For this initiatory post, I'd like to take up the topic of one of the most powerful fuels for a healthy relationship - Praise!
The inspiration for this post has come from Marya's and my recent attempt to deepen our understanding and facility with compassionate communication, non-violent communication, and the creation of emotional intimacy. What has happened with this intention to deepen is what often happens, in my experience - the moment we began to work toward deepening our OWN understanding, many beautiful friends began to come forth with brilliant questions and their own personal life experiences.
One of the big things that has arisen in the conversation is the recognition that in order to become a brilliant communicator (able to stay in the heart of compassion amidst the "storm", and also state your own needs clearly) one needs to practice! The challenge here is that when conflict arises, the principles of NVC (non-violent communication) or whatever system we are studying are often far from our mind. This principle is often emphasized in martial arts training - you must drill the physical and mental techniques over and over if you wish to have access to them in a time of need.
As Marya and I spoke about this, one of the things that we recognized has been very powerful for us has been to practice our compassionate communication model when conflict has NOT arisen. Simply put, we practice communication skills through praising each other.
This, for us, accomplishes what the discipline of Permaculture calls "stacking functions" - meaning that you do one thing, but it accomplishes many results. I was deeply inspired by a teaching from one of my Buddhist masters, who shared that in order for a relationship to stay healthy, it requires about 5 positive comments made to your partner each day - and if there is stress or conflict, that number goes up - because there needs to be a higher ratio of positive feedback than negative (even constructive) feedback. I personally took this as a challenge and decided to try to implement this teaching as a daily life-practice and have been astounded by the increase of joy in our already-joyful relationship.
What Marya has said is that even when a challenging topic does come up, it is as if the conflict is taking place within a greater environment of love - so we don't get to stressed out, or caught up in our stories. Lately we've been working on being more specific with our praise, and using the offering of our happiness as a chance to practice specific communication skills.
Ok, so how to go about using praise to practice a model of conscious and compassionate communication with an intimate partner (or anyone else)? First, I'd like to borrow from Marshall Rosenberg's NonViolent Communication terminology and offer forth their model of Feelings, Observations, Needs, and Requests. To remember all of these stages, I just think "I'd like to praise or compliment my partner OF(te)N(e)R ('oftener' as in "more often")".
First is Observations: What is an observation? Well, basically, this means a statement about some specific behavior or event. In terms of a compliment, rather than saying "you're so beautiful", an observation says something like "looks like you really spent time getting ready for our date".
Next comes Feelings: Feelings means basically - what's happening in your realm of sensations/emotions? So, "when I notice how you've taken the time to get dressed up I feel...." then just say whatever you feel: happy, ecstatic, aroused, tingly, nervous, etc. Simply put, this is a chance to really become aware of what is going on inside of you and to SHARE that with your beloved one. Even going to just this step is often much more than we usually do, and it can contribute a lot of juice to our shared reality in a partnership.
One thing we have to watch out for here, though, is the danger of confusing an evaluation for a feeling. An evaluation means an assumption about what the other person intends - and even in a point of praise, or a compliment, this can actually take away from intimacy. An evaluation stated as a feeling could look like "When I see how dressed up you got, I feel like you're really looking forward to this date we're going on." Can you see how this is actually a statement of what we are imagining about the other person, rather than what we are feeling in our own body?
Instead, we might say "when I see how dressed up you got, I feel excited, and I'm wondering if you're excited about the date too?". If you'd like to look at some examples of feelings, check out this great gift from communication master Scott Catamas
http://lovecoachscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Feelings_Emotions-1.pdf
After feelings comes a statement of Needs: If conflict is arising, this is often where we explain some of what we are feeling in relation to what our needs are - thus letting a person even deeper into our experience. Needs are things like the need for companionship, the need for shelter, the need for purpose, the need to be valued. Again from Scott, here's a great list of Universal Human Needs and Values
http://lovecoachscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/UNIVERSAL_HUMAN_NEEDS-2.pdf .
What we need to be careful of here is confusing our needs for our preferences. I have a need to be understood, but I have a preference that you understand me. When we are giving someone positive feedback, or an expression of love, we can also express our needs or what we value in our lives. So, continuing our example above, we might say "When I see how much effort you put into getting ready for our date, I feel excited, because I really value companionship and having fun together."
You may be noticing how all of these steps place a big emphasis on your OWN experience, rather than saying things like "you look nice" "I can tell you are excited about tonight", or "you make me so happy when we spend time together". There's a reason for this self-referential focus - and that reason is that emotional intimacy is a process of UNVEILING the more we show a beloved what is in our heart ("I feel happy when you smile at me that way"), the closer we become. If we want to create an experience of closeness in our relations, the BEST thing we can do is learn the art of self-revelation.
Finally comes Requests: I may not be following the NVC(tm) model here, not sure, but I am going to state that in an expression of praise, you don't need to necessarily make a request. Of course, one great way to make requests is to make them based off of a positive observation ("I really liked the way you held my hand yesterday - would you like to hold my hand on more of our walks???"). Where I find requests to be most valuable personally is when a need is not being met, rather than when we are celebrating a need that has been met. This is totally revelatory, in my experience... life can often be as simple as saying "would you be willing to do the dishes?" but we so often feel the need to dive into assessments, criticisms, and judgements as ornaments to our requests - perhaps because we've had our needs rejected so often in the past. It's a big and amazing topic, we can learn more about requests in a future post!
So, there it is - the OFNR model adapted to praising according to Rev. Fa Jun's experience :) I hope that this inspires you to start praising OF(te)N(e)R than ever before!!!
To practice, it's sometimes easiest to start in your imagination - just think about scenarios where you might want to give your partner some nourishing, positive feedback about how happy you feel. Then, dive right in and try it! Don't worry if it feels a little like something out of a book at first - like anything new, you grow facility with it over time. Soon, you can get to a level where you've integrated the model completely and can move beyond it into unexplored and wonderful realms.
Once you think you've got the model in you, try saying at least 5 sweet things every day to your partner - using Observations, Feelings, Needs, and Requests. See if it doesn't create MAGIC!
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