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Learn to Speak from Authenticity and Self-Responsibility - Honest Expression: Mindful Compassionate Dialogue Relationship Competency 3 (Video Conferencing or Self-Paced)

Thursday, March 25, 2021
11:30 AM 1:00 PM

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Learn to Speak from Authenticity and Self-Responsibility

Honest Expression: Mindful Compassionate Dialogue Relationship Competency 2

Is this you?

Perhaps you pride yourself on being direct and honest, but then you find that others don’t welcome your honesty. You want to be heard, but instead see that others disconnect and check out. Or, they pay attention in the moment, but over time don’t keep agreements they said yes to in the moment.

Or, perhaps, you want to speak up more often and be able to communicate what’s true for you. You would like a better understanding of your needs and how to make requests that others can hear easily.

This workshop is designed for anyone who wants better communication skills and to express themselves from a place of greater self-awareness and self-responsibility.

What's It All About?

Honest expression is the third relationship competency in Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD). Honest expression is based on the intention to connect through self-awareness and self-responsibility. It is about discerning which aspects of experience in a given moment are truly relevant to express and will contribute to clearer communication and connection. Honest expression means taking responsibility for your experience by expressing clear observations and requests as well as relevant thoughts, feelings, and needs. Honest expression replaces other irresponsible and indirect forms of communication like complaining, blaming, manipulating, convincing, or criticizing.

Honest expression is a rich and subtle practice that empowers you to live in alignment with your deepest values. It often feels vulnerable, as it requires awareness and direct expression of your needs and explicit acknowledgment of interdependence through specific and doable requests, and negotiation with others. It helps you to truly collaborate with others while fully maintaining autonomy and self responsibility.

In any given dialogue, it may not serve the connection to share every aspect of your experience. The ideal is to discern what will serve connection and to make a conscious choice about that.

In this workshop, you will be introduced to the following specific aspects of honest expression:

Awareness of your intention when you express something
Awareness of the quality of connection in a given moment, both with yourself and another
How to take responsibility for reactivity by learning to recognize it, name it aloud and pause to get grounded before continuing to engage in dialogue
Taking responsibility for thoughts, speech, and reactivity by discerning the difference between observations and interpretations.
Expressing feelings and needs with full self responsibility by making specific and doable requests of yourself and/or another
Knowing the difference between universal needs and strategies for how needs are met
Communicating specific and doable requests as the starting point of collaboration

About Mindful Compassionate Dialogue

Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD) naturally supports you in creating the relationships you want by integrating the wisdom and skills of three powerful modalities: Hakomi, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and mindfulness.

Each modality contributes something unique to the process. Hakomi offers clarity about reactivity and healing. NVC provides a method for achieving self-responsibility, skillful communication, and agency. And mindfulness adds the stable attention and clear focus needed to continuously refine your understanding and skills.

MCD is a system meant to provide access to agency, compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom. Personal transformation is achieved through practice with the 12 Relationship Competencies and Nine Foundations, which arise from a central, life-serving intention.

What to expect?

In this 90 minute workshop, you will engage in conceptual learning, group discussion, experiential learning, and skills practice. Practice exercises will be done individually, in pairs, and in small groups. You can apply examples from your own life that you choose in the exercises.

Understanding the online format

Students will be signing in to the workshop simultaneously in real time from their own locations, using Zoom. We will be able to see and hear each other. For visibility, it’s important to have a light in front of you, not behind you. The technology allows for breaking up into pairs or small groups, which the trainers can check in with just as would happen in an in-person course.

You will be able to review a recording of the workshop for a full week after it ends. Students won't be shown on the recording, but can be heard. You can participate in discussions via chat if you don’t want your voice recorded. This course may be sold later as a pre-recorded course.

You can also opt to take the series only through the recording.

Having someone in your life available to do the exercises with you is recommended for this option.

You will receive a detailed handout as a part of the workshop that you can download and keep for future reference.

Details:

Live attendance means:

Arriving on time to the workshop.
Attending and participating for the duration of the class. It is very disruptive to come in and out of the workshop; please plan to attend by recording if you cannot stay for the full 90 minutes of the workshop.

Access to the video recording for a full week following the workshop.
Receiving a detailed handout that you can download and keep for later reference.
The opportunity to be assigned a study buddy
Ensuring you have consistent access to internet speeds and connectivity that support video conferencing (600kbps/1.2Mbps (up/down) for HQ video; 1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps (up/down) for gallery view).