by Elly van Laar | Jan 6, 2014 | Acceptance, Compassion, Compassionate Communication, Nonviolent Communication, Personal Growth, Self-compassion
Changing old habits can be hard
“This happens to me all the time. I just can’t quit smoking. I was so committed to not smoke. And then, at last night’s party, I couldn’t resist temptation and smoked one anyway. It is just me. I just don’t have it in me. I know it is bad for my health, I know it is way too expensive, I know my clothes smell terrible, but I just don’t have enough will power to stop. I read ‘Stop smoking’, I tried patches, had an accountability partner, but nothing ever helps. I just don’t have it in me. I am not even gonna try anymore. I am a smoker, and I’ll always be. Let’s just accept that.”
Do you recognize this? Maybe your issue is not with cigarettes, but with eating less sugar, gluten, dairy. With speaking up for yourself. With getting up on stage. With applying for a job.
Maybe you, too, feel discouraged and hopeless about your ability to change old, ingrained habits. Maybe you, too, give up on your ideals. Maybe you, too, don’t trust that you’ll ever take a step towards your dreams.
The number one thing to sustain change
Don’t despair! Change is within your reach. The number one thing you can do for yourself when you want to change your behavior, is to empathize with yourself. With both parts: the part that wants to change, and with the part that wants to remain the status quo. Both the old and the new behavior are strategies to nurture universal needs. Understanding these needs will help you find creative new ways to include all needs.
Maybe not speaking up nurtures a need for acceptance, safety, belonging. Eating chocolate might help to calm ourselves when we’re anxious. Watching television might be our way of comforting ourselves when we are sad and lonely.
Getting up on stage could be a strategy for self-expression. Eating more fruit might be a way for autonomy. Writing blogs can be a form of authenticity.
When we understand why we are doing something, we are more empowered to come up with solutions to that why, that also address our other still unmet needs. When we don’t know why, the solutions we come up with may not serve all our needs. As soon as we connect to àll our needs, we have more space to brainstorm strategies that nurture both sides.
I invite you to empathize with yourself, and connect to the needs behind the behavior you want, and the behavior you don’t like. And once you understand and accept all needs, think of a new year’s resolution to support them.
Find an empathy buddy
If it is hard to empathize with parts you don’t like, find yourself an empathy buddy. A friend, a sibling, a coach. Call me if you want my help (512-589-0482). I would be honored. I’ll teach you empathy skills, and share my compassion. We’ll collaborate, so you will successfully step towards your dreams.
May this year bring you encouragement, excitement and trust.
by Elly van Laar | Jan 3, 2014 | Compassion, Compassionate Communication, Personal Growth, Self-compassion
Celebrating failure
The first lesson I learned in my improv classes, was failure applause. You throw your hands in the air, yell “I failed”, bow to your audience, and receive wildly enthusiastic applause.
I love it. It is the celebration of trying, of learning, and of failing along the way.
We cannot expand our behavior, our life, if we are not willing to try something new, and fail.
Whomever thought we can learn something new, and nót fail? We learn to ride a bike, and we fall. We learn to juggle, and we drop our balls. We learn a new language, and we babble incomprehensibly. How can we expect to learn something new and succeed at once? That is not learning, that is reinforcing what we already know. That is thinking we are bad ass, while all we do is staying in our comfort zone.
Learning means venturing out of our comfort zone, out of our habitual behavior, and trying something we have never been or done before.
Trying something new
Maybe you want to practice compassionate communication. You want to hear a hard-to-hear-message with compassion. You want to stop, bring your attention to your breath, pause your reaction for a second, and literally reflect what you hear your friend say. The first two sentences go well. You reflect back, you pause your own reaction, and your friend is satisfied with how you heard him. You are proud of yourself. You get it! Then something goes wrong. You get triggered, and start defending yourself. Or you start explaining. Or advising. Or counterattacking.
