The 7 Principles of Fierce Conversations

These principles are taken from Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. Enjoy and Implement!

Principle 1: Master the courage to interrogate reality.

Reality has a habit of shifting. People change and forget to tell each other. Not only do we neglect to share this with others, we are skilled at masking it even to ourselves.

Principle 2: Come out from behind yourself into the conversation and make it real.

While many fear "real", it is the unreal conversation that should scare us to death. When the conversation is real, change occurs before the conversation is even over.

Principle 3: Be here, be prepared to be nowhere else.

Our work, our relationships, our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to transform a relationship, any single conversation CAN. Speak and listen as if this the most important conversation you will ever have with this person. It may be.

Principle 4: Tackle your toughest challenge today.

Burnout doesn't occur because we're solving problems; it occurs because we're trying to solve the same problems over and over. The problem named is the problem solved. Confront the real obstacles. Travel light - agenda free.

Principle 5: Obey your instincts.

Don't just trust your instincts - obey them. Tune in. Pay attention. What we label as illusion is the scent of something real coming close.

Principle 6: Take responsibility for your emotional wake.

The conversation is not about the relationship; the conversation is the relationship. Learning to deliver the message without the load allows you to speak with clarity, conviction, and compassion. (speak the truth in love. Beth)

Principle 7: Let silence do the heavy lifting.

When there is a whole lot of talking going on, conversations can be so empty of meaning they crackle. Slow down the conversation, so that insight can occur in the space between words, and you can discover what the conversation really wants and needs to be about.

T.W.I.S.T.

Oh! We are having fun with fierce women willing to have fierce conversations in the workshops! This week we discovered the secret to Getting Anyone to Do What You Want. T.he W.ay I. S.ee T.hings it's all about how you behave and what you say. BE the kind of person others are pleased to do things for - the kind of person others want to spend time with, to get along with, and to share themselves with.

Communicate honestly, directly, and clearly. EVERYTHING is about the nature and quality of our relationships. We succeed or fail one conversation at a time. Susan Scott, author of Fierce Conversations, says the conversation is not about the relationship - the conversation is the relationship.

She writes, "A fierce conversation? Doesn't fierce suggest menacing, cruel, barbarous, threatening? Sounds like raised voices, frowns, blood on the floor, no fun at all. In Roget's Thesaurus, the word fierce has the following synonyms: robust intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, unbridled, uncurbed, untamed. In it's simplest form, a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real."

You know how I love a word study! I am loving the word fierce - don't you? Stay tuned for the 7 principles of Fierce conversations. Until then BE fierce.

Find Your Music

This week I had wonderful evening with some wonderful women. Lanette Rajski, my friend and colleague, and I facilitated a workshop called Quit the Chaos. Each woman came with some pretty daunting circumstances. Because they were willing to be honest and do some work, everyone left with tools to calm their minds, build energy reserves, and develop stress resiliency. Sometimes the biggest hurdle is carving out time for ourselves - seeing ourselves as worthy and giving ourselves permission to put everyone and everything else aside for few hours.

I want to invite you to do just that. Scroll down and register or click right here for an e-class (one that is delivered to your e-mail inbox and can be done on your own schedule) that will forever change the way you think of your wellness and the importance of taking time out to take good C.A.R.E of yourself! Don't hesitate. Don't tell yourself you will think it over. Don't wait for a "better" time. The time is now. Class begins Monday September 7! AND it is deeply discounted for this offering. See you there!

Now for more of When the Heart Waits. "It's anguish to come to that place in life where you know all of the words and none of the music."

She tells a story of taking a long walk on a chilly evening, feeling restless and frustrated. She came upon a cocoon and immediately knew it was an epiphany to grace her inner darkness; God speaking to her about waiting, transformation, and hope. She broke the twig off and carried it gingerly home where she grafted it, with duct tape, to her own backyard tree. "I stood at the window watching the cocoon, which hung in the winter air like an upside-down question mark. Live the question, God whispered. Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping - they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness."

Summer days are dwindling. Fall is in the air with the promise of quieter and slower days. I know many of you resonate with Sue Monk Kidd's blistered spirit in the face of upheaval, change, and crisis. Are you being asked to enter a cocoon? Do you sense a shift ahead? Is transformation calling to your heart? Are you feeling anticipation - or anxiety - or both? Think of it as an invitation directly from God's heart to yours. Enter the chrysalis. Wait for the sound of the music - YOUR music.

When the Heart Waits

Goodness! The days fly by...I have had a great week with girlfriends at the lake and am currently ensconced in a Chicago suburb with my grandkids. On the way here I began a book given to me at the lake last week, When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd, written in 1990. If you have read any of her books (Secret Life of Bees) you know what a gifted author she is and how her style draws you in. This one is really resonating with me. She talks about change, waiting, and spiritual growth or "soulmaking".

"It's always difficult and risky to try to put soulmaking into words. In many ways waiting is the missing link in the transfromation process...waiting as the passionate and contempative crucible in which new life and spiritual wholeness can be birthed."

She describes her life as making no sense, "curled up into the frightening mark of a question." To all appearances she looked and seemed fine, but inside she was in turmoil with a "chorus of orphaned voices crying out for all the unlived parts of me."

"As a woman I sometimes felt that I had been scripted to be all things to all people. But when I tried, I usually ended up forfeiting my deepest identity, my own unique truth as God's creature."

She began her journey of transformation with T.S.Eliot's question, "Do I dare/Disturb the universe?/ She wondered, "Is it possible that I'm being summoned from some deep and holy place within? Am I being asked to enter a new passage in the spiritual life - the journey from the false self to the true self? Am I being asked to dismantle old masks and patterns and unfold a deeper, more authentic self - the one God created me to be? Am I being compelled to disturb my inner universe in quest of the undiscovered being who clamors from within?"

I wrote to you in the last newsletter that I woud be blogging this month about whatever was put on my heart. I love God's synchronicity and timing. Thank you, Kim for the gift of this book and for listening to the nudge to give it to me. My universe has been disturbed and I am stepping in. I am not yet sure of what I am being asked to do but I know I will be given the grace and strength to meet the challenge.