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Feb 24
2017
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Helen Whitten
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Hampshire Hunt Cottage
Have you ever counted how many houses you have lived in over your lifetime? You might be surprised. I have just calculated that I have lived in some thirty properties over my 66 years. It seems excessive, doesn’t it? These include homes I grew up in, various flat-shares I did as a young girl and three boarding schools that became my home for a period, as well as the houses I have inhabited as an adult. All in all I do seem to have moved a great many times.
The interesting thing is that I can walk, in my mind, through all those houses. I suspect you can do the same. Spatial memories, even when one is older, are more readily accessible than other memories, such as names or dates, I find. The images of the home I lived in as a small child come in snatched snaps and it is harder to picture the logical route through the house but after 5 years old all becomes clearer. And as I walk through the rooms of those homes I remember people, family, friends and pets, with whom I shared those times and places. They have left an imprint on me just as I believe I have left an imprint on them.
The walls of a house seem to collect the energies of those who have passed through. You can sense a happy home the minute you walk through the door. It is invisible but tangible. It is in the air, in the walls. Enter a church, cathedral, mosque or temple and you are almost hit by the silence of the ages and a sense of the prayers that have been shared in those spaces. Those who have visited prisons or concentration camps talk of experiencing a sinister chill as they entered.
A few years ago I visited the temple of Kom Ombo in Egypt, close to the banks of the Nile. I knew nothing about it but gained a sense that the area had somehow been a place of healing in previous eras. When I asked about it I was told that it was indeed a sanctuary and that local villagers even bring their children or relatives here now because they believe that the stone walls hold some healing powers. The building itself seemed to communicate a message, without words.
And now I am on the move again, from our beautiful Hampshire home (see http://www.hellards.co.uk/full-details?profileID=100820004054) as we have decided to downsize. It has made me aware of how each home is perfect for a specific period of time and yet when one is ready to leave there is a feeling that it is now time for another family to enjoy the space. We only ever borrow a home, even if by law we own it for many years. Ultimately it sits there in its own right, often for many centuries. Others have lived there before and others will follow, through wartime or peace. Each person who visits leaves a trace and if you leave it for a period the home loses a little something until you fully inhabit it again.
Our Hampshire house was originally made of two cottages, built in around 1835 and then extended to create a beautiful house. We have enjoyed huge family parties and cosy quiet times together. The garden is lovely, a mix between a typical English country garden and a few pretensions at a French chateau-style with shaped box and a lovely avenue of hornbeam. These were not of our making. We inherited them but have tended and loved them and added a vegetable garden with raised beds as David enjoys seeing the seeds come to fruition.
But we need to move to a smaller house for this next part of our lives and I woke the other morning with the Animals’ song in my head “We’ve got to get out of this place if it’s the last thing we ever do. We’ve got to get out of this place. Girl, there’s a better life for me and you”… and so we know deep inside that it is the time to let go and let someone else enjoy it all now.
But oh dear, the decluttering of many years! How difficult to know which books to keep, which family heirlooms to pass on when most of our children prefer Ikea or retro, which CDs or vinyl. Then there are the endless papers of years of work. Do I keep all the articles I published, the original typescripts of the books I wrote or trust in the digital? But I think if my mother hadn’t written down her memoir on paper I probably would never have found it in a computer filing system, so both of us feel tempted to hang on to more than our children will no doubt thank us for. We will try to pick out just those things that will represent enough of our lifetime’s history but not too much. And in moving from 3000 sq ft to around 1200 sq ft will make all this a rather daunting challenge.
So think of us, and the ghastly process that is involved in selling and buying houses in England, the stamp duty, the chains and the stress. I will let you know how it goes and what I learn about decluttering and becoming the person who lets go her past in order to embrace the new where we now hope to live, in Kew. Something tells me it could make us feel both lighter and younger once we have filled a few skips with what others will probably consider to be rubbish. Indeed, in our efforts so far we have cleared clutter that we had intended to tidy many years ago and have made the rooms brighter and more spacious as a result. It has made me realize that, had we done this before, we could have made the house even more beautiful and enjoyable to live in some time ago.
