A Powerful Conversation:
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The word ‘power’ seem the preserve of a few.
Most of us feel powerless, or else, certainly have felt powerless with certain poeple and situations.
Does this mean we are consigned to being moved, kicked, shoved, defined and assigned by those more powerful than us.
We have all felt, experienced and perhaps are living this even now.
This past week, I went for a four-day training that drew from Gestalt and Ontological Coaching on Facilitating Powerful Conversations.
We considered Dispositions, Language, Emotions, Intution, Somatic Realities and more.
Each of us has a predominant disposition, an approach to life, for example. This is how we navigate life, but each disposition naturally, has downsides which don’t serve us well. One disposition is Stability, where a person draws from the wells of foundational values and a vision of life. New information and data are mapped against this and the Stability disposition can get, let’s say, rather stubborn (someone coming to mind?).
In the churn and cadences over the hours, I kept thinking back to a powerful person who changed the course of human history, but who by all accounts was powerless.
His beginning were humble, his hometown usually spoken off as a putdown. His education wasn’t sterling. He had absolutely no connections, save an old uncle who held some influence, but only when he was on the roster to be the chairman of the committee. We don’t have photographic evidence, but he was apparently ‘plain looking’. He preferred the company of the dubious, down and out, and socially outcast.
But boy did he hold space.
The powerful exude space — theirs — with bold lines for boundaries that scream “do not come near unless…”. But he allowed his to be violated by a bent old woman, children, a weepy once-prostitute, rowdy, fishy-smelling rough deck hands.
But he’s no pushover. He had boundaries which he spoke, lived and even drew in the sand. It’s called truth. Step on those, and you could get a real earful filled with the most colourful and even vitriolic language: brood of vipers and whitewashed tombstones, to name two.
