleasurable emotions and feeling them fully—observing and experiencing them—without allowing those emotions to carry us away. When we can open our heart up to joy, hope, and passion, we are more able to stoke the creative energy of group fire. When we allow our heart to feel pain, suffering, and despair, we unleash the cleansing and restorative potential of group fire. When we can feel the wide range of emotions without melting into fight or flight, gently cradling our own heart, we become a cradle for the heart of everyone in the room.

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Every label we assign, every judgment we make, every feeling we have, is an opportunity to look inside and ask, What part of me am I projecting in this moment? What part of me needs to be identified and accepted?

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We too quickly forget that every person who walks into the room has a larger life story.

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Seeing the whole person doesn’t mean learning the life story and motivations of every participant with whom we work. Instead, it involves an ongoing awareness that each person we encounter is much more than the person who is showing up in that moment, in that meeting, on that day. We strengthen our capacity for compassion when we can hold this question as a mantra: Who else is this person?

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The term unconditional positive regard originated with psychotherapy pioneer Carl Rogers. It refers to an unwavering support and acceptance of people as worthy of our respect, regardless of what they are doing in the moment. Extending this kind of positive regard means approaching difficult behaviors without ridicule or criticism. This doesn’t mean that we have to agree with or condone everything that people do.

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When I find my heart closing and patience and compassion fading away, I often say one of these statements to myself in order to reconnect with my regard for the person: I respect you as the unique individual I am coming to know. I respect that you have a different way of looking at things. I respect that you react differently than I might want you to. I respect that you came here to do this difficult work. I respect that this is a moment in which it’s normal to struggle.

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What enables you to maintain an open, compassionate heart in the presence of others who are acting in ways you find to be distasteful or who are undermining the goals of the meeting?

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What do people do that hooks you in meetings? What qualities and behaviors do you find difficult to accept in others? In what ways might they be connected to qualities within yourself that you have not yet accepted? Who in your life currently gives you unconditional positive regard? What do you feel when you are with them?

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The Deep Democracy practitioner Myrna Lewis suggested this activity.6 Think of the last meeting participant who really annoyed you in some way. This is a person in whose presence you felt a shortage of neutrality and compassion. Now pair up with a partner and play the role of this person. Really exaggerate the person’s words, tone, facial expressions, and physical gestures. Even if you become uncomfortable with the level of exaggeration, continue the role-play. If you carry on being this person, you will discover a part of yourself that this person represents. Take time to debrief with your partner and reflect on the aspects of this person with which you identify.

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For facilitators of high-heat meetings, meditation teaches us to get comfortable with restlessness, excitement, worry, judgment, and other disruptive inventions of the mind. Mindfulness meditation teaches us to observe our thoughts and feelings without judgment and then to return to our focus on the breath. In high-heat situations, this can be an invaluable practice for avoiding being swept up in the emotion and intensity of the group.

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PEER MENTOR RELATIONSHIPS A peer mentor is a trusted colleague with whom you meet on a regular schedule, say every four to six weeks. If your goal is to work specifically on building your self-awareness of mental habits, emotional hot buttons, and ego, then that should be the agreed-upon focus of the inquiry. Among the questions you might ask each other are: When do you typically feel overwhelmed, insecure, resistant, or resentful in the meetings you facilitate? What beliefs or assumptions are operating when you experience these states? How true are these beliefs? In what ways do these beliefs support or undermine your ability to be in service to the group and to lead with integrity? What beliefs about yourself in your work tend to get you into

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Those sitting in the circle are forbidden from speaking to the focus person in any way except to ask an honest, open question aimed at helping the focus person deepen his or her understanding of the problem. No advice, reassurances, or problem fixing is permitted—just questions and silent reflection.

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The practice of compassion breathing involves identifying anything that feels distasteful, painful, or distressing. Instead of attempting to repress or deny it, we breathe it in and connect with it fully. As we breathe in the suffering and grief—our own and that of others—we let the heaviness of the in-breath pass through the nose, throat, lungs, and heart, not holding on to it but letting it flow through the body. We breathe in the suffering not only as our own specific experience but also as part of the larger human condition. In doing so, we feel a kinship with the larger web of life. On the out-breath we send out a wish for happiness, relaxation, or whatever will relieve the suffering that we breathed in. As we exhale, we do so with a sense of openness and relief.

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An affirmation is an authentic, heartfelt declaration of what you want to contribute in the world, the gifts you offer, or the future you want to bring into being. Peggy Holman, a convener of Open Space meetings, has had a daily affirmation practice since 1986. She chooses one or two affirmations to work on for a period of one year. Over the years, her affirmations have evolved into questions.

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An affirmation is more powerful if it is personal. You can write your own affirmation by following these steps: 1. Take some time to write three to four sentences answering these questions: What qualities, gifts, motives, and callings do you want to be reminded of each day? What are you here to contribute in the world? Think about the person in your life who is your most avid supporter and cheerleader. In your moment of greatest self-doubt, what would you want this person to whisper in your ear? 2. Now, craft these ideas into a three- to four-line affirmation— a statement that will fit on a piece of paper as big as a business card. Print out a pocket-size version to keep with you. 3. Commit to thirty days of reciting it out loud every day until you know it like you know your own name.

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The process consultant Chris Grant suggests that we all make a point of regularly participating in meetings as non-facilitator, non-leader members—as just part of the gang. This practice heightens our sensitivity to what it means to participate in a group process. As group members, we gain empathy and appreciation for what it is like to attempt to influence others, struggle with differences, and conform to a process someone else designed.

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Another heat-exposing practice is one I call stepping into your allergy zone. It involves seeking out ideas and people we might otherwise avoid. These are ideas and people we tend to experience as uncomfortable, distasteful, and even offensive. Attend public talks by people who hold viewpoints opposed to yours. Listen to radio programs with commentators who make you want to scream when you are alone in your car. Pay attention to encounters with friends and family members who express opinions you might label “stupid,” “outdated,” even “bigoted.” In all these cases, take time to inquire sincerely and openly into their beliefs and assumptions. Notice your internal judgments and reactions. How open are you to what is being said? What is your level of curiosity? What are the ways in which you can acknowledge a very different viewpoint without having to agree with it?

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION What is the role of “practice” in your life? What practices do you do with intention and consistency, and how do they contribute to your health, effectiveness, and happiness? Which of your current ongoing practices prepare and support you in your work with high-stakes, high-heat groups? What purpose is served by each of these practices? What new ongoing practices are you considering? What benefits do you hope to gain from each of these practices?

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What are the practices and rituals for coming into a meeting space that support a grounded presence, clear purpose, and authentic way of leading? There are four categories of practices for preparing to lead, and to engage in them you must: Connect with the self Connect with the space Connect with the participants Connect with a larger world

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Before the meeting it’s easy to focus on logistics and the agenda. This is a mistake. Just prior to the meeting at least 50 percent of our focus should be on affirming who we need to be in order to help the group achieve its purpose. This is because who shows up as the meeting convener is as powerful an intervention as any technique or methodology.

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Over the years, the time I take for introspection just prior to a meeting has become so important that if there are no other options, I will take refuge in my car or a toilet stall for even five minutes of final centering.

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1. Choose two to four people (they can be dead, alive, heroes, teachers, friends, or whoever else you want) that you need in the room today. 2. Close your eyes and mentally position them around the edges of the room. 3. Take a moment and let each of these people speak and declare your gifts and abilities.

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Find a quiet place to stand, if possible outdoors or in front of a window so that you feel connected with the sky and the ground. Stand with your knees slightly bent, legs shoulder-width apart, and rest both hands on your belly just above your navel. Take a minute or two to feel the soles of your feet firmly in contact with the ground. This is the solid ground of your intention. Then silently review four questions: What am I here to contribute in the world? Who am I here to serve today? What is the purpose I am here to help them achieve? What principles and beliefs will enable me to lead with integrity and in the spirit of service?

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How do you place yourself and your work in the context of the larger world? In what ways does your work connect with a bigger view of the universe or a higher calling?

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This is a template for a personal meditation that can be used before a meeting or even during a break: I honor the shared intention that people have for today’s gathering, which is . . . As I prepare for this gathering, I am deeply grateful for . . . I recognize others who have or are currently engaged in similar efforts throughout the world . . . I acknowledge that . . . are beyond my influence and control today. As I let go of . . . I hold on to faith in the belief that . . . Whether through a practice of gratitude or prayer, connecting with a larger world helps place us into a larger context. As the leadership and spiritual teacher Robert Gass said, “We are but leaves blowing in the wind.”5 In other words, we must arrive at our meetings grounded in the belief that there is knowledge beyond our current knowing, there is influence beyond our current influence, there are possibilities beyond our current ability to see.

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION What pre-meeting practices and rituals currently strengthen your ability to be an effective fire tender? What new practices for connecting with yourself just before the meeting starts might you consider? What new practices for connecting with the physical space might you consider? What new practices might assist you in establishing a more authentic and human connection with the people in the groups you facilitate? What new practices would assist you in connecting with the larger world or the spiritual dimension of your work?

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The goal of attending is simply to notice what we are experiencing from moment to moment. Too often in high-intensity situations we become disembodied: we function completely in our heads and become cut off from any physical sensation.

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Naming is shorthand for acknowledging that we have been triggered and for identifying the feelings and judgments we are having in the moment. For example, I might notice that my hands are clenched or my heart is racing. This enables me to name that I am feeling anxious.

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When we encounter an uncomfortable physical or emotional state, the most basic question is often the most helpful: What’s up with me?

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But just because we get hit with a strong emotion doesn’t necessarily mean we need to take action. Pausing involves experiencing and appreciating this energy—observing it but not acting on it. The pause is a conscious choice not to act on the voice of self-protection and impulsiveness.

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The moment of pausing is like standing at the crossroads of two responses. The first road leads to a defensive or ego-induced response. The motivation is psychological comfort. The second road leads to wise and deliberate choice.

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When you’re feeling confused or distracted by what is happening in a meeting, ask yourself these three questions: Who am I here for, and what is their purpose? What is my job and what is not my job in this setting? What has integrity for me right now?

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When you feel disconnected from your purpose, you can take a shoulder-wide stance, bend your knees slightly, and place a hand on your belly. Others will be unaware that you are inducing a state of heightened awareness and physically locating your internal gyroscope.

