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New Year's Blessing
May you fall madly in love this year .. in love with someone who unhinges your tired trajectory, in love with a spouse of several years who might be aching for lightning, in love with demanding children and crazy relatives .. in love with the particular pedigree of genius insanity that has perhaps claimed you in spite of your reluctance .. and certainly in love with an animal, a cloud,
a redwood, the wild .. these at least once a day. May you fall in love with this fragile jewel of a world, with hard work, real learning, just causes, petitioning and prayers. May you fall in love with wonder itself, with the grand mystery, with all that feeds you in order that you may live .. and with the responsibility that that confers. May you fall in love with heartbreak and seeing how it's stitched into everything. May you fall in love with the natural order of things and with tears,
tenderness and humility. May this be a magnificent year for you. May you fall deeply, madly, hopelessly, inextinguishably in love.
Rachelle Lamb
Breakthrough Conversations
Speaker * Writer * On Relating, Deep Ecology & Soul
" I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the
universe."
~Dalai Lama
Featured Article
Making Your New Year's Resolutions a Reality
By Beth Banning and Neill Gibson
In January it's traditional to make New Year's resolutions. You plan to go to the gym, get into great physical shape, earn more money, improve a troubled relationship, or get along better with your family members. But you suspect that in a few days or weeks you'll get tired of making the effort and your good intentions will disappear. Would you like to improve your chances of making your resolutions stick?
" In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive
vision."
~Dalai Lama
Article
How to Survive the Holidays: 6 Communication Tips
By Oren Jay Sofer
For many, spending time with relatives over the holidays may be challenging. In addition to the love and care we may feel, family gatherings can bring up old hurts or expose painful differences. How many family meals have been marred by tense silence or devolved into harsh argument?
For me, learning to find balance, authenticity and care in my conversations with family members was a key turning point in my communication practice. Instead of dreading the holiday meal, gritting your teeth and sweating it out, here are six tips for more meaningful, healthy conversations during the holidays.
1. Set intentions
One of the most transformative ingredients in a conversation is intention, the inclination or motivation that impels us to speak or act. When we come from healthy intentions like patience, kindness, or curiosity, we're more likely to respond in a helpful way rather than react impulsively. Take some time reflect on your intentions before you get together with family or friends. How do you want to
engage? How strongly are you committed to those values? Can you feel the strength of that in your body?
"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."
~Dalai Lama
Article
Tolerating Uncertainty With Curiosity: The Spirit of Nonviolent Communication
There are many different ways that I describe Nonviolent Communication (NVC). One way is that it’s a way of developing curiosity. If you think about it, curiosity is a very different response than judging, evaluating, “should-ing” or blaming.
NVC also gives the resources to act from this place of curiosity. It gives me specific tools to help me be curious:
1. What actually happened? What did I hear? What did I see? (Observation)
2. How am I feeling? What am I noticing in my body? (Feelings/Sensations)
3. What matters to me about this? What’s “driving” it for me? (Needs)
4. What next step or action will support connection and move things forward? (Requests).
Focusing on these four steps (my connection roadmap) gives my mind something to do other than jumping to conclusions, getting defensive (otherwise known as explaining myself), or disagreeing with
or critiquing the other person. All I have to do is follow those four steps.
The Art of Mindful Communication: Living Your Values Talk-It-Out Radio (December 9, 2018)
In these extraordinarily polarized times, what would it be like if people could truly hear others and speak their minds in a clear, kind way, without becoming defensive or going on the attack? Join Talk It Out Radio’s host and Oren Jay Sofer, meditation teacher and communication trainer, the author of a new book, “Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication.” for an engaging conversation about Oren’s work
and new book.
Interview With Marshall Rosenberg: The Traveling Peacemaker
Ronna Kabatznick and Margaret Cullen interviewed Marshall Rosenberg by phone on May 10, 2004. Published in Inquiring
Mind.
Marshall Rosenberg: My trainings are based on an assumption that when we are clear and connected to
ourselves, there’s nothing that we like better than to contribute to one another’s well-being. But there are a number of things that can happen that disconnect us from that. So for me, reconciliation is connecting people again so they enjoy contributing to each other’s well-being rather than contributing to each other’s suffering. By “connecting” I mean clearly seeing what’s alive in one another, with no enemy images.
Inquiring Mind: What do you mean by “enemy images”?
MR: If my child is not picking up the room and I say, “You are lazy,” lazy is an enemy image. If my life
partner is not meeting my needs for intimacy and I say, “You are insensitive to my needs,” insensitive to my needs is an enemy image. When we say that some people are “terrorists,” that’s an enemy image. Enemy images turn people into things. When we see the other person as a monster, all we want to do is to punish them. This type of language disconnects us from what’s alive in one another, disconnects us from
life.
IM: Is the challenge of reconciliation a language problem?
MR: No. The language is part of a broader scheme of things. For about 8,000 years, we have been living
under domination cultures in which a few people claim to be superior. Partner this with the belief that people are basically selfish and evil, then the people who claim to be beyond that feel as though they have to control the others. We’re educated to believe in authorities and their right to inflict punishment and suffering on us if we don’t do what they think is right. So this whole scheme requires a
language.
IM: Does the enemy image have more to do with those who perceive it or those it is projected
onto? Read the full interview at InquiringMind.com.
Marshall Wisdom With Illustrations
Conceived by Meiji Stewart - Illustrator David Blasidell
"The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for
goodness."
~Dalai Lama
Misc
Video Song- Take a Drunk Girl Home
It’s about the difference between a boy and a man. Please consider sharing this with your sons and anyone else you think could learn from this powerful song-it’s really about loving, caring and respecting woman of all ages.
"I would like us to create peace at three levels and have each of us to know how to do it. First, within
ourselves. That is to know how we can be peaceful with ourselves when we're less than perfect, for example. How we can learn from our limitations without blaming and punishing our self. If we can't do that, I'm not too optimistic how we're going to relate peacefully out in the world. Second, between people. Nonviolent Communication training shows people how to create peace within themselves and at the same time how to create connections with other people that allows compassionate giving to take
place naturally. And third, in our social systems. To look out at the structures that we've created, the governmental structures and other structures, and to look at whether they support peaceful connections between us and if not, to transform those structures."
~Marshall B. Rosenberg
NVC Free Resources (NEW)
Stay Connected to the Values of Compassion With the Free 366 Daily Peaceful Living Meditations. Click on any that interest you.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice
compassion."
~Dalai Lama
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