Landing a Pinch in Appreciation

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My colleague Gordon White and I have co-created a course on How to Have Difficult Conversations that we’ve been teaching online during COVID (stay tuned for more on how we’re developing that course in a future issue!). 

One concept we teach is something from called Pinch Theory, developed in the 1970s by John Scherer and John Sherwood. The idea is that we tend to put off the little “pinches” or annoyances that can arise in relationships.  Sometimes that can be fine, if it’s something that truly does not bother you. 

But often times, there are parts inside us wanting a voice and if we don’t attend to that, the pressure can build up until the issue, which was really just a little thing a few months ago, becomes a big “crunch.”  We perhaps are more irritated than we intend or avoid the person or even leave the situation altogether. 

Pinch Theory recommends to bring things up when they are small. If you think back in your own life, to a conversation or situation that may not have worked out well.  Can you imagine what it would have been like if you had brought up the topic earlier?

One important caveat is to bring up pinches in a culture of appreciation.  John Gottman and others have cited that five appreciative comments are needed for every negative one. 

Five appreciative comments to every one negative one! The challenge is our brains tend towards the negative (negativity bias) so we need to be intentionally appreciative. 

Colleague, Norn Smookler, recently shared a short 2-minute article on how to spread around more appreciation!  It’s intended for leaders to motivate their teams, but can apply to all those around us!  Enjoy! 

3 Stories – Which One Will You Choose?

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I was listening to a podcast by Sounds True founder, Tami Simon.  She had interviewed author, environmentalist, activist and elder Joanna Macy. 

It’s a wise and inspiring interview. 
 
One part that jumped out at me was when Joanna shared that she sees 3 stories playing out in our world:
 1 The Great Turning

This story is that the times we live in are calling us all to change, to learn new ways of being and of doing conflict, of advocating for species. The times are about creativity and a shift in consciousness – where we choose to see our environments not just as a supply house but to see our world as a living body.

2 The Great Unraveling

This story is that the times we live in are the dying times.  We are living in the sixth extinction, where everything is being destroyed.  I must admit I often find myself here and simply accept death as part of life and attempt to contribute to a gentler death.

3 Business as Usual

 
This story is about a focus on growing our economy and continuing to take from the earth in a one way relationship, in the usual ways we’ve always done things.
 
Joanna shared that she sees all three stories as having truth. And that we have the choice about where we put our attention. We have a choice about how we understand a given set of experiences – what meaning we want to put to it.
 
Joanna asks which story will be the predominate one?  What action one decides to take, if any, comes out of where we situate ourselves in these stories.
 
“If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.” .. Joanna R. Macy

What if Everything is Love?

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I happened to be lucky enough recently to hear Dan Brule tell an impact story that rocked my world.  Firstly, who is Dan Brule?  He’s a breath teacher who has been teaching breathwork since the 1970s.  If you’ve not heard of breathwork, and are perhaps thinking (like I did at one point), why do you need to teach someone to breathe, read on!
 
Breathwork, in the way Dan Brule teaches it has two aspects: breath awareness and conscious breathing.  Breath awareness is becoming more aware of how we are breathing at any given time.  Conscious breathing is changing some aspect of our breath.  How we breathe can impact many aspects of our lives including wellness and inducing calm in times of stress.
 
Now to Dan’s story. He was talking about a dark period in his life. He’d had a series of traumas that eventually landed him in jail.  He’d only spent a few days in jail when he acted out on a guard who had been taunting him.  The guard had spit on Dan’s food before giving it to him, and Dan grabbed the guard’s arm and tugged it so hard that the guard was smashed against the steel bars.  His shoulder was dislocated and Dan ended up in isolation for 17 days.
 
Talk about an enforced silent retreat!

I have never done a 10-day silent retreat, although I know people who have.  I had never thought of “Isolation” in the jails as something that could induce an ecstatic state, but for Dan, it appears that was part of the formula. 

When he got out of isolation, his first assignment was to clean the urinals.  There he was scrubbing them and the drain hole itself, when all of a sudden, he caught sight of something beautiful: the brass around the drain hole.
 
Yup.  The way he tells the story, he was struck by the inherent beauty of the brass around the drainage ring.  He was scrubbing and then getting lost in its beauty.  That experience started to open him up and he went into a ecstatic state.  He started to see the beauty all around him.  The perfection and geometry in the prison bars.  He leaned against them and felt the coolness of the steel.  Then he thought of how the bars are holding him up. 
 
Soon enough, the guards came to escort him back to his cell.  Dan was so overcome and in a bliss state, that he wanted to hug the guards.  He started walking towards them with outstretched arms.  They took that to mean he was going to attack, dropped to position and cocked their guns (which he could hear). 
 
In that moment, Dan realized he was coming towards them with this tremendous love in his heart and they interpreted it as attack.  He thought about his own life of anger and violence, and wondered how many times he had been in situations where love was coming at him, but he couldn’t see it or feel it or interpreted it as attack.
 
That was another key and pivotal moment in his healing.

I took that story into my kundalini practice the morning after I heard Dan’s story. Kundalini yoga gives me such tremendous access to calm, as a lot of the practice is meditation and allows my mind to settle in my body.

In that state of mind-body, what came to me was: 
 
“What if Everything is Love?” 
 
Of course, one can easily negate that supposition.  There is so much suffering in the world. But while on the yoga mat, I let myself feel the proposition: what if everything is love.
 
And from that space, I “got” it.  If I can allow myself to be open enough to the vibration of love, it is all around me and can come in to me and out of me.
 
