by Dr. Heléna Kate | Dec 7, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
It\’s easy to feel disempowered when reading the news, driving down the street, or simply moving through life. We read about the recent terrorist attack in Paris. We get stuck in traffic next to a driver who yells profanely at the person who cut him off. We find out that a family member became sick. And we slowly emotionally withdraw from the world around us.
Throughout our lives, we experience so many negative things that it can seem impossible that our actions could make a positive difference or have a lasting impact on this ever-changing world. We ask ourselves: how can one person change the world – how can I stop hatred, face adversity, and create social equity? When we don\’t come up with an answer, we resign ourselves to the \”fact\” of negativity. We stop ourselves from seeking solution.
The hard truth is, though, that apathy is noxious. Giving up in the face of adversity leaves us feeling like a half a person.
Yet – as many brilliant leaders have shown us – you can’t fight your way to a better world. When we use anger and angst to resolve a problem we only create a new problem or compound the old one.
We need different tools to create the change we desire. These tools are love, truth and compassion. They make up a set of holistic and healing approaches to adversity that transforms the world around us. The best part is that these tools have always been with us.
I believe that the entire world benefits when you choose to build your life with these tools. Bringing love, compassion and truth to each situation you face takes practice, though. And this is why I developed my LifeWork Virtual Program – which offers weekly practices that help you cultivate awareness and develop skills that make your life easier and more rewarding.
These practices are instrumental in creating positive change in the world around us. For this week\’s article, I\’m going to talk about three of these practices today.
Love
\”Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.\” Buddha
Love is the most powerful, world-changing tool we have. I\’m fully aware of how Pollyanna this sounds. My challenge to you, though, is: try it! Get your heart-broken, feel disrespected, lose something you really cherish and see how quickly you can move on from the negativity you feel into LOVE. It takes a high degree of awareness and sophistication to experience our negativity and move beyond it into a place of love. Anyone who has walked this path knows that this is the way of a REAL bad-ass.
The first thing we need to do is cultivate love inside ourselves. To do this we need to hunt down the barriers to love that live within us more ferociously than we hunt down barriers to love in the world outside us.
This does not mean that we turn hatred toward these parts of ourselves. It means we see them, accept them and let them go.
Truth
\”If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.\” Jesus Christ
Truthfulness is a time-honored and respected trait. To be truthful is to be honest and trustworthy. It requires a commitment to speaking and acknowledging the truth, and to acting with integrity. When we have our truth we also have our respect and love.
While philosophically there are many types of truth, the truth I\’m talking about here has a dynamic holism that is much more easily experienced than written about.
There is a paradox around truth, though, and it\’s this: truth does not make anything untrue. Whenever you negate something, there is a lie present. Truthfulness allows for multiple perspectives in a way that honors each of those perspectives.
One very common example of this is that if you make yourself wrong you\’re not living your truth – nor are you allowing others to live theirs.
Compassion
\”No man is a true believer unless he desireth for his brother that which he desireth for himself.\” Muhammad
To be compassionate is to open your heart to the suffering of others. Compassion, to me, is a healing action. When we offer compassion to ourselves or others we are, in fact, healing ourselves or others. One of the best ways to practice compassion is to tend to our own pain and suffering. Without a doubt, one thing we gain from our own hardship is an ability to give love to others while they experience hardship of their own.
Still, sometimes we might find ourselves feeling closed off or judgmental about others who are in a difficult spot. We can feel wronged and because of this feel justified in wanting understanding from the other person. When we do this, we withhold our compassion and do not give our understanding to the person we feel wronged us.
If you want to have an impact on the world, each time you feel wronged stop and take a moment to understand the other person\’s perspective.
While none of these skills are easy, they are all quite simple and in the reach of every single one of us all the time. We don\’t need to start a movement or become a politician to have an impact. We only need to focus on being a better person and sharing this with the world.