So on that note, my suggestion would be to declutter now, so that you can enjoy the best of your home today rather than being surrounded by things that you meant to clear ages ago. I found the dusty piles just made me feel downhearted and guilty about procrastinating though I do wonder how well my good resolution to never to allow the piles to mount up again will go! Those distraction activities can be just so appealing, can’t they…?
Feb 13
2017
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Helen Whitten
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“Love is where it falls” is a phrase I first noticed when Simon Callow wrote a memoir, Love is Where it Falls, in which he shared how his agent, Peggy Ramsay, had fallen in love with him, despite the fact that she knew that he was gay and, aged under thirty at the time, also much younger than her seventy-odd years. The friendship was, in his words, “a passionate friendship” but not in a way that could be proscribed by any convention.
I suspect most of you reading this will have experienced how love can, literally, “fall” into your life, often at unsuspecting moments. It might be a look across a room, a chance touch as something is handed to you, a timbre of voice (Leonard Cohen’s Marianne said she fell in love with his voice first) and it may be thoroughly inconvenient and challenging to convention. Having watched The Crown (Netflix) recently I suspect many of us have been reminded of Princess Margaret’s thwarted love of Group Captain Peter Townsend and today we read media comment about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and remember his mother’s much-criticised relationship with Dodi Al Fayed. Diana’s life ended tragically and yet I have lasting memories of her looking very happy in photographs of those last moments on his yacht.
On this Valentine’s Day my mind is drawn to those whose love is judged, criticised or forbidden due to prejudice, cultural or social norms, or religious edicts. It is drawn to those who have to marry someone they have never met and may never love. It is also drawn to those who love one another but are separated by war, poverty, terrorism or family ‘honour’.
And so for those of us who experience love, let’s honour it and know that we cannot make it happen. It happens to us. No dating app algorhythm will ensure that we experience love if that mysterious chemistry is not there. So if it has honoured us with its presence, today is a day to be thankful, even when we know that loving another human being can push us to the limits, and can lead us to challenge ourselves as well as them! It also provides us with the potential to discover depths within us we never knew we had before. So I hope you find the time to celebrate what love you have in your life on this Valentine’s Day and if you aren’t in relationship remember that you are always in relationship with yourself and those around you and that’s just a different sort of love.
Jan 25
2017
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Helen Whitten
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When someone you love is ill everything slows to a stop. The focus of your mind narrows to a pinpoint. Your priorities become clear and all that is less important fades into a grey blur. You want to make it better, wave a magic wand so that all is well and the pain is over. Or take that pain yourself. But you can’t. And nor should you necessarily do so. We learn and gain so much depth and perspective when we go through hard times. Certainly, when I look back on my own life I realize that I would not wish away all the difficulties and tragedies that I have experienced, however painful they were at the time. I have come to see that it is these challenges that provide us with the opportunity to develop some wisdom.
Many years ago I was running a Creativity workshop for Kent County Council and I remember asking the group individually to draw something that gave them a sense of wonder. One woman drew a picture similar to the one below:
When I asked her what the picture meant, she said that once you have children your heart is living many lives, for as they wander around the world on their many journeys, one’s heart is not only on one’s own path but also on theirs. I found it touching and have thought of it often when I think about my children flying across the Atlantic or my grandchildren going to school or nursery for the first time, or taking a school trip. My heart seems to have flown around the world in multiple directions over the last few years. And there is always a sense of relief and gratitude in a safe return, a safe landing. There is also immeasurable joy in a school cup rewarding a 5-year old’s effort, or a 3-year old granddaughter telling me very seriously “When I grow up I want to be a tooth fairy.”
Another friend once remarked that, as a parent, you are only ever as happy as your most unhappy child. I have both experienced this and observed it in my friends who are parents. When a child suffers, you suffer. Now that I am older I find myself thinking about my mother and the worries she still felt for us all, even when she was in her eighties and we children were well into our fifties. We may have been adult but we were still her children and she, too, lived our lives alongside hers.
