Hardwired for Connection

We love to share what brings people together and what touches our hearts. Right now, Brene Brown’s latest book: Dare to Lead is near the top of that list… We found this book to be so profound and aligned with our practice that we now include it in our recommended reading for our Art of Circling Practitioner Training.

This month we thought we’d share some of our favorite excerpts with you.  If you have some favorite Brene Brown wisdom you’d like to share with our community, we’d love to hear what it is, and how it impacts you, over on our facebook page.

Dare to Lead

by Brene Brown

We believe this book pierces right to the heart of what we do at the Circling Institute.

Brene teaches about vulnerability, connection & courage in a way that is contemporary, relevant, and the world is able to hear.

Her cutting edge work is reaching leaders in industry, education, the military & even Hollywood. She shares living stories with research-based conclusions that legitimizes the essence of what we do with a wide audience. This is an important body of work – but it focuses mainly on the “what” and the “why” of human connection… We designed The Art of Circling to address the “how”. (See below to find links for information on our trainings.)

TCI’s Favorite Quotes from Dare to Lead

• We are hardwired for connection. From our mirror neurons to language, we are a social species. In the absence of authentic connection, we suffer. And by authentic I mean the kind of connection that doesn’t require hustling for acceptance and changing who we are to fit in.

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• Setting boundaries is making clear what’s okay and what’s not okay, and why. Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability.

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• Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, and joy.

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• True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.

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• Shame resilience is about moving from shame to empathy – the real antidote to shame….if we share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.

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• Empathy is connecting to the feeling under the experience, not the experience itself. If you’ve ever felt grief, disappointment, shame, fear, loneliness, or anger, you’re qualified. Now you just need the courage to practice and build your empathy skills.

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• It’s almost impossible to process emotion when we can’t identify, name, and talk about our experience….In a world of emotional literacy, we would be able to recognize and name between thirty and forty emotions in ourselves and others.

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• When someone feels sorry for us, it magnifies our feelings of being alone. When someone feels with us, it magnifies our feeling of connection and normalcy.

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• Empathy is a choice. And it’s a vulnerable choice, because if I were to choose to connect with you through empathy, I would have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling…Empathy isn’t about fixing, it’s the brave choice to be with someone in their darkness – not to race to turn on the light so we feel better.

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• I’m also not a fan of anything that’s brutal, including honesty. 
• Honesty is the best policy, but honesty that’s motivated by shame, 
• anger, fear, or hurt is not “honesty”. It’s shame, anger, fear, or 
• hurt disguised as honesty.

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• Find the face of God in everyone.
• Show up for people in pain and don’t look away.
• Choose courage over comfort.

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• Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; it’s choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy; and it’s practicing your values, not just professing them.

And, finally, this one.That we think will really speak to all of you Circlers!

• Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance. You’re going to confuse, piss off, and terrify lots of people – including yourself. One minute you’ll pray that the transformation stops, and the next minute you’ll pray that it never ends. You’ll also wonder how you can feel so brave and so afraid at the same time. At least that’s how I feel most of the time…brave, afraid, and very, very alive.

We hope these inspire you to read Dare to Lead – and to come join us in learning to embody the skills of connection, empathy and vulnerability, so that you can continue living from your truth.

Upcoming Trainings & Workshops

Intro Events
In SF Bay Area

The Explorer – Getting Someone’s World
Sept 28-29 in SF Bay Area
($100 offthrough Sept 14)

Art of Circling Practitioner Training 
$1000 off full tuition through September 30

I came across this beautiful story from Alan Cohen while looking through some old files and felt deeply moved by it once again. I wanted to share it with you…

For me it represents the sacredness of the Circling practice, where we connect with each other’s essence & humanity. 

• We listen and reflect back what we get about someone, with understanding & acceptance.
• We trust their inner wisdom, even if it seem buried beneath their core wounds & the strategies they use to avoid them.
• We discover that by being with them fully …in the depth and truth of “what is”…something new is born that may have only been possible together.

And a new understanding, perspective, healing, possibility rises… from their own guidance within…and through our co-exploration of their inner world.

~  Jon

They’re Singing Your Song by Alan Cohen

When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique flavor and purpose. When the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else.

When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the child’s song to him or her. Later, when the child enters education, the village gathers and chants the child’s song. When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood, the people again come together and sing. At the time of marriage, the person hears his or her song.

