Season of Nonviolence - Day 28

Welcome to Day 28 of the Season of Nonviolence – 64 Days of peaceful wisdom honoring the lives and nonviolent principles of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez.

Nonviolence begins with learning how to be less violent and more compassionate towards ourselves. We learn by building the courage to speak and act with respect, honor and reverence for our own being.

Eleanor Roosevelt has urged, "You must do the things that you think you cannot do." Practicing these 64 Ways will challenge you to do things that you think you cannot do.

Day 28: LISTENING

Can you stop what you are doing and thinking, and take time to truly listen to the feelings behind someone’s words to you?  Being fully present for the conversation and interested in what that person is saying is a practice of nonviolence. 

 A component of Marshall Rosenberg's "Nonviolent Communication" involves listening with compassion.  The listener attends fully to the speaker's words, while sensing the feelings and needs beneath the words.  The listener is simply fully present, not trying to "figure out" what the speaker is needing, nor trying to "get it right."  If I can listen to you with compassion, it is usually only a short time before you listen with compassion to me.

Today:  I will be fully present to each conversation I engage in, and listen longer than usual - and with more patience - to what others are saying.  I will give the other person my full attention, because nothing else really matters.  I will look directly at the person who is speaking, without thinking about other things.   

Listen with the Heart

When we face another person in need and we are not conscious then we do not hear with our heart and do not take the other into our heart. We are left then with only one option - judge, reject, condemn, ignore, accuse. We then stand separate, outside of Love and untouched by Beauty.

Through practice, learn the differences between listening with your ears, with your mind and with your heart so that you can deliberately choose how you will listen to others. ~ The Soul Journey

Learn the art and skill of sacred listening. Learn to listen with more than your ears. Learn to listen with your heart and your entire being. You’d be amazed at what you will discover.

Season of Nonviolence – Day 28: Listening

Welcome to Day 28 of the Season of Nonviolence – 64 Days of peaceful wisdom honoring the lives and nonviolent principles of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez.

Nonviolence begins with learning how to be less violent and more compassionate towards ourselves. We learn by building the courage to speak and act with respect, honor and reverence for our own being.

Day 28: LISTENING

"The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention." ~ Richard Moss

Most of us are born with the ability to hear, but we all must learn to listen. Too often we hear with our ears as our minds construct our next statement, wonder when it will be our turn to speak, or evaluate what is being said. When we truly listen, we focus on the other person. We hear their words and the feelings behind them. We make eye contact. We check to make sure we understand what is being said. Sometimes it is all we need to do when a friend or loved one is in emotional pain. We do not have to offer solutions; we need only listen with our hearts.

Be mindful of listening rather than only hearing. Today, stop what you are doing and take five minutes to listen to the feelings behind someone's words to you. Be fully present for the conversation and interested in what the person is saying. Contemplate or journal about the experience.

From A Season of Nonviolence

Be Skeptical, But Learn to Listen

The Fifth Agreement: Be Skeptical, But Learn To Listen.

"Don’t believe yourself or anybody else. Use the power of doubt to question everything you hear: Is it really the truth? Listen to the intent behind words, and you will understand the real message." ~ Don Miguel & Don Jose Ruiz

There is a tiny yet powerful word in the middle of BELIEVE. Yes, it is LIE! Not the malicious, on purpose lie you might know and be familiar with (hmmm); but the kind of lie that is truth for you but not for someone else. My truth may not be your truth.

You were conditioned as children to believe what the elders told you. Well, who told the elders? Their elders! And if the beginning elder has incorrect information, then guess what got passed down? You guessed it – incorrect information. Remember, playing telephone as children? The first child would whisper a message in the ear of the next child and so on down the line. When the last child repeated the message, it was so different from the original message.

The second part of Don Miguel’s fifth agreement is crucial in building excellent communications skills – learn to listen. This is where so many people fall down. Listening is an art and a skill and one not readily taught to the masses. Most of the time, people just don’t listen. Instead, they are rehearsing their rebuttals, eagerly awaiting their turn to speak. When you actively listen to someone, you come away drained, but listening is an action.

I have been told that I am a good listener. I have honed this skill. I want to hear what someone has to say. That is not to say that I sit and listen to gossip and slander or toxic negativity. No, no, that is not being helpful in any way. I listen to help another. I listen as a coach, as a counselor and as a facilitator. I listen for the other person’s truth, though it may not be my truth; and I listen without judgment or criticism.

Just for today, STOP, TAKE A BREATH, and ASK:
“Am I listening to fix or judge, or am I listening to learn?”

Coach Carolyn

Soul Guidance

“People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a résumé than to craft a spirit. But a résumé is cold comfort on a winter night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely …” ~ Anna Quindlen

Letting go of my own ego-driven thoughts and allowing my soul to guide me is what really empowers me. I can tell when it’s my soul speaking because she always speaks without any negativity and I always feel a sense of peace and tranquility. Usually, whatever she wants me to do not only helps me grow spiritually, but also helps someone else along the way. My ego, on the other hand, is often selfish, negative and critical.

Bad habits are hard to break, but when I allow my soul to show me the best way and when I allow myself to be aware, I know I'm going in the right direction. My ego still takes over sometimes and when I listen to it instead of my soul, there’s always a lesson to be learned afterwards.

