by Elly van Laar | Apr 15, 2017 | Compassion, Compassionate Communication, Nonviolent Communication, NVC, Personal Growth
It’s Easter weekend, and many Christians are commemorating the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
One of the things that always struck me about how the event is told in the Gospels, is how reluctant Jesus was at being crucified: “Please, Father, take this cup from me”. Jesus wasn’t that excited about being killed, and I wonder if he was convinced he would be resurrected from death. His fear tells me he might not have been. To me, this is the most poignant example of Jesus choosing a purposeful life over a happy life.
Martin Seligman describes in “Authentic Happiness” a happy life as a life where you cultivate positive emotions about the past, present, and future. An engaging life is a life where you use your core strengths and virtues to achieve a sense of flow, being fully engaged with what you’re doing. The purposeful life is a life where you use your core strengths and virtues to contribute to a goal that is larger than you, even if it comes at personal cost. It is the life where you see the oneness in the fragmentation, and your motivation follows meaning.
History is full of examples of people willing to make personal sacrifices for a higher purpose. Martin Luther King and Ghandi are well-known, my grandfather and millions of others less well-known.
Jesus inspires me to live a life of purpose, pledging allegiance to love, care, and inclusion of the outcasts. Up till now I have enjoyed a comfortable life, being married and enjoying my beautiful home and loving friends. I have a happy life, an engaging life. I also believe my life has meaning: I have a strong sense of purpose in the work I do.
And yet. I wonder if I have the guts to sacrifice my comfort, when circumstances call me to stand up for what I believe is true. I am scared that I won’t be willing to follow Jesus’ example, when it comes at an expense to me. I ask myself ‘Do I need to?’, hoping the answer will be ‘no, sweetie pie, go back to sleep’.
When you ask yourself these questions, what comes up for you? I would love to read your response.
by Elly van Laar | Feb 7, 2017 | Empathy, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication
After the elections, one thing that stands out to me is the need to create circles of listening. With myself, with family and friends, and especially with those who have different points of view. I want to understand the beautiful needs behind all choices. I want to collaborate to find solutions that work for everyone.
I love and have adapted the Peace Agreement that Thich Nhat Hanh offers for such conversations in “Creating True Peace, ending violence in yourself, your family, your community, and the world“, 2003.
I invite you to read it and edit it to adjust to your truth. Find others to agree to it, so that you can have the support of a community.
And if we can’t find anyone to collaborate with us, we can hold this mindset as a vow to ourselves when listening to people whose choices scare, upset, or anger us.
Without listening we are stuck in our segregated circles. With listening we can build bridges of understanding, love, and connection. One step at a time.
I, the one who is angry, scared, or upset, agree to:
- Refrain from saying or doing anything that might create more damage or escalate anger, fear, or upset.
- Practice mindful breathing to take care of my anger, fear, or upset.
- Calmly, within 24 hours, find the empathy I need to understand which needs triggered my feelings so that I can speak responsibly about my experience, using loving speech.
- Verbally or in writing ask for an appointment to talk about the matter more deeply, preferably with a community of mindful supporters.
- Practice self-connection. I will not deny or suppress my feelings, and not say: “I’m not angry, scared, or upset, it’s fine. I’m not suffering. There’s nothing to be angry, scared, or upset about.”
- Practice self-acceptance. I will look deeply into my daily life -while I’m sitting, standing, walking, or lying down- in order to see:
- *How I myself have been unskillful at times.
- *How my own unmindful habits have contributed to hurt in the other person.
- *How my thoughts, needs, and the energy of my feelings are the primary cause of my anger, fear, and upset. How the other person is the stimulus of my feelings, not the cause.
- Reflect that I cannot be truly happy, as long as the other person suffers.
- Express my mourning for my unskillfulness and lack of mindfulness, without shaming or blaming myself, as soon as I have that insight.
- Postpone any meeting, until I am openhearted enough to meet the other person with the love and respect I choose to bring into the world.
I, the one who contributed to the other person’s feelings of anger, fear, and upset, agree to:
- Respect the other person’s feelings, not judge or deny them, and allow them enough time to self-connect and restore balance.
- Not press for an immediate discussion.
