Who are you trying to change?
If we want to make the world a kinder place, then it might not be about the language or models that we use, it might be all about us.
How do you make other people become more compassionate, grounded and able to engage well with conflict?
That was one of the questions that we chewed over today in a session of my Hot to Fight Well course - and it's one that comes up quite frequently.
We talked about how many people aren't necessarily interested in understanding their needs or getting into a better relationship with their nervous system.
They might naturally be dismissive of these kind of conversations and/or be fixed in their way of relating to the world around them.
So how do you get them to engage with these ideas if you want to change the world for the better?
I always say that it can help to talk about it in language they understand - which is why I often use models that are rooted in western science and rationality.
I found very early on that if I talked in the pseudo-spiritual language that I came across in practices like Nonviolent Communication, it can alienate and push many people away.
But ultimately, I always come back to the underlying bias that drives all of my work: you can't really change other people, only have some kind of passing influence - and you certainly can’t change them through explanations.
The best way to take different ways of being into the world is by embodying them yourself because you've fully understood and integrated them - and because they genuinely serve you.
We were on this planet in one form or another for millenia, surviving and thriving, before we developed language, let alone the modes of intellectual thinking that dominate our society today.
We passed on information, settled conflicts and built societies through non-verbal means - and I don't mean we just had sign language - I mean that we had to communicate it through how we were.
We still do this and it's called limbic resonance.
It's a theory they talk about in interpersonal neurobiology - the way that we relate to each other through unconsciously feeling the state of the other person's nervous system.
While these states are translated into body language and even verbal communication, they are something you feel at a much deeper level, even if you don't know it.
It’s why your dog might come to comfort you when you’re sad and why people use horses to support ex-military personnel suffering from PTSD
In human-to-human relationships it's most noticeable when you ask someone: "How are you?", they respond with "I'm fine" and despite there being no explicit sign that they are not, every fibre of your being tells you that this isn't true.
So how does this relate to developing a more compassionate, tolerant or simply constructive way of being in the world?
Well, you can develop all the clever tools, language and models you want but if you can't embody the underlying state, you pass on nothing.
While you may be able to explain things in a clear or artful way, the dissonance between what you say and how you are undermines your integrity.
Even if people don’t cognitively pick up on this gap, even if they nod and smile, make notes and go out to practice what you’ve told them, they will soon find that their practice comes to very little, because they haven’t really had the teaching.
In traditional martial arts and spiritual practice, the difference between having this and not having it - the act of a style or discipline being passed down from teacher to student - is known as ‘transmission’
If you can truly embody these states that you wish to transmit, then the tools and models are just icing on the cake. When people are with you, as a coach, facilitator, partner, parent or teacher, their nervous system will naturally pick up on yours and resonate with it.
If we instead spend our working lives focused outwards, on how to change other people in order to make the world a better place, we may find that this leads to a life that's wasted.
And when we are able to properly investigate our underlying need or drive for acting in that way, we will often find that our efforts are underpinned by a sense of not being OK with the everything as it is.
Driven by a sense of feeling unsettled at our core.
Why else would we dedicate so much time and effort trying to bend and manipulate the world around us so that it feels safe or loving?
If we double down on walking the talk - to first and foremost pay attention to and work on ‘our selves’ - then people will pick up on this and respond to it.
When we show up with all of that available for the people who rely on or relate to us, we have a chance to make a difference.
So the irony is that if we really want to have an influence on the world around us, we have to give up trying and focus on nothing but how we are in ourselves.
Once we do stop this fruitless pursuit, then perhaps it doesn’t matter whether you’re a therapist, a changemaker, a primary school teacher, a barista or slinging burgers at a fast food joint - you’ll still be a more effective agent for a kinder world.
So thought provoking and insightful. I’ve often heard it said that you can’t change other people, only yourself, but have never known how or where to begin doing this. Your description of being or embodying the change helps illuminates how it is not something that requires “dong”, rather that this is a process we may have already started by reading this piece, and one we can quietly continue in our own way.