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During your next few meetings, experiment with your physical way of being and notice how your mindset and emotional state shift almost instantaneously. Feel the soles of your feet in contact with the ground. Pull your shoulders back and open your pelvis. Relax your jaw and lift your head. Straighten your back, extending the top of your head toward the sky. Smile. Let your in-breath go all the way down to your belly. Change the volume and tone of your voice. Stop talking.

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Another reframing I have found to be useful moves me out of a narrative of victimhood (“They are messing up my meeting, so I’m forced to crack the whip”) and into a narrative of choice (“I am choosing to hold stricter boundaries in service to the group’s purpose”).

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One of the most common distinctions people fail to make is between differing viewpoints versus conflicting ones. People waste immeasurable time in meetings because they get into debates about different perspectives, not realizing that those perspectives are not incompatible and can be easily combined. A fire tender alert to this distinction will be less susceptible to this unnecessarily divisive dynamic and can aid the group in finding common ground.

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Make a list of three to five of your most important and inspiring advisers. Next to each of their names write down one or two sentences of their wisdom. Try to capture their teaching using words they might have used if they were speaking with you. Let this be the start of a “wisdom journal,” which we will discuss in the next chapter.

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In the context of recovering during a meeting, an affirmation should not focus on the outcome of the meeting but, rather, on the state we want to be in to be of service to the group. So, we might say to ourselves, “I am the wide-open heart” if we want to shift our state toward more compassion.

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For example, “Yes, I misused my authority. And if there were more trust in my being, what would it feel like?” Here is the two-step process: 1. Acknowledge the negative message with a yes, taking in the true parts of the message in without resistance. 2. Affirm the quality or capacity you want to cultivate by adding and plus the question: “If there were more [of this quality] in my being, what would it feel like?”

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I suggest you begin by using everyday interactions with family members, friends, colleagues, and clients to practice these approaches to in-the-moment state shifting. The more you look for them, the more you’ll find the opportunities to practice recovering when you are grabbed by everyday events.

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION What are the specific physical and behavioral warning signals that your hot buttons are being pushed? What are the more subtle signals that precede the ones you just identified? Can you think of a time when you named the hot button that had just been pushed, or when you consciously noticed that you were having some kind of emotional reaction, and you made a conscious choice to say and do nothing? What came out of the space you created in that moment? What practices do you currently use to shift your state from a reactive one to a clear and more deliberate way of being?

Walk Out Walk On

2011-11-20T23:27:00.000-08:00

Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze

Here are a few of my notes…

The whole globe is shook up, so what are you going to do when things are falling apart? You’re either

going to become more fundamentalist and try to hold things together, or you’re going to forsake the old ambitions and goals and live life as an experiment, making it up as you go along. —Pema Chödrön

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We’ll see that lasting change doesn’t start from the top of a system, but from deep inside it, when people step forward to solve a problem, then move on to the next issue that needs addressing. We’ll see how much becomes possible when we abandon hope of being saved by the perfect leader or the perfect program, and instead look inside our community to notice that the resources and wisdom we need are already here.

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Are you willing to risk being changed by this journey?

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Confusing moments are wonderful opportunities to observe our minds more closely. If something’s provoked or startled me, it’s because I assumed something different was true. I thought things worked like this, but now I’m not so sure. …

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Because when we seek to scale things up, we move vertically, we presume linear time, we build on what has come before. But constant forward progress is an illusion. In reality, life is cyclical, undulating in loops and waves, two steps forward, one step back—and a whole lot of steps sideways.

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RASA is not only about inventing technologies for urban agriculture. It’s about weaving together people who wish to reunite Oaxaqueños with their food sovereignty, which means their right to decide for themselves what they eat and their ability to produce it. They do this by inviting people to share their skills, to garden together, and to have a good time. In the language of Unitierra, what RASA is up to is co-motion rather than promotion: spreading ideas through contagion rather than pushing people in a particular direction.

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Suppose that there are no universal solutions to global problems—like poverty, hunger, or environmental destruction. Suppose that the kind of large-scale systems change that many of us have been yearning for emerges when local actions get connected globally—while preserving their deeply local culture, flavor, and form. What if people working at the local level were able to learn from one another, practice together, and share their knowledge—freely and fluidly—with communities anywhere? This is the nature of trans-local learning, and it happens when separate, local efforts connect with each other, then grow and transform as people exchange ideas that together give rise to new systems with greater impact and influence.

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But we believed that for an idea or innovation to be meaningful and lasting, it needed to arise from the unique conditions of people and place. As Meg Wheatley often reminded us at our gatherings, people only support what they create.

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French winemakers use the term terroir to describe the unique characteristics that place bestows on each varietal. It is what makes us desire champagne from France, coffee from Kenya, cigars from Cuba, and sourdough from San Francisco. The word itself means something like “a sense of place,” which emerges from the unique qualities of soil, climate, and topography.

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Modern winemakers have learned to embrace the notion of scaling across: the movement around the world of winemaking practices and techniques that have preserved deep reverence for the uniqueness of place, for the gift of terroir that today has generated bountiful flavors, styles, and vintages on five continents.

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In other words, conventional wisdom tells us to use the same irrigation, measure out the same slant of hillside, and plonk down our grapes. And then somehow we’re surprised when the wine tastes bad.

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In fact, it only takes a little bit of digging to discover that even in corporations, exchanging best practices often doesn’t work. What does work is when teams from one organization travel to another and, through that experience, see themselves more clearly, strengthen their relationships, and renew their creativity.

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When I was in business school, “scaling up” was how most of us thought about growth. We understood it to mean adding more parts where the parts all look the same. And we assumed that most systems were ripe for replication, that one size could fit all. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time that this approach was problematic—especially in the context of communities.

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But a single model cannot account for the differences between urban and rural communities or between Mexicans and Americans. In the context of community change, our work is to foster networks of relationships through which ideas and beliefs can travel, adapt, evolve, and grow. We’re not ignoring scaling up; we’re resisting it because we’ve found that for most communities, it doesn’t work. Scaling across invites communities to learn from one another and solve their own problems in their own particular way.

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What these many success stories reveal is that change happens differently than many of us imagine. It doesn’t happen from top-down support, or elaborate plans, or from the best-practice or franchise model. It happens as small local efforts create and develop solutions that then travel freely through networks of relationship.

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Scaling up relies on another assumption, one that is fervently believed, but rarely true in experience. The assumption is that people do what they’re told. So instructions get issued, policies get pronounced. When we don’t follow them, bosses just create more. When we still fail to obey, we’re labeled as resistant or lazy. Consider your own experience. How do you feel when someone presents you with a finished plan or outline, when the steps, the curriculum, the process are set down in great detail? Do you gratefully accept it, excited to implement it to the letter of the law? Or do you poke holes in it, noticing where it needs changing, where you disagree?

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If you’ve done any of these things, you’re just like the rest of us. People don’t support things that are forced on them. We don’t act responsibly on behalf of plans and programs created without us. We resist being changed, not change itself.

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People often say, “We don’t want to waste time reinventing the wheel.” But we do need to reinvent the wheel. And it’s never a waste of time. What we learn from others’ successful innovations is that wheels are possible. What others invent can inspire us to become inventive, can show us what’s achievable. Then we have to take it from there.

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People eagerly support those things we’ve had a hand in creating; we’re motivated to keep going by discovering for ourselves what works (and what doesn’t). Engaged with others in problem solving, inventing, and learning, we discover that we’re creative, caring, intelligent. When we have the chance to meet with other wheel inventors, our energy, confidence, and boldness grow and grow.

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Like Brazil’s fruit, nobody knows exactly how many favelas there are, or how many people live in them. What we do know is that their growth is also relentless, and that there are enough of them to assume that when it comes to transforming life in a favela, no one is coming to help. Instead, the residents of Brazil’s tenements must rely on their own fertile imaginations, their own capacity to generate the possibility of a different world. Which is why Edgard, Rodrigo, and Mariana are inviting the residents of Paquetá, its children, parents and grandparents—those who have been branded illiterate, apathetic, and in need—to attend a two-day urban planning conference.

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Of course, every game has rules, and Edgard offers these four: 1. Whatever we build has to be simple, accessible, and easy. 2. It can’t cost anything—whatever tools and materials we might need, we’ll have to find a way to obtain without paying for them. 3. The product has to be something that we create collectively and with our hands. (It can’t be an idea.) 4. It has to meet a real need in the community—as defined by the community.

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In the words of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire: I am convinced that in order for us to create something, we need to start creating. We cannot wait to create tomorrow, but we have to start creating. I am sure that in trying to create something inside of history we have to begin to have some dreams. If you don’t have any kind of dream I am sure it’s impossible to create something.

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Everything is a constant process of discovery and creation. Messes happen. Sometimes one person builds half a wall and then someone else comes along and tears it down to start another. Redundancy happens. There is chaos and confusion—and there is also laughter and joy and pride.

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We have expertise. But instead of relying on our expertise, we all pitch in wherever we can, and a community is rediscovered. Together, we become garbage collectors and ditch diggers and bricklayers—side-by-side with the eight-year-olds and eighty-year-olds who will be visiting this garden every day.

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Gently, he explained to me how his approach would stabilize the stairway and make it last longer. How with a few more hands, we’d be able to get it done quickly. And that without the hard work I had already put in, he would not have seen what he could create. Yes, play creates chaos and redundancy and confusion. But it also creates the space in which we invent together, we inspire each other, and we talk through our differences. I continue to be grateful today for the messes we made in the children’s garden.

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When the old recipe is used, you may be surprised to discover what’s happened to your creation twelve months down the road or so. No one is using the community center or someone has ripped the planks off the benches in the public square. This is to be expected—no one bothered to ask the community members what they thought their needs might be. No one invited them to talk about their own dreams and experiment with bringing them to fruition.

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Play returns us to a state in which we can see what’s possible—not what’s so. When we look through the eyes of play, we see a children’s garden; when we look through the eyes of power, we see only trash.