Listening to my soul empowers me. Looking inside myself isn't comfortable when I see the shadows as well as the light. But then I stop and realize that without the shadows, I wouldn't know about the light. ~ Diana Brunson

“The place where I am most at home, the place where my soul resides, feels located in and around my heart and a little below, in my solar plexus. When I am aware of that part of my self, attend to it, and act from it, I am at home.” ~ Patrice Vecchione

From Women at Heart.

Ignite your heart passion!

Coach Carolyn

Conversation Week 2008

Conversation Week 2008 is a celebration of the power of conversation to change the world. Hosts will convene face-to-face, small-group conversations with friends, neighbors, and strangers. The goal is to empower people worldwide to convene a meaningful, respectful discussion in their community. For more information on Conversation Week 2008, check out the Conversation Café.

Social networking, such as blogging is one way that keeps conversation flowing in the virtual world. When you get together with friends in real time, what do you talk about? Are you having awesome conscious shifting dialogues, or meaningless chit chat? Are your conversations infused with lots of mind-stretching questions? From the Conversation Café, here are a few of the Top 50 questions that you can use to shoot into your conversations this week:

~What can we do to reduce or eliminate violence in the world?
~How can intangibles like values and beliefs tangibly contribute to solving the problems of our times?
~What have your found works to open another's mind to what you have to say, especially if they think they already know?
~How do we shift from "Me" to "We" on both the local and global levels?
~How can we take responsibility for making a better future without making others wrong?
~What kind of leadership does the world need now?
~How do we create a culture that is inclusive of all people and beliefs?
~What does compassionate living look like to you?
~What do you hold so dear that you would give your life to it?
~How can you, as Gandhi said, be the change that you want to see in the world?
~What helps you have energy and hope in these times?
~What do you most want for our world? What would it take to bring that about?
~When you look back at the end of your life, what legacy would you most love to have left the world?

Just a note: To have a great conversation, you need two critical components: the speaker and the listener. We have had plenty of practice with the speaking part, however the listening part tends to escape us. To listen does not simply mean to just sit quietly until the other person stops talking so that we can have our rebuttal.

Listening is a skill, an art; a lost art. Listening means using not just your ears, but your entire body. It means setting aside your agenda and judgments while the other person is speaking. When you are focused on what you are going to say next, then you are not really listening; you are rehearsing your lines.

Go out and have a conversation, and remember to listen.

Have a purposeful conversation!

Going Within

To get in touch with your passions and your purpose, you must take the time to go within and listen. We have a very difficult time "unbusying" ourselves to just sit and be with ourselves. We must be doing, taking care of someone or something, schlepping, going, coming. How are we ever going to really know what we need and want unless we take the time to truly find out? This passage from Susan Hanshaw's Sanctuary for Change blog says it all:

"Give yourself quiet time to listen to your inner voice. Whenever you find yourself alone, reject the tendency to busy yourself. When you’re driving alone in your car, turn off the music and pay attention to what is going on inside of you. When you’re in a waiting room, don’t distract yourself with a magazine or newspaper. Just close your eyes and turn within. Don’t get hung up worrying about what other people are going to think. Get to know your inner voice. What does it dream about? What ideas might it have about you that you may be too afraid to share with anyone else? Give this voice and its instincts credibility and strive to follow it."

I do a LOT during the day. But one thing I can say is that my busyness creates productivity, passion, and purpose. I also take the time to just be. I cannot do all the things I do and not have time for going within. Clients and friends say that I make them tired by all the things I do. But I also share my being time, my quiet time, the time I take to just listen to what is going on inside of me.

Sometimes it is not comfortable to listen to my inner child -- sometimes she screams and has tantrums. But she is always fully heard. And when she wants to just play, I let her. I have gotten over feeling guilty about taking play time. It does not serve me. It does serve me to create some self care space within my busyness.

Take time to go within and listen,
Coach Carolyn

Listening with Purpose

In our daily lives, we are more hurried and busier than ever. Since the age of technology, life was to be more simpler and with more ease. Instead the opposite is the fact. Because of this hurried existence, we fail to take time to just sit and be. But I have found more and more people, women especially, not knowing what they are passionate about, not knowing what their purpose is, thus giving them no inner peace.

I have patterned my life in such a rhythm that without a certain amount of self-care, I cannot function properly. One of the self-care tools I utilize constantly is listening. Listening to the Divine, listening to others, and listening to self. Without this tool, I could not do what I do. To coach and counsel, one has to be in tuned with the whisperings of the Spirit and self -- in order to listen to others.

Listening is not a passive act you do while waiting for your turn to speak. Listening is a skill and an art; sadly a lost art. Deep and active listening involves not just the ears, but the entire body, including the heart. When you have truly listened to someone, you can feel it. You are drained but energized at the same time.

But harder than listening to someone else, is being still and listening to what out own inner voice has to say. To take the time and sit in stillness is absolute torture to some people. But start with just ten minutes. Use commute time, or waiting in a line time. These are opportunities for listening. Don't just stand and complain, create an A-Z gratitude list while you are waiting. Ask yourself a question about something that you are dealing with in your life. Call to mind an old friend that you haven't seen or heard from in a while. Send them a silent blessing.

Listening is also a wonderful time to minister to those far-away loved ones. Send silent blessings and warm thoughts -- then follow up with a hand written thinking of you note card. You'd be amazed what comes up inside when you take the time to just be still.

Sitting still has helped me create my workshops, writings, lectures, and classes. My inner child knows what she wants to play and she lets me know it too. Get in touch with your inner child. Let him or her out for an hour a day and listen to what wonders he or she wants to share with you.

In peace and stillness,
Coach Carolyn