I will leave you with this quote from Rumi. \”Listen with the ears of tolerance. See through the eyes of compassion. Speak with the Language of love.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jul 30, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
I listen for a living. Over the years, I\’ve developed my ability to listen into what people say and – sometimes more importantly – what they don\’t say. My ability to listen closely to my clients is a big part of how I help them get the results they seek.
Really listening to what people say has changed my life in many ways. Over time, I\’ve witnessed many unique experiences, feelings, and thoughts behind a person’s individual perspective. This has strengthened my compassion and broadened my world-view.
This week I\’d like to explore the art of listening and how it can change your life for the better.
Learning to Listen Can Change Your Life
Listening is central to creating relationship. When you deeply listen to what someone says, they feel cared about and understood. People who feel cared about and understood will undoubtably change your life for the better. However, the real impact of listening is how it changes you.
During our lifetime, we hit a million instances of misunderstanding. In fact, most of us spend a lot of time feeling misunderstood. Regardless of how much each of us might try, it\’s virtually impossible to easily navigate the myriad of perspectives contained in each person with total understanding.
This is why it feels so good when we come across someone who is willing to really listen to us. When a person listens to what we say, they show us they care. They demonstrate their desire to know what we think and feel. They want to understand. Their willingness to be present to our thoughts and feelings encourages our loyalty. The payoff is that we\’re much more likely to go to bat for someone who has worked hard to understand what we\’re all about.
But, truth be told, there is a greater benefit to listening well. When we learn to listen, we stop – or at the very least decrease – the amount of misunderstanding there is in the world. The simple act of listening contributes to everyone\’s overall sense of connectedness and wellbeing. Here\’s how this happens –
We learn to see other points of view:
Each of us live in a bit of a bubble. Even the most reflective of us spend the majority of our time reinforcing our established beliefs. If we do not try to see things through other people’s eyes, well, we just don’t. In the best case scenario, this entrenchment in our own perspective leads to misunderstanding. In the worse case scenario, this mode of myopic thinking contributes to things like hate-crimes and wars. Yet, our ability to see other people’s points of view can have powerful and lasting effects. It can inspire innovation and change the course of cultures.
We develop our ability to empathize:
To \”walk a mile in someone else’s shoes\” is a standard piece of wisdom for a really good reason. While seeing another’s point of view can be helpful for creating intellectual understanding, empathizing helps us feel into the emotional factors that guide other\’s beliefs. Empathy forms a “human” bond. It allows us to disagree and still relate to other person\’s emotional experience. This increases our desire to find solutions that benefit both parties.
We stop the cycle of reaction:
When we chose not to listen, understand or empathize, we\’re likely to get caught up in reactivity. In these moments, we will inevitably disagree or get triggered by another person\’s actions. If we don\’t stop to listen or try to promote mutual understanding, we\’re likely to react to what is being said versus responding to it. This makes matters exponentially worse. Listening helps us break the cycle of reaction and creates new outcomes.
We see our limitations:
If we have enough ego-resilience, we can deal with being wrong and we recognize that we are limited – just like everyone else is. Listening to others and suspending our judgments can help us recognize our own limitations and support us to grow and change in positive ways. The very first limitation that listening is likely to reveal is our need to be right. In order to listen well we need to put aside this need. Instead, we must chose to truly hear what the other person is saying.
We see our contributions to misunderstanding:
We often unconsciously do things that perpetuate misunderstanding Our default patterns can go unnoticed if we don\’t listen to other people’s perception of us. By deeply listening to others, we can start to see how we have contributed to the challenges at hand.
So, if you want to change the world, you can start by getting quiet and listening to the people around you. Begin to let what others say and how they say it challenge or even change your limited ways of being in the world. And, by doing this, you may open up the potential for all of us to co-exist more peacefully.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 30, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
“Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? Are you sure you love me? You will ask this a dozen times and drive the person nuts. But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you’re angry? When someone is angry, you don’t doubt it for a moment. Yet the reverse should be true. We should doubt the negative in life, and have faith in the positive.” ― Christopher Pike, Remember Me
The holiday season brings up feelings of stress and lack for many of us. I personally find myself thinking about the gifts I cannot afford to buy, the tensions in my family relationships and the things that did not happen in a year drawing to a close.
