Grievance Story vs. Hero Story
We would start by saying that forgiveness is a very important step in changing difficult, repulsive feelings into light and motivating ones. With forgiveness, you don't have to love what happened, but you accept that "what was, was, what happened, happened." We are no longer angry at the person who hurt us, nor at ourselves for letting it happen. All we do is stop fighting fate, life, and the past, and accept that we can no longer change it. In essence, we step out of our Grievance History.
The next step after acceptance is clarity and a conscious decision. A decision to transform our Grievance Story into a Hero Story.
At this point, it is important to highlight the word “story”, which is the telling of an event, primarily to ourselves. Our subject waiting to be forgiven and processed has a history and to understand this, we need to know a certain connection, a chain of events. To process and understand this, an internal monologue is necessary. When we consciously rewrite our story, we primarily rewrite this monologue, our internal communication with ourselves. This new communication gives us the new narrative and the dynamics of our transformation.
Communication with ourselves can be verbal or non-verbal. If we are in the Grievance Story, we may often say to ourselves, “I am so tired,” or we may just non-verbally look into the mirror where a Victim is looking back. With just one glance, we can receive serious information and confront our current identity markers, our archetype. When we want to be in our power and want our most beautiful face to look back, we rewrite this internal communication.
Before we communicate with others, we consciously or subconsciously communicate with ourselves, discuss things, express opinions about our own things, our thoughts, our feelings, our appearance. This communication, self-talk, internal monologue has an effect on the interpretation of internal and external stimuli and has the power to transcribe internal experiences.
Positive and negative communication with ourselves plays a key role in our mental and emotional health, our self-expression, and our creative power. According to experts, becoming aware of our own communication is the foundation of all other forms of communication. This internal communication is therefore an extremely powerful and pervasive tool for changing our thinking and regulating our own actions.
We can consciously change the self-deprecating or bitter inner monologue and take our voice, and thus our communication, to a whole new level. You have certainly already connected to this higher quality of your voice, your communication, as we have all used positive affirmations, mantras, prayers. In every tradition, we encounter the Creator as the inner voice of conscience.
Once, we have started an honest, positive, self-aware conversation with ourselves, where we can express our emotions arising from our clarity, where we can state our challenges and self-supporting decisions to ourselves, once we are comfortable using positive affirmations, mantras, or prayers, we can introduce these techniques into our communications with others.
Communication with others always has at least two actors and two fundamental questions: Do you understand what I'm saying? Do I understand what you're saying?
Someone might look at us with big, curious eyes and we think, "Oh my God, you're interested," and we'd go on and on and on. It is very well possible that he didn't really understand a word we said in the last five minutes, but he didn't know how to express it.
That's why we often end up talking past each other, even though we both meant well. But we don't have time to clarify, because we have to rush somewhere again. That's why communication is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. It's a big help in talking past each other, if we start communicating and listening more consciously. If we talk, if we speak out loud, it doesn't mean we're right. It means we're trying to articulate and express our thoughts. And it's possible that we're full of biases, that we don't have enough information, or that we can't speak very well, or maybe we're emotionally overheated.
Because of the above, we try to place great emphasis in our coach training on recognizing the place from which we communicate and the possible other place where the other person hears it.
Integral coaching generates new perspectives in communicating with others, can shed light on our blind spots, and helps us distinguish that our thoughts reflect our particular worldview and not the absolute truth. The extent to which participants can subjectively interpret a story and how they can tell it completely differently based on their own interpretation was called the Rashomon effect in the 1950s.
It takes its name from Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, in which four witnesses tell the same story in four contradictory ways, with self-serving agendas. In other words, this is what the characters are doing: I look out of MY window from this room, and I see the world through MY curtains. This is my worldview, this is my belief. So the Rashomon effect emphasizes the importance of understanding that people's perspectives are shaped by their cognitive biases, emotions, and personal experiences. In the end, there is no resolution to the actual incident, and the director leaves it up to the audience to come to terms with the contradictory events in their minds.
The place we find ourselves after watching a movie is very similar to when we are a part of or witness to a controversial conflict. We would like to list three important and useful components that we can use in communicating with others:
The first is to recognize our own and others' motivations in the conversation.
The second is how this motivation is driven by our inner personality.
And the third is for the participants, including ourselves, to remember that we want to solve the problem by consensus, so the opinions of each group member must be taken seriously and considered.
One of the strengths of our communication with others is our ability to resolve conflict. Any problem, big or small, within a community very often begins with poor communication. Someone is not paying attention, not listening. ... or Someone is not speaking ... Two monologues do not create a dialogue. What other challenges can arise during a dialogue?
It often happens that we don't dare to ask back, but say: "We believe that ... " or ... "We think that ..." and we react from that. These associated thoughts or beliefs, like filters, have often been placed on our communication in the past and we react from this past instead of being in the present tense. If we consciously feel and recognize that we would immediately jump to a word, phrase, a gesture, an emphasis, then there is a high probability that a past memory has appeared, whether from childhood, from our parents, from school or even from a previous workplace.
So we ask you to look at what it is that can tip YOU over in a conversation. Words? Style? Volume? What emotions do they evoke in you? Anger? Frustration? Fear?
Once we recognize the presence or, better yet, the origin of these “trigger” points within ourselves, the conversation can stay in the present. This way, we can objectively and calmly see who our conversation partner is, what communication style we need for the situation, and we can ask questions back.
Azon kívül, hogy felismerjük és átírjuk érzékeny pontjainkat és jelen időben maradunk a beszélgetésben, hogyan lehet még hatékonyan kommunikálni?
Besides recognizing and rewriting our sensitive points and staying in the present tense in the conversation, how else can we communicate effectively?
We can listen to words and their true meaning and significance without the filters of the past. This is facilitated by active listening. Because you may hear what others are saying, but are you really listening to them?
People's minds wander when others are speaking, especially in a group setting, and they don't really hear what is being said and only pay attention when an opinion that contradicts theirs is expressed. If you disagree with what is being said, it helps to ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions do not have a yes/no answer. Every parent knows these questions because when children reach the 2-year-old “Down with the Up” stage, we don’t ask yes/no questions. For example, “Are you thirsty?” Instead, a good question is: “What do you want? Water or tea?” So in open-ended questions, we use the question words what, where, who, how, and why. With these, we can defuse conflict situations in a conversation without conflict.
Communication can be aggressive, which involves violent and hostile speech and alienates others. It can also be passive, where thoughts, feelings, and desires are not expressed.
Communication can be aggressive, which involves violent and hostile speech and alienates others. It can also be passive, where thoughts, feelings, and desires are not expressed.
The highest level of communication aims to resolve conflict while keeping the needs of all parties involved in mind – neither giving in nor trying to dominate the other. It helps human relationships in conflict resolution, cooperation, and consensus.
We talked about recognizing and rewriting our own “trigger points,” active listening, using open-ended questions, and different communication styles. All of these can help us rewrite our conversations.
But, if you are a leader of a group, it is very effective to set clear expectations and rules of the game in communication. For example, this could be that we do not interrupt each other. Or that criticism can only be positive and not vitriolic.
Last but not least, change in our lives – whether personal or communal – is always based on awareness and sincere inner work. By rewriting our own story and making our communication conscious, we can create a more truthful, supportive and harmonious reality. Because “the world is what we are.” Change begins first and foremost within, by renewing our own perspective and inner monologue, and then everything else happens “outside”. Only in this way can we become the true hero of our own life and our own story.
Nelson Mandela said, “The greatest thing I have learned is that the greatest change is the one we make within ourselves.”