I am on a video call with my business marketing training group. The trainer presents his material. Above the main screen are the initials of the participants.
I feel disappointed that I am the only one with a camera on. Seeing the faces of the others would bring me more connection.
I am enthralled by the materials that are shared and the questions answered. I am delighted and engaged, I gobble all the info down like a hungry duckling. I watch the slides keenly and carry my laptop around while I am doing chores.
Halfway into the session, the presenter reads a chat from one of the participants. “Tell everyone to turn off their camera, I can see someone on the toilet.”
I think “Poor guy, forgetting to turn off their camera while they do their private business. So embarrassing.” I feel lucky that I have participated in enough webinars to know to turn the camera away or off.
…..
Then I look at the screen with the initials of the participants. And Elly’s happy face…
With a shock, I realize that I have forgotten to turn off the camera, and it is me in the bathroom. I am blushing with shame as I imagine who else sees me pee.
I can’t help and think that nonprofit leaders might end up in similar situations. Hopefully not peeing on Zoom, but experience the gap between what they think they are doing and how others perceive them.
I have heard examples of this. Like a leader who intended to be fair and neutral, and yet gets accused of racial bias.
I have heard about simple intentions to contribute, being received as bossy and interfering.
Leaders who try to balance all needs, and yet choose relationships over honesty and authenticity, unintentionally eroding the trust that issues can be discussed openly.
Or they work hard to help and still hear staff complain about feeling overwhelmed and not getting the support they need.
Lastly I’ve heard a leader report that even though they thought they set clear boundaries about availability, they work 12 hours Monday through Friday and get calls at the weekends.
Instances, where the message sent, is not the message received. Moments where they have to spend extra effort to clean up the confusion and misunderstanding they did not intend to create.
Fortunately, you can learn to be a more effective communicator and increase the chances that how you want to be seen, is how you are perceived.
For all those, who want to learn what to do and not do, I offer a discovery webinar “Effective Communication for Nonprofit Leaders”.
You will:
Hear the five biggest mistakes in communication
What to do better while listening to your team members
The 10 words that will improve your requests
Connect to other nonprofit leaders
Get a once-in-a-lifetime offer
See you Tuesday, April 28, 8:00-9:00 am CST on Zoom (and make sure you’re not in the bathroom with your video on….).
I am standing on a wobbly, one-legged chair with a wide footing. Its seating is torn up. Basically, a few threads held together on the edges. In the last five years, I have stood on it probably 219 times to unhook the cloth line to reel it in.
I have never lost my balance. I trust I won’t lose it this time either.
Only, today I feel exhausted and I am distracted as I look to the right at a fascinating, exotic bird.
I lose my balance to the left. I fall on the concrete patio. Fortunately, my instincts help me to keep my head and wrists safe. But the rest of my body is not so happy.
I lay on the concrete patio for a couple of seconds, before I manage to get up.
I can barely walk. My hip feels incredibly sore, my knee seems bruised, and my ankle can hardly carry my weight.
I know I need to ask my husband for help. He is a miracle healer of sorts, and I know he can support.
But I don’t want to ask for help. I feel ashamed of my stupidity for being distracted and I struggle with familiar, habitual thoughts that are screaming in my head “I am such a clumsy idiot!”
I feel too embarrassed to take the risk that he will blame or shame me for what I believe is true. Even though I know he won’t, I don’t have the mental and emotional resources and will take even the slightest raising of an eyebrow personally.
I rather hide in my study and suffer in silence.
That is certainly what I would have done in the past.
But this time I remember how much worse bad situations became as a result of silencing and hiding my need for support.
Being the hero he is, he neither blames or shames me. Not even the lifting of an eyebrow. He immediately puts me on the couch and brings me icepacks and blankets. Even a stuffed animal.
I feel relieved.
And I wonder how many others have learned all too well to toughing it out, rather than vulnerably asking for help.
Maybe I am not the only one who would love acceptance of their struggles.
Or feeling overwhelmed trying to get everything done on their to-do list, slugging through 7:00 am-9:00 pm?
Maybe others also have a sense that they are responsible for everything.
And I bet I am not the only one who does so much better working in a supportive environment of trust and honesty.
Probably.
And just like me, we all can learn to ask for help. Even when we are the cause of our own pain and suffering.
And you don’t need to hit the concrete patio to do so. It’s easier:
Join my free webinar “Effective Communication for Nonprofit Leaders”.