- Confirm their request for a meeting, either verbally or by note, and assure them that I will be there, and that my intention is to respect everyone’s needs for acceptance, understanding, and love.
- Practice mindful breathing and looking deeply to see how:
- *I have mistakenly thought that making others suffer might relieve my own suffering.
- *I am suffering when I contribute to their suffering
- Express my mourning for my unskillfulness and lack of mindfulness, without shaming or blaming myself or others. I will be aware that efforts to defend, explain, or justify myself indicate that need more support to act with the love and respect I cherish.
We vow with all our heart and in the mindful presence of our community to practice wholeheartedly. We ask that our community helps to protect us and grant us wisdom.
What have you committed to to bring more peace in yourself, your communities, and this world? Let me know. I’d love to be inspired.
by Elly van Laar | Jan 24, 2017 | Compassion, Empathy, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication
I’m playing Triominos. By myself. Usually I play with my husband, but he isn’t home. I put nine tiles in front of my right hand, and nine tiles in front of my left hand.
My right hand has the triple five and starts.
My left hand needs to take a stone.
My right hand is excited as it puts down a perfect match for the triple five.
“Bummer” — my left hand needs to pass again.
“Awesome!” — my right hand puts down its third stone — “I’m winning!”
Then my left hand puts out a stone, relieved.
“You blocked my move!” — says my right hand, irritated.
My left hand can put down a second stone — “Nothing is lost yet. Pfew.”
My right hand gets agitated — “Again: you blocked me!”
After a few more rounds, my right hand can finally declare victory — “I won!!”
Playing by myself and hearing these habitual voices about winning and losing go through my mind, I think of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on interbeing:
“Non-violence can be born only from the insight of non-duality, of interbeing. This is the insight that everything is interconnected and nothing can exist by itself alone. Doing violence to others is doing violence to yourself. If you do not have the insight of non-duality, you will still be violent. You will still want to punish, to suppress, and to destroy. But once you have penetrated the reality of non-duality, you will smile at both the flower and garbage in you, you will embrace both.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger, p. 70)
I love this teaching.
I also struggle with it.
I get it when I look at my right and left hand playing against each other. They are part of the same body.
I forget it when I’m in conflict with people and think they are the cause of my hurt, fear, or anger. When I see ‘them’ as the enemy and ‘me’ as the angel. I want to withdraw, or lash out. I want someone to tell me how right I am and how wrong they are.
And yet, when I utter harsh words against my husband, I feel miserable. When I yell at someone in traffic, I feel anxious and upset. When I ignore the suffering of Syrian refugees, I feel ashamed.
As much as I struggle to put the teaching of interbeing into practice, I continue the effort, because in my heart I know it’s true. I feel more at peace if I see the interbeing of Nazis and Jews, white supremacists and blacks, the one percent and the 99%.
I want to remember that in the end we are held in the same Earth, who accepts us unconditionally, without discrimination. I want to remember that we all return to compost. Especially when I feel a frustrated urge to withdraw or an angry urge to lash out.
For my greater happiness. And for the greater happiness of others.
Let me know how this landed for you.
by Elly van Laar | Jan 10, 2017 | Nonviolent Communication
My friend Kadi is in the ER. Her husband calls me to see if I can take Anora, their 14 months old, to their apartment and hang out with her until Kadi is released.
I love Anora. They all lived across the street and we used to go for a walk, every day, till they moved out of the neighborhood six weeks ago.
Anora has not been apart from her mom, more than the occasional 1½ hours I babysat with her. So this request is different – really different. I won’t be able to bring her back to her mommy.
When we get to Anora’s home – without her mom – Anora is fine. I feed her yogurt, we play, we watch baby Einstein. Then she starts crying. Big, blue, baby eyes fill with tears. She looks at me with this innocent plea “Will you please help me? My needs are unmet.”
I pick her up. It doesn’t help. I take her potty. She doesn’t want to. I feed her yogurt. She pushes it away. Finally, I put her in a car seat and drive her around. The crying gets worse.
I know she misses her mommy. There is nothing I can do about that. What I can do, is receive her tears as “gifts offered with ‘Santa Claus energy”, as Marshall Rosenberg coined it: “Hoho, wouldn’t life be more wonderful when my needs are met? Are you willing to help me with that?”
