It's easy having easy conversations with easy people. There's no
training
required. But having hard conversations with hard people isn't
something I've always included in my list of favorite things to do. In
the past I've even shied away from being
trained
to do it. It takes a certain guts, a certain brass, a certain
verve to start, to
stand for,
to
commit to
a
conversation for
transformationin the face of
demeaning disagreement,
in the face of
insulting skepticism, and (in some cases)
in the face of
outright hostility. When a
conversation for
transformation
is easy, it's easy. When it's not, it's the lions' den. And no,
I'm not about to vacate the lions' den. What I'm about to do is tout
the skill of the lion tamer.
The truth is it calls for a certain authentic power to be in and to
stay in hard conversations with hard people. Even though it hasn't
always been on my list of favorite things to do, I do it because
uncovering the access to this authentic power, is worth it. And when I
discover the access to this authentic power, I can embody it. These
days I'm willing to request
training
from and be
trained
by others in this regard. Mostly I
train
myself. And the way I
train
myself to be in hard conversations with hard people is by not shying
away from being in hard conversations with hard people.
You can't embody what you don't fully experience. And you can't fully
experience what you're unwilling to experience.
In the realm of sharing
transformation,
there's the preaching to the choir audience (when you're
sharing with people who already got it). Then there's the
enrollable audience (when you're touching, moving, and
inspiring people to
transform
and invent new possibilities for their lives). And then there's that
third group who, no matter what you share or how you share it, will
resist
transformation
for all they're worth - that is to say the
machine they
are
will resist
transformation
for all they're worth.
Standing
for
transformation
is to
stand
where all human beings stand, and to enroll others in this
stand.
Enrolling others in this
stand
isn't akin to persuading people to vote for it - like
persuading people to vote either Republican or
Democrat. It's not akin to persuading others to agree with your
political opinion and to vote the way you vote. Enrollment is akin to
offering people direct access to the possibility of
who they really are.
The event enrollment occurs in the
context
of being rather than in the
context
of agreeing.
When we hear the possibility of
transformation
for the first time, what it is may not be readily obvious to us (if it
were,
the world
would be
transformed
by now, yes?). But it's more than that actually. It's the possibility
of
transformation,
when heard for the first time, can be threatening - which
is to say the possibility of
transformation
when heard for the first time, can be perceived as
threatening. And when people perceive they're being threatened, they
(which is to say we) will do anything in self-defense, ...
anything ... at ... all
.... And notice I didn't say "When people are threatened ...". I
said "When people perceive they're being threatened ...".
Big difference.
When people perceive they're being threatened by you speaking
transformation,
regardless of whether the threat is real or
imaginary (and mostly it's never real), it takes a certain
willingness, a certain
commitment,
a certain
presence
to stay in a
conversation for
transformation
with them, keeping enrollment as your
intention.
The highbrow intellectual debate and reasoning against
transformation
isn't personal. It's just a defense mechanism - and it's a
predictable defense mechanism at that. They're defending
themselves against an imaginary threat, and they're not agreeing
with you. That's all. And:
so what?!
It's not a big deal. Listen carefully: if you require them to agree
with you for your
conversation for
transformation
to be valid, for it to be enrolling, for it to be
authentic,
you have no power. Gee! I hope you get this ...
Standing fortransformation
in a
conversation for
transformationin the face of
no agreement, is like
standing
in the lions' den. That's not necessarily true, by the way. But
it can feel like that sometimes. It's nothing to shy away from. Rather
it's something to get practiced at. It's something in which to
train
yourself. To do so is to discover the access to your own authentic
power.