Oops. Thàt’s the time for failure applause. Throw your arms in the air, and yell, with a big smile on your face, “I failed”! And receive applause of your friend. (Of course, it is unlikely that your friend will applaud you. He is too triggered himself. And we can still be a friend to ourselves! We can be our own best audience, applaud as we watch ourselves try something new. And accept our failure.) You gave it your best, and you failed. That doesn’t mean you’re a failure, that means that your skills are not well enough developed to serve you intentions and efforts.
Try again
So you try again, and again, and again. Until the awareness of compassionate communication becomes second nature, first habit. When you finally notice you automatically start reflecting first, and your communication conveys your compassion, you throw your arms in the air, and yell at the top of your lungs, with a big smile on your face, “I succeeded!”. And receive the same appreciative applause for your intentions and efforts to try.
Intention applause
Life is not a game of winning and losing, of getting the right results. Life is a journey of learning. Life is an experiment of letting our intentions and efforts speak for themselves. That’s all that counts. Doing the best we can, and deserve applause for that.
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You want help applauding your intentions and efforts? Contact me at 512-589-0482
by Elly van Laar | Jan 1, 2014 | Acceptance, Compassion, Personal Growth, Self-compassion
This is a tender letter to all my friends who experience shame. Shame about the choices you’ve made, and how you think these reflect on you as a person. All my friends who have come to believe that whatever you do, it is never good enough. It is never good enough to cover up the fundamental flaws of your being. It is never good enough to get the love, acceptance, support, and understanding you so deeply long for. You just want to hide and never face the pain, fear and loneliness of this shame again.
You’re not alone. I am here. We are here. For you. For me. For us. We all know what shame feels like. We all know the devastating impact shame has on the freedom of choices we make.
We also all know the healing power of compassion.
Last year I participated in a yearlong program Nonviolent Communication. We were invited to offer a workshop to the other participants as a learning opportunity. I had two participants show up. Josie had 14. I felt deeply ashamed. Here was direct proof that I was not attractive, interesting, and inspiring enough to have anyone show up. When I shared my shame in my empathy-group a shame storm raged through my body. I hardly could look at anyone. Then they responded. With compassion. With care. With understanding. With a longing to include me, support me, reassure me.
I was flabbergasted. I was showing up naked, covered in my shit, and instead of the anticipated response of disgust, rejection and exclusion, I received love, belonging, acceptance.
I wish this healing experience for everyone in the world. I wish we all can find a friend, a coach, a therapist we trust. Someone who is willing and able to listen and empathize with us. Someone who doesn’t brush off our experience, or tries to cheer us up, but who is willing to be there for us in our suffering.
Then we can start to heal. We can start to heal the wounds of our childhood. We can start to believe that love, acceptance, and belonging are possible, just for who we are, with all our flaws. We can start to open up and be vulnerable. We can start to share our dreams, our aspirations, our heart’s desires.
After the shame storm is heard, we can listen to the quiet. We can hear everything that brings joy in our lives, and help us bloom, blossom and grow. Our vision will reveal itself, guiding us on the path of becoming more fully who we are.
May this year shower you with love, acceptance, and support.
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You want help bringing compassion, healing and integration in your life? Contact me, 512 589 0482
by Elly van Laar | Dec 29, 2013 | Acceptance, Compassion, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, Self-compassion
You want to change, and you’re failing. You try, you struggle, and finally give up. Your mind tells you: “Ah, it was not so important after all.” “It is too hard, it is just impossible.” “You don’t have time for it anyway.” “Your dreams are too big, you are not worth it.” Your mind has all kind of good reasons to stop trying. That’s what minds do: maintaining homeostasis, maintaining the status quo. You’ll just never wear these skinny jeans, you’ll never be a compassionate Bodhisattva, you’ll never make enough money.
Feelings of disappointment, self-judgment and criticism arise as you acknowledge that you are not the person you want to be, and might never be. Peter Senge calls that emotional tension. It often leads to lowering your vision, bring it closer to your current situation. This helps lessen the tension, and the anxiety. Personal masters are those who use this emotional tension creatively. Instead of bringing their vision closer to their current situation, they use the tension to think of steps that bring their current situation closer to their vision. Emotional tension becomes creative tension.