You will:
Learn the five biggest mistakes when making requests
See how a vegan gets the best dish in a steakhouse
Shift your paradigm about requests and see them as strengths, not weaknesses
Understand what Santa Claus has to do with getting help
Connect with peers and inspire each other
Memorize ten magic words for constructive requests
As a result, you will be more confident that you can create the collaboration you want, inspire others to support your cause and goals, and transform conflict into collaboration.
Tuesday, April 28, at 8:00-9:00 am. Maximum nine nonprofit leaders.
Contact me with any questions. I am here to support you.
It is Jugglefest and Noah offers a workshop big-ball-balancing. I’m curious enough to watch others do it, but too terrified to try it myself. At age 12, I do a head roll and land on my neck. I can’t breathe or move for minutes and think I am gonna die. I don’t, but I never completely overcome the fear for acrobatic stunts.
But now Noah is here. He tells me how to get up on the ball and extends his hand. His presence helps me take a risk and go way beyond my comfort zone. I trust that even though I might hurt myself, I won’t harm myself.
Learning
I realize that when we have the support we need, we can do things we never thought ourselves capable of.We can expand our self-limiting beliefs and do things that fear keeps pushing off to the back burner of our aspirations. Those Big Hairy Audacious Goals come within arms reach with enough support.
We might fail at reaching them -even more than once- but we learn from the failure, not die from it.
Having needs doesn’t mean we’re needy
The challenge for many of us is to ask for support in the first place. We belief that having needs, means we’re needy. That asking for help, means we’re weak. Making a request, shows we’re incompetent. And some of us have come to believe that we’re unworthy to ask for anything to begin with, that our needs come second place to everyone else’s.
We struggle to see our needs as beautiful, human, and universal. We don’t realize that getting support for our needs, means we’ll be happier. And that when we are happier, we are so much more giving and less self-centered. We see asking for support as an expense to others, not an investment in our community.
Seeing needs as beautiful, human, and universal
Imagine a gardener who takes care of a bougainvillea. She doesn’t criticize the bougainvillea for needing eight hours of sun, or very specific amounts of watering, or severe trimming right after the last frost. The gardener supports the bougainvillea with delight, because she knows that if she takes care of the bougainvillea’s needs, it will bloom exuberantly.
We are not bougainvillea’s. We are human beings with a rich, sometimes painful, history. Some of us need support to see our needs as beautiful.
How to find support to see our needs as beautiful
Search for people, communities, and living beings that you feel safe with. It might be your aunt, your mindfulness community, your therapist, God, your dog.
Bring awareness of the acceptance, support, and respect you’re receiving and let this restorative healing experience sink in. Connect to your physical sensations, feelings, needs and take a deep breath.
Once you have experienced that your needs matter, ask someone you trust for help, even if it is just for a simple ask.
Celebrate that you did! Whether or not your request got support, you took a step to live the life you really want, with yourself and others.
My ex-husband, Rob van Gils, passed away November 16, 2017. His cremation was Thursday November 23.
My visit to the Netherlands for his cremation service was much harder than I anticipated. Rob and I had succeeded in having –what our mediator described as– “the most peaceful, loving, and harmonious divorce.” We had also figured out how to have a caring friendship beyond divorce. While we had moved on, four of his best friends still harbored pain and anger about my decision to leave him nine years ago for my second husband.
The cremation service becomes not only a moment of intense grief and mourning over the loss of my first love, it becomes a startling confrontation with unresolved issues of loss and perceived betrayal in our former circle of friends.
One friend turns away as I approach him. Another can barely say ‘thank you’ when I share my condolences. A third lets me wait for two minutes, before he interrupts his conversation, then looks at me with a face that seems to convey his wish I had died instead of Rob, and says with emphasis, “You better leave. I don’t want you here.”
I leave the service quickly, too overwhelmed with confusion, pain and grief.
That night I read Pema Chödrön’s “When Things Fall Apart”:
“Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But for practitioners or spiritual warriors –people who have a certain hunger to know what is true– feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”
As enemy images of Rob’s friends race through my head, fretting how they should have behaved, how badly I am treated, how not deserving of their wrath I am, I notice I soften. I am open to using this experience as a wake-up call to lean into where I’m stuck. To let it all be, the pain and sorrow, the hatred and shame. I am willing to allow myself to be penetrated by my feelings –to be changed by them. Slowly I relax into my human condition, and experience the vulnerability of being alive.
That evening, I do not reach enlightenment. I do stop myself from becoming frozen in my judging of how life “should” be. Instead, I accept what is: the pain and the hurt triggered by people needing understanding and compassion.
