Don’t Quit
Nurturing Relationships
Nurturing Relationships
Value of authentic connection
“The human need for psychological contact is strong enough that even moderate increases in psychological contact are of great personal and psychological value to clients. If a client connects with another human being while he or she is making sense in some ways but not others, this in itself is likely to bring a lessening of that client’s existential aloneness and anxiety.
Focus on Teachings not Teachers
There are a lot of people that present themselves as gurus, and that has nothing to do with whether they’re gurus or not, in the real sense of the term ‘guru.’
The difference is that a teacher points the way; the guru is the way. Continue reading
If you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation
Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. Continue reading
If you need to say sorry to someone
The Journey from Hero to Host
For too long, too many of us have been entranced by heroes. Perhaps it’s our desire to be saved, to not have to do the hard work, to rely on someone else to figure things out. Constantly we are barraged by politicians presenting themselves as heroes, the ones who will fix everything and make our problems go away. It’s a seductive image, an enticing promise. And we keep believing it. Somewhere there’s someone who will make it all better. Somewhere, there’s someone who’s visionary, inspiring, brilliant, trustworthy, and we’ll all happily follow him or her. Somewhere…
Well, it is time for all the heroes to go home, as the poet William Stafford wrote. It is time for us to give up these hopes and expectations that only breed dependency and passivity, and that do not give us solutions to the challenges we face. It is time to stop waiting for someone to save us. It is time to face the truth of our situation—that we’re all in this together, that we all have a voice—and figure out how to mobilize the hearts and minds of everyone in our workplaces and communities.
Leaders who journey from hero to host have seen past the negative dynamics of politics and opposition that hierarchy breeds, they’ve ignored the organizational charts and role descriptions that confine people’s potential. Instead, they’ve become curious. Who’s in this organization or community? What skills and capacities might they offer if they were invited into the work as full contributors? What do they know, what insights do they have that might lead to a solution to this problem?
Leaders‐as‐hosts know that people willingly support those things they’ve played a part in creating—that you can’t expect people to ‘buy‐in’ to plans and projects developed elsewhere. Leaders‐as‐hosts invest in meaningful conversations among people from many parts of the system as the most productive way to engender new insights and possibilities for action. They trust that people are willing to contribute, and that most people yearn to find meaning and possibility in their lives and work. And these leaders know that hosting others is the only way to get complex, intractable problems solved.
Leaders‐as‐hosts don’t just benevolently let go and trust that people will do good work on their own. Leaders have a great many things to attend to, but these are quite different than the work of heroes. Hosting leaders must:
We need more producers across all industries….
What a Producer Does
He has an idea and pursues it; or he learns of someone else’s idea and seeks the means to realize upon it … indeed, to be sure that it is improved upon. A good producer, as an inspirer of creativity, must, himself, be creative. He is a creative administrator … a judge of creativity. He guides and helps hundreds of people toward an objective that becomes increasingly clear-cut as the work proceeds from an idea, through its script and budget preparation, then to shooting (very tense and money hazardous), then to post-production (cost manageable and leisurely if you don’t have a pressing air date or release deadline). It’s like herding bees with a switch. Continue reading
We cannot always place responsibility outside of ourselves, on parents, nations, the world, society, race, religion….
We receive a fatal imprint in childhood, at the time of our greatest plasticity, of our passive impressionism, of our helplessness before suggestion. In no period has the role of the parents loomed as immense, because we have recognized the determinism, but at the same time an exaggeration in the size of the Enormous Parent does not need to be permanent and irretrievable. Continue reading
Severing the Ties that Bind us through the practice of forgiveness
While there are shamanic techniques for cutting the cords that energetically tie us to another person, we can also sever these bonds through the practice of forgiveness. Continue reading
But what about Listening?
“Communication is the most important skill in life. You spend years learning how to read and write, and years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training have you had that enables you to listen so you really, deeply understand another human being? Probably none, right? Continue reading
ONE TUSK 