Came across this message from an author named Saskia Davis:

SYMPTOMS OF INNER PEACE

A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences

An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment

A loss of interest in judging other people

A loss of interest in judging self

A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others

A loss of interest in conflict

A loss of ability to worry

Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation

Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature

Frequent attacks of smiling

An increasing tendency to let things happen
rather than to make them happen.

An increased susceptibility to love extended by others
as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it

WARNING: Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many already have been exposed; and it is possible that people, everywhere, could come down with it in epidemic proportions.

This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.

If you have some or all of the above symptoms, please be advised that your condition of inner peace may be too far advanced to be curable. If you are exposed to anyone exhibiting any of these symptoms, remain exposed only at your own risk.

Source (poster of this piece available there): http://symptomsofinnerpeace.net/Authors_Website/Wall_Poster.html

How do we change out of a destructive pattern?

Emma (my daughter, now 9) frequently makes a big fuss when it’s time to do work that’s not appealing, especially “dumb writing homework” (despite usually liking writing and being an outstanding student).  This has gone on for years, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed myself becoming very reactive.  I was getting more and more irritated with her — and the irritation about homework seemed to be bleeding into our relationship-in-general.

I’d say hello in the morning and she’d grouch at me… say hello in the afternoon and she’d ignore me.  Then the homework fuss would come up, and I found myself thinking in such a judgmental way, labeling her as “drama queen,” “irrational,” and a few I won’t put in print.  As my frustration grew, I found myself thinking things like, “she can bloody well sit in her room ’till the work is done” (and thinking it with a kind of violent savagery ala “that will show her!”).

There are two aspects of this reaction that I’d like to explore with you:

First, when I felt disrespected and excluded, my patience for the “homework drama” plummeted.  My hurt feelings translated to wanting to hurt back.

Second, as I was feeling impatient, I fell into a pattern of force (power and control) and dealing with superficial “facts” — despite my certain knowledge that this DOES NOT WORK.

In Six Seconds’ work on change, we teach that people behave the way they do for emotionally valid reasons, and that unless you change the underlying emotional dynamic, you don’t create change.  This concept is explained well in Alan Deutschman’s book, Change or Die, which I constantly talk about (here’s an interview I did with him about this).  Deutschman says the dominant, but failing, paradigm when trying to drive change is to use facts, force and fear.

As I get more and more frustrated, I begin to rely on power and control.  I start using facts to back up how right I am, and force to reinforce my sense of power, and fear to accentuate my own power over her.  In that FFF paradigm, we try to make people change.  This doesn’t work, because people don’t want to be forced.  When people feel pushed, they resist.  The resistance causes them to protect, and they become less open to risk.  Meanwhile as we push, we become more irritated and less open to understand what they’re feeling and what’s really blocking the change.

Nice mess — and I KNOW this, but knowledge is not enough.  So here I am, getting frustrated with my daughter, and the more frustrated I get, the more I find myself shooting down this track, a track that I intellectually know leads only to more frustration.  But nonetheless, I’m sucked in.  It’s like I’m in a terrible daytime TV show where these messages are beamed into my brain.  And the more irritated I get, the more I’m in this reactive, superficial, destructive mindset.

Once I started to reflect I could see this pattern — this track I was on.  Which was great to recognize, but then what?  Getting off requires a shift in thinking+feelings — a way to step out of the dynamic.

Fortunately, it came a day later at bedtime.

I was just kissing my daughter goodnight and she had a rare evening of not having a book in hand… so welcomed a sleepy snuggle.  She’s so big now, and so fierce in her opinions.  But laying next to her I had this vivid memory of 9 years ago when we were on our first long plane ride and told her about it.

So long as one of us was walking around holding her, Emma was content.  But as soon as we sat down she fussed.  I remember walking up and down the long 747 aisles in the dark, with glimpses of night as we walked past the rows of windows, pacing endlessly at 500 miles per hour with this sleepy warm angel.

I remember quietly singing the same little song over and over and over (“la mar estaba serena, serena estaba la mar…”).  Probably as much for me as her; I can still feel the soothing rhythm of it.

I remember looking out the small galley window, watching the endless stretches of Nordic ice in the moonlight, and wondering at the infinite variety of that unknown alien landscape, so cold and distant.

At the time, I had no sense that this would become a precious memory… but now it’s so vivid… and tinged with the sepia tones of nostalgia.  Amazing what become printed in our hearts.

And from that place of appreciation, the whole “homework drama frustration” simply evaporated.  I remembered the precious (and willful) innocence inside this person.  I “made her good” in my mind and heart and this let me step off the reactive track.  This emotional connection is empathy, and it’s a doorway to a whole new way of seeing — and the antidote to the FFF paradigm.