I don’t know if I can quite convey to you that moment on the mat, but if you can imagine your heart region for a moment…. Put your hand on your heart.  Think of someone or something you love (your child, lover, a flower or sunset, a dog or peak moment). Now imagine there is a white light between you and that other. It could be a while light in the shape of a pipe or simply a golden cord.  However your own mind can see or sense it, is perfectly fine.  The exercise is to simply feel your own love inside and feel the love that can be generated in the in-between.  There is a space that extends from inside your heart region, outwards and connects with the “other” in love. 

That experience of love is being able to come into you and out of you.  It is the field that Rumi spoke of in his quote of there being a field and his desire to meet up there.
 
Now let’s take this imagining a step further.  Still with your hand on your heart, imagine you are Dan standing in front of those guards. See yourself as Dan.  Feet firmly planted in his ecstatic loving state.  Open to love.  Feel it in your chest, under your hand. 

Now glance up and see the guards. This is the “other” we imagine will harm us in some way.  We are seeing the threat of the outside world.

See the guards “out there” softening into love as well.  They too can open into love. Love opens. Love softens.  Love expands.
 
You. Love. The other. Love. You. Love.

After that incident of incredible bliss, Dan stayed in that state for a few more days.  While “in love” – he profoundly touched the prison psychiatrist who was sent to assess his mental health as well as one of the key guards in charge.  As each of them visited Dan, they were overcome with his unconditional love for them and felt his love touch the tenderness of their own hearts, crying, weeping, opening up to Dan. One of them crawling into Dan’s lap in a fetal position washing away the regret of his years of a perceived wasted life. 
 
That’s the kind of impact we can have on others when we come from love.
 
Within a week of having had this love opening, Dan received a letter inviting him to come to a “Clemency Board hearing” in Washington. He was supposedly in prison for 3 years minimum, and probably more as he’d been violent at the outset. He had no idea what a Clemency Board was, or how anyone had even gotten his name.
 
He went to the Clemency Board hearing, where there were high ranking officials and when he got back to prison, he received another letter from them soon after.  In it, it stated he was to be set free immediately.
 
Instead of 3 years in prison, he spent 69 days.
 
That is the power of love.
 
Can you stay in the feeling, even only for a few moments, that everything around you is sending you love?  Might the only barrier to feeling and receiving that love is to let down our inner guard and feel the love pour in?

“Once you are free everything happens for you. You vibrate differently and the world changes.”  … Dan Brule

Want to be in an Open Yes State?

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There’s something about being “open” that creates a certain state of mind that can be very useful in difficult conversations.

Gordon White and I teach an 8-step model for Difficult Conversations.  It’s one that leverages the combined 50+ years we bring to our conflict work as mediators, teachers, coaches and writers.  We’ve really enjoyed the experience of creating the model and a course to go along with it.  These last few weeks, we’ve been working on recording an online version (which I hope to tell you more about in the coming months!).

One key piece of our model is preparing for how you want to manage your emotional state going into a difficult conversation, so that you set up the conversation well.

One exercise we teach comes from Dr. Daniel Siefel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He has done this exercise with his patients who are not particularly aware of their bodily states until he helps them with the noticing. The exercise is also something Gordon and I have adapted and named the “Yes/No Exercise” and it helps raise self-awareness about what our bodies feel like in a “Yes” state and a “No” state. 

To give you a taste of what we mean: 

When you are in a “Yes” state –you are relaxed, receptive, resourced and therefore able to draw on your best self to continue through a difficult conversation.  Outside factors can contribute to a Yes state, including how much sleep you’ve had, whether you’ve moved your bodies that day, or if you’ve heard a good joke!

The “No” state is the opposite, those times when you are feeling stressed and therefore you become more closed, and less able to access your resourced self. This is the reactive mode and we all have that state as well.

It can be incredibly helpful in difficult conversations to be more aware about whether we are in our “Yes” state or “No” state or traversing somewhere between the two states. 

The exercise we do in our teaching involves someone saying the word “No” out loud seven times while you observe yourself in reaction to the word.  You could even record the word seven times into your phone and play it back to yourself.  You become a detective as you identify what your self-talk is and how your body feels and reacts in a “No” state.  That same is then done with the “Yes” state.  Say the word “Yes” seven times and notice how your body and your self-talk responds to the word.

This exercise could be done repeatedly as a way to strengthen awareness about whether you are slipping into a “No” state. This is a powerful practice, because the more we notice we are slipping away from our resourced selves, the more choice we have to take the simple steps we all know to calm down.  We know breathing or counting to ten works in conflict, but unless we have the capacity strengthened or planned out that we will attend to our bodily and self-talk realities, we can easily slip into the stressed zone and create inadvertent damage.

Siegel even wrote a whole book about this that he called the Yes Brain.   As summarized:

The Yes Brain

  • Flexible, curious, resilient, willing to try new things and even make mistakes.
  • Open to the world and relationships, helping us relate to others and understand ourselves. o Leads to true success because it prioritizes our inner world and looks for ways to challenge our whole brain to reach its potential.

The No Brain

  • Reactive and fearful, rigid and shut down, worrying that it might make a mistake.
  • Might lead to gold stars and external success, but does so by rigidly adhering to convention and the status quo and becoming good at pleasing others, to the detriment of curiosity and joy.

What I love about the concept of a “Yes” state and a “No” state is it allows for the possibility that we complex beings.  We all can be rigid at times and open at other times.  The more we can companion ourselves, be witness to ourselves, and stay connected to ourselves, the more choices we create in the world and the more harmony we can have in our lives.

It starts with noticing what a “Yes” state sounds like and feels like to you and a “No” state and being able to switch from No to Yes.  The more we are in our Yes state, the more open we are.

“We often think that there is just one way to look at things – the way we always have. In fact, there are an infinite number of ways to look at most everything. An open mind allows for a multitude of perspectives from which to choose in any given moment. That suppleness of mind allows for true choice, and opens us to a whole new realm of possibility.” …  Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things – Navigating Everyday Life with Grace