I’m happy to help. I don’t hear blame, as if I’m doing something wrong. I don’t hear shame, as if she believes she’s not worthy of getting help.
It makes me think of all the people who did receive messages of wrongness when they shared their needs. All those people who came to believe that having precious, universal, human needs is the same as being needy. That there is something wrong with them because they want support for their needs.
We’re not needy. We just have specific conditions for our happiness. We can hold our needs the same way we would hold the needs of a baby or anything we care for.
We don’t think a bougainvillea is needy because it wants full sun and lots of trimming. Or that the fern is demanding because it wants shade and lots of water. We happily respond to their requests because we’d like to see the bougainvillea in full-bloom and the fern green and vibrant.
The next time we confuse having needs with being needy, let’s look around us and ask ourselves what we would rather see: a drooping bougainvillea, or one in full bloom? A strong fern, or one that’s shriveled? A smiley face, or one that looks angry, sad, or scared?
It might inspire us to hold our needs with the same compassion and care.
We’re more than worthy of receiving support for our needs.
Let me know how this landed for you.
by Elly van Laar | Nov 18, 2016 | Compassionate Communication, Empathy, Fear, Nonviolent Communication
I am sitting happily in my backyard, writing in my journal. It’s 8 am. The sun is shining. The breeze is fresh, it’s finally cooling off in Texas. It’s quiet and peaceful.
Then I hear hassle and bustle in the tree above my head. I see a squirrel on the branch, maybe 12 feet away. His two beady eyes stare directly down at me. With curiosity. I assume.
I look back with delight at his beauty: his lush tail, dark eyes, brown fur.
As he continues to stare at me, I start to feel uncomfortable. Why is he waving his tail? Why is he gnawing so loudly? And why does he keep staring at me? What if this is not a curious squirrel? What if this is an aggressive squirrel on a mission to protect his territory, whatever it takes? What if he jumps down to plunge his sharp claws into my face, or worse, into my eyes?
I feel scared. I cannot take the risk. I want to keep my eyes. I hiss at him as ferociously as I can. I make enough commotion to scare him, and he runs away.
It reminds me of other moments when I use protective force to make sure my needs are seen and supported.
I use protective force, when I don’t trust the other person has the capacity or willingness to see and support all needs. I take action to keep everyone safe, including me.
For example, I would pull a kid out of the street, when a car is coming. Or I might leave a relationship when I can’t compassionately process the criticism, dismissal, or contempt I experience. I use force to protect my needs for emotional safety, respect, and to be seen.
It is forceful, because I make a choice without dialogue.
I don’t ask the kid: “Hey, do you see that car coming?” If I did that, the car crashes into the kid, before I finish my sentence. The same might be true for a relationship. If the pain I experience in my connection is larger than my capacity to process it, I am risking my physical, emotional and mental health.
Protective use of force is not about punishment.
I don’t need to shoot the squirrel to feel safe. I don’t need to blame or shame him for behaving as he does. He hisses and gnaws to meet his needs. That’s his choice. It doesn’t mean I have to accept it.
We don’t need to demand change, in order to protect needs.
I can protect my needs myself. If I am respectful and take a stand, I can find a solution that supports as many needs as possible. I can do it unilaterally, until the other party is ready to work together from a place of compassion. By protecting ourselves we transform from victim to actor.
Without a victim, there is no perpetrator.
by Elly van Laar | Oct 11, 2016 | Nonviolent Communication
I step in poop. With my bare foot.
I was at Margaret’s house. She is one of my best friends and needed to run some errands. She had asked me to watch her kids, Maya and Kiran, and their dog, Luna, a sweet Labrador Retriever. I know Luna has diarrhea, because I have already faithfully cleaned up after her three times.
But this one I don’t see coming. It is camouflaged on the carpet.
And even though I feel disgusted, shocked, unpleasantly surprised, I don’t have a tinge of anger, indignation, or resentment.
Why? Because I love Luna and I am convinced she loves me. Her pooping on the carpet has nothing to do with me, she has no ill-intent. She is just sick.
So I don’t take it personally.
I have compassion for her and her anguish. I want to support her. Not blame or shame her.
This makes me think how different life would be, if I would receive the words and actions of others as a reflection of where they are at, instead of a reflection of my self-worth, my lovability, my adequacy.