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The Oasis Game disrupts the power differential between the urban poor and the professional problem solvers by putting them side-by-side and handing them a basket of crayons and rubber cement. Edgard, Rodrigo, Mariana and the rest of the Elos team have walked out of the notion that we need to leverage power to produce results. They have walked on to the belief that creativity is in everyone, play unleashes that creativity, and if we want to create a healthy and resilient community, we need to invite the members of that community to play together. When we play, everything once again becomes possible.

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Yet many leaders assume that people are machines, that we can be programmed, motivated, and supervised through external force and authority. This “command-and-control” leadership smothers basic human capacities such as intelligence, creativity, caring, dreaming. Yet it is the most common form of leadership worldwide. When it doesn’t work, those in power simply apply more force. They threaten, cajole, reward, punish, police, legislate.

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Power of this kind has a predictable outcome: it breeds powerlessness. People accept the message they’ve heard so consistently, that they’re helpless without a strong leader. They become dependent and passive, waiting for a leader to rescue them, and their growing dependency leaves leaders with no choice. They must take control if anything is going to get done.

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Why do we place more value on struggle than on ease? Joseph Campbell, a wise mystic and scholar, said that we can identify our gifts by noticing what is easiest for us to do. He advised you to “follow your bliss.” Few people understand what he was talking about.

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But all living things resist whatever threatens their very life, and so the spark grew brighter, and fought against the cold and the darkness. And since that time there is also the eternal battle of Fire and Ice, of light and of darkness, throughout this universe. The Wise Ones know that this is a battle that must always be fought but never won. Only the Great Spirit, Unkulunkulu, may watch over such a titanic struggle and remain calm, for the battle goes this way and that, and all life struggles in its embrace.

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For blacks, it is a crime to sit on a Whites Only bench. As Nelson Mandela recalls in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom,

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What Dorah learned living in a rural community she’s now applying to life in the city. “We start from a place of abundance—knowing that we’ve got what we need—and we operate from that,” she says. “We’re not looking to other people to solve our problems; we work to maximize our own potential.”

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“We just cannot come and say, ‘Oh, my responsibility is health, and I’m just going to come here and only look at health. I’m just going to give these people drugs and help them survive AIDS.’ You need to look at what it is they are eating and where they are living. What kind of houses are they living in? What kind of energy are they using? It’s not only about one thing. Once you start addressing this, it’s going to lead you to that. Once you own that one, it’s going to lead to another.” She’s interested in how we can look at people’s lives holistically—the whole system—rather than just one problem at a time.

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Start anywhere, follow it everywhere. It started with the small act of photographers figuring out how to secure their livelihood. As the park became more secure, people’s attention turned toward the children; with day care established, people could focus on the parents; as the parents learned to read and obtain employment, attention shifted to the youth. And so on.

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But because of the nature of the relationships and the kind of people that have been involved, you can’t duplicate what happened in Joubert Park in any other place.” She invited them instead to join her in Joubert Park to listen to their stories, share resources and ideas, and create learning relationships. But she was emphatic that the local community would have to discover its own path. “The people have to do it by themselves,” she says. “It can’t come from those who don’t live what’s happening day to day in the area.”

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When I was first introduced to the phrase “Start anywhere, follow it everywhere” in 2002, it had an immediate impact on me. I had recently quit my job as a consultant, where I was often hired to design a road map for clients to travel from their current state to some desired future. One reason I had quit was because I realized that the journey never unfolds the way we say it will.

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They aren’t trying to solve the problem of homelessness; they’re figuring out how to support homeless people in Joubert Park. They’re not trying to eliminate illiteracy; they’re teaching their neighbors to read. In Joubert Park, solving problems always begins with knowing where we are.

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We live in a world of never-ending complexity, but complexity isn’t the problem. Complex systems are filled with challenges and conflicts that are unavoidable, but these aren’t the problem, either. The central problem is how we work with complexity.

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We recognize that we don’t solve problems one by one. And we relax because we don’t have to solve them all at once. We start, anywhere, and see where the work takes us next.

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Once we start anywhere, we have to stay alert to where we are, what we’re learning and what’s next. It’s not about how well our plan is working, but whether we notice the signals swirling around us. What are presentmoment opportunities, who’s shown up willing to work with us?

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Go inside. Start anywhere. Follow it everywhere.

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History plays a critical role in how we shape the future. What we tell ourselves about the past gives us ground (even though these stories change). People who persevere know where they come from. They stand on the firm shoulders of their ancestors and draw sustenance from the old stories. We humans need to know that we participate in something bigger, that traditions will outlast us, that history will continue to unfold beyond this moment.

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A bell rings, piercing the heavy air and reverberating off the massive granite boulders that perch inexplicably on the land, like gods and guardians protecting the circle. It is a call for silence, which the Kufundees say is also part of the conversation. There is no need for action now; you are not meant to do anything. You are invited to bear witness to another’s suffering, to listen deeply with your heart wide open—without leaping up to fix, heal, soothe, or respond. This, perhaps, is the essence of what it means to be in Zimbabwe in these times: to engage in the excruciatingly difficult practice of simply bearing witness.

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“I asked them what they used to do before they got handouts of fertilizer and seeds,” Marianne continues. “They said they didn’t remember! So we agreed to ask the elders.” Marianne and several of the villagers called a circle with the elders and asked them to describe their agricultural practices prior to the 1980s, when the Green Revolution arrived in their home.

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Marianne listened thoughtfully to their proposal. Then she said, “The only way I could accept your gracious offering is if you were willing to purchase an irrigation system for all villages in Zimbabwe. For we are a demonstration center, and how could we demonstrate ways of cultivating resilient food systems if we relied on a technology to which others had no access?”

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Zimbabwe is hardly the first country in recent history to endure a sudden, sweeping food system collapse. Cuba had been touted as another miracle of the Green Revolution—until the Soviet Union fell apart. Almost overnight, Cuba lost its supply of oil, the essential resource that fuels industrial agriculture. Within a year, over 80 percent of Cuba’s foreign trade disappeared. Suddenly, there were no chemical fertilizers, no seeds, no fuel for tractors and irrigation systems, no way to obtain spare parts. Between 1989 and 1993, the average Cuban lost twenty pounds.51

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In 1989, Cuba did not have a resilient food system. When oil was withdrawn from the structure, the entire system collapsed like a Jenga tower. That is because the Cuban food system wasn’t designed for resilience; rather, it was designed to be maximally efficient.

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In his book Resilience Thinking, co-authored with David Salt, Walker reflects on the risks of our efficiency addiction. “The more you optimize elements of a complex system of humans and nature for some specific goal,” he writes, “the more you diminish that system’s resilience. A drive for an efficient optimal state outcome has the effect of making the total system more vulnerable to shocks and disturbances.”

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It is time to walk out of the illusion of stability, to walk out of the addiction to the efficient optimal state. Life always bursts through the door—why not expect it? A resilience approach knows that uncertainty and surprise are inevitable. Writes Walker, “Resilience thinking is about understanding and engaging with a changing world. By understanding how and why the system as a whole is changing, we are better placed to build a capacity to work with change, as opposed to being a victim of it.”

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No one would deny the need for those who have resources to help support Zimbabwe in climbing out of its current morass. The trouble begins when we commit ourselves to a narrow set of beliefs about the optimal path. The Sachs approach would have Zimbabweans waiting on foreign aid to jump-start the economy—just like the villagers who were once found waiting on donated fertilizer and seeds to jump start their crops. Kufundees have walked out of the limiting beliefs that result from kowtowing to efficiency. They have walked on to declare that we have what we need—now let’s get our hands in the dirt.

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But then the long-term consequences clamor for attention. If we would look at, for example, the Green Revolution, we’d see that hunger didn’t end. That now, in addition to hunger, there are polluted streams and fields, toxic factory farms, and dislocated rural people who’ve lost their cultures, who are crowded into cities, homeless and hungry. We’d see we’re in more trouble now than when we began, that an efficient solution spawned many more problems more difficult to solve than just hunger.

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As more people experience hardships and loss, resilience has become a popular word. It’s often described as a personal capacity, something we need to develop on our own. But like any of life’s strengths, resilience grows in relationships, in community. This is what the Kufundees so clearly teach us.

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Sad to say, dependency is an unintended consequence of helpfulness. Whenever we receive help, it’s easy to let that person or group take over. The more they offer, the more we can just sit idly by and wait for rescue. Yet over time, this backfires. We can lose confidence in our abilities, forget what we once knew, and think of ourselves as poor and needy.

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Manish talked repeatedly about swaraj, Gandhi’s invitation to take responsibility for ourselves. He would patiently explain how Shikshantar’s work was to experiment with creating our own learning, weaning ourselves from the ready-made world where all that’s expected of us is to be good consumers.

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Homo giftus offers goods and services freely, without any expectation of return. Its value is measured by the quality of our relationships rather than the quantity of our profit. Our capacity to give is infinite, unconstrained by shortages and fear of scarcity. Perhaps what’s most incredible about the culture of Homo giftus is that it shows up every time our transactional culture breaks down—in times of human-made and natural disasters, grief and illness, celebration and joy.

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one of the programs of The Berkana Institute that supports younger leaders in discovering right livelihood (Amanda’s note: great question to explore)

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Mukesh is now cultivating a network of relationships among local farmers, many of whom are starting similar projects of their own. He is gifting his knowledge, his time, his assistance—while still selling his fertilizer. This is the path of right livelihood, a mindful way of living that balances service with self-interest, community vitality with economic security. This is what it might look like to transact in the market as little as necessary to sustain our health and well-being—while giving as much of ourselves as we can to our community.

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Growth promises some illusion of greater freedom and security—if I accumulate more stuff, I don’t have to depend on others, I don’t have to negotiate with others, I have a new kind of power. The accumulation of stuff becomes our primary spiritual and psychological purpose and dominant social identity—rather than the quality of our relationships, our creativity, or our consciousness.”

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But as Manish points out, as a consequence of believing in unlimited growth, we’re now living in a culture of destruction. “In transactional culture, we use and throw away people, resources and ideas,” he says. “Everything can be converted into a commodity until there’s nothing sacred left. Land, water, air, seeds, even grandmother’s cookies—our most intimate and profound aspects of life—are subject to this commodification.

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Gandhi talked about the notion of trusteeship: We are not really owners of anything. Nature doesn’t work with ownership. We are guardians or trustees, stewarding resources that are part of a commons of human beings and life on the planet. We don’t have a right to hoard things—or to mindlessly throw them away.”