I take another step on the path of the spiritual warrior, facing adversity with dignity and compassion.
How does this land for you? Let me know, I would love to hear from you.
I wrote this blog four days before my beloved ex-husband Rob van Gils died, Thursday November 16, 2017. I’m writing this in his honor and as a reminder of the love we shared:
When I think of my ex-husband dying, I experience intense feelings of fear, grief, and terror. It’s like I’m drawn into a black hole in the vastness of space, a hole around my solar plexis, till I’m stretched out to nothingness and finally annihilated. When I sleep I have nightmares with invasions of Klingon-like monsters, Uruk-hais, and Sauron. And again, an overwhelming, devouring, completely black nothingness of darkness: a void without life and love.
I struggle to be mindful with my feelings. Mindfulness teachers tell me to accept and embrace them, to allow myself to be fully penetrated by them, and surrender into the tenderness of life. I fail in the practice. I struggle. I resist. I barely succeed to stay afloat in an ocean of grief, loss, and terror.
In my search for support, I talk and cry. I take a break from work and spend more time with myself, and I read. I reach for Pema Chödrön who talks about our suffering in “When Things Fall Apart”:
“When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell. In fact, that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable. Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly. The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last – that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security. From this point of view, the only time we ever know what’s really going on is when the rug’s been pulled out and we can’t find anywhere to land. We use these situations either to wake ourselves up or to put ourselves to sleep. Right now – in the very instant of groundlessness- is the seed of taking care of those who need our care and of discovering our goodness.”
I find something meaningful about letting be. To sit with the terror of losing my best friend, grieving an unhappy ending, overwhelmed by grief.
Am I able to see that this is what life is about? The joy of a sunrise, laughing out loud with my sister, feeling annoyed with a car cutting me off?
And losing my best friend.
I live in an ebb and flow of feelings, thoughts. Nothing to hold on to. Grief, terror, love. Letting it in and letting it out. Being with the groundlessness of our human existence.
How does this land for you? Let me know, I would love to hear from you.
To my husband. I feel pretty shitty about it. Scared. I fear I’ll lose acceptance by confessing. I know this feeling from long, long ago and it has motivated me more than once to show up with less honesty than I wanted.
A few weeks ago I described washing the cushion covers of one of our living room chairs. My husband has taken care of this chair for 25 years, and it was in almost pristine condition. I had asked to clean it and we had agreed to try the washing machine set on cold temperature and delicates. I shared in a previous story that the covers came out shrunken and shredded. I wrote that it was an accident, and that I forgot to check the temperature.
I lied.
I actually knew the temperature of the washing machine and had made a conscious choice to wash them on a ‘warm’ setting anyway. I thought it wouldn’t do any harm, and I was convinced that a warm setting would do a better cleaning job. When they came out shredded and shrunken, I felt shocked.
I did irreparable harm, and it was my fault. I felt shame. I feared my husband would be angry, blame me, and we would lose connection.
So I lied.
At our nextNonviolent Communication empathy practice, a friend asks me if I really hadn’t checked the temperature. With my husband nearby, I decide to continue the lie. I don’t want her to know the truth, before he does. That only seems to aggravate the lie. I feel horrible immediately. I sacrifice my needs for integrity and honesty in service of my needs for acceptance and emotional safety.
As soon as our practice ends and our community leaves, I tell my husband the truth about what had happened. To my relief he seems to already have understood this. He appears to hold no grudge or judgment, just a genuine regret that the cushions were ruined.
It reminds me of a lesson about mourning and self-forgiveness:
“Mourning in NVC is the process of fully connecting with the unmet needs and the feelings that are generated when we have been less than perfect. It is an experience of regret, but regret that helps us learn from what we have done without blaming or hating ourselves. We see how our behavior ran counter to our own needs and values, and we open ourselves to feelings that arise out of that awareness. […]
We follow up on the process of mourning with self-forgiveness. Turning our attention to the part of the self which chose to act in the way that led to the present situation, we ask ourselves, “When I behaved in the way in which I now regret, what need of mine was I trying to meet?” (Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication).
I feel relieved to see how much I value intimacy and honesty in my closest relationships and cleanliness in my house, and how my strategies failed to include my hubbie, my roommate in brainstorming strategies that meet all those needs.
When I call my friend that same evening and explain what happened, she laughs. Wholeheartedly. She is amused by the tangle of cushions, honesty, and acceptance. She doesn’t have any judgments. Just compassion for our human predicament, and empathy for my needs for love, acceptance, and belonging.
How does this land for you? Let me know, I would love to hear from you.