How would it be if I open my compassionate heart to their suffering?
The challenge, of course, is that I am not always convinced that they care about my experience.
That’s the hard part.
So I might do some work here. Something about seeing what I receive as a lack of caring as a failure of compassion. I might need some empathy, before I can see that they hurt enough to disconnect from their own core compassionate nature. That their behavior is “a tragic expression of unmet needs.”
I would become less defensive, less critical of their actions, less blaming them as a person. Instead I could try to understand and support.
When I don’t take actions personal, I am less triggered and better able to see the beautiful needs behind any behavior AND I am better able to speak up for my experience from a place of compassion.
And when I see the needs in the behavior, I can humanize the other person. I can see their needs as precious—even if I dislike the strategy they choose to meet those needs. When I see needs, behind behavior, I restore my groundedness in my own humanity. Instead of playing judge and rule who is right and who is wrong, I see and accept universal human needs. I see the precious truth within their action.
And when we see the truth of all needs, we can find a strategy that works for everyone: them and us.
by Elly van Laar | Sep 9, 2016 | Personal Growth
I love lists.
I love writing down what I want to get done, how much time it will take me to get it done, and especially crossing it off when it’s done. Hell, yeah, I’ll even write down a chore I have already finished. Just for the sake of crossing it off.
Since three weeks I include my daily routine of self-care on my to-do list. I consider self-care the most important investment in my work, so it is a high priority. I wanted to know how long those commitments actually take. Guess what the first item on this list is?
Getting up.
Just getting out of bed, getting dressed, making green tea.
Guess how I feel after three weeks crossing it off my list?
Delighted. Excited. Amused. Even if I didn’t succeed in getting everything done I wanted to get done, I did get one thing done, every day: getting up.
I giggle.
I am a winner, just by getting out of bed and getting dressed.
I also feel a bit embarrassed about my delight. Since when do I care about crossing off ‘getting up’? Aren’t there more important things in the world?
There are. No doubt about that.
And after I listen to Simon Sinek I get it.
It is not because it is so important. It is because of Dopamine.
Dopamine is the hormone that gets produced when we set goals and achieve them. The more visual the goal, the greater the satisfaction. As visual beings, we like to see what we are striving for, even if only in our imagination. Writing our commitments done is a visual act. That’s why it is such a happy feeling of relief and satisfaction, when we can cross things off. We accomplished our goal and the dopamine shot inspires us to get more things done.
Now I have scientific proof that to-do lists work.
And in that blissful knowledge, I update my list.
by Elly van Laar | Aug 26, 2016 | Acceptance, Compassion
I am not a big fan of diagnoses.
From 1997-2007 I worked for mental health institutions. I have seen the same person diagnosed as manic-depressive, then depressive, then borderline personality disorder, then back to depressive. I have seen more than 100 people who carried the diagnosis ‘schizophrenia’, not one of them the same. Their symptoms might have had some resemblance, and their individual behavior was so different that the diagnosis could only partly help you help them.
Diagnoses reduce human beings to a uni-dimensional view of their being.
I believe in seeing whole humans. People with different backgrounds, different vulnerabilities, different potentials. People trying to meet precious, human, universal needs in different ways.
I do believe that diagnoses can help us understand people.
We can use a diagnosis as a working hypothesis for what might be going on. If this person is diagnosed with schizophrenia, does that help me understand that their aggression is a result of them seeing people I don’t see? If this person is labelled autistic, does this explain why they don’t make eye contact? Can I better accept that someone is in bed 18 hours a day, if I know they have clinical depression?
My compassionate response to a diagnosis is that – while incomplete – it might help me better understand what another person is experiencing. When one of my clients thought there was another person in the room, and talked to him while we were in conversation, I was respectful until he finished. I didn’t tell him there was no one else but us, because I accept that his reality is different and no less valid than mine.
With this unconditional acceptance, I can step into their reality and try to see the world through their eyes. When I know my friend has delusions, I accept that his truth is that the Suriname Embassy is trying to kill him. I might try to distract him, offer this moment right here as an alternative to his delusions, and reassure him that his life has meaning to me. If someone with an Asperger’s diagnosis, needs structure and predictability, I can try to be complete when I tell him my schedule. If my friend is diagnosed with Borderline, I support a clear sense of boundaries in our connection and open myself to the beauty they have to offer, and deflect their anger.
