The power of connection
How you connect is just as important as who you connect with
I’m offering a free introduction to Self-With-Others, an approach to living and thriving in an interconnected world.
It takes the form of 14 emails — two per week sent over 7 weeks.
Self With Others is based on exploring three different domains of human experience simultaneously: our inner universe, the network of connections we’re each part of, and the systems we work within.
This is email #3 of the series— looking at connections. If you’d like to access the full sequence of emails in the appropriate order, please use this link: https://www.subscribepage.io/swointroduction
The first of the Three Domains in Self-With-Others was ‘Inner Work’
The second is ‘Connection Work’
It’s tempting to think this means ‘Outer Work’. That’s not quite true. How we connect is certainly more visible by looking at what happens between us and the outer world, but as I wrote in the last email, the inner world is also a web of interconnection.
The discipline of making healthy and effective connection with something outside of us is the same discipline needed to forge healthy connections between parts of our inner world.
The heart of exploring connectedness is recognising the assumptions, expectations and prejudices we bring to our connections.
One of the 8 Principles of Presence I base my work on is: ‘Have No Opinion’.
It’s more challenging than it sounds. We love our opinions. They make us who we are.
They also get in the way of developing from who we are into who we could be. Opinions represent lessons we are bringing from the past into the present. They’re useful, but can be a significant problem if you’re trying to imagine a different future.
If you struggle with a work relationship, are you bringing assumptions to each new conversation? Are you not hearing what’s being said, but hearing only what you expect to be said? Are you assuming you know the motivations of the other person? Are you leaping to conclusions before even starting a conversation, because you ‘know how it’ll go’?
Could you put your assumptions, prejudices and expectations aside and instead be present with the other person? Could you open up and connect with them as they are today, not with how you experienced them yesterday?
If the connection is still not satisfactory, could you accept that though there’s a problem, you retreating into expectation and away from connection means that problem is never going to go away?
Could you commit to making the connection real, immediate and authentic and see what you learn from it?
What about inner connectedness?
What assumptions, expectation or prejudices (‘pre-judgements’) do you have towards yourself?
Do you fail to consider new possibilities for yourself because you ‘know’ they won’t work? Do you expect certain outcomes in life (then achieve those outcomes because they’re the only ones you envisaged, thereby confirming you were right, because things turned out as you expected)?
Can you change how you connect parts of yourself?
Can you recognise that your fears are dominating your excitement and that you need to rebalance?
Can you recognise you’re allowing disappointment from the past to stop you acting in the present?
Can you notice when you’re over-tired and avoid making a big decision until you’re in a better state?
Can you reframe your feelings?
The American Psychological Association defines ‘reframe’ as: ‘a process of reconceptualizing a problem by seeing it from a different perspective.’
It’s a powerful process of altering how the parts of our inner life interconnect so we can create happier, more easeful and effective ways of living.
I once directed a show where the music was composed by a rock musician who played really big gigs. I asked him if he got nervous before the opening night of a small theatre piece he’d composed music for.
He said: “Sure I get nervous. These days I call it excitement’.
That reframe removed all the stress from the job he did and turned into something of unalloyed joy.
It’s not about self-deception — physiologically, nervousness and excitement are almost identical states.
We learn to name feelings early in life. We can learn to rename them.
We can change how we connect with and respond to what our body or mind are urging us to do.
Learning to pay attention to how we connect — with the outer and inner world — gives us the tools to develop, change or discard ways of thinking and being that no longer serve our needs.
It’s part of growing.
After thirty years performing, directing and teaching around the world, now I coach and mentor artists and others to live in joy and creativity. I still perform sometimes, and sell paintings sometimes.
To access the full sequence of Self-With-Others emails, please follow this link: https://www.subscribepage.io/swointroduction
More information about me here: www.johnbritton.co
Email: john@johnbritton.co
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