Kaizen Conversations

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My conflict colleague Gordon White and I have been busy these last few months creating an online course on How to Have Difficult Conversations.  We started working more closely together last year, around when COVID first hit.  At that time, we held a few online versions of a course he and I had both taught many times:  How to Have Difficult Conversations.
 
Since then, he and I continue to cook up ideas and scheme and dream of sharing more of what we’ve learned from our experiences as mediators, teachers and from those we interact with, our students, our clients, our podcast guests and our colleagues.
 
Our newest project is taking the How to Have Difficult Conversations course and making it available to anyone – night or day – as an online stand-alone course.  We are inspired by the idea of people being able to access this vital information at their convenience and as often as they want.
 
I’ll be telling you more soon as we are almost ready to go public! 
 
In the meantime, I did want to share one way working on the course has impacted me.
 
It’s around the idea of having “pinch conversations.”  Pinch conversations are those conversations which might seem small at the time:  like how someone rolls up their toothpaste or that they leave their cup in the sink or the volume in their voice as they talk on the phone.
 
However, if not shared, pinches can often build up into a “crunch” – where we either over-react to something that seems small to the other person or we check out of the relationship in some way.
 
Since Gordon and I have been working together more closely, it’s been inevitable (as we know so well) that we would have our own fair share of conflicts.  They are all what most people would call “garden variety” – but – as Gordon and I say in our course, it’s those little conversations that feel awkward or uncomfortable, if left unsaid, that build up to more significant conflicts.

So, we’ve both been diligent in bringing up the “pinches.”  Whether it’s something related to seeing the design of one part of the curriculum differently, or how much input one of us has on something we are working on, there is always something to see differently!

As we started to have those ongoing pinch conversations, at a certain point, they started to feel like a lot.  There is something called a “positivity ratio” which states that high performing teams express five positive comments to every negative one.  We both do share a lot of appreciative comments too, yet the word pinch was starting to not work for us.
 
So, we experimented with renaming our pinch conversations to “feather” conversations.  That seemed easier to hear – light, not so serious. That still didn’t’ seem to get to what the dynamic truly was however until we started to call those little conversations “feedback conversations” and “continuous improvement” conversations.
 
That has made a difference.  The principle of kaizen has meant something to me for years – the notion that we can do continuous improvement, that change is a good thing!
 

In that simple shift of phrase, our conversations become ones between allies for each other’s growth and improvement.  We all have areas we are blind to, so having someone who can help you see yourself from the outside is invaluable.
 
What do you think?  Might those awkward conversations seem a bit more possible if you reframed them as continuous improvement ones?
 
“Watch the little things; a small leak will sink a great ship.” ~Benjamin Franklin

Expect the Best and Prepare for the Worst

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I’ve been following Jem Bendell for years.  He is a Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cumbri and founder of the Deep Adaptation Forum.
 
In July 2018, he released a paper on dangerous climate change and societal collapse.
 
His paper inspired me such that my podcast co-host Gordon White and I researched how to have either Jem or someone connected with him on our show.  We did have the privilege of interviewing Herb Simmens who works closely with Jem and is a leader in his own right.
 
Recently, I heard Jem Bendell talk about Michael Shaw.  Michael was also inspired after reading Jem’s paper.  As a result, Michael sold his house and decided to make a documentary film entitled Living in the Time of Dying.
 
The film, according to Bendell, was Michael Shaw’s attempt to feel into our environmental predicament, and to find ways of  being kind and compassionate and curious and creative in such a context.
 
A quote from the trailer shows the flavour of the film:
 
“Each one of us, if we go out and really listen as closely as we can, then I do believe that if we do that the right way, each one of us will get what’s ours to do. And in that way the earth is the organizer.”
 
This seems a good way to live and to die.  To expect the best and prepare for the worst.

Want to be Pronoid with me?

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It’s month two of my Year of Fundamental Wellbeing.  I set out this January to keep a sense of fundamental wellbeing as a top intention for the year.  This is especially important in a COVID context. 
 
How have I been doing?

I am stretching my own definition of fundamental wellbeing.  Today, what it means to me, is trust.  I fundamentally trust that all is well. I fundamentally trust that things work together in mysterious ways that I don’t understand.  I fundamentally trust that, although I am not always “happy” – I am fundamentally okay.  I am taken care of.
 
Today, this well-known quote comes to mind:  “And why be anxious about clothing? Learn a lesson from the wild lilies. Watch their growth. They neither toil nor spin.” … (Weymouth New Testament, Matthew 6:28).
 
I choose to believe that things are being arranged in my best interest.  Yes, I realize this may very well be delusional.  Yet, it is no more or less delusional than being paranoid.  I’ve always loved the idea of “pronoia.”
 
The word has Greek origins, meaning foresight or providence, but starting in the 20th century, it picked up popularity in various pieces of literature and self-help books.  Pronoia is the belief that the universe conspires to shower me (and everyone, by extension) with blessings. 
 
These are some attempts to explain what I mean these days by fundamental wellbeing.
 
Want to be pronoid with me?

One Year of Wellbeing

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In the last issue of HEN, I wrote about an experiment I was engaged in. I focused on my own wellbeing for 45 days, to replicate a fundamental wellbeing program put out by Jeffery Martin, based on his book, The Finders.  The experiment involved mostly a lot of daily meditating and a deliberate daily gratitude practice for 45 days.  That experiment ended just as the year did.
 
As I passed through the holidays and the energy of new beginnings in January, it occurred to me that I’d like to try a whole year of wellbeing. 
 
What that meant at the beginning of January, I was not sure, but I wanted to stay in “experimental” mode with it, such that I could be free to try different things as I kept in mind the overall theme of fundamental wellbeing for the year.
 
I started with exploring the idea of rating my sense of fundamental wellbeing on a daily basis, possibly multiple times a day. As I started on that path, however, it occurred to me fairly quickly that I needed to have some definition of fundamental wellbeing upon which I was rating myself.
 
I first went back to source.  Jeffery Martin defines fundamental wellbeing in a number of ways, including: “a relatively quiet mind, positive or peaceful emotions” and “that things are okay, regardless of life circumstances.”
 
Then I had a conversation with a friend who took Jeffery’s course last year and “transitioned” to fundamental wellbeing.   We talked about this idea of tracking one’s fundamental wellbeing on a daily basis. Her input was pivotal.
 
She tried to imagine how she might track fundamental wellbeing on a daily basis. She said that these days, no matter what happens “out there” for her, she has a deep and abiding faith that we are all always taken care of.  She, similar to Martin, defines fundamental wellbeing as a fundamental okayness with the world. 
 
She said if she were to check in with herself at any given moment during the day, she might not rate her fundamental wellbeing at a 10/10.  She recognizes that life contracts and expands and she with it.  She doesn’t always feel pure joy and, at times, her life even gets thrown upside down.  But through it all, she has that fundamental sense that it’s all as it should be.  She trusts the process of life, that life is moving through us, and if we can surrender to it, it goes more smoothly.
 
As we approach the end of the first month of January, I have noticed my original impulse to track my own fundamental wellbeing every single day is fading as an idea and a practice. I am still checking in, but not every day and not always for a rating.
 
What is staying with me is that I notice that every time I call to mind the definition of fundamental wellbeing, I feel better.  I like to think of fundamental wellbeing as a type of unwavering faith and a surrendering trust, that all is ultimately well.
 
It helps me sit in a place of fundamental wellbeing and gratitude for all that is well in my world and our world, at the most fundamental level.
 
How would you define fundamental wellbeing?