But, as I am learning, we have to be careful to differentiate and separate ourselves enough not to live our children’s lives too closely, especially when they become adult. One can’t live the lives of others. When my first grandchild was born I was so overwhelmed by love for her that I thought of her every day and perhaps too often. I had to pull my heart back a little and remind myself that she was not my child but that of my son and daughter-in-law and so ultimately the worries, pleasures and immediate concerns about her were theirs, not directly mine. I could love them but at more of a distance than my heart might have chosen! One needs to focus on living one life, on making one’s own life the best and wisest it can be, whilst giving as much love and support to one’s children and grandchildren as one is able.
I frequently remind myself of what I consider to be the wise words of Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet. He writes “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you …You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts… and their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth…the arrow flies and the bow is stable.”
As a parent you may have many ideas and suggestions about how your children live their lives but we have to tread carefully as we do not, ultimately, know what the future holds nor what is a ‘right’ solution to a problem that is not our own problem. One has to trust the child and the universe that they intuit what is right for them.
And that reminds me of the time when I was making a major life change and switching career. My parents loved me very much but were not enthusiastic about my retraining to become a management coach and business trainer. They didn’t understand what the role involved and were nervous of me starting my own business and setting up alone. But something in my gut told me it was the right decision for me – a future that I could see but they couldn’t. And I was right. The last 25 years of setting up and running Positiveworks have been amazing and enabled me to travel the world and meet so many stimulating people. My parents were also right in warning me that it would be hard work and a challenge with an uncertain outcome. But they couldn’t see what I envisaged and if I had listened to their advice I might have deprived myself of some wonderful experiences. I was living in the “house of tomorrow” and they were the stable bow.
So perhaps it is, as I sit in Hampshire with a chilly fog so thick that I can’t even see the hedge at the end of our garden, a timely reminder that we cannot know what the future holds for ourselves let alone our children. And perhaps also to question how many hearts we have trotting along the pavements or flying thousands of miles up in the sky and how many lives we are trying to live – whether we are getting the balance in supporting others enough but not too much. For holding too many hearts too closely can be tiring for us and potentially claustrophobic for them.
And of course I shall hope that my own sons will read this and put me right if the balance of my attention is out of kilter!
Dec 21
2016
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Helen Whitten
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Michelle Obama recently commented that America is a country “without hope”. But I question whether, as we turn towards 2017, any of us can truly live without hope. We can’t afford to focus on the pessimistic view if we truly wish for things not to be as cataclysmic as many people fear. The question is, do we really know what we do want the outcomes to be – for ourselves, our families, countries and the world? Without a vision of a positive future we cannot create it.
It is easy to feel anxious, certainly. We sit at a pivotal moment where all kinds of world situations look as if they could go horribly wrong. Trump and Brexit have shaken up the norms to which we have become accustomed. There is the concerning potential that the clock will be turned back on the Cold War, European alliances, American diplomacy, the balance of power, the position of women’s equality. There have been the tragic events in Berlin, Nice, Paris, Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. Mass migration across Europe. It’s been a year of upheaval.
But we can get caught too easily into what Ekhart Tolle describes as our ‘pain body’ – the part of us that is attracted to negativity and pain. It is a part that the media exploits outrageously – always focusing on the negative dramas of any situation that is occurring in the globe, working on our fear. Even charities have to reinforce negative messages in order to encourage us to give more generously. But fear doesn’t help us stay healthy, nor does it help us to be happy – and remaining as happy as possible on a daily basis is surely a reasonable goal for us all as we head into the new year.
Here I am encouraging you to vision what you really would like to happen next year and beyond. What would you like for yourself as an individual in 2017? What would you like for your family, your work, your community? What would you like for the environment, for your country, for the world in general? What might that look like? How might some of the headlines run? What would you be seeing, feeling, hearing?
