the worst mutilation tools

“Rings are a major risk for hands”, they are “the worst mutilation tools”, it read in the newspaper this morning.

This article was published on the occasion of the “first day of the prevention of injury of the hands”. It triggered a double warning to me (and none having to do with my hands!).

First it reveals an aspect of western societies that I’m getting concerned about. We are talked into believing more and more that we can live a risk-free life. We use bactericide after washing our hands so that we don’t get germs, we don’t dare eating a fruit from the garden before washing it, we prosecute a primary school teacher when a child falls and hurts himself, we invent fake gardening tools for kids so that they won’t risk to hit or cut themselves with a spade or a fork, we are told to be careful when opening a door because there may be someone behind it (I swear I read this!), we can put electronic bracelet to new born babies to track them if they were to be stolen or exchanged, we will soon drive electronic automatic cars that are so smart that they avoid accidents (in experimentation in La Rochelle in France in the coming months) and the list goes on. By wanting to master all risks, we are getting afraid of taking initiatives, so we don’t try ourselves to anything new. But what is life but action, but taking risks, all the time? How do we learn but by making mistakes and getting scars? With no trials, what is the point of life?

The other aspect that stroke me is the fact that the state dictates us the guidelines. Is the state supposed to be our educator? Eat 5 vegetables a day, don’t smoke, practice 30′ exercice everyday, drive safely, wash your hands etc. I feel very uncomfortable being told by the government what’s good for us, what should be done. No matter if I agree or not with their recommandation, I don’t like the fact that they are directing us in one direction. They are not (yet) fining us if we don’t eat enough vegetables, but what will prevent it? From recommendation to obligation, the line is thin. We are getting used to being told by the state what is good and bad, it starts sounding normal to most people, and this is frightening to me.

If we are taught into being afraid of taking risks and are also told what is good and bad, we will very soon follow our government’s direction very nicely, very obediently, and they’ll be able to lead us anywhere. Isn’t this a caracteristic of a dictatorship?

Close your eyes, take a deep breath. Feel your belly, feel your body. Feel the movement of your organs and cells. Feel the life running in your veins and animating you. Let this life gush out. Dare, act, do what honestly feels right to you, love, be. This is the most powerful act of resistance.

The wonders of listening

I was at a birthday garden party last week-end, with a great opportunity to chit-chat and talk for the sake of holding a conversation and looking good. I didn’t feel like it. I’ve never been great at that and didn’t want to force myself as I didn’t see the point. So I decided to just listen.

Very soon, I ended up sitting with someone whose choices in life are seemingly quite different from mines. The image I had of him was pictured by what I had heard from others, and the description was not so positive. I could easily label him as a teen who has gone bad. I decided to suspend my images and judgments, listen and open space to connect so that I could get a chance to understand his life, his thoughts, his choices, his world.

No advice, no shoulds, no role. The only thing I did was to reflect back emotions and needs I perceived, and this encouraged deeper and deeper dialogue.

We ended up sitting there for an hour while the others started to play games in the garden, and we didn’t see time go by. After a little while, I felt very close to him, his life was very far away from mine and yet I could very much understand his choices and how he was growing from it all. I felt very close to him indeed. We were interrupted in the end as we were urged to join the common game and we decided to go, and I left very energised.

Later on, I started to talk with another person, younger than me, going through life challenges and eager to find answers, willing to have someone to tell her what she should do. It would have been easy to start telling her about life, giving advice, playing the « from my experience, I can tell you that… » tune. Yet I decided not to go in this direction.

I decided to practice my listening skills, empathy and nvc. I listened, left room for silence when she finished a sentence so that what was in the air could sink in or what was deep inside could come up, I reflected back what she had said, offered feelings and underlying needs, in a natural way.

The more I listened in this attitude, the better I felt, although we never talked about me and I didn’t provide any advice. Focusing on her fully made me feel great, and that was amazing. The day after, she sent me a text message to thank me for the great conversation and some comment that made me feel something happened, while all I did was listening and connecting.

The day after, my husband told me the one who was holding the party told him I was so shining and looked serene. Is that coincidental?

You are so beautiful

Since I started my work in January, I’ve spent about 186 hours in the metro. In those hours, I’ve spent a good while watching people.

My initial impression, coming back to Paris after a long break, was that there was so many different people in the metro! Yet very quickly, as I started to commute, like most commuters I tended to go into my bubble, music in the hears, thoughts in my heads, looking away or inward. And then we all seem to look alike.