In the week since that evening, we’ve had no conversation about changing the “homework drama,” but it just hasn’t come up.  It’s like the circuit is (at least for the moment) diffused.  While it’s likely to resurface, I’m now more keenly aware of the trap — and at least one way out.

♥

This week we watched the Star Wars trilogy as a family – first time for Emma and Max. Return of the Jedi was today. A couple of comments that followed up from the discussion of Satyagraha.

Tucking into bed, Max, 7: “Remember when Luke made C3P0 fly, and then C3p0 said, ‘I didn’t know I could do that,’ and then Luke said, ‘I didn’t either,’ Luke was making C3P0 good.  Like you said you can make people good or make them bad, and Luke made him good.”

Me:  “And what about Darth Vader – Luke even made him good, right?  He knew there was good inside Darth and that’s what he focused on.”

Max:  “It’s like there is a big circle of red and one little bit of blue, and Luke made the blue get bigger and bigger until there wasn’t room for all the red.”

Yes, it’s fiction, but what a powerful example of Satyagraha — Luke was faced with this choice (over an over) to hide or to engage, and a clear difference of how to engage: through anger or through love.

Emma had a similar reflection earlier today and asked Patty about the difference between Luke and the Emperor.  After they talked a bit,  Emma’s conclusion: “Luke was trying to make peace with his fight and the Emperor wanted to destroy through fighting.  So it matters what you want.”

A friend of a friend went to Iran recently and took photos of kids and of their drawings about war and peace. Someone else then put together this video – it’s a little long, but I found it kept drawing me in. What must it feel like for children to hear superpowers talking about bombing their country? How do we help children make sense of the past and current conflicts so they create something different for the future?

EQ Reflection: Vigilance and Prevention
April 27, 1999

I know we’ve all heard and thought a lot about Columbine. Rather than going over the same ground about what happened and why, I’d like to consider my own role in this kind of violence, and ask you to do the same.

Like all of us, I am devastated by this atrocity. I am also devastated by the implications and the responses. It is terrible to even write this, but I am not shocked that such a thing could happen — in some ways it seems the natural outcome of the system we each perpetuate. Claire Nuer, a great teacher about commitment and getting “unstuck” called this system the egosystem. Partly I mention Claire because she died recently, and I wonder what she would have said about Columbine. I think she would have said that if we look at our actions, we are not actually committed to ending violence.

I AM shocked by the degree to which America’s response is “install metal detectors, arm principals, create tough discipline policies.” I see that these reactions are more of the same — Einstein wrote, roughly, that we can not solve a problem using the same kind of thinking that got us INTO the problem. And while I too am compelled to urgent action, I hope that we can utilize different kinds of thinking than the “egosystem.”

In the last week, Six Seconds has been working to gather a broad spectrum of educators who will join a call for a re-focus on long-term prevention. I will send that out next week, but for now, it has been sad for me to see the egosystem at work in our colleagues — so many of whom wanted to sign-on only to their projects, their perspectives. And as I write this and point my finger, I realize that even in the way I wrote the original “call for prevention”, I was doing the very same thing. I was writing a press release that talked a lot about Six Seconds and our work… and then blaming people for wanting to only talk about their work….

Marsha told me that when she taught kindergarten, she taught that when we point a finger, we point three at ourselves. As I have thought more about this, I realize that one implication is that when I find myself pointing my finger, I need to learn something about what I am thinking, feeling, and doing. That might be a good moment for me to take a six second pause and carefully reflect.

It takes vigilance. Not metal detector vigilance, but stuck-in-the-same-pattern vigilance. If we can only change ourselves, we’d each better take that responsibility pretty seriously. Vigilance is cental to that seriousness.

Essentially, “vigilance” means careful watching. To add the EQ piece, it would also include monitoring the interplay of thoughts, feelings, and actions. Why do you do what you do? Why are you responding to this question the way that you are? As I become more vigilant, I become more aware of cause and effect within myself; I become more aware of the patterns that drive me — and perhaps automatically become more responsible for them.

I am not sure it is automatic. I have seen students have this moment of realization where they see how a pattern has driven them, and they immediately move toward responsibility. But it is often short term — they have to see it over and over.

In the face of kids killing kids, I lose patience. I do not want to see it over and over before I learn about my responsibility.

The emotional part of vigilance also means that like watching closely, I will “feel closely.” Each time I hear more about Columbine, I close off more feeling — I do not want to go there. But if I am going to vigilant, I can not ignore those feelings. Instead, I will use them to motivate myself toward change — despite finger pointing, and despite the long uphill climb.

I will send the prevention info in a few days.
- Josh