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It’s like a game of financial musical chairs where there just aren’t enough seats to go around, and someone’s got to get kicked out of the game.72 We are stuck in a positive feedback loop, Greco says, where debt begets interest, and interest begets more debt. After a point, none of this has anything to do with the actual production of goods and services. We just need to keep growing fast enough to stay ahead of ourselves—and everyone else. So we run around in a frenzy, hoping we won’t be the one left standing without a chair.

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Gift culture is about trusteeship, about stewarding the commons rather than ourselves. It’s about taking care of the whole so that everyone has enough. We offer what we can, and we value gifts on our own terms—rather than those dictated by the marketplace. We turn to one another for our needs—to local businesses, teachers, artists, gardeners, craftspeople—rather than to the anonymity of the global marketplace. We walk out of our identity as Homo economicus, and we walk on to discover the patterns and practices of Homo giftus.

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Krishnamurti: Does life have a meaning, a purpose? Is not living in itself its own purpose, its own meaning? Why do we want more?

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Gandhi: Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom or self-rule] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away. Krishnamurti: In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself. Tagore: I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

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These messages are so powerful in modern global culture that it takes a great deal of awareness and discipline to silence their seductive lures. If we don’t like what’s happening to ourselves, our children, our colleagues, and our communities as we continue down the path of endless accumulation, then we need to reclaim the life we want. As at Shikshantar, we can practice swaraj, self-rule. We can practice swaraj by turning off the insistent cries of consumerism. We can think about what we really need, when enough’s enough. We can consider how we want to feel at the end of our lives, what achievements will have enduring value.

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Most of us already know this, even as we’re struggling with transactional culture. We’ve had experiences of working together without thought of personal gain; we’ve shared moments of hard yet purposeful work that gave us more satisfaction than any object or paycheck ever could. These experiences, wherever they’ve occurred, give us a glimpse of how humans are meant to live together. What creates lasting happiness in life? What few things become most important as we approach the end of life? Isn’t it about family and relationships? Isn’t it that we’ve contributed, that in some small way we’ve made life better for our children, for others, for the future?

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When we speak of offering work as a gift, it doesn’t mean that we stop charging money for our services. We have to be realistic about the world we live in. But we can change how we offer our work at more subtle levels. We can notice all the strings we attach to our efforts—our need for approval, recognition, status, appreciation—and think about whether we want to cut them.

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If you’d like to experiment with exploring your work as gift, here are some things to consider about gifts and gifting. A gift is a gift when: I offer it freely. There are no conditions. I give it because I want people to have it. I do not need to gain from it personally. I let go of needing the gift to be appreciated. I don’t call attention to how hard I’ve worked, what it’s taken me to get here, how dedicated and committed I am, what a good generous person I am. I don’t look for approval, recognition, or thanks. I offer my work, then turn away. I don’t stand and wait for compliments. I don’t expect any kind of gratitude. I don’t resent the people who didn’t thank me. I let go of what I just offered. I move on, looking for the next place I might contribute.

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More than 2,500 years ago, the Athenians decided it would be a good idea if every adult citizen (excluding women and slaves, of course) had the right to have his say and vote on legislation. All that was required to speak or propose a law was Ho boulomenos, “he who wishes”—someone willing to take the initiative and stand in front of his fellow citizenry to speak on behalf of what matters.

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I’m learning how to control my heroic urges. When I’m in meetings or with a group, sometimes I literally sit on my hands, reminding myself to refrain from offering a solution. I’ve learned that when I listen rather than tell, when I wait for the community’s wisdom to surface rather than impulsively offer my own, then so much more is possible. We are smarter together than we are apart—an assumption that lies at the root of democracy.

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However well intentioned the intervention might be, it is always rooted in the belief that people need help, they can’t help themselves, and it is our duty to “interrupt” their experience on their behalf.

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Stories of intervention gone awry abound with laughable absurdity—were it not for the deadly serious suffering they inflict on people’s lives and livelihoods. Yemen is on the brink of a water crisis after replacing its centuries-old practice of harvesting rainwater for crops with a World Bank-driven approach to irrigated agriculture that has tapped out underground aquifers.

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Intervention is not fundamentally flawed. In fact, it is essential for protecting people who are being victimized by brutality greater than they can withstand—from domestic violence to genocide. But it’s a short-term strategy for the immediate situation; any longer-term change requires the engagement of the person or people.

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It is time to walk out of the interventionist mindset of outside experts. Now more than ever as humanity’s challenges converge, we need to learn from one another.

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The convivial society built on friendship is messy but enduring. It listens to each and every voice, it receives all contributions. It values as equal the wisdom of people who live differently. The empty-vessel paradigm of learning is fundamentally founded on the inequality between the professional and the amateur, the expert and the ignoramus, the so-called developed and underdeveloped. It’s like the nutritionist who prescribes a perfectly balanced diet. But nourishment that satisfies the body and soul requires far more than the right blend of vitamins and minerals. True nourishment arises from the intimate connection between human beings, the precious moments of mutuality and trust that emerge when we turn to one another. True nourishment is about the joy of sharing a meal, including the messiness of preparation and the hard labor of cleaning up, the botched brownies and the victorious soufflé, the stories, laughter, and tears that show up whenever people open their hearts to one another, whenever we offer our friendship.

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Grameen Bank trusted this unconventional approach to poverty because it knew that poor people have all the skills, creativity, and ingenuity they need; it is the economic and societal barriers embedded in our cultures that are inhibiting their success. “Government decision-makers, international consultants, and many NGOs usually start from the opposite assumption—that people are poor because they lack skills,” Yunus writes in his book,

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Friendship creates a container in which we can co-create, support one another, and bounce back from the conflicts that arise. Conflict is an inevitable consequence of interdependence; the more interdependent we are, the more conflict there’s likely to be. But when friendship is present, so, too, is our commitment to stay together and work things out. We open our hearts to each other, knowing that we need kindred spirits—especially when the going gets tough. We can walk out alone, but we can only walk on in friendship.

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When friendship fades and we no longer feel responsible for taking care of each other, what also disappears is our own sense of personal competence. Where do we turn when we need advice? Do we consult our own experience or immediately ask an expert? When there’s a problem at work, do we come together as colleagues to try and figure things out, or do we import a solution from elsewhere? If a friend comes to us in crisis, do we offer our companionship, or do we refer him or her to a book or DVD? Experts are important, absolutely. But it’s our dependence on them as the first or only choice that bears watching.

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Friendship takes time. The easiest way to discover its strong threads is to work together. This company of friends, who traveled from afar to labor on a Greek hillside, knew this from their own experience. They’d learned, as we’ve seen in every visit, that the most reliable way to develop good relationships is to engage together in hard work that has a tangible outcome. Working side-by-side, we learn things about each other, we notice skills and talents, we focus less on interpersonal dramas than on figuring out how to get work done. We often become friends even with people we at first had no interest in.

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I meet many people who are tired of command-and-control tactics. They want to find new ways of leading, but they don’t know how. They often say, “I just need to get out of the way.” This statement scares me. Leaders have critical work to do to engage people and redistribute power. The leaders we’ll meet in Columbus didn’t get out of the way; instead, they’ve used their power to create the means to engage people and communities in solving their own problems.

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the Art of Hosting. She’s going to explain it to you, but be patient. It’s more than one thing; it may not fit any familiar categories. People come to Art of Hosting events to learn how to host a variety of conversational processes. These conversational processes are used with diverse groups to resolve conflicts, develop strategy, analyze issues and develop action plans. But it’s more than a collection of problem-solving tools. At its core, and what allows it to flower in so many different forms and places, the Art of Hosting is a philosophy, a set of beliefs and values that are embodied in every process and in every person who learns how to host.

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Tuesday’s personal description is that Art of Hosting “is a practice, like yoga or meditation. There are tools in it, for sure—social technologies like circle, Open Space, and World Café that surface a group’s collective intelligence through conversation. But there are deeper patterns present in the Art of Hosting that invite us to be authentic, to stay in inquiry, to build community.”

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These twenty-six people sitting in circle are all experimenters; they’re learning what it means to lead as a host. They come together every three months as a community of practice to encourage, support, and learn from one another.

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Similar stories surface from others at OSU, although outside the community of practice, they’re often kept below the radar. “We call it stealth hosting,” Deb explains. “The department chairs want to bring it in, but they know they can’t call it ‘World Café’ with their faculty. Faculty can be pretty mean to each other. And they don’t want to be laughed at. You put your reputation on the line when you try something new.” So Tuesday and Deb find other ways to bring it in, knowing that good things will emerge. “Particularly in faculty culture, people are desperate for connection,” Deb adds. “At the end of a program, people will come up to us and say, ‘This is the first time I’ve felt part of something—part of human connection and part of community.’ That is what we’re all thirsty for.”

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The reason it can be difficult to see is because the Art of Hosting is an operating system, like Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. So far, all you’ve seen are two different applications, the Foodbank and OSU.

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The reason it can be difficult to see is because the Art of Hosting is an operating system, like Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.

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The Art of Hosting is like Linux, freely offering its source code for leaders to achieve order without control. Its code is a set of principles and practices for how to host conversations that matter: setting intention, creating hospitable space, asking powerful questions, surfacing collective intelligence, trusting emergence, finding mates, harvesting learning, and moving into wise action. Like Linux, the Art of Hosting operating system encourages experimentation and sharing worldwide. What’s emerged is a vibrant global community of people discovering that the wisdom we need exists not in any one of us, but in all of us.

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Several beliefs feed our trust in heroic leadership: Leaders have the answers. People do what they’re told. High risk requires high control. When we believe this, we willingly give away our power. We wait for leaders to direct us, assuming they know what they’re doing. Many leaders enthusiastically accept the power we hand over. But we’re all caught in a terrible illusion. When problems are complex, there are no simple answers; no one person, no matter how brilliant, can make things better. And even though some surrender personal freedoms in exchange for pledges of security, how can any leader these days guarantee that we’ll be secure?

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If we want to find solutions to our most challenging problems, we need to transform our ideas about effective leadership. We need to walk out of our reliance on the leader-as-hero and invite in the leader-as-host.

