You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Hi, it's Claire here, just opening the door at the Coaching Inn to let in Becky Hall, who's going to tell us more about Chapter 7. Over to you, Becky. Hi everyone and welcome to the last of these podcasts working through each chapter in the Art of Enough. I can't quite believe we've got here. It seems to have whizzed by as the year does.
And thank you for journeying with me again and the book. So I'm going to talk today about chapter seven. and the epilogue and the questions that you have asked or comments. Some lovely questions today, so thank you very much for those. I'll read each and I will address them. So as you know, the final chapter, chapter seven, was about enough connection and the imaginal cell at the root of enough connection is love. So let me read out the first question I was offered here.
So the question, can you recommend any practical ways or places that we could use to break out of our echo chambers, as in page 196? How might we find those people who are different to us? Well, what a great question and what a big challenge. As I say in the book, we are almost pushed certainly on social media to find our ways into just hearing from people who agree with us, who think the same as us. And it's a dangerous place, in my opinion.
So the first thing I would say about this is don't look to social media for this, partly because I haven't yet found a really good resourcing, respectful place where people with really different views on important issues really talk and listen to one another. It seems to me that part of the challenge of Echo Chambers is that it's easier to mudsling than it is to really engage in subtle, complex conversation. So the first thing I'd say is try to do this in person.
But that's my preference and my experience. So please, if you've got places where you think, actually, no, there's a great, good discussion forum where people genuinely disagree without insulting each other quickly or without assuming positions or platforming, then yeah, tell me or share. share with others. I think that the thing that often gets in the way of disagreement is social discomfort.
so I suspect that whilst online we might very well be in our echo chambers and potentially within our social groups maybe, but actually in our wider circle of people we interact with, I think that there will be massive difference of opinion. And so what it requires is for us to have the courage to disagree and to create environments which are safe enough to disagree respectfully and really, really listen.
The thing that often gets in the way of respectful conversation is a deep sense of loyalty to is something in the past. it's often that we feel that we're being loyal to a sense of our own identity that we can't even hear a different view. And the way that we can overcome that is to, of course, just listen with an open mind and an open heart, with no expectation to change the minds of somebody else and with no desire to even.
So in my opinion, In my experience, when I have spoken to people that I work with, that I may meet at my church, or that I may meet in my yoga class, people have massively different views about things that really matter. But it does require me to have the courage to ask and the ability to notice my own discomfort with both disagreement but also my desire to persuade others to my view.
An open space where we can just hear each other is what I think is massively required in the world right now and there are spaces, there are facilitated spaces where that can happen. But I think we are more different than we suspect we are but it's the courage to move beyond. So that's the first question. The second question that I was offered really touched me, which is this. The idea of love is really central to the enough connection piece.
For those people who have hurt or not experienced love fully, where might they start on this journey? I found this a profoundly moving question, so thank you for asking it. And I hold it very tenderly because for people who haven't experienced love, love can feel like an alienating and unavailable concept, of course.
One of the definitions of love that I like the best and that I use a lot in my life and in my work comes from a guy called Bert Hellinger, who I refer to in the book, who wrote and thought a lot about human relationship systems. And his definition of love is this, love equals seeing plus distance minus judgment. Love equals seeing plus distance minus judgement. think that's just such a profound way of looking at love.
the need to be seen at a distance that's appropriate to the relationship, so sometimes that's really close and other times that's at a different distance away, minus judgment, being seen minus judgment at a safe distance is a profoundly powerful experience. So for people who haven't experienced love or a have been very badly hurt. I would suggest that finding a way for them to feel seen and not judged safely would be a good place to start. And of course, The place to start is with ourselves.
It's a bit of a sort of coaching, counselling 101 to say that our ability to love others is directly proportionate to our ability to love ourselves. And it's often the biggest journey that we might have is to learn to love ourselves. And then we circle right back to the beginning of the book, of course, and in this way, the book. is very cyclical, cyclical, yeah, that's the word. So finding ways for people to have small connections that matter to one another.
if people feel too vulnerable, then that's where nature comes in. But small connections to things that matter to them in a way that feels safe and non-judgmental. and supportive would be the place to start. And of course, every person's different and I hear the pain and the trauma in the question. So thank you for asking and I hope I don't want to be disrespectful or too generic in answering. The final comment was this.
I found it really helpful the way you described grounding yourself with nature, enabling you to be more connected with myself, with yourself actually. I found it really helpful the way you described grounding yourself with nature, enabling you to be more connected with yourself. Well, I'm glad you found that helpful and I offer it to you if it works for you. I find it profoundly helpful, increasingly so. The more I reflect on it, the more I appreciate its value to me.
It's a deep connection and what I notice about myself is that it helps me connect with all aspects of myself. So I often think of my gut brain, my heart brain, my head brain, for example, and each of those things are... aligned and connected with nature in different ways. And when I can be aligned with myself and fed myself in a coherent way, then I can connect better to others and to the world.
And what nature does for me is give me a deep sense of peace within myself and coherence, at the same time as offering me the biggest picture that I can have of the world and and even spiritually, for me, being in nature can be a spiritual experience as well as a physical one. So it's that simultaneous moment of being entirely connected with myself and entirely connected with the planet that we are privileged to be within, part of, for the time we have.
Yeah, I hope that that's been a useful build on some of the themes in the chapter. In many ways, it was the chapter that I found hardest to write. I rewrote it the most times because I wanted to say so much and yet I wanted to find ways of making it practical for people. It's the absolute soul, I think, of the book at the same time as being the most abstract. So I hope that that's... It managed to be both of those things for you too, or that you managed to relate to it in a way.
It's been absolutely brilliant to journey with you over the past five months and thank you, thank you, thank you for your questions. I really, really hope that you can join me and Claire, Pedrick, for drinks at the Coaching Inn as we conclude the book group, the 3D book group. It's been a joy for me and I hope it's been useful for you. It will be great to gather and share what we've learned, what you've learned through reading the book.
to deepen your conversation, to talk about it more, and you can offer me more questions, of course. As you can probably tell, I love talking about this stuff. So please do check out whether you can come or not and sign up. It will be really good. I think that there is still some space, but do sign up. And look forward to seeing those of you who can make it there. And for those that can't, just a heartfelt thanks from me.
for engaging with the book, not because of me, but because my hope and desire for this book is that it lands where it needs to land and makes a difference in a way that's useful for people. And if that's in any way been you, then hooray, thank you. Take care and see you hopefully in a few weeks time, a few days time, I think, actually. Bye bye. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, we'd love you to share the podcast with a friend or leave a comment on social media.
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