Communicate for a Change

27/10/2023

Oh dear!😩 Not the sight I was hoping to see at The Hub this morning!😱 Looks like my choice of spooky music will have to wait till next week. 👻🫥

12/06/2023

I think we've got so used to evaluating & assessing our words and actions and those of others in terms of good/bad, right/wrong that to conceive of another way to do it seems, what, far fetched, unrealistic, pie in the sky? What though, following the lead provided by Marshall Rosenberg, the architect of Non-Violent Communication, what if we evaluated and assessed those words and actions in terms of how well our present needs were being met?...

What to do if we don't criticise or judge?

09/05/2022

in case you're not already singing the next bit, courtesy of Edwin Starr, let me refresh your memory. 'Abolutely nothing!' Surely as true now as then and for all the millenia that have gone before. And how sad a truth that is. But keep going back through the millenia and we seem to find something interesting. Well, according to Steve Taylor in his book, 'The Fall - The Insanity of the ego in human history and the dawning of a new era' that is....

Must we continue to use war as a way to resolve difference? What if we are not prisoners of our past? A different approach is possible.

11/02/2022

Ever get angry with someone and hours later you're still playing the scene over and over? Here's a simple 7 step sequence you can follow that will make all the difference. 1) Think about someone who annoys you, irritates or intimidates you. 2) Close your eyes and make an image of them. Have them look at you in whatever way they look at you when you are affected adversely by them ...

Still feeling angry hours after it happened? Try this and spot the difference!

01/02/2022

I’m hearing the word ‘misinformation’ quite a lot at the moment.
So is it misinformation or a difference of opinion? So what is ‘information’ and who is deciding or dictating what that information actually is?
Seems to me like it’s one of he muddles of thinking and terminology we can get confused about.
The spirit of Voltaire (not the actual words he ever spoke, as that would be inaccurate) was conveyed by the willingness to defend a citizen’s right to freedom of speech. Are we now at a point where we deny anyone that right? Seems like a dangerous path to tread.
Any thoughts in regard to this?

27/01/2022

It's often the case when we ask someone how they're feeling, we get the response written in the title or we get a type of thinking, usually an opinion or complaint, either about our own words and actions or those of others - or both! I'm not at all surprised by this. Perhaps like you, rather than developing my emotional intelligence, I developed an extensive vocabulary of complaint, criticism and judgement language....

It's common to hear opinions and criticisms when we ask how someone is feeling. Here's why and how best to respond.

21/01/2022

And what a surprise it was. And yet at the same time, it wasn't. After all, it had been staring me in the face for years but maybe I didn't really want to acknowledge the strength and depth of it. How attached, even addicted so many of us have become to it. So just what the heck am I talking about?...

Conflict that is intense, frequent and unresolved is down to our attachment to being right and others wrong. So what can we do about it?

16/01/2022

For months, I've been doing a pretty good impersonation of Rip van Winkle (well, I thought it fitted better than Sleeping Beauty!) I was stirred to write because I've been increasingly dismayed by the growing trend of what I believe are harmful communicating habits between us. These habits of disconnected communicating seem to becoming more accepted as normal. I'm seeing and hearing personally critical, even insulting words spoken or written about or to others that I believe would be highly unlikely to be used in person to person comversation....

We've developed some unkind habits of communicating in recent times that are becoming distressingly normal

12/03/2021

Isabella Tree is a British author and travel writer, whose book, Wilding: the Return of Nature to a British Farm, made a big impression when it was published in 2018. Just after the turn of the millennium, she and her husband made the decision to transform their 3,500-acre estate in West Sussex from an unproductive farm into a richly biodiverse wilderness....

The story of one couple who decided to return to a more natural and productive wilding approach to farming.

22/02/2021

Written & sung by Laura Nyro in 1984, I’d like it if we could have a dose of this now.
https://youtu.be/wntbr_i5Wbk

16/02/2021

Born in Kenya in 1940, Professor Wangari Maathai always felt a deep connection to the natural world, even from earliest childhood. She thought the mountainous, green landscape of her home in central Kenya the most beautiful place in the world. After excelling at school, and studying biology and zoology in the USA, she became the first East African woman to achieve a PhD and take up a professorship....

Planting trees a solution to a big environmental problem? Yes indeed, thanks to the work of Nobel Prize winner, Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement she founded in Kenya back in 1977.

14/02/2021

There is a foretelling, a prophecy even, amongst some indigenous peoples about a sign that will herald peace.
The sign? When the Eagle & the Condor are seen flying together.
These majestic birds of prey will not be keeping their distance, nor competing or fighting for supremacy but rather respecting, acknowledging & appreciating each other’s power.
To me, this image is true on an interpersonal level as well as an international one.
It is in our nature to create personal space boundaries that allow us to keep in comfortably safe connection with each other. These natural social boundaries have been interfered with in recent months.
This interference with the natural order could be why people have either begun to shout loudly (on social media for example), creating polarisation or have retreated and withdrawn into a collapsed, powerless position. Neither of these responses are likely to have us ‘flying together’.
I believe that to listen patiently to others with an attitude of curiosity & respect before making our own ideas & opinions clear are much more likely to create the sort of peace that we truly desire.
What do you think?