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Leaders learn to trust that everyone has gifts to offer, and that most people want to work on behalf of something greater than themselves. In some cases, these leaders serve as mirrors, so that people can see their skills and potential, those that have been buried under years of disregard. Over time, as conversational processes become the normal way of meeting, communities discover they have new skills. They can examine problems in depth, make use of each other’s diverse insights, and create robust solutions. Leaders, and those they happily host, take on large-scale, intractable problems and discover they’re capable of solving them.

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The citizens of Columbus, Ohio, are slowly but steadily walking out of a model of heroic leadership that most Americans assume is the only way to lead.

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It’s a huge countercultural act to do something as simple as dropping a talking piece into the conversation. People like the solutions that come out of a more collective way of operating. I believe hosting taps into a basic human need to be connected and to be connected in as unconditional a way as possible.”

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For Tuesday Ryan-Hart, when we practice hosting, we are learning how to be together better.

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Well, “it is time for all the heroes to go home,” as the poet William Stafford wrote.

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You’re acting as a hero when you believe that if you just work harder and put in more hours, you’ll fix things; that if you just become smarter or learn a new technique, you’ll be able to solve problems for others. You’re acting as a hero if you take on more and more projects and causes, no matter how worthy, and have less time for the people you love and the activities that nourish you. You’re playing the hero if you still hold the belief that it’s up to you to save the situation, the person, the world.

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They used their positional power to convene people, not to tell them what to do. They learned that their city—any city—is rich in resources, and that the easiest way to discover these is to bring diverse people together in good conversations.

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Hosting meaningful conversations isn’t about getting people to like each other or feel good. It’s about creating the means for problems to get solved, for teams to function well, for people to become energetic activists.

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When you see a pile of trash, do you think of Edgard and a children’s garden? When you pass a fruit tree, are you reminded of Ticha and his arborloos? When you walk through a dirty city park, do you imagine how the local community might get engaged? When you see your child struggling or being bored in school, do you think of the learners at Unitierra who create their own education? When you sit in a meeting, do you wonder how it might be different if Tuesday or Phil were hosting?

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In their actions, they aspire to follow eight principles. Woven together as a whole, these are a powerful and coherent theory for how to foster systemic change and create healthy and resilient communities.

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Start anywhere, follow it everywhere.

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We make our path by walking it.

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If the road looks familiar, if we’ve walked it before, if we feel comfortable knowing where we’re going, then we aren’t walking on, we aren’t pioneering something new. Walk Ons make their path by walking.

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We have what we need.

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The leaders we need are already here.

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The pattern here is simple: People see something in their world that needs to change, and they step forward to take that first action. They don’t declare themselves “a leader”; they just start acting to change things. A leader is anyone willing to help, anyone willing to take those first steps to remedy a situation or create a new possibility.

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We are living the worlds we want today.

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We walk at the pace of the slowest. The Zapatistas say we walk to make the road better, we must listen as we walk, and we must walk at the pace of the slowest. If we wish to build healthy and resilient communities, we can’t leave anyone behind. So we take the journey as slowly as we need to.

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Speed is not our goal. Growth is not our purpose. Winning is not evidence of our success. What gifts do we discover as we slow down, look around, invite more people in, and enjoy our well-companioned journey?

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We listen, even to the whispers.

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We hear these voices only if we create the spaces to listen.

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We turn to one another.

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In company with our friends worldwide, we’ve developed simple practices for sustaining ourselves as Walk Ons and for resisting the strong gravity of familiar ways. These practices are: Name, Connect, Nourish, Illuminate.

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Naming is being able to claim publicly who we are and what we’re walking on to. Whenever we give ourselves a new name, it’s a way of making visible our intentions. What are you walking out of, and why? By walking on, who are you choosing to be? However you name yourself, choose a name that encourages you to move forward, that challenges you to be fearless. I am a Zapatista. I am a Walk Out. I am an edge-walker. I am a leader. I am daring to live the future now. How will you name yourself?

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Connecting is finding others who share our purpose, who hear our new name and say, “Me, too!” None of us can do this work alone—we need each other to support, encourage, and console one another. We need companions to think with, celebrate with, cry with, dance with. We need companions to lessen the loneliness, to keep us going when the work gets hard, when the world tells us we’re lunatics. Skilled pioneers never venture forth alone, and neither can you. Whom will you connect with?

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Nourishing is turning to one another for ideas, knowledge, practices, and dreams. Among us, we already have a great deal of experience and expertise. When we affiliate with other Walk Ons, we inspire, provoke, and support each other. Ideas and inventions flow among us, like the bicimáquinas, the Oasis Game, the arborloos. When we gather together, we learn quickly from one another, discovering new ideas and solutions, like at the Art of Learning Centering, as in the Art of Hosting communities of practice. Together we discover that we have what we need. Where will you turn for nourishment?

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Illuminating is sharing our stories so many more people can know we’re out there and join in. Walking out is never easy, and walking on is often invisible. Our work comes from the future and is difficult to see through current lenses. By shining a light on our pioneering efforts, we bring the future into focus. Little by little, our work becomes recognizable as evidence of what’s possible, of what a new world could be. This book has been an experience of illuminating that future. What stories will you illuminate?

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There are no easy answers, only a long string of unanswerable questions that slam into us once we return home from our journeys and discover that we’re no longer comfortable where we are. Questions like: How do I hold what I now know? How do I live in integrity with my beliefs? How can I hold my own hypocrisy with compassion? When do I engage and stay—and when do I walk out? What am I willing to walk on to?

Being Genuine

2011-11-20T23:04:00.001-08:00

Being Genuine by Thomas d'Ansembourg

Here are a few of my notes…

How can one be oneself without stopping being with another, and how can one be with another without stopping being oneself?

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And everyone knows that a read-through of Simple French from A to Z will not win a person a speech-making competition in Paris. Nor will that person dare to step into the arena of a conversation in French at a party! First of all, one modestly plays one’s scales.

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And it was thus that we started to listen to the feelings and needs of everyone—boss, customer, neighbor, colleagues—except ourselves! To survive and fit in, we thought we had to be cut off from ourselves.

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I like to introduce the process that I advocate by using the picture of a little man born of the imagination of Hélène Domergue, a trainer in Nonviolent Communication in Geneva, Switzerland.

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It is worth recalling the words of Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, “We only see well with our hearts; what is truly important is invisible to our eyes.” Do we really look at others with our hearts?

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I would go to my room, and the same rational process would predominate: “It’s true, I have no right to be sad. I have a father, a mother, brothers and sisters, books for school and toys, a house, and food. What am I complaining about? What is all this, this sadness? I’m so selfish. Useless idiot!” Once again, I judged myself and found myself guilty, alienating myself from my heart. Sadness went off to join anger in my pocket, and I went to redeem my place in the family, displaying another contrived smile. So you can see how early we learn to be nice rather than genuine.

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Indeed, swimming perpetually in one’s feelings brings no development and may even induce nausea.

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In Nonviolent Communication training sessions, a list of more than two hundred fifty feelings is handed out to participants to enable them to expand their word power and, in so doing, broaden the consciousness of what they are feeling.

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Developing our vocabulary expands our ability to deal with what we are experiencing.

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However, when in our education did we learn to name what was at stake in our inner life? When did we learn to become aware of what was going on within us, to distinguish and sort through our feelings, as well as our basic needs, to name those needs and then simply and flexibly make concrete and negotiable requests, taking into account the needs of others?

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To our feelings of being ill at ease and angry, sad or nostalgic, are now added discomfort and helplessness: “Not only am I unhappy or angry, I also don’t know what to do to get out of it.” Often “to get out of it” we can only blame someone or something: Daddy, Mommy, the school, buddies, colleagues, clients, job, the state, pollution, the slump. Having neither understanding of nor control over our inner lives, we find a party outside ourselves to serve as a scapegoat for our pain. “I am angry because you … I am sad because you … I am disgusted because the world …”

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Feelings act like a blinking light on a dashboard; they tell us that an inner need is or is not being met.

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Now it’s true that the word need has often been misunderstood. It does not mean a passing desire, a momentary impulse, a whim. We are referring here to our basic needs, the ones that: Are required simply to maintain life. We meet for the sake of balance Relate to our most basic human values: identity, respect, understanding, responsibility, liberty, mutual aid.

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So, if one day, despite all that, we confusedly observe that our needs are not being met, then there is necessarily a guilty party, someone who has not bothered about us. We then get into the process of violence by aggression or projection referred to earlier, that is, a process where criticism, judgment, insults, and rebukes loom large. “I’m unhappy because my parents …

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More often than not, we have experienced being subservient to the needs of others (or we have feared not being able to have our needs met) to such an extent that we bossily impose our needs on others—and no questions asked. “That’s how it is. Now, go and clean your room—and at once! … Do it because I said so, that’s why.” We then get into a process of violence through authority.

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Finally, we capitulate: “I give up! I give up on myself. I close in on myself, or I run away.” Here, the violence is directed against ourselves.

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A key reason for us to be interested in identifying needs is that as long as we’re unaware of our needs we don’t know how to meet them.

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The lesson from this story: If needs aren’t followed by a concrete request in an identifiable time and space (e.g., need for recognition: “Would you agree to thank me for specific efforts I’ve been making for thirty years?” … need for intimacy and tenderness: “Would you agree to take me in your arms for ten minutes and gently rock me?”), it often looks to the other person like a threat. The other person wonders if he or she will have the capacity to survive such an expectation and remain themselves, maintain their identity, and not be swallowed up by the other person.

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b)Another issue the above example clarifies is this: As we are obsessed by the idea of our need not being recognized, we aren’t open to observing that it is so. The wife had striven to recognize her husband’s efforts. Yet he was so caught up (or bogged down) in the notion of not being understood, that he couldn’t hear her. This is a common phenomenon. (Amanda’s note: like the ladder of inference!)

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In these instances, it’s necessary to work on fundamental needs. The questions we may be asking ourselves, among others, are as follows: Am I able to provide myself with the esteem, the recognition, the warmth, the understanding that I’m so fervently expecting others to give me? Can I begin to nurture these needs myself rather than maintain myself in a dependent position regarding the approving opinions of others? And above all: Am I able to experience my identity other than in complaints and rebellion? Am I able to feel safe and secure in ways other than leaning on something or someone, other than by justifying myself or objecting? Am I able to feel my inner security, my inner strength of and by myself, outside the domain of power and tension?