Diagnoses do not define people. They can be an incomplete starting point for understanding.
And I am a big fan of understanding. Anytime. Anywhere.
by Elly van Laar | Jun 25, 2016 | Compassion, Personal Growth, Self-compassion
“I feel frustrated with my marriage. I am done with it! I don’t want to deal with his anger and resentment anymore…”
“What would the absence of his anger and resentment bring you?”
“A sense of peace. Someone who is available to me, someone who is willing and able to listen and support me. Maybe just enjoying life… You know, I am 43 and I don’t want to spend the second half of my life with someone who is constantly dissatisfied with life. That was not my vision when I married him.”
When you are married to someone who struggles to hold his unmet needs in a way that respects your needs, you might take it personally. You might start losing your self-respect and self-worth, and think you are at least partly responsible for his anger and resentment.
If so, Steven Stosny suggests four choices to reconnect to your own basic goodness, your core value as a human being:
- Appreciate. When you appreciate what brings you joy, a sunset, the flowers of the plant you carefully nurtured, the smile of delight of your baby, you reinforce your values, your sense of self. You reinforce your inner goodness by appreciating outer goodness.
- Connect. When you connect to people who stand by your side no matter what, you realize you are lovable enough to receive love, acceptance and belonging. Even if your husband doesn’t meet those needs. It doesn’t really matter whether your friend is a human being, your pet, the nurturing part within yourself, God or nature. Any connection with someone who has an unconditional, positive regard for you helps you connect to the place of positive regard within yourself.
- Improve. When you improve your life, you restore your sense of self-agency. You are not in control of how your husband feels, thinks or acts. You are in control of improving your own life, whatever he does. It might be cleaning up your room, finishing chores, weightlifting, taking a class in ceramics: anything that makes your life a bit better. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to get better.
- Protect. Protecting what you care for, something that is vulnerable and precious, calls upon your inner warrior. The one that protects and defends. Not against anyone, but for someone. It is not reactionary, it is pro-active: “This is important to me and I won’t let you contribute to harm, because I care for this and for you.” You appeal to the compassionate core value of your husband. You call upon him to be more than his unmet needs and act from the place within himself that wants to contribute and protect.
Try these strategies out and see if they help. I also suggest you read “Love without Hurt” by Steven Stosny. I find it highly valuable to maintain your core value.
by Elly van Laar | Jun 10, 2016 | NVC, Personal Growth
I am born and raised in the Netherlands. As a child I saw my dad suffering deeply from his experience as a child in WW II, an experience that he never talked about till a few years ago.
Every May 4 the Dutch people commemorate those who died in WW II and the aftermath of WW II’s devastation, with 2-minutes of silence. We as a family sat together at 8:00 pm and watched the solemn national ceremony on television.
As a child the night before, every May 3, when everyone was asleep, I would sneak down to the living room, take out a book of war heroes and look at the picture of my dad’s dad. He had been part of the resistance movement that smuggled Allied pilots into safety during Nazi occupation. In September 1944, right before my dad’s 11th birthday, the Nazis arrested my grandfather. He died in prison 10 days later. My grandfather left behind his wife and 10 children.
My dad recently told me that my grandfather “stood up for compassion, inclusion and care for those who are vulnerable” and that “he died for his principles.”
As a child, I didn’t have the words to describe the inheritance my dad had passed down to me, even though my lifelong connection to compassion shows I was strongly impacted by it. As a small child, I spent hours rescuing hedgehogs and blackbirds caught in the nets around my father’s raspberry bushes. At 12, I inspired my class to “adopt” Diego, a boy in Colombia, through Plan International, and collected our monthly donations for him and his village. At 30, I joined Pax Christi to bring refugee children in Croatian refugee camps to the Netherlands for 3-weeks of peace and safety.
At 51, I now have a special dedication to bring compassion, empathy and mindfulness to couples in divorce. I specialize in helping them maintain mutual respect.
This is my contribution to transform conflict into respectful understanding, right here, right now.
I hope I can leave the world a better place, and honor the legacy of my granddad.
