Navigating a stalemate in relationship.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’ve hit a stalemate with someone, and despite your best efforts to understand where the other person is coming from, you just can’t manage to find common ground?

Here’s a truth: creating a sense of connection requires more of us than simple understanding and critical thinking. You can know everything you need to know and more about a person’s life — you can ask all the right questions and get all the answers to those questions, and that understanding could even change some of your behaviors — but it’s the tip of the iceberg in building intimacy and generating the powerful medicine of transformation and transmutation both from within and in the in between of relationship.

To transform and transmute your energy permanently, you sometimes have to stop listening with your ears and brain, and instead start hearing with your heart.

I don’t know about you, but for me, one of the most likely places for me to get stuck is in my ability to really be receptive in the face of a stalemate. I need to turn off my intellect. I have to find my own receptivity even if I don’t necessarily agree or believe what I’m hearing from another person. I have to learn to embody neutrality without totally losing myself.

This is hard to do, because we often conflate being receptive with agreeing and believing what we’re hearing. And if we think we need to agree and believe what we’re hearing, it quickly starts rubbing up against our identity!!!

Suddenly being receptive to someone means we must change who we are, and it’s in this moment that we start to close off and protect ourselves from what another person is sharing, or worse, we reject who they are entirely.

I can think of dozens of polarizing social issues where this occurs, many of which we have challenging examples of popping up loudly in society right now: subjects like vaccinations, masks, abortion, politics, and racism have all revealed a lot of stalemates in our connections with the people around us in the past year.

I’ve spent a lot of time really observing this phenomenon. Watching as groups of people I love become righteous about what they believe, self-efface to show solidarity, get in heartbreaking arguments where they lose friends, or otherwise avoid charged topics because getting involved is so overwhelming that they’d rather just stay out of it entirely.

But I want to assure you: there’s another way.

On Monday, in collaboration with Transforming Privilege, an initiative which provides resources to actively embark on an anti-racism journey, I’ll be speaking about what it takes to graduate beyond listening to understand or analyze, so that you can begin to hear with your heart.

The topic of racism is a microcosm of a transformational journey which has the potential to truly liberate us, given we have access to the right tools.

In this hour-long talk and discussion, we’ll be visiting the standard ways most of us know how to listen, and I’ll introduce you to some tools to help you learn how to listen more deeply, in a way which promises to bring extraordinary depth and richness into your life almost immediately, through the medicine of compassion and humility.

Would you like to join us?

I’m honored to donate my time for this cause, offering emotionally intelligent communication skills most of us were never taught which catalyze breakthroughs and build unbreakable bonds in all forms of relationships, and which can quickly bring about the sort of inclusion and consideration required for collective progress on the anti-racism journey.

This event takes place live on Monday September 6th at 6pm PST, and for those of you who aren’t available or are sleeping then, or who want to catch the replay, purchasing your ticket ensures you’ll have access to the recording. Tickets are on a sliding scale and are $10-25 (USD). You can buy your ticket here.

I look forward to seeing you there!