by Elly van Laar | Apr 3, 2016 | Compassionate Communication, Empathy, Nonviolent Communication
“Which three words do you want to be known for?”
“Empathic. Compassionate. Committed.”
“Tell me about committed. What does that mean to you?”
“That I care about relationships. That I try to understand the needs in people’s behavior. That I never give up on relationships. That I search for ways to make it work. That I listen to feedback to learn how I can show up better next time.”
“Why is that important to you?”
I feel startled. I thought I had to avoid the ‘why’ question. I have no clue why that is important to me. For me, it has always seemed a given, a natural tendency to care about relationships.
Kelley Russell-DuVarney is patiently waiting. She looks around the room filled with 30 women at the Austin Women’s Network meeting. “Tell me, why is that important to you?”
“I don’t know. I just care about my family and friends. My clients. I want to contribute to their happiness. I don’t like to see them suffer.”
Then I stop. I feel tears well up.
“You know, I am born and raised in the Netherlands. My father lived through the second World War as a young child. I still see him suffering from the trauma he endured during the war. I don’t want anyone to suffer like that. I want to help prevent something like that from ever happening again. I want to support people to listen to each other, understand each other — to care for each other.”
That’s all I can manage to say without breaking into tears. The room is quiet. Kelley is quiet. She gives me space to connect to my deepest motivation, the drive behind my work.
I want to ensure that we resolve our differences peacefully. I want to protect people by helping them with nonviolent, compassionate ways to resolve conflict. That is my mission in life.
It was empowering to connect to the power of my true motivation. The tears were not an expression of sadness, they were a sign of profound self-connection.
You want help to connect to your true motivation? Contact me, 512-589-0482 for a free, discovery session.
Thank you, David Nayer, for editing this post during your travels. I am inspired by your shaping of words, the clarity of meaning and focus you bring to my writing, and your dedication to contribute!
by Elly van Laar | Mar 18, 2016 | Compassionate Communication, Empathy, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, NVC
Did I climb the ladder against the wrong wall? Did I get faster to a place I didn’t want to go? Am I being a manager instead of an effective leader?
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” (Peter Drucker in: Covey, S. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 2013, p. 108)
As I wind down from all my excitement and focus on SXSW and reap the fruits of my investments, I wonder if I lost some of my mindfulness and compassion along the way. Was I so rushed to finish all my chores (print business cards, update website, register for Square, install online scheduling tool, post Tweets and FB messages), that I forgot it’s not about what we do? That it’s about who we are and the intention behind our action? About the values we are serving, more than about the actions we complete or not complete?
I realize that in the hassle to get things done, I neglected my spiritual nourishment. I haven’t been to my mindfulness Sangha in more than two months. I haven’t read Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings in more than four weeks, I hardly sat on my meditation cushion since I came back from the Netherlands in February.
Reviewing all I did and didn’t do, AND all I was and wasn’t, I realize that at the end of my life I probably won’t care about the success of my business, the money I made, the fame I built. At the end of my life I hope that others will appreciate me for how caring I was, how I focused on connection, how I walked towards conflict and misunderstanding to resolve it, and how dedicated I was towards empathy and compassion.
And I make a new pledge to myself: “I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering; that true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion, and that running after wealth, fame, power and sensual pleasures can bring much suffering and despair” (Second Mindfulness Training, transmitted to me by Thich Nhat Hanh in 2011 with my Dharma name “Joyful Harmony of the Heart”).
That’s all I am asking of myself: To master the art of friendship in the context of mindfulness.
You want help to be a leader in your own life? Contact me, 512-589-0482 for a free, discovery session.
Thank you, David Nayer, for editing this post during your travels. I am inspired by your dedication to contribute!
by Elly van Laar | Mar 11, 2016 | Empathy, Nonviolent Communication
Empathy works. It always does.
Also with online harassment.
That’s the main message for my panel participation at SXSW (Yes, with President Obama as keynote speaker).
A friend tells me that my tagline is an opinion, not a fact. It’s a moralistic judgement. He acknowledges it is my truth, and he tells me I could present it more authentically if I show up in it.
“I believe empathy works. I think it always does.”
Hum.
Not so powerful. Not so snazzy. More cumbersome.
And yet. He is right (he often is). It is just my belief, based on my years of empathizing NVC-style. Am I suffering from confirmation bias? A cognitive bias wired into our brains that creates the tendency to see confirmation of our core beliefs in our experiences, while disregarding experiences that don’t affirm our core beliefs?
What happened to my scientific scepticism, so well-trained during my graduate studies at Rijksuniversiteit Leiden? Should I actively seek out situations –or create them?- that might disprove my thesis? Something like: Empathy works: In these cases? And not in those?
Gosh, that actually sounds enticing. Can I find situations with a high likelihood of empathy failure? Can I pretend I am initiating research on the limits of empathy? And are you willing to send me examples where you think empathy isn’t enough to create respectful understanding? I would be excited to see how empathy might work, even in the most difficult cases.
You want help to develop awareness of your confirmation bias? Contact me, 512-589-0482 for a free, discovery session.
Thank you, David Nayer, for editing this post during your travels. I am inspired by your dedication to contribute!
by Elly van Laar | Mar 4, 2016 | Compassionate Communication, Empathy, Nonviolent Communication, NVC
My friend is excited about his piano recital. He is anxious too. He expects around 80 attendants.
Pooh.