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At the same time, when I hear your proposal to stay at home, I feel a bit disappointed (F) because I also need a change of scenery, to get out of the house for once when the children aren’t here (N). So now that we have set out the criteria of what is at stake for us [formerly that would have been called a conflict!]—need for relaxation, need to get together, and have a change of scenery—what solution, what concrete action could we come up with to meet these varying needs?”

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We fall into the trap ourselves—and tend to drag the other person in too—when we don’t take care to differentiate our true need from our request. By seeing what underlies our request and identifying our need, we give ourselves freedom. We note, for example, that we can meet our need for intimacy and getting together with our spouse or our need for rest (restaurant, walk, movie) in all sorts of different ways. We escape from the fallacy that there is only one solution.

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By taking care of our true need instead of haggling over our request, we give ourselves a space to meet, a space to create!

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“Is it difficult for you to imagine that one can both have a good time and please others, take care of your own well-being and the well-being of others at the same time?” “Right. I’ve always seen those two things as mutually exclusive. Either I take care of myself, or I take care of others and disregard myself.” “And how do you feel when I tell you that what I enjoy about organizing this trip is that I’m nurturing both my need for discovery, space, and exploration and my need to share what I love, contributing to the well-being of others by bringing them along for this adventure?” (Amanda’s note: L’s managing paradox!)

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Since I have been seeking to understand and give meaning to the difficulty of being, I note that the people who radiate deep well-being, a joy of living in this world, are those who give precedence not to the number of things they do, nor their possessions, but to the quality of the relationships they have with others, with their environment, and with what they do—beginning with the quality of the relationship they have with themselves. These people don’t seek to fill their lives with things to do or people to pass time with, but to fill life with the relationships they nourish and the things they care about doing.

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We often sacrifice our own needs to please others, to “be nice.”

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OBSERVATION. We are reacting to something we observe, we hear, or we’re saying to ourselves. FEELING. The above observation generates within us one or more feelings. NEED. The feelings guide us to our needs. REQUEST. Aware now of our needs, we can make a request or implement concrete action.

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The cornerstone of the method being recommended here is making observations that are as neutral as possible: State facts (quotes, body positions, facial expressions, tone of voice) just like a camera would. We have to be so attentive to how we “enter” into conversation with another person.

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I approach him, saying, “When I saw that you left the room during the meal without speaking (O), I began to feel concerned (F), and I would like to know if something is on your mind and if I can help (N + R).” This is a formulation that may appear naïve and somewhat impractical in ordinary life! It could be made more plausible and less academic by saying: “It seems to me that you are more quiet than usual. Is something wrong?” What I observe is that this way of “opening” a conversation, approaching an issue without judgment or interpretation, not only makes us better disposed to listen to the other person, it also extends an invitation to the other individual to talk to us from the heart about what they are feeling, without any sense of being criticized.

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By contrast, if we start dialogue with a neutral reference to something that is preoccupying us (neutral observation: “I see your stuff lying on the carpet in the drawing room, your shoes on the hall carpet, and your toys on the staircase”),

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And, so that it will not be heard as criticism or an obligation that will exclude freedom of action, we take care to formulate an open and negotiable request.

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Do not say: Say rather: “You’re late; it’s always the same with you! You can never really be relied on.” “We had an appointment at eight in the morning. It’s now half past ten. (O).” “I feel angry and worried (F).” “I need to understand what’s happening, to be reassured that I can count on you in the future (N).” “Would you agree to talk to me about that now (R)?” (Amanda’s note: idea for managers to separate these)

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“I feel that” vs. “I feel” Generally when you ask someone “How do you feel?” in relation to a preoccupying situation, the person will reply: “I feel that this absolutely must be done … I feel that it’s time for our leaders to do this or that … I feel that it’s hopeless …” People answer, therefore, with a thought, a concept, or a comment, not a feeling,

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Indeed, very often, in the belief that we are using “I” statements, assuming responsibility for our feelings, we use such words (commonly considered as feelings) as: “I feel betrayed, abandoned, manipulated, rejected.” True, these words do express feelings. At the same time, however, they convey an image of another person, an interpretation, a judgment. Between the lines we read: “You are a traitor, a manipulator; you have abandoned me; you reject me.”

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As long as he is commenting directly or indirectly on what his companion is or is not doing, he makes little headway. But as soon as he starts speaking truly of himself, he forges ahead.

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What is of interest is to observe that Peter begins to get beyond complaining (“She’s manipulating me. I am her victim.”) when he gets to his true feelings (“I am sad and angry.”) and his own need (“I need respect for my identity.”). It is when he begins to refer truly to himself that the work begins.

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We therefore will be alert to working on our language and our consciousness to purge them of anything that may generate opposition, division, or separation and to cleanse them of anything that is—or could be heard as—a judgment, interpretation, rebuke, criticism, prejudice, cliché, test of strength, or comparison. We do this because we know from experience that if others hear what we say as a judgment, criticism, reproach, or fixed idea about them, they are no longer listening.

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Exercise Try to decipher for yourself your true feelings underlying your “labeled” feelings. Here are a few proposals:

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It is the consequences of feelings that may be perceived as positive or negative, not the feelings themselves. We, therefore, suggest making the following type of distinction among feelings: Feelings that are pleasant to experience and that let us know that needs are met. Feelings that are unpleasant to experience and that let us know that needs are not being met.

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Thus, to avoid the violence of binary thinking that keeps us in alienation, separation, and division, it is truly in our interest to become aware of our needs, identify them in relation to others, and prioritize them so as to become increasingly able to understand others’ needs, accept their priorities, and little by little acquire greater ease in flexibly processing the issues with them.

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First the relationship: logistics will follow! So often in our relationships, the quality of the relationship appears to play second fiddle to actual problems.

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“For now …”

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“And at the same time …” rather than “But …”

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“I suggest that the next time you receive such a request, you take time to listen to your various needs, so that you’re really available for what you choose to do.” A week later, he told me he had once again accepted to serve as a replacement for an evening at the swimming pool with the young people. “I took time to listen to myself as you had suggested,” he began. “The need around the young people was clearly the top priority in my mind, and I went along joyfully. Although I was counting on doing several things at home that evening, I was able to accept postponing them, and I felt fully available to the youngsters.”

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Identifying our need for rest, to have some time for ourselves, to do what we want with our evening, etc., doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll meet the need. We simply wish to become aware of it so we don’t deny or disown anything that is alive in us. Through awareness, living choices can be made that involve us in all of our aliveness and not just 10 or 15 percent of ourselves.

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“What is the littlest thing or the most pleasant thing, however small, I could say or do in the direction of the change I wish for, in the direction of the change I’ve identified?” In short, seek first the smallest thing we might do, and change will follow.

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We do not like being prevented from doing. We much prefer being invited to do.

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Conventional version “I am very disappointed with you when I see the school results you got this month. If you go on like that, your year is going to be charming indeed! And then you won’t be ready to find a job later. Look at your sister; she is much more conscientious.”

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Nonviolent version “When I see your school results this month, and especially a D in math and an F in statistics (an observation that is both neutral and detailed, to express to the other person what I am reacting to), I feel worried and concerned (F). I need to be reassured about two things, namely that you: Understand the significance of these subjects and know how they will be useful in the future. Feel OK and welcome in your classroom with your teacher, so that if you do run into difficulties, you will feel at ease about saying so (F). Would you agree to tell me how you feel in relation to all that (R)?”

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Nonviolent Communication encourages us to listen to others as completely as possible, to dare to welcome them in their complexity or their distress, without assuming we are responsible for what is happening to them. Nor must we “do something” other than listen and attempt to understand.

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Buddha suggests the following (just the reverse): Don’t just do something, stand there

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We will hook a need onto the feeling. If we only reflect the feeling, the risk we run is of getting into complaining and aggressing.

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The answer may be: “That’s absolutely right. I need both recognition and respect” or … “Not at all. I do feel recognized and respected. And I’m not angry. What I feel is sad and disheartened, and I need encouragement and cooperation.” The reason I’m giving both responses is to show that it isn’t necessary to guess another’s feelings and needs accurately. Reflecting feelings and needs is like throwing the other person a lifeline.

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“Judgments are tragic expressions of unmet needs.”

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Empathy literally means “staying glued” to another’s feelings and needs. It also means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. This means, on the one hand, you invent nothing, no feeling or need, and you attempt to get as close as possible to what the other is feeling by putting their feelings and needs into words;

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It seems to me a matter of urgency to set up more talking places—in businesses, schools, institutions, medical and hospital units, the nonprofit sector, government departments, and even in families!

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I facilitate monthly talking groups in hospitals, in families and schools, as well as in youth support institutions. The institutions and people who call me in have all chosen to give priority to relationships in their field, and they cover the costs in terms of time, human resources, and budget. All of these groups are struck when they see to what extent misunderstandings can be clarified, ambiguities cleared, cold wars settled, and “unsaids” said, because a safe framework is proposed where each person knows that they will regularly be able to express their thoughts freely, even though clumsily at times, without being either judged or rejected. It’s also an opportunity for work groups or other gatherings of people to share their joys and enthusiasms. Such meetings can therefore make it possible to clean out anything that has been encumbering a relationship and stimulate what has been nurturing it.

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the niceness I’m describing is motivated out of fear of losing, the fear of rejection, the fear of criticism, the fear of asserting their identity. (Amanda’s note: interesting insight into culture.)

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Hubert Reeves says pollution in the world is not one major problem, it is seven billion small problems. It seems to me that confusion in the world—its chaos and disorder—is not one major problem, it is seven billion small problems. We each can choose. We each have the power in our daily lives to contribute or not to clarity, transparency, peace. Amazing, isn’t it?

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Behind the fear of conflict almost always lies a need for emotional security. As I’ve already recalled, the background question is: “Can I still be loved if I’m involved in a conflict? Am I still lovable if I say I don’t agree?”

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If our feelings are gauges on our psychic dashboard, anger is the red blinking emergency light: It shows that vital needs are not being met and that it’s increasingly urgent to pay attention.