Finally, when the soul is about to pass from this world, the family and friends gather at the person’s bed, just as they did at their birth, and they sing the person to the next life.

In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them.

The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.

A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.

You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn’t. In the end, we shall all recognize our song and sing it well. You may feel a little warbly at the moment, but so have all the great singers. Just keep singing and you’ll find your way home.

If you’d like to develop this way to hear people’s song and sing it back to them, please join us at our upcoming workshop:

Explorer: Getting Someone’s World
Oct 13-14 in Berkeley
https://circling.wpengine.com/tci-weekend-workshop/

You’ll learn the magic of attunement…of deep listening…and of getting someone’s world & reflecting it back to them in a way that creates connection, trust, and healing.

 

Hello Compassionate Communicators!

We hope you are staying warm this winter. I often find myself staying indoors way too often in winter, and yearning for more real connection.

So for this post, I wanted to share some insights on how to start doing that, with the conversations already happening in your life.

Authentic Relating Tidbits

So often in our interactions, we wind up in disagreements or misunderstandings because we make inaccurate assumptions about what someone means, or we hide our feelings about what we heard.

How do we make our communication at work or at home more effective, intimate or co-creative?

Two foundational steps we find work consistently are to:

1) Show the other person that you heard them and get what they mean

2) Share what you feel and want in response

Then discuss and repeat.

Sounds pretty simple right? I can’t tell you how uncommon this can be to do well, especially when the heat is on.

Here’s a work example: Your boss tells you on Friday he needs a proposal for the Monday morning meeting.

You could assume your boss forgot you were going away with family for the weekend or that (s)he doesn’t care about you. You react in a way you may regret, or more likely bury your feelings of resentment.

Or you could say something like…

1) “I hear how urgent this is and it sounds like you need me to work the weekend to make this happen.”

2) “I get the importance of getting this done and… I have a trip planned with family, and flights already scheduled so I feel stressed and upset about letting my family down if I do this. Can we discuss the options and what makes sense? I am struggling with my commitments here.”

A complementary home example:

Your partner is mad at you for canceling your family weekend for the 2nd time due to work. You could argue that you are working this hard so you can pay the bills for the family, etc… which the other side has come to expect to hear and argue about.

Or you could say…

1) “I hear you that you were really looking forward to this weekend. I imagine you feel disappointed, hurt and upset with me. Or think I’m not caring enough or prioritizing our time together.”

2) “I feel disappointed too, at losing this time together. I want to hear what else this brings up for you. As you know, my work is also important, so let’s make better make choices and priorities that we can both embrace. And I want to find ways that I can make this up to you.”

Obviously, the second alternative in both cases would create more connection and possibilities following the steps outlined. But here’s the rub and it won’t surprise you – it is not so easy to pull off the better alternative when you feel stressed, triggered or reactive.

We have seen people try it many times and it can come across as insincere, mechanical or patronizing, if they are still irritated. The next time you are stressed, try to calmly speak your truth, listen and genuinely empathize with the other person and see how easily it comes through or is received.

This is where practice is key. So I want to give you some simple phrases to try out and see how they work.

The key tidbits here to borrow and practice are…

1) I heard you say…

or….this is what I think I’m hearing, is that right?

 2) Hearing that I feel… and I want.

or… I’m hoping for…or would you consider…

I invite you to practice using those two phrases every day with 2 or 3 people, for a week or two and see what happens, what you learn and what impact it has on your connection with the people in your life.

The simplicity here is deceptive because the practice will save you when the heat is on. Without this grounding of practice, most of us will flounder. I certainly have many times in the past.

Share Your Gems 

Try it and let your community know how it goes. What worked, what didn’t? Where did you get stuck or reactive? How did the other side respond? What other suggestions do you have?

Feel free to share this on our Facebook page…

https://www.facebook.com/circlinginstitute/

Learning More

Got the basics and want to dive in deeper? Getting live feedback and insights on these practices and making adjustments until you get really good at them is what you will learn in our intro weekends and/or the Art of Circling Practitioner Training.

Getting the other person by sharing what you heard is the first level of what we call The Explorer: Getting Someone’s World.

Sharing what you feel and want are some of the basic skills of Sovereign: Your Presence.

You can find information on our upcoming Workshops and Intro Events on our website and/or our Facebook page.

Come join us and experience the changes first hand in how you relate with the people in your life.

Love,

Jon Cotton,

and The Circling Institute

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”

–Karl A. Menniger