I came across the above quote today and it spoke to me very strongly and inspired me to try to reframe all that is to come in the next weeks. I am personally committing to being more positive, during this time and end my year the way I hope to begin my new one – with compassion, patience and joy – and I invite you to take the challenge with me.
Lets commit to taking time to pause, to reflect and to focus on the good that we do have, not our places of lack. To focus on what is good and right about our lives and especially our relationships instead of the places where they are painful. To celebrate the end of the year by celebrating the areas of our life where there is abundance, where there has been growth and where we are proud and joyful.
One of the ways I am staying focused on the positive is by taking 10 minutes to write about what I am grateful for from now until the last day of the year. Join me in this exercise and lets end this year on a positive note no matter WHAT comes our way.
Blessings to you in this very special, potent and beautiful time of year!
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Sep 14, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
A lot of times, especially when working with women, we hear that they over-give, over-accept, and over-care. These people might hear my message, “Care more” and say to themselves \”The solution to being more successful and fulfilled can’t possibly be to care more? Can it?\”
Well, actually, yes.
But, if you are one of these people, you don\’t need to care more about others – you need to care more about yourself.
If you are hurting, you are not caring for yourself. You are hoping that if you care for someone or something else that you will get that care back.
Caring should not hurt, period.
Sometimes, people get caught in the trap of shutting off their care because they got hurt one too many times and don’t want it to happen again.
If this is you, you may respond to the message, “Care More” with \”No way that always ends badly! Isn’t it smarter to make sure I can trust that there will be a good outcome before I invest my care?\”
Well, while you always want to use your head, basically, no.
If you are one of these people, I have one question for you: How is it working? Have you managed to stop getting yourself hurt?
The problem with cutting off your care is that as humans, we want to care. It feels better to care! When we cut off our caring due to fear it leads to numbness and you will not find fulfillment from being numb, trust me.
So, your solution is the same as above. You need to be able to care for yourself exquisitely to be able to care for others.
Lastly, there are people who believe it is all dog-eat-dog and that all this caring stuff is the worst. They are not on my list. In fact, they think that I am super annoying. All they need to do, is live in the world that they built…
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 19, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Everything in life starts and ends with relationships. Imagine trying to build wealth without others. Imagine trying to be happy without others. Imagine trying to learn without others.
Our very existence starting from the womb has relied on our relationships to others. But there are no rule books for relationship building. We grow up learning to read and write hoping our connection skills learned on the playground are good enough to get by.
If your wealth, education, love, and even happiness is contingent on others, imagine what would happen if you upgraded the way built and engaged your relationships? Your life would change right in front of your eyes.
I believe there are 7 principles for building meaningful relationships. I’ve noticed these principles show up no matter what. I believe they are universal rules. They apply no matter what culture you’re in, where in the world you may be, or what time in history it is. They’re fundamental for life, love, and business.
The 7 principles are:
- 1. Our external relationships are a reflection of our internal relationship
- 2. Focus your mindset on giving unconditionally
- 3. Serve others how they want to be served
- 4. A relationship must be give and receive (sometimes you say no)
- 5. Get on peoples maps…empathize
- 6. Always make others feel safe
- 7. Honor every behavior because it has an intended positive outcome, no exceptions
#1: Our external relationships are a reflection of our internal relationship
Our experience of life on the outside is a reflection of the internal relationship we have with ourself.
If you operate from scarcity, believe people are out to screw you, and you’re not worthy of receiving, how will your relationships look?
But if you’re abundant, believe people want to help you, and you’re deserving, what will your relationships look like? Meaningful relationships are a reflection of the way we build relationships with ourselves.