In my experience in my own life and as a coach I have seen visualisation work over and over again. People’s goals don’t always happen in the precise format that they want nor within the timescale that they hope for – but virtually always when goals are shaped and action taken towards them I have found that many of those goals are achieved. Indeed, David and I were pleased recently when we looked back over the new year jottings and goals we had created together over the last six years and realized that many of them had come to fruition. So I know that at some stage during December 31st we shall be working out what we wish for ourselves, our families and the world in 2017.
When it comes to world goals it can seem as if we can’t influence the outcomes. And yet if we all spend our time in the negative conversations I have experienced in 2016 focusing on the worst outcomes of Trump, Putin, Brexit, Turkey or Syria then we start to make it a reality before it is even happening. This wastes our precious moment of here and now as we are interrupting our peace of mind with speculative thoughts of catastrophe. No entrepreneur would do this, because they understand that optimism – or what I prefer to call rational optimism – is what initiates opportunity. They might check out the risks but nonetheless maintain a positive focus on how these can be overcome.
Could we therefore vision a world where Trump is not the disaster that we fear he may be, where Putin becomes a benevolent force, where Brexit works out well for all those involved, where IS fizzle out, where there is more integration between religion and races across the world, where women are treated as equals? Could new contracts, new leaders and new alliances actually be a good thing for the world? We may not be able to see this as a possibility today but equally none of us knows what the future holds so perhaps some modesty around our clairvoyant abilities is appropriate?
Let’s not feed the negativity and fear that exists in the world. There has been progress – fewer dictatorships, less bloodshed in war. Let’s build on this. We can’t create future success unless we acknowledge the successes we have created so far. We can’t shape a better world if we don’t know what we are trying to shape.
I won’t have time to write another new year message (we have between 10-16 people staying with us every day now between Christmas and new year!) so on that note may I wish you a very happy Christmas and a 2017 that brings what you would like.
I wish for peace and goodwill for all
Helen
Dec 13
2016
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Helen Whitten
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“When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep… “ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
They say that Christmas is one of the most stressful times of the year for any couple. So as we head towards the chaos of presents, parties, over-indulgence and young children’s excitement, I thought I would share some of the lessons I have learnt about love in my 50 years of endeavouring to get it right (and inevitably not succeeding!). I am not sure that anyone gets it ‘right’ of course. We just muddle along in the confusion that is oneself and another person. But some things work better than others, I have found, and I wish I had known them when I was younger. So here goes…
- I have come to see that love is an activity of the mind as much as the emotion because one sparks off the other. We need to keep love in focus, not just assume it will be there forever without conscious thought. You can train your brain to remember why you fell in love with one another in the first place – the first image, the attraction, the conversations and the interest you showed towards the other in those early days. This activates the emotions and memories that reinforce love even through the pressures of the Christmas season when one is woken early by children or under a deadline to put the turkey on the table at a particular time for the in-laws. I have found that one can fix many of the everyday challenges of living with another person if one holds love central. Once we allow it to fade it is much harder to reignite that wish to be together.
- I have just discovered, at my ancient age, Karen Horney’s model that one can become aware of one’s tendency to respond in three different ways to one’s partner – to turn towards them, to turn away from them or to turn against Realizing that I have a conscious choice as to whether I turn towards my partner and listen to their needs, turn away from them when they ask me for something, or turn against them and get angry, has been a really helpful insight. I become alert to what I am doing and make a more helpful choice, especially when I acknowledge that my response may have had nothing to do with them precisely but more to do with me just being in a bad mood about something completely different! It’s a great model to keep in mind.
- I don’t think I knew enough about the nature of love earlier in life, the give and take, joy and pain that is a natural part of being in relationship. Nor the need to express one’s inner being with one’s partner. I met my ex-husband when I was 18 and was very naïve and rather buttoned-up. I knew nothing about love nor, indeed, at that age much about life either! The myths about “happily ever after” did not prepare me for bumping up against another person’s perfectly legitimate but different habits and moods. Maturity makes a difference. Self knowledge enables us to achieve a degree of honesty about our own quirks and expectations of life and love. We can then learn to question whether those expectations are realistic! After all, the Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn movies of my youth gave us the impression that it would be so easy but of course that was just Hollywood. Perfection doesn’t exist.