And as quickly as I was tempted to be in my bubble and ignore people around me, I realised I didn’t want to be like that. I often kept the music on my ears, yet I started to look around me and observe people. And as I started to look at them, I saw how each of them is unique. I saw them smiling and crying, fighting and blessing, waiting and hoping. The more I focused on them, the more my thoughts slowed down, and while judgments initially kept on popping up, gradually I came to merely observe them as they are and found myself full of gratitude and tenderness.

I have been so touched by people that I started to sketch them (while I had never sketched anyone before). I didn’t choose the one most appealing, I chose the one close to me, easiest to watch for a few minutes. This led me to look at them in even more details, and because I spent some minutes watching them carefully to catch what was significant abouth their traits, they became less strangers to me and days later I can still remember them.

I am impressed by how beautiful every single person is if I just take the time to see it.

Feeling my limits… or trying to.

When does commitment turn into blind dedication? When does persistence become stubborness?

In the new job I’ve had for the last 5 months, there is a lot to do, and there is no way I can do everything in the official number of hours per week. In addition to this, no procedures are written and it’s a real mess in the files in the computer, so I spend much time looking for the information and ways to do thing. On top of this, the team has changed so much in the last 1.5 year and keeps changing so there are no habits of work, no clear view of who is in charge of what for many things, and we have a hard time building consistent actions together. To add some spice to it, interns change often, come for 1 week, 2 months or 4 months, so that’s a lot of time and energy welcoming them, explaining things and learning to work with them before they leave. As a bonus, the director who has been in his position for less than a year comes from a university and is not used to running a business (althgouh non-profit, it’s a business) on an everyday basis, with objectives to meet and a team to manage.

I’m committed to the project of the organisation, I want all our students to have a host family before they arrive, I want the students and the families to experience a fruitful year full of learnings. I am therefore very tempted to work extensively extra hours. Yet I find out that if I work too many extrahours, in addition to my commuting time, I become quickly very tired, then in a bad mood, and not as effective and not that positive.

I also want the team to learn and grow from our work together and practice as much as I can of all I learned to take care of our relations. I want to be supportive of each one’s learning path and respect who they are and their specificities. Yet it can be very overwhelming when the everyday relations are tensed the way they are, when there is so much anger and frustration in the air, when the challenge is that big and when I also could do with some empathy myself.

If I feel it is more than I can manage, is it because I need to change my attitude, because I need to try harder or because I need to acknowledge my limits ?

When I am losing myself out of will to support others?

These questions have been with me a lot lately, days and nights…

Aaaaarggghhhh!

« Whatever happens, I don’t take it personnally ». «  Any criticism is the tragic expression of an unmet need ». « Separate the facts from the interpretation ». « Listen so that the other can speak ». « Speak so that the other can listen ». «Identify and acknowledge the needs behind the feelings ». « Positive inner dialogue ». « Breathe ». « Empathy and Self-empathy.  » « Suspend assumptions and judgments ». « Connect with yourself ».

Yeah, great, but sometimes I just can’t manage it and all I want to do is shout AAAAAAAarrrrrghhhhhhh!!!!!!!

And as I’m afraid I may hurt people and don’t want to, I keep it for myself, then I’m angry because I don’t manage to connect, and I become sad as I’m not consistent with whom I want to be. AAAAAAAarrrrrghhhhhhh again!

Hopefully I keep in mind this quote: “You don’ t fail when you don’t succeed, you fail when you stop trying” and I keep trying.

Rocky Greeny Gnome

I attended lately a workshop on Dialogue for the second time, and like last time, it was an amazing experience of connection to myself and to the group as an identity in itself, different from the sum of its parts.

At some point, we were invited to do an exercise that sounded quite surprising at first. We were to do some walking meditation for a few minutes, then wander around and choose a spot where we would sit for about ten minutes. Or rather than choosing a spot, let a spot choose us. Once we would have found it, we were invited to greet it, thank it for welcoming us and ask for its help, support, advice. We were then to think about a question or issue that we wanted some insight about, then close our eyes, and when opening them slowly, look around and see what caught our eyes. Whatever it was, we should write down its description, and then compare it with our question and see what it told us.

I had decided to trust the process in the week-end, so I went for it in the nearby forest. I was amazed by how obvious the spot appeared to me. I followed the instructions, and when I opened my mind, a rock totally covered in moss appeared. With its eyes and nose in the moss, it looked like a face. I looked for the mouth but could not see it. I went on with the instructions, described it, compared with my question, and was amazed by what came out.