Peanuts.
I have much more to be excited about. And anxious. Speaking at SXSW. Potentially 575 attendees. Probably national exposure. YouTube video. The same festival that has President Obama as the keynote speaker. Thàt, my friend, is something to be excited about. And anxious.
Hum.
Whàt am I thinking?! (Thank God, not saying!). How did I get into this comparison game?
Nonviolent Communication calls this a sympathetic trigger. It happens when someone talks about something that reminds us of our own experience, especially when we have unfinished business with that experience or unmet needs around it. Instead of keeping our focus on our friend’s experience, our attention is drawn to our own sympathetic world. The trigger turns our attention inward with potentially obnoxious consequences: consequences that don’t include our friend’s needs, and maybe not even our own.
There is nothing wrong with sympathetic triggers per se. They are one of the many ways we can connect to others. Sometimes it brings it’s sibling one-upping, giving advice, or reassuring. Things that are not empathy. They can be a way of connecting, if our friend wants to support our style of listening and reacting.
If we’re sympathetically triggered and our friend wants empathy instead, it won’t work. There is a mismatch between what he is asking and what we are offering.
If that’s the case (which for me happens frequently enough), we have choice: We can self-express: “Hey, I hear you’re excited and anxious about your piano recital. As I listen to you, I notice that I am distracted by my excitement around my panel participation at SXSW. Would you be willing to listen to me for a bit, and then I focus back to you?” Or: “I don’t think I can listen to you with as much presence as I wish, is there someone else you could reach out for to give you empathic support?” Or: “Are you willing to give me a minute for self-connection to support myself first, and then I come back to listen to you?”
Those are strategies that both support our trigger and honors our friend’s need to be heard. We try to compassionately recognize all needs, what’s alive in our friend and what’s up for us listening to our friend.
You want help to work with your sympathetic triggers? Contact me, 512-589-0482 for a free, discovery session.
Thank you, David Nayer, for editing this post during your travels. I am inspired by your dedication to contribute!
by Elly van Laar | Feb 20, 2016 | Compassionate Communication, Empathy, Nonviolent Communication
“I choose the wrong lane. The other lane is way faster.”
I hear the woman behind me in line for the airport security check sigh deeply. She clearly wants a response. The 100 people around us remain silent.
She tries again “What’s wrong with this lane? We’re not moving at all.” Another sigh, a bit louder. Still no response.
“I’ll miss my plane!”, she says angrily and anxiously.
I get irritated. What does she want me to do? Push the person in front of me? Yell at the staff to work faster?
Then somehow I remember my commitment to work on proactivity. To create a space between the stimulus and my response. I ask myself how I might want to respond: from my reactive annoyance? Or from my most empathetic and compassionate self?
I pause to notice my breath, a simple practice to remind me to come back to the present moment. This woman wants support and maybe understanding for her anxiety. She might want the people ahead of her to let her go by. That certainly would speed up her security process. I can be the first one to offer my place. I turn around and see the face of an anxious and tired woman. “You’re scared to miss your plane?” “Yes, I only have an hour.” “You want to go in front of me?” “Yes” she says with a deep sigh. I can see her relief. Someone understands her predicament and wants to help.
And in her relief, I see a woman, not an annoyance. I have transformed my enemy image with compassion. She is a human being with the same needs and feelings that I have, someone with whom I might enjoy more, not less, connection.
And so we connect! I discover she is also Dutch. We switch to our native language to add more comfort and connection. In no time we form a group of five people talking about our own languages (English, Dutch, German and Spanish) with big smiles on our faces.
And then, all of a sudden we’re not standing in line, we are a hub of connection. We’re almost disappointed, when we’re done with security and go our separate ways.
That’s the result of proactivity: more connection and joy.
I feel deeply satisfied and inspired.
You want help to practice proactivity? Contact me, 512-589-0482 for a free, discovery session.
Thank you, David Nayer, for your willingness to edit this post last minute.
by Elly van Laar | Feb 6, 2016 | Compassion, Empathy, Nonviolent Communication, Personal Growth
My work aligns with my values of loving-speech and deep listening and supports my aspiration to see our interdependence.
When I look at my business as seeing our interdependence and contributing to empathy and compassion, my shyness about marketing my services melts away. I transform my thought that I am a beggar, grasping for clients, into a contributor who creates value and solves problems. I bring a service to the world. Without arrogance, without false humility. From a place of joy and pride that I found the sweet spot between what I love to do and what the world needs.
Building a business is ultimately also about creating a life. Not just about making a living. Creating your life and building your business become synonymous with finding the sweet spot between what you love to do and how you can add value. And then do that with all your heart.
“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Beethoven composed music. (…) And sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and Earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”” (Martin Luther King in: Cornel West, The Radical King, Speech delivered at Barratt Junior High School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 26, 1967)
When I look at my business from the perspective of offering my services wholeheartedly, because they uplift humanity, I get super excited. I love listening to people and asking questions to deepen understanding and self-connection. I love helping people understand each other from a place of compassion and empathy. And I love facilitating dialog in group settings, certainly when there is conflict involved. Why? Because I value connection, I value harmony and I value understanding and support. I believe we are better off as a team, than as individual players, and we get more things done when we collaborate.
You want help to Build a Life? Contact me, 512-589-0482 for a free, discovery session.
Thank you, David Nayer, for role modeling the value of collaboration by editing this and many other posts with such delight.