- There can be some science to it: I have found that understanding personality types is both interesting and helpful to observe the different way each of us responds to a situation. Myers Briggs (http://www.myersbriggs.org), the HBDI (http://www.herrmannsolutions.com) and the Enneagram (https://www.enneagraminstitute.com) all give insights into why one’s partner does things the way they do and can also help one understand the impact of stress on behaviour. I become horribly nit-picky and anxious when I am stressed. Others become sharp, angry or withdrawn. Getting to the bottom of the emotional concern beneath the behaviour can be enlightening.
- The advent of young children inevitably skews the balance of the relationship. I didn’t realize how many men feel sidelined at the birth of a baby. I could have been more sensitive to this. It’s really difficult to keep the couple relationship central, even in the midst of a child’s demands but nonetheless so important. If you value family then value each other because if the two of you don’t hack it the family falls apart and that is sad for everyone. Divorce is a miserable affair. You won’t see as much of your children and are likely to have less money to spend on yourself or them. So keep the romance alive. Make time for the two of you to be adult, to be lovers and stay on each other’s side, as your children will test you on many levels as the years go by.
- I know it’s really hard in today’s 24/7 digital world to put love before career. But in my experience it can often be far easier to find another job and far less easy to find love with someone you can live with. Watch the balance of priorities in the midst of the reality of having to pay the bills. “I’m doing it all for you” has a hollow ring if you aren’t giving enough attention to the relationship. Being at the bottom of a priority list doesn’t feel good. Review your mutual priorities often as you and your partner’s lives change and the children grow up. Working late and focusing on career is ok some of the time but not all of the time. The reality is that work loses its meaning when life at home is unhappy.
- It’s easy to forget that we will change. When I hear people say things like “She isn’t the girl I married” I think to myself, of course she isn’t because you married her twenty years ago and none of us are the same people we were twenty years earlier (just look back at the photos!). Inevitably each of you will change over the years, and the nature of your relationship will change with time. This is totally natural but can take adaptation, particularly if one of you takes a new turn or develops an interest that you personally can’t understand. I know I found it threatening to be with someone as they changed. But it means a lot to have a partner who encourages you when you try something different – as David does now with my poetry.
- I could have been better prepared for the reality of marriage. What Gibran says is true. Love is a long journey and its lessons are tough and challenging. It isn’t for the faint hearted. It is a decision. A decision to commit, to be loyal, a decision to push through the problems and challenges. A decision to keep the positive aspects of the relationship to the foreground of our mind and not to keep harking back over old wounds or allow a spiral of negative dialogue to build up about how the other person is wrong. All divorces, just as all relationships, take two to create the dynamic. Each has to take responsibility for their part in what they contribute to the union. When you feel like judging or blaming the other person ask yourself “but do I do that too sometimes?”. It’s shameful how often I have realized that I have got irritated about something that, when I reflected on it, I have to accept I do too.
- I read John Gottman’s book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work a few years ago. He describes ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’ that break relationships – criticism, contempt, defensiveness (ouch, how difficult it is to avoid that one!), and stonewalling, which is where you refuse to talk about an issue the other person has raised. The book is full of good advice taken from well-researched cases. Read it, reflect on it, act upon it and it gives you a chance to keep love alive.
- As we get older the number of people we love grows – children, parents, grandchildren, siblings, friends, nieces, nephews and intimate partner. We have room for all of them in our heart but there can be times when, say, a baby arrives or a parent is needy and we get pulled in different directions. Watch for the real need versus the emotional blackmail and don’t lose sight of what really matters to you in the long-term.
- Learning about cognitive-behavioural psychology has been very useful. Reflecting on how we are all fallible and make mistakes, checking whether expectations of one another are rational and helpful. If you find yourself using should, must, ought-to’s in your thinking – “he should know how I am feeling” (even though he is not a mind-reader and you haven’t shared your emotions with him) or “she ought to have understood how difficult my day has been” (even though she hasn’t been there), then check whether your thinking is helping you connect or just pushing you apart.
