Category: Listening

Waking Up the World

It is a strange time, he said to me. No one can ques­tion that. Dai­ly life goes on, but against a frac­tured back­ground. Trust is naive, would­n’t you say? And our imag­ined, much laud­ed future for a long time’s been lit­tle more than a bro­ken puz­zle. Prob­lems have mount­ed, would­n’t you say? A pile of fire­wood just wait­ing for a match? Mean­while,… Con­tin­ue read­ing Wak­ing Up the World

An Exercise to Reduce Negative Inner Voice

Recent­ly, I’ve been work­ing with a num­ber of clients who are inter­est­ed in reduc­ing their neg­a­tive thoughts, self-talk and defen­sive reac­tions. Here are some notes from our dis­cov­er­ies togeth­er and a relat­ed net search.* • Neg­a­tive inner voice (inner crit­ic) express­es thoughts ini­tial­ly formed as a set of rules and penal­ties aimed to pro­tect us… Con­tin­ue read­ing An Exer­cise to Reduce Neg­a­tive Inner Voice

How to Have a Strategy for Change

Think of “strat­e­gy” as hav­ing a per­spec­tive, an agen­da if you will, about how things could be bet­ter. When I’m help­ing a man­ag­er think about what those things are for a depart­ment in a more or less tra­di­tion­al hier­ar­chy, I like to employ a kind of sys­tems map that illu­mi­nates dif­fer­ent aspects of the work… Con­tin­ue read­ing How to Have a Strat­e­gy for Change

On Fairy Tales

Often we can see some­one else — a friend, per­haps — liv­ing out their untrue sto­ry, and we want to help. The oth­er per­son says some­thing like… “I’m an out­sider — that’s just my nature!” — a sto­ry of feel­ing sep­a­rate “What­ev­er room I’m in, I’m the smartest one there!” — also a sto­ry of feel­ing… Con­tin­ue read­ing On Fairy Tales