Conversations: Dancing with Words

The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.
Mata Hari
I guess I could say I’m a conversationologist.
Yes, I made that word up.
I find myself most days listening to clients talk about their conversations with themselves, or others. These conversations are typically upsetting to my clients. The content is either self or other directed with the client either stuck in the past, or projecting into the future. As my clients talk patterns appear. Habits that have become so familiar that my client is completely unaware of them. As I reflect, and ask questions, the client’s awareness begins to shift. The client shifts to a neutral, present moment awareness that the conversation is no longer personal but transformative, yielding data. Data about the self, and data about the other. Noticing is heightened, intimacy increased, and the power of what lies behind the words evolves into a deeper understanding of the self, and other.
 Conversations become dances of graceful swoops, meaningful pauses, and spiraling insights formed from words that are heard, pondered, reflected, and responded to in understanding honesty, and kindness. These rewarding conversations are neutral without judgment, and occur in this moment.  Judgment dissipates, only the moment exists in true connection. Meaning, understanding and connecting with oneself, or with others are truly conversations to create, collect, and treasure.
How are your conversations going? Not well? Contact me.

Extraordinary Relationships

Creating extraordinary relationships requires regular emotional deposits, and minimal withdrawals.
Stephen Covey


Who doesn’t want extraordinary relationships? I love my extraordinary relationships. Don’t you? What makes them extraordinary? Emotional deposits are one thing that makes a relationship extraordinary.

When am I making emotional deposits? When I create acts of kindness, keep promises, have and honor clear agreements, speak well of others in their absence, apologize, and forgive. However, it is not enough to just make emotional deposits I must minimize emotional withdrawals. Emotional withdrawals can be acts of unkindness, broken promises, unclear expectations or non-existent agreements, disloyal in word or deed, never apologizing, or never forgiving.

Are you making more emotional deposits than withdrawals in your relationships? Are you wondering why your relationships are not extraordinary? What actions will you take to make more emotional deposits today in order to begin to make your relationships
extraordinary?

Intimacy in Relationships Through Deeper Human Connectedness

What does it mean to live in connection? It means I am connected to myself, I have intrapersonal intimacy, I know myself. I am aware of my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I take responsibility for and seek to understand them. I am responsible for myself, and blaming my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors on others is a cop out that dismisses me from personal responsibility. Likewise, I am not responsible for the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others; they are responsible for their own.

To live in connection means that I am also able to experience interpersonal intimacy, a connection between me and others at a fundamental level of being. I allow myself to be known, they allow themselves to be known and we are both aware that this connection is occurring. This level of connection is exquisitely deep, fleeting, and quite rare. My experience with this type of connection is of being suspended in a time and place where the world around us falls away, and all that is left is the deep, exhilarating, and sometimes terrifying experience of knowing and being known.

To live in connection means that I am willing to develop skills to listen to and understand myself and others deeply, and that I have others in my life that are willing to be known and to know me. Many believe they desire this depth of connection, yet few are willing to do the work it takes to achieve it. It is frightening to look at oneself, unmasked and vulnerable and it is even more terrifying to let others see our essence. It is also amazingly rewarding and awesome to be seen, known, and still loved.

If I am to live in connection with others it means I cannot shrink from the authenticity and vulnerability of them. I must value the courage it takes others to let me know them. In turn, I must not shy away from truly knowing them, honoring their journey, and holding their space with the sacredness it deserves. I cannot flinch if I am repulsed by what they have done or what has been done to them, because in those moments of true connection I must be able to support their truth, not indulge my own weaknesses and be able to love them more by knowing them for who they truly are. By knowing and connecting, we form meaning for our own lives and celebrate the lives of others.

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Copyrighted 2014