- Life changes. It was my ex-husband’s 70th birthday last week and David and I went to his party to celebrate. It’s hard to believe that someone you have known since you were 18 is now turning 70 – scary in fact as it means that I must be heading for that number too soon. And 70 is an age I associate with my parents and their friends, not with myself. But of course I’d better learn to live with it. For me the most poignant aspect of the evening was that I could toast my ex for feeling blessed that we have a good relationship, that when either of us is concerned about our sons or grandchildren we can turn to one other and talk about it. That we have been able to share graduations, weddings, children’s parties and Christmas happily together. It’s a lonely place if you can’t talk about what is best for your children with the person who loves them as much as you do. You may not live together but you can remain loving parents, rejoicing in their successes, supporting them through harsh times. It’s not always easy but it means a great deal to those children when you do manage it. If you are parents you will be parents for life. No-one else cares for your children as much as the two of you do. So it’s worth keeping that relationship on good terms and I know many families who will be celebrating Christmas happily with ex-spouses and their extended families.
I love Christmas but it is often a muddle of family relationships, burnt gravy, spilt red wine on white carpet, noise and chaos. Acceptance, forgiveness and a sense of humour work wonders at releasing you to enjoy whatever happens. There’s no perfect template for living. Nor for love. But some things help, and as it has taken me to reach the age of 66 before I learnt many of them, I thought I would share them with you so that hopefully you don’t have to be the slow learner I have been!
Nov 30
2016
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Helen Whitten
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I don’t know about you but I found the interaction between boys and girls pretty confusing when I was growing up. At my kindergarten the boys would chase me with stinging nettles and spiders and yet I was the one who got into trouble when I screamed. The teachers didn’t reprimand the boys for scaring me. This seemed thoroughly unfair and left me with a sense that they were more powerful than I was. I was relieved when I moved on to an all girls’ school. But did this then cocoon me in an unnatural world where I wasn’t learning how to manage the opposite sex? Or sex? I do remember being rather horrified when boys tried to touch me up at teenage parties and finding it tricky to balance being polite and considerate with being firm enough to say “no”.
In a week where we have learnt of the sexual abuse of boys by football coach Barry Bennell, it becomes clear that young children find it difficult to assert their rights, even when they know that what is being suggested is wrong. Yesterday morning on the Today programme Maria Miller, Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, recounted that 2/3 of girls in school report being harassed sexually by their male peer groups, being called names such as slut or whore, being touched inappropriately and being rated for sex appeal. I feel lucky that didn’t happen at my school.
Ranulph Fiennes recently spoke very movingly about his own experience of being sexually harassed at school, which he writes about in his book Fear: Our Ultimate Challenge (Hodder & Stoughton). We need to help girls and boys find the language and behavioural skills to manage these bullying situations as today’s young people can suffer not only in the playground but also through social media, sexting, and at home. Mental illness among the young is increasing and incidents of bullying and harassment can lead to conditions such as depression, anxiety, self-harm and anorexia, so the more skills we give children to counteract these experiences the better for them, their families and also for the hard-pressed NHS.
It may seem strange but I didn’t realize until mid-life that I had as much right to my opinion and needs as the next person. I, like many girls, was brought up, both at home and in school, to be helpful, polite, accommodating. I am not alone. In my experience many people only learn about assertiveness skills and managing conflict when they are in their 30s or 40s and are sent on a training course at their place of work. But we need to be taught these behaviours earlier in life. Saying no is difficult in many different situations. I know many people who find it tricky to say no to a boss’s demands on a project at work. I knew girls who had sex with boys because they felt it too impolite to say no. They didn’t necessarily want to make love but felt that a rejection might be rude, uncool, or hurtful to the boy. Looking at the research on today’s teenagers it would appear that this still happens.
We are basically talking about power and how to enable children to feel powerful in themselves but not have to wield that power over others. It isn’t always easy to speak up for yourself, especially when the other person is older than you or in a position of authority. But it has to start with the self – with each individual working out for themselves what their personal boundaries are, what they are or are not willing to go along with, whether in relationships or in other areas of life such as drugs or crime. If we don’t have this clear within us then we can’t express it to others and there is no reason why they should be expected to know it intuitively.