And then, as I looked at the stone again, I could see very clearly a smiling mouth. It was no mossy rock. It was a gnome, and I could not resist but go and cuddle him gently. I left the forest in high spirits and I now have my rocky greeny gnome watching over me from somewhere in the woods.

“It’s bad to judge”

“Be a good girl”. “Be open”.” Try to understand”. “Don’t judge”. “It’s bad to judge.”

How many times have I heard this in my education, by my parents, by teachers, by other adults, and then by myself?

I don’t want to judge, yet I keep having judgments coming up, then I blame myself for judging, so I blame myself for blaming myself, and the guilt increases, and… And then I feel like crap, and I don’t really see how this attitude helps me be a good girl!

By hearing and thinking that it’s bad to judge, I’m judging myself negatively, so what’s the use of this saying???  Can I get out with it???

“Suspend your judgment.”

« Suspend », not as « Stop », but as « hang », the same way I hang clothes and can watch them. I cannot stop judgments. So if I fight them, deny them, ignore them, I am mastered by them and remain stuck in them. However if I acknowledge them and embrace them, then I can decide what to do with them. I can put them aside and try to see another way, then compare it with my view. I can observe my judgment and analyse what data and added meaning and beliefs triggered it. I can observe what feelings are going on inside me and what they tell me about unsatisfied needs, being then a wonderful help to take care of myself. I can observe what they tell me and choose how to act instead of being led to react.

So Yes I judge ! No, there is nothing wrong with judging ! I will keep on judging as I don’t know how to be otherwise, and I am most happy when I manage to welcome my judgments and listen to what they want to tell me.

Do we want this to be normal???

I was asked lately how things were at work, and I mentionned that the relationships are pretty tensed, that there is a lot of passive-agressive energy, that there is a lot of blaming and complaining and that each one thinks that the other should be more this and less that. And I was then told that this is just normal, and that I’ve got to get used to it.

This left me stunned.

In my previous fast job, I had contacts with a lot of people but I was working alone in my office as I didn’t have colleagues and my boss was based on another continent. Working with colleagues and a director on site for the last two months has therefore been a new experience for me, and I might have been idealising it, especially since I am working in the non-profit area promoting exchange, relationships and peace. But still.

I can accept that this type of relationship is pretty usual, that it is common, however I do not want to accept this as normal, I do not want to accep this as my norm. What I want as a norm is active listening, genuine love, positive intentions and care for each one’s needs. I want to believe the working place can be a place of cooperation, of acceptance of our limits, of mutual inspiration, of growth. That doesn’t mean I’ll manage this all the time, but at least that’s my reference, my compass, what guides me.

What’s guiding you?

The trigger

Last Wednesday I arrived at work full of enthusiasm and energy, like every morning. My job is challenging, there is a lot of tension between the team and the director and in our daily work we constantly have to choose between urgent and very urgent matters, so it’s tough, yet since I’ve started I’ve managed to take distance every evening and come back fully ready the next day.

And all it took to throw it all down was one sentence. My heart went mad in my chest, my stomac was tightened, my brain was speeding like crazy. Anger started to grow. The whole day I had to master myself to not attack the others, my mind tried to analyse and rationalise and to avoid blaming both the others and myself, but my guts were still played with.

This opposition between my brain and my emotions went on the whole day and I could not calm down. In the metro I let the pressure come out as tears, and in the train I started towrite. I wrote about my anger. « Yes, I am angry. I am angry because… and I am angry because…. » and the list went on and on. Til this one. « I am angry because it sounds like I’m not doing my work well, and I can’t stand it ». I am not perfect and I’m afraid I won’t be loved if people are not satisfied with my work, hence with me.

I’ve done a lot of personal development work these last years and I am now very much aware of my wish for perfection, and I feel I’m making a lot of progress to temper this, and yet I can very much see with that kind of event how it’s still there, inspite of it all…

The sentence triggered strong emotions in me because it pressed a button, while someone else would not have reacted or in a totally different way. It took me a lot of energy during the day to stay focused on the fact that it was not about him who said the sentence, nore about me, but about what it triggers in me.

Smile

Practicing this in the metro, with all those people grinning in front of me is a lot of fun. I feel like a kid and makes me want to smile even more. And it makes me think that people are beautiful and adorable even if I don’t know them and if they look sad.

If you try it, tell your stories!