Fresh Start Monday #66: Building deeper connections with Authentic Relating
Two weekends ago, I attended a full weekend in-person course on Authentic Relating.
My two main goals for the weekend:
Continue to tune into my present emotions better and communicate them with others around me.
Continue to build deeper friendships and bonds with those around me, and better understand how to do that. It's something that's felt harder to do after the pandemic.
From the course notes: Authentic Relating (AR) is a set of Principles and Practices designed to cultivate trustable, empowering and nourishing connections and relationships with everyone in your life.
At its core, AR is making the implicit explicit, the hidden revealed, and the unconscious conscious. This implies that AR is only about revealing more and more of what's already here, rather than importing anything new.
This weekend fascinated me because while we spent 20 hours in person with about 20 other people, I knew almost nothing about where they lived or what they did for work.
We felt a bond without knowing anything about each other.
Why?
Three Levels of Conversation / Depths of Intimacy
All of our conversations with others can be grouped into the following three groups:
Informational - When we talk about objective facts. Most of small talk falls into this. This might happen while talking to strangers or in interactions at work. For example, talking about the weekend, the weather, or sharing details about what happened at an event.
Personal - When we talk about how you feel about things/people/events out in the world or other than the current moment. For example, a cause I care about is... or the Israel-Hamas war makes me feel...
Relational - When we talk and listen in reference to the present moment and present space. What’s it like being here and now together? This is often where we experience the greatest intimacy and connection. For example, being with you, I notice… or when you say that, I feel...
We spent the majority of the weekend in level three. We almost never spent any time in conversation about something not present in that one room.
I honestly found it difficult to spend a sustained period of time in level three. And in real life, we need to spend time at the informational level throughout. However, the course really challenged my assumption of how much information I need to know about someone to feel a connection.
Journal Prompts:
As you look back over the course of the past week, how many of your social interactions were spent in level one, two, and three?
As you look to the week ahead, can you shift certain conversations to a deeper level? Can you skip level one?
Zone of Connection/Equanimity
This was my favorite framework we learned. I'll give definitions to all the terms below but think of Dignity and Humility in the middle of a diagram with Posture on the far left and Collapse on the far right.
(Paraphrasing from the notes) Dignity is the validity and authority of your unique perspective of the world. It's using your voice to speak your truth, and to stand up for what you believe in. Dignity is seeing yourself as a teacher, and that you have something unique to teach the people around you.
Humility is recognizing the validity and authority of the unique perspective of everyone around you. It's listening and learning from the people around you. Humility is seeing the teacher in everyone, and seeing the unique teachings everyone around you has to offer.
If you go too far past Dignity, you go into Posture. Posturing is making yourself bigger than you are, puffing yourself up, making things up to try to cover up an inadequacy or fear.
If you go too far past Humility, you go into Collapse. Collapse is making yourself smaller than you are, becoming the victim, thinking of yourself as worthless.
When you are centered with both dignity and humility, you're grounded and composed and allow true connection to happen.
What I took away from this framework is that I need to bring more dignity into all my online and IRL interactions to attract the friendships and types of relationships I want. I can't just expect them to happen without sharing who I am first.
Journal Prompts
When looking at this framework, do you need to bring more dignity or dignity?
In what situations do you fall into posture or collapse? Or depending on the situation, maybe it's both?
Happy connecting!
Currently reading: Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential AND HOW YOU CAN ACHIEVE YOURS
Finished reading: The Female Brain