Personal masters are brutally honest about their reality ànd hold on to their vision. Personal masters have compassion with themselves, and excitement about their dreams.
We all want to be personal masters. We all have dreams of togetherness, compassion, contribution. We all want to strive for what is good, pure and wholesome for all of us.
We often aren’t.
This week is dedicated to change. I will support you taking steps towards strengthening your mastery skills. So that you can transform the emotional tension into creative tension, and create the life you love. So that you can honor your dreams and hold on to them, even if evidence seems to indicate that they are unattainable.
This week, at the turn of the year, we’ll take a step towards our dreams. Together.
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Contact me, if you want my help to bring more self-compassion, healing and integration in your life.
by Elly van Laar | Dec 26, 2013 | Acceptance, Compassion, Compassionate Communication, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, Personal Growth, Self-compassion
You cannot change someone. You might want to. The world might seem so much yummier if such-and-such behaved so-and-so. But you can’t. It is beyond your scope of influence.
You can only change your response to them. That’s it.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor Frankl
I have found great delight in the strategy of nót responding when I am upset. Of delaying expressing myself. Of absorbing what the other person said or did. And let it be.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us to not speak or act when we are angry, and I finally get it.
Something happens, and my habitual response is to react. Now I bring my attention to my belly. I notice if my belly is tight, or loose like a Buddha belly. The attention itself relaxes my belly. I bring my attention to my breath. I notice if it is deep down, or more constricted in my chest. I don’t change it, I just observe it. I focus my attention on something I enjoy. Working, walking, talking to a friend. I pause my painful feelings, and create feelings of happiness and joy. I will get back to the painful feelings when I am calmer.
Then something resolves. The anger mellows out. It is not such a big deal anymore. Nothing serious happened. Just someone who needed help, and didn’t quite know how to ask for it. I don’t have to have a big conversation about it. I can let it go. If something big happens, I can talk about it when I am calm. For now, let me focus on the important things. Let me save energy for connection and understanding.
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Contact me, if you want my help to bring more self-compassion, healing and integration in your life.
by Elly van Laar | Dec 25, 2013 | Compassion, Self-compassion
At the Christmas eve celebration with Unity Center Austin we lit a candle for each apostle, and recited a meditation to reinforce their qualities in us. The last candle was for Judas.
I cry. I feel so moved that we include the one person whom we consistently have excluded throughout history. I feel so touched that we honor him, that we acknowledge him as a source of inspiration.
I once read an article about Jesus and Judas. New research showed a different perspective on Judas, “the traitor”. It described how Jesus and Judas talked about the kingdom of God. That it is the kingdom of thís present moment. Of being fully alive with whatever is. Of being fully present with our suffering, feeling it, saying “yes” to it. That it is the kingdom of our vision, our dreams, our soul’s calling. Of holding on to what is true for us, what we envision for the world, even if all circumstances might indicate it is impossible. It is the kingdom of asking for what we need, and knowing we’ll receive it.
Jesus and Judas discuss how reluctant people are to enter this kingdom. How hard it is to give up on the habitual patterns of fear, of holding back, of not trusting we can reach for the stars. For all the miracles in the world, people are still blind to the truth that embracing the present moment and holding on to our dreams transforms suffering into light, life and love.
Something more radical needs to happen. They come up with a plan that will lead to Jesus’ crucifixion, so he can resurrect after three days. That should be powerful enough to open people’s eyes. Judas is willing to be the one who betrays Jesus. He shares Jesus’ vision of transforming suffering. So deeply that he is willing to be rejected, excluded and ostracized in pursuit of this dream. Jesus trusts Judas enough to know that Judas will stick to the plan, and not back off when the going gets tough.
We all know the rest of the story. We repeated it for 2000 years. Last night we celebrated his existence and his contribution to our well-being. We included him in our acknowledgment and affirmation of love, life and light. I felt touched and honored to have been there.
I wish you a merry Christmas, may your dreams come true.
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If you want my help to deepen your self-compassion, healing and integration, contact me for a complimentary, discovery session.