The need to know what one stands for and where one is going was brought home to me when I did a leadership day with horses, which I may have mentioned before as a life-changing moment. I was put in a ring with a horse with no bridle and I had to somehow persuade him to follow me. It was only once I became absolutely clear where I wanted him to go and had embodied that sense of direction in my body language that he deigned to follow me. I had to make my intention clear to myself first and not give fuzzy or ambiguous messages. When others know what you stand for they often – though not always – respond with respect. We can help young people to be prepared for either.
Growing up is complicated. Well let’s face it, life and other people can be complicated! We have to learn to develop the confidence to express our needs and opinions. Schools can provide a safe environment in which children can begin to think about the social areas of life. They can introduce topics such as values and principles and, through questions, help the child to identify their own set of values and boundaries. My colleague Diane Carrington and I wrote a book on this subject called Future Directions: Practical Ways to Develop Emotional Intelligence and Confidence in Young People (Network Continuum). In my own life I have found role play to be invaluable in integrating new behaviours as one literally has to learn new words, voice tone and body language in order to convey firmly enough what one is requesting or rejecting. One has to practice and rehearse the words sufficient times so that one’s response becomes built into muscle memory. This develops a sense of self and one’s rights that are firmly centred within.
They always say that you end up teaching what you need to learn and I did, indeed, find myself teaching assertiveness classes when I first set up my business, Positiveworks. I taught others and therefore learnt for myself that to be assertive means:
- Respecting yourself and giving respect to others. Recognising that you have as equal a right to your opinion as others do. You may have different opinions but can still honour one another.
- Taking responsibility for yourself, including the recognition that you have a responsibility towards others in how you communicate and act.
- Knowing what you want, feel or need and asking clearly for it by expressing your needs and feelings honestly but without punishing people or violating their rights.
- Being able to say no, or that you don’t understand.
- Being clear about what you want to accomplish, and then being prepared to negotiate on an equal basis of power rather than trying to win.
- Allowing yourself to make mistakes, to enjoy and talk about successes, to change your mind or to take time over a decision.
I was obviously a late starter but I came to see that each person has a right to their own opinion but not a right to force that opinion or need on others. And that you can say no to another person just because it doesn’t feel right to you but you don’t have to be unpleasant. You learn the language that helps you feel strong enough in yourself not to give your power away to another person or compromise your values. Useful phrases can include “No thanks, that doesn’t work for me.” “I can see what you’re saying but I don’t agree”. “I’d like to think about it.” “ I’ll decide when I am ready.” It’s the tone of your voice that will tell the other person whether you are choosing to be rude or whether you are understanding their position but holding your own position. It helps to keep your inner thoughts supportive too – such as “Just because the other person wants me to do something doesn’t mean I have to do it. I am the director of my own life, I can say no if I want to.” In this you have to become willing to be unpopular or be subjected to put-downs, called a spoilsport or worse, because ultimately you know that it is better to stand up for yourself than it is to be popular with others on their terms.
This is particularly difficult in teenage years, of course. Parents and teachers can support young people in these situations but only if they open their eyes to the kinds of challenges their children are experiencing and are willing to talk about them. Sex education is still often taught on a biological level. The assertive behaviours required in multiple situations in life and work often don’t get taught at all.
One doesn’t want to frighten a child but bringing these issues out into the open can help them be prepared and plan their response in advance. Teachers can be role models of assertive behaviour in how they discuss and deal with both boys and girls equally – unlike the teachers at my kindergarten. They can show zero tolerance of disrespectful behaviour on any level. Learning to manage conflict or demands are essential social skills that can be readily shared with children at school and at home. The earlier they are taught the better. They are life-skills.
Links: Future Directions by Helen Whitten and Diane Carrington https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Future_Directions.html?id=FY2tAwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y .
NHS advice: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Sexandyoungpeople/Pages/Itsoktosayno.aspx