Humanistic Approach, Challenging Divisiveness | 0:03:51 – 0:05:23 (91 Seconds)
0:03:51
And even in our conversations they are structured around being divisive and either or either you’re for my group or you’re against my group. And why can’t I be for more of a humanistic approach where I can look at children being killed and elders being killed and innocent people who have nothing to do with terrorism or being killed in the name of peace, and that in itself doesn’t make any sense to me how we can justify bombing and killing innocent people on both sides and and say that’s a way to peace. And I think there’s a lot of really deep conversations that we need to have as a society, because not everyone fits whatever label that we choose to give each other, and so the idea of individuating is getting to know people within those groups who don’t agree with that label, that philosophy, that abhorrent behavior that we’re seeing in our world today, even within our own country, there are people who are violent, divisive, attacking each other based on labels, and this was happening before what happened between the Israelis and the Palestinians?
Triggers and Honest Conversations | 0:10:50 – 0:13:33 (162 Seconds)
0:10:50
And I think we’re in a really challenging time right now because we are getting all of these narratives that we’re being socialized to about each other and then people become triggered by conversations and that triggering can have some really devastating emotional effects depending on what it triggered within each human being. I was doing a workshop a while back and I mentioned something about the Palestinian and Israeli hospital that got bombed and I was told it triggered somebody, and that was not. My intent was to make somebody feel bad, and yet something I said triggered them, and I think there’s two elements to it being triggered. So everybody has a trigger. So everybody has a trigger. Those are the things that people do say behave in ways that causes you to go to question what just happened here, and typically a trigger is something that is mine, that is just triggered based on someone’s behavior, and their intent could not be to hurt me or do any harm or even trigger me. And yet something in what they said struck a chord. And so I say that because if we’re having these really honest conversations about what’s happening in the world, we’re all gonna be triggered in some way or another. And so when something I say triggers somebody, that person can approach it in one of two ways. They can never tell me about it, walk away, and I just wonder why they’re treating me differently or why we’re interacting differently. Or they could say which is what happened. Something that you said triggered me and it caused me to become emotional. Now, that was not my intent, and yet I know that’s possible, and I would still ask that person what is it that needs to be healed, for that trigger to diminish. And that’s a real question, because I think that’s what’s at the root of our triggers is some pain, some hurt rooted in our own personal experiences, and everyone is bringing those and it seems like today it’s heightened even more. Every other day I get a call from one of my clients to say can you come in and do a mediation? Can you come in and do a restorative conversations?
Creating Connection and Trust in Relationships | 0:14:53 – 0:18:15 (202 Seconds)
0:14:53
So I wanna finish with this I worked with a facilitator when I was about 25 years old in Boulder, where I lived at the time, and her name was Lillian Roybal Rose. She was a pretty amazing human being who facilitated a conversation for a group of my colleagues of color, and so we live in a predominantly white community and there were a lot of challenges that we had that were rooted in our own experiences and got triggered that we needed to heal, and so we went through a process that lasted days and weeks and in some ways I’m still in 40 years later and she told me two things. She said if you remember these two things, you’ll be successful not only in growing yourself, also in working with other people if you choose to do this. And those two things were everybody has a good heart and everyone deserves to be trusted, and I took those to heart, and when I walk into a space, I walk into it with this mindset that you all deserve to be trusted and that you all have a good heart. And that has served me well, because it allows me to create a connection with people who are like me, with people who are different from me, with people who have different backgrounds, different values, different beliefs. And if the trust is eroded because of interactions that we have with each other, either by myself or by the other person, we know that it’s real. It’s not a story that we’re making up, and we can either choose to rebuild the trust and to figure out what our roles were in getting where we are, or we can just part ways and just say I don’t feel I want to be in a relationship with you and that’s okay. I think the challenge is that when we walk away and we interact with somebody who’s like that person that we walked away from, then we say, oh yeah, there’s another one. Well, that’s not really another one. That’s a new human being that has their own unique identity that we’re probably not taking the time to get to know. So, of course, whatever our mindset gives us is what we’ll bring into our life, whether it’s real or not. It could be completely the opposite of what our mindset is telling us and we won’t be able to see it, and I’ve had a life experience of doing that, where I had a mindset about a particular person, and when I got to know them, I realized that they were a completely different human being than my label, and so I just want you all to think about your role in creating a more connected planet, and also want to say that I’m really excited because part of what I have always done is well, I haven’t always done this for a good part of my life. What I’ve done is recognize where we are and then created something to counter it. So I want to share with you what I’ve created to counter this divisiveness.