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I regularly work in the school environment, and frequently I hear the same complaint, “But we don’t have time!” After a conference where I had talked about the image of the shepherd, the head of a large school in Brussels told me: “You are so right. Neither the parents nor the pupils any longer know what it means to take their time. There are two things the pupils hear continuously: ‘Hurry up, hurry up!’ and ‘Quick, quick!’”

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I suggest the following: “Three minutes, three times a day! Three minutes listening to yourself without judging, without blaming, without advising, without trying to find a solution. Three presence-filled minutes for you, not for your plans or concerns. Three minutes to take stock of your inner state without trying to change anything. Three minutes to connect with yourself, check that you are truly present to yourself, and that to the question, Is there someone home? you can truly answer with all your being, ‘Yes, I am there.’ Do this three times a day! It is out of this quality of presence to yourself that may well be born a quality of presence to others.”

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The better you become acquainted with your own powerlessness or insecurity, the more compassionate and understanding you’ll become for the insecurity in another person.

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In day-to-day life, in couples, families, and (why not?) at school or work, gratitude is the vitamin pill of relationships.

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Basically, wickedness is an expression of the bitterness of people who have not taken care of—or had the opportunity to take care of—their suffering.

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Some Basic Feelings We All Have Feelings when needs are fulfilled Amazed Fulfilled Joyous Stimulated Comfortable Glad Moved Surprised Confident Hopeful Optimistic Thankful Eager Inspired Proud Touched Energetic Intrigued Relieved Trustful

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Feelings when needs are not fulfilled Angry Discouraged Hopeless Overwhelmed Annoyed Distressed Impatient Puzzled Concerned Embarrassed Irritated Reluctant Confused Frustrated Lonely Sad Disappointed Helpless Nervous Uncomfortable

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Some Basic Needs We All Have Autonomy Choosing dreams/goals/values Choosing plans for fulfilling one’s dreams, goals, values Celebration Celebrating the creation of life and dreams fulfilled Celebrating losses: loved ones, dreams, etc. (mourning) Integrity Authenticity Creativity Meaning Self-worth Interdependence Acceptance Appreciation Closeness Community Consideration Contribution to the enrichment of life Emotional Safety Empathy Physical Nurturance Air Food Movement, exercise Protection from life-threatening forms of life: viruses, bacteria, insects, predatory animals Rest Sexual Expression Shelter Touch Water Play Fun Laughter Spiritual Communion Beauty Harmony Inspiration Order Peace Honesty (the empowering honesty that enables us to learn from our limitations) Love Reassurance Respect Support Trust Understanding

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The Surprising Purpose of Anger: Beyond Anger Management: Finding the Gift by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. Marshall shows you how to use anger to discover what you need, and then how to meet your needs in more constructive, healthy ways. 48pp, ISBN: 978-1-892005-15-1 • $8.95

Speak Peace in a World of Conflict

2011-11-20T22:39:00.000-08:00

Speak Peace in a World of Conflict by Marshall B. Rosenberg

Here are a few of my notes…

Bringing about peaceful change begins with working on our own mindsets.

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Everything we do is in service of our needs.

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“Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.” — THE BUDDHA

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NVC is a combination of thinking and language, as well as a means of using power designed to serve a specific intention. This intention is to create the quality of connection with other people and oneself that allows compassionate giving to take place.

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I ask people to think of something they’ve done within the last twenty-four hours that in some way has contributed to making life more wonderful for somebody. After they think a minute I ask, “Now, how do you feel when you are aware of how that act contributed to making life more wonderful for somebody?”

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“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” — HAROLD WHITMAN

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Question number one: What’s alive in us? (Related questions are: What’s alive in me? What’s alive in you?)

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The second question—and it’s linked to the first—is: What can we do to make life more wonderful? (Related questions are: What can you do to make life more wonderful for me? What can I do to make life more wonderful for you?)

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So these two questions are the basis of Nonviolent Communication: What’s alive in us? What can we do to make life more wonderful?

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I asked what the daughter does and she told me what she thought the daughter was. I pointed out to this person that labeling people—diagnosing them as lazy—leads to self-fulfilling prophecies.

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Get clear about defining behaviors without mixing in a diagnosis.

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EXERCISE: Take a look at what you wrote down. See whether it had any evaluation mixed in. If so, see if you can now say it, being very specific, just describing what the person does that you want to talk to them about. Now that we have an observation in mind of what this person does, if we’re to use Nonviolent Communication, we want to be honest with them about it. But it’s honesty of a different kind than telling people what’s wrong with them. It’s honesty from the heart, not honesty that implies wrongness.

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Whatever circumstance you can recall at the moment, big or not so big, write it down or make a mental note of it: one specific thing that this person does that makes life less than wonderful for you. It could be something they do, something they don’t do, or something they say or don’t say.

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“You make me angry when you hit your brother.” We’ve been educated by people who tried to make us feel responsible for their feelings so we would feel guilty. Yes, feelings are important, but we don’t want to use them in that way. We don’t want to use them in a guilt-inducing manner. It’s very important that when we do express our feelings we follow that expression with a statement that makes it clear that the cause of our feelings is our needs.

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EXERCISE: Write down the following in relation to what the other person has done. Identify how you feel about what happened and write it this way: “When you do what you do I feel_____.” Put into words how you feel when the other person behaves as they do.

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The problem with people who are in touch with their needs is that they do not make good slaves.

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In a workshop I was doing recently, a woman was upset with the way her daughter was not cleaning up her room. I said, “What needs do you have in this situation that aren’t getting met?” She said, “Well, it’s obvious. I need her to clean up the room.” “No, “ I said, “That’s going to come next. That’s the request. I’m asking what needs you have.” And she couldn’t come up with it. She didn’t know how to look inside and see what her needs were. Again, she had a language for diagnosing what was wrong with the daughter, that the daughter was lazy. She could tell what she wanted the daughter to do, but she didn’t know how to identify her own needs.

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It’s been amazing to me over the years of doing conflict resolution and mediation work what happens when you can get people over their diagnosis of each other, and get them to connect at the need level to what’s going on in one another. When this happens, it seems as if conflicts almost resolve themselves.

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At this point we have listed the three pieces of information that are necessary to say what’s alive in us: what we’re observing, what we’re feeling, and the needs of ours that are connected to our feelings.

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EXERCISE: Please write down the following in relation to what the other person has done and how you feel about it. Identify what needs are creating your feelings, and write it this way: “I feel as I do because I need____.” Put into words that need of yours that isn’t being met by the other person’s behavior.

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Nonviolent Communication suggests that we make our request using positive action language.

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Your language is positive in the sense that it requests what you do want the other person to do, rather than what you don’t want or what you want them to stop doing. You want to request an action that involves them doing something.

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Question number one: What do we want the other person to do?

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And what is the second question? What do we want the other person’s reasons to be for doing what we want them to do? As I’ve mentioned, the purpose of Nonviolent Communication is to create connections so people give to one another out of compassion—not out of fear of punishment, not out of hope for rewards, but because of the natural joy we feel of contributing to one another’s well-being.

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She said, “Well, I told you. I want her to clean up the room.” “Not quite. We have to use action language. Clean is too vague. We have to use a concrete action to make our request.”

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EXERCISE: Imagine that you’ve said the first three things to the person. First, you’ve made an observation about what happened, without mixing in an evaluation. Second, you’ve expressed how you feel about what happened, free of blame and criticism. Third, you’ve expressed your needs in the situation, without referring to the other person or specific strategies. Now write down what you would say to make a request. Put it this way: “I would like you to_____.” What would you like this person to do to make life more wonderful for you?

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We want to make clear, assertive requests, and we want other people to know that these are requests and not demands.

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So we have to show the managers, the head nurses, whomever, how to make clear requests, and then be able to empathize with dissent in a way that makes it safe for people to disagree. When you have that, you will come to agreements everybody will respect. That’s one big thing we teach in the corporate world, in schools, and, of course, to parents.

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Power with is getting people to do things willingly, because they see how it’s going to enrich everybody’s well-being by doing it.

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One final distinction we need to be clear about is the concept of “power over” versus “power with.” Power over others gets things done by making people submit. You can punish, or you can reward.

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Research shows that companies, families, or schools that use power-over tactics pay for it indirectly through morale

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EXERCISE: Look at your request of the person and the situation you recorded earlier. Is there a chance that your request will be perceived as power over them? What steps can you take to establish power with them and thereby increase the chance that they’ll willingly respond to your request? How can you reword your request so that it reflects positive action language?

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“How did you educate yourself at that moment? What did you say to yourself?”

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And I asked this mother that very question: “What need of yours was not met by how you talked to the child?” With a little help from me, she got in touch with the need. She said, “Marshall, I have a real need to respect people, especially my children. Talking to my child that way didn’t meet my need for respect.”

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“Well, we’ve already looked at that part of yourself that doesn’t like what you did. It didn’t meet your need to respect other people. Now let’s be conscious of what need of yours was met by doing it. You care for the child; you wanted to protect the child’s well-being.” “Yes.” “I believe we have a much better chance to learn how to handle other situations in the future if we ask ourselves how we could have met both needs. Now, when you have those two needs in mind, can you imagine how you might have expressed yourself differently?” She said, “Yes, yes. Oh, yes. I can see that if I had been in touch with those needs, I would’ve expressed myself quite differently.”

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In this way we can actually make good use of our depression, guilt, and shame. We can use those feelings as an alarm clock to wake us up to the fact that at this moment we really are not connected to life—life defined as being in touch with our needs.

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The word should comes directly from this game of violence that implies there’s a good and a bad, a should and a shouldn’t.

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What we find is that when people can empathize with themselves in these ways … then if they do start to criticize themselves, they know how to translate that criticism into an unmet need. When people can practice self-empathy, they are much better able to learn from their limitations without losing self-respect—without feeling guilty or depressed.

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When our awareness is on our needs, we’re much better able to meet our needs without losing self-respect, and we’re also better able to avoid judging others for what they say or do.

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NVC helps us learn how to create peace within ourselves when there’s a conflict between what we do and what we wish we had done. If we’re going to be violent to our self, how are we going to contribute to creating a world of peace? Peace begins within us.

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First of all, we talk very little if at all about what happened in the past. I have found that talking about what happened in the past not only doesn’t help healing, it often perpetuates and increases pain.