This is also why I believe in bringing interpersonal work into business strategy. While the givegive methodology is a business methodology for growing sales through relationships with our clients and partners, the success of these relationships are based on our ability to develop a relationship with ourselves. The interpersonal work is as important, if not much more important than the strategy.
#2: Focus your mindset on giving unconditionally
Have you ever met someone that you felt an instant connection to? And have you ever met someone you disliked right away? What lets you know to like someone and what lets you know to dislike someone?
Every relationship happens in three layers. The first layer is what can be observed on the outside. The second is what is happening in the conscious minds of both people. And third is what is happening in the subconscious minds of both people. It’s in this mind where the subconscious is scanning 2 millions items of information every second for anything that lets them know its unsafe.
When we focus on giving unconditionally, we unconsciously align our body movements, posture, tone of voice, and the words we use with the best interests of the other person.
#3: Serve others how they want to be served
This is an upgrade from the golden rule- “do unto others as you want done unto you”. Instead, it should read, “do unto others as they want done unto them.” While serving others the way we want to be served in theory makes sense, it assumes that others experience what we want in the same way we do. This is in fact not true.
In order to build the life meaningful relationships, you have to commit to identifying what others want, and serve them how they want to be served.
#4: A relationship must be give and receive
Sometimes its really easy to focus on giving unconditionally and serving others the way they want to be served. But it can be really hard to receive.
A relationship is a two way street. With only one person giving and not receiving, it’s not a relationship. When we deny the ability for the other person to give, we deny them principle 2 and 3. Therefore, we have an obligation to receive just as much as we have an obligation to give.
#5: Get on peoples maps (empathize)
It’s easy to assume we understand what others mean when the use the same words that we do. But what their words mean might be completely different that what those same words mean to you.
For example, if someone said, “I’m going to make $150,000 this year.” You might interpret that as being a lot of money, but they may be worrying about how they’re going to pay their bills.
Each person has their own map for how they experience the world and until you can empathize with others from their viewpoint, you are not truly building a relationship (the root word “relate” being a key point).
We don’t know until we focus on learning how the other person experiences the world. This is their map. When you can learn how the other person sees the world through their beliefs about it, you can start to connect in a whole new way.
Everything in life starts and ends with relationships.
#6: Always make others feel safe
So many interactions are unsafe for others. Without safety, the other person can never truly open up and be vulnerable. Imagine trying to hang out with someone that’s afraid they’re in danger. Will they be focused on connecting? Will they present? Will they talk about things that are meaningful? Of course not, they’ll be focused on not dying.
As silly as this might sound, when we feel unsafe, we remain it fight or flight until it the perceived danger is gone. Just like keeping the engine of the car running permanently incase you need to drive away in a hot second. It’s our jobs to focus on ensuring others feel safe, so we can bring them into a place where they will open up and share the most meaningful parts of them. This is where real bonds are formed.
#7: Honor all behavior because it always has an intended positive outcome, no exceptions
This is perhaps the hardest principle to accept but is also the most important. Every single behavior, from the most joyful to the most horrendous, has an intended positive outcome.
There are two main drivers of behavior- pain and pleasure. We humans always make the best available choice at any given time between these two choices. Often, the choices are both painful so we will always take the less painful choice.
For example, why did so many men run out into walls of machine gun fire during D-day in WWII? Because while that was an extremely painful option, not running out and letting down their country or potentially being shot by their commander in the boat was far more painful. While this principle doesn’t excuse hurtful behavior, it allows for you to empathize with others. If they had a better more pleasurable option, they would be making it. But when people do things that are not seen favorably, just remember it’s the best available option to them. If they had a better one, they would have taken it.
This is by far the hardest principle to accept but it’s one that is also the most empowering one of them all. If you can own this and allow it to guide your interactions, you can free yourself from outcomes due to the behavior of others.
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Keep these principles top of mind as you interact with others. Your success relies on relationships with your clients, partners, associates, and community. The more you can build and strengthen these relationships, the more abundance you will create both in dollars to your business but also in your experience of life.
reblogged from thegivegive.com
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