Culture

Overcoming Defensiveness

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Why is receiving feedback challenging? Whenever any one of us gives feedback that is tainted with criticism, judgment, or our personal upset, we create a situation that requires a lot more capacity and skill from the person who receives our feedback. So, a big part of why receiving feedback is so challenging is because so few people around us know how to give feedback. But, if we wait for others to offer us usable, digestible, manageable feedback, we will not likely receive sufficient feedback for our growth and learning. The alternative is to stretch our inner muscles, seek feedback, and grow in our capacity to fish the pearl that’s in what may otherwise be someone else wanting to be heard for how upset and angry they are with us.

Empathy

Dialogue Across the Divide? How Can Liberals and Conservatives Start Talking?

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Cross-posted on The Fearless Heart. Since I started writing about empathy between liberals and conservatives, (April 5; April 10) I have been thinking about facilitating dialogues between the two groups. As a first step I wanted to meet people who identify as conservative. This past Monday I had the good fortune of meeting Peeter, who identifies as a “dye in the wool” conservative, and who is a sympathizer of the Tea Party movement. Whether or not this meeting will lead to the dialogue I am wishing to establish, I learned a lot, I was surprised, and my heart was touched.

Culture

Empathy and Authenticity in the Workplace (part 2 of 3)

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Part 1 of this mini-series was posted here on Tikkun Daily. Bringing Our Authenticity into the Workplace
In the workplace, as in the home and elsewhere, many people forget about including themselves when it comes to connection. I have already written (“Is Resentment Inevitable?”) about how leaving ourselves out can lead to resentment. How does this apply in the workplace? Including yourself means bringing your opinions and visions when you have them, even when there may be disagreement.

Empathy

Taking Action in the Face of Despair and Helplessness

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“I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.” Dawna Markova
Penny Spawforth asked me in a comment: “I would love to hear how you transform the despair you feel about where the world is heading and your helplessness about contributing sufficiently as I daily experience and feel a sense of helplessness that creates despair and minimal action (‘no action seems large enough to be of use’). What I see as my tiny contribution to the world I want to help create just doesn’t feel ‘enough.'”
Before discovering my current passion for Nonviolent Communication, I was in exactly the kind of place that Penny describes. I saw no way that I could support movement towards what I wanted to see in the world. Then, while talking with my friend Tom Atlee, we came to realize that having a calling, knowing what you are to do in your life, is a form of privilege.

Empathy

Empathy and Authenticity in the Workplace (part 1 of 3)

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When I talk with people about Nonviolent Communication and about empathy and authenticity, I often hear skepticism in the form of “Yes, but what about_______.” Frequent candidates for filling in the blank are teenagers that don’t respond to anything; Hitler; very angry people; and workplace situations. It seems many of us are habituated to thinking that empathy and authenticity belong only in some contexts and not others. Today I want to look at the workplace context, because so many of us are at work more of our awake time than anywhere else. Can Connection and Effectiveness Coexist? On the surface, it appears that the time it would take to reach mutual understanding and collaboration would detract from task-oriented focus, thus taking away from productivity and efficient decision-making.

Empathy

Empathy and Good Judgment

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President Obama ignited controversy when he named empathy as a necessary quality in a Supreme Court judge. Wendy Long, legal counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, said, “Lady Justice doesn’t have empathy for anyone. She rules strictly based upon the law and that’s really the only way that our system can function properly under the Constitution.” Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) referred to empathy as “touchy-feely stuff.” During Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) asked her, “Have you always been able to have a legal basis for decisions you have rendered and not rely on extralegal concepts such as empathy?”

Culture

Is Resentment Inevitable?

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Recently I talked with a friend about why he harbors so much resentment towards his partner and their 13 year old child, that he sometimes reacts with intense anger to relatively minor snappy expressions. My friend, let’s call him Fred, wanted to free himself from the grip of unconsciously chosen anger, so he could choose how to respond. Invisible Contracts
As we talked, Fred recognized that it’s highly unlikely that he can transcend his reactivity in the moment. It’s almost always too late. The moment of true power is earlier, when he makes his own choices about what he will or will not do.

General News

Empathy, Obama and connecting across differences

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Cross-posted from the Fearless Heart. “Empathy [is] the act of understanding and being sensitive to the feelings and experiences of others. … Empathy is essential for any president… To be authentically empathetic, however, presidents must consider how policies affect all Americans.”

General News

Nonviolence and Vulnerability

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“Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for non-violence. Violence does not mean emancipation from fear, but discovering the means of combating the cause of fear. Non-violence, on the other hand, has no cause for fear… He who has not overcome all fear cannot practice ahimsa.” (Gandhi, All Men Are Brothers, 104)

Courage in the Face of Fear
This quote has been haunting me ever since I first discovered it some years ago.

Politics & Society

Empathy from Left Field — A Response to Helen Smith

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Cross-posted from The Fearless Heart. [Editor’s note: Miki Kashtan leads workshops and intensive retreats in Nonviolent Communication]. I love a good challenge, and Helen Smith’s recent article, How Should Conservatives Deal with the Left’s Disrespect and Lack of Empathy?, immediately called my attention. As someone who’s dedicating my life, in part, to increasing empathy all around in the culture, I found some of her comments painful, because they matched my own experience with liberals. The Missing Empathy for the Right
In the social circles in which I find myself, and in much of the Left media, conservatives are regularly referred to as stupid (at best), backward, uncaring, or unevolved.