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You heal by talking about what’s going on in the moment, in the now.

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Nonviolent Communication shows us a big difference between mourning and apology. Apology is basically part of our violent language. It implies wrongness—that you should be blamed, that you should be penitent, that you’re a terrible person for what you did—and when you agree that you are a horrible person and when you have become sufficiently penitent, you can be forgiven. Sorry is part of that game.

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Now, in contrast, what is really healing for people is not that game where we agree that we’re terrible, but rather going inside yourself and seeing what need of yours was not met by the behavior. And when you are in touch with that, you feel a different kind of suffering. You feel a natural suffering, a kind of suffering that leads to learning and healing, not to hatred of oneself, not to guilt.

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EXERCISE: Think of a person or event from the past that still brings you pain. What’s alive in you at this moment about that person or event? What may have been alive in the others involved?

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“Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. All things are bound together. All things connect.” — CHIEF SEATTLE

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The other half of Nonviolent Communication shows us how to make empathic connection with what’s alive in the other person and what would make life more wonderful for them.

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It doesn’t mean we have to have the same feelings; it means we are with the other person.

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We have been educated that when authorities tell us what’s wrong, we think there is something wrong with us. I suggest that you never, never, never listen to what other people think about you. I predict you’ll live longer and enjoy life more if you never hear what people think about you. And never take it personally.

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The recommendation I have is to learn to connect empathically with any message coming at us from other people. To do that you have to see what’s alive in them.

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empathy is like riding on a wave; it’s about getting in touch with a certain energy. But the energy is a divine energy that’s alive in every person, at every moment.

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At the core of our humanity, we all have the same needs. So when I do this healing work, I don’t go up into my head and think what’s going on with this other person. Rather, I put myself in that role and say what would have been going on in me were I to do something like that.

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EXERCISE: To prepare us to see how Nonviolent Communication suggests responding to other people, let’s go back to your situation and use your imagination. Imagine you will try out what we’ve learned so far. You decide to go to this person and be honest with them, using the four steps to answer the two questions. You tell the other person the four things I’ve asked you to write down: what they’ve done that you don’t like, how you feel, what needs of yours aren’t met, and what your request is. Now, predict how they might respond and write that down.

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Learn how to connect empathically, and you will hear they are always singing a beautiful song.

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Try to connect in a way that shows the other person you care about what’s alive in them.

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Now, when we put this all together, it looks like this: We may start a dialogue with the other person by telling them what’s alive in us and what we would like them to do to make life more wonderful for us. Then, no matter how they respond, we try to connect with what’s alive in them and what would make life more wonderful for them. And we keep this flow of communication going until we find strategies to meet everybody’s need.

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“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” — GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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I said, “Whenever our objective is to get somebody to stop doing something, we lose power. If we really want to have power in creating change—whether it’s personal change, changing another individual, or changing society—we need to come from a consciousness of how the world can be better. We want people to see how their needs can better be met at less cost.”

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You see, once people don’t have to defend themselves against our single-mindedness of purpose to change them, once they feel understood for what they’re doing, it’s much easier for them to be open to other possibilities.

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So, obviously, if you are going to do this and have to pay so much for it, it must be meeting some needs of yours. Let’s identify those needs, because I believe that once we understand those needs, we’ll be able to find another way of meeting the needs more effectively and at less cost. So, what are your needs?” He asked, “Are you saying it was right to do what I did?” “No, “ I said, “I’m not saying it was right. I’m saying you did it for the same reason I do everything I do, to meet needs. So what needs are you meeting by doing this?”

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He realized that his need for doing that was for understanding, for empathy. From the terror in their eyes, he felt that his victims understood what he felt when he was a child and his father had done this to him. He didn’t realize that was his need. He didn’t know other ways of meeting that need. Once we got it clear, it was obvious there were many other ways to meet that need other than terrorizing children.

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The practice of NVC is very much in harmony with principles of restorative justice.

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Then I help him mourn for what he did. Not apologize; that’s too easy. I help him go inside and look at what he feels when he sees the suffering of this other person. That requires going deeply into oneself. It’s very painful, but it’s a healing kind of pain. So I help him do that.

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EXERCISE: In relation to the person who has done something you don’t like, think of the ways they might have met their needs without doing what hurt you. Write down how you might express those options to them, using what we have covered so far.

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“The world will change for the better when people decide they are sick and tired of being sick and tired of the way the world is, and decide to change themselves.” — SIDNEY MADWED

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Basically, it’s the same structure as before; it’s just that we’ve substituted a gang for a king. For further reading on this subject, I recommend G. William Domhoff’s book Who Rules America? He’s a political science professor who lost two jobs writing the book because the people in the gang have a lot of money, and they don’t like to fund professors to educate the public about their gang.

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U.S. schools, however, are doing what they were set up to do, which is to support gang behavior. Which gang? In this case, it’s the economic-structure gang, the people who control our businesses. They control our schools, and they have three historical goals: First, to teach people obedience to authority so that when they get hired they’ll do what they’re told. Second, they get people to work for extrinsic rewards. They want people to learn not how to enrich their lives, but to receive grades, to be rewarded with a better high-paying job in the future. If you’re a gang who wants to hire a person to put out a product or service that doesn’t really serve life (but makes a lot of money for the owners of this gang), you want workers who aren’t asking themselves, Is this product we’re turning out really serving life? No, you just want them to do what they’re told and to work for a salary. Katz says the third function of our schools—and this really makes lasting change difficult—is that they’re doing a good job of maintaining a caste system and making it look like a democracy.

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It’s the structure that’s the problem, not individuals. Teachers and administrators within the schools are not enemies. They genuinely want to contribute to children’s well-being. There are no enemies here. It’s the gang structure we have set up to maintain our economy. So what do we do if we want to transform the schools in ways that better serve people? We need not only to change the schools, we also need to change the bigger structure of which schools are a part.

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EXERCISE: Think of one thing you can do to make it more likely that you’ll attempt to change something you don’t like. Write this down and put it in a place to remind yourself to do it.

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“The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” — MARILYN FERGUSON

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I started as I usually do in mediation. I said, “I’m confident that if anybody’s needs get expressed and understood, we’ll find a way to get everybody’s needs met. So who would like to begin, please? I’d like to hear what needs of yours are not being met.”

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Well, that wasn’t quite what he was saying. He said, “You’re murderers.” But it’s closer to the truth to hear the needs than the enemy image. With Nonviolent Communication skills, I was able to hear the needs behind the judgment.

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That’s why the first thing we do with people when we’re training them in how to tackle “terrorist gangs” is how to do the necessary despair work: looking inside and dealing with your own pain in relationship to the gangs. You transform all the enemy images you have of other people into clarity about what needs of yours are not getting met.

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Every time we go up into our head and make a judgment of others instead of going into our heart and seeing the needs, we decrease the likelihood that other people will enjoy giving to us.

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And I said, “That’s why I think we had ten minutes of unproductive discussion. Whenever we take the attention of a group and present something, and we’re not clear what we want, it’s very likely that we’re not going to have a very productive encounter. Nonviolent Communication shows us, whether we’re talking with an individual or a group, to be sure you end whatever you’re saying with clarity about what you want back: What is your request?

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As Walter Wink points out, organizations, structures, and governments have their own spirituality. And within those environments people communicate in a way that supports that spirituality.

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Think of someone you’d like to connect with, but whom you now consider to be an enemy. What’s the first thing you’ll do to turn that conflict into connection?

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Here’s another application of Nonviolent Communication for social change. In our meetings we can be more productive and not fill the air with a lot of words. Rather, we can create a flow in which the other person can tell us what they need to know to decide whether we can work together.

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EXERCISE: The next time you’re involved in an unproductive meeting, what can you do to get things moving? (Hint: Focus on observations, feelings, needs, and clear requests!)

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Despair work is Joanna R. Macy’s concept. She’s a person working in social change whom I admire very much. She points out how important it is to do despair work, noting that spirituality and social change go together. If we have a good, powerful spirituality, we are much more likely to reach our social-change objectives.

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I had never seen the man, but they had, and they showed me how he communicated. I worked hard the night before to see his humanness so I wouldn’t see him as an enemy.

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And when the spirituality of the organization is “production over all, “ that’s the only thing that counts. Human feelings, human needs, humanness doesn’t matter. Then the company pays for it in terms of both morale and even production, because when you get people believing that their feelings and needs are understood, production will go up.

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Another thing we teach business people is how to do performance evaluations that don’t criticize employees when they don’t do what supervisors like. In this sense, we teach teachers the same thing. We also teach parents how to evaluate without criticism. I was explaining that to managers in one company. I started by saying something that’s part of our training—how to make clear observations, how to get people’s attention by expressing what they’re doing that you don’t like. I asked this group of managers I was with this question: “For example, what behaviors would you like to work on today that are problematic among the employees?”

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We suggest that positive judgments are equally as dehumanizing to people as negative judgments. We also suggest how destructive it is to give positive feedback as a reward. Don’t dehumanize people by complimenting them or praising them. When I say this to managers in industry or to teachers, they’re often shocked. They’ve often been in training programs that teach them to compliment and praise employees or students daily because performance rises. And I point out to such people that if you look at the research you will see that, yes, most children work harder when they’re praised and complimented. Most employees work harder when they’re praised and complimented … but only for a very short time. It lasts until they sense the manipulation, until they sense that this is not the real stuff, that this is not gratitude from the heart. That is another manipulation, another way of trying to get them to do things.

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If you want to read more about the violence of rewards, to see that it’s the same kind of violence as punishment, and just as dangerous, read Alfie Kohn’s book, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. Both punishment and praise are means of control over people.

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How do we express gratitude in Nonviolent Communication? First, the intent is all-important: to celebrate life, nothing else. We’re not trying to reward the other person. We want the other person to know how our life has been enriched by what they did. That’s our only intent. To make clear how our life has been enriched, we need to say three things to people, and praise and compliments don’t make these three things clear: First, we want to make clear what the person did that we want to celebrate, what action on their part enriched our lives. Second, we want to tell them how we feel about that, what feelings are alive in us as a result of what they’ve done. Third, we want to tell them what needs of ours were met by their actions.

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“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — MARCEL PROUST

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“Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” — MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

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