A dear colleague of mine, Emma-Louise Elsey, has a wonderful project called Fierce Kindness. She’s on a mission to infuse more courage in the world to be kinder to ourselves and when we engage the world. Her website offers tools, exercises, inspiring articles, and community connections to help you feel safe and at home with you while doing what you can to make a difference in the world.
It’s the kind of combination we need to be reminded of – how to be bold, mission-driven and yet – fiercely kind!
She offers a newsletter as well and, this month, she chose one of my articles on how to approach the holidays with kindness. She did such a lovely job of how she presented the article – and it’s in such a powerful context of kindness and courage – that I thought you might also appreciate reading my Health offering on her website. Check it out here.
PS – The picture is a kind act from coach and TalktoToT podcaster Tracey Burns. She had me on her podcast and sent me that lovely necklace after the show. Mindful HR consultant Michelle Precourt also had me on her Mindful Monday podcast and sent me a lovely journal. People are kind.
“We all have hearts… If you have a heart, love somebody. If you have enough heart, love everybody.”… Stevie Wonder
The men have deadly poison arrows for hunting. When conflict arises between members of the community, and temperature rises, someone hides the poison arrows. Then everyone in the community sits around in a circle and talks and talks until the conflict is resolved.
As an anthropologist, Ury believes such a system is responsible for keeping the entire human race alive. You can check out a summary of some of his findings here.
The longer I work in the conflict space, the more I see the necessity for circles. I recently had the privilege of working with a group of leaders, some of whom were indigenous and served an indigenous population. The imperative of circles came up again.
We need circles as spaces where our communities can come together and speak about itself to itself. Circles are a place to nurture ourselves and each other in our bonds of commonality. Circles also serve as natural conflict resolution mechanisms.
This article by Ken Acher on circles is also informative. I hope you are inspired as well to think about where you might be able to experiment with circles.