UNCONDITIONAL COMMUNICATION

Shaping Better Relationships and Bigger Futures - Together

David Firth

• Publisher: Lagado Library Publications, Colorado, USA
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780985494520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

We are faced with a breakdown of 'We' - in our fragmented communities, in our polarized media, and in our vindictive public discourse. More and more there is a feeling of separation and discord, of blame and making wrong.

Unconditional Communication isa new way of thinking about communication that causes 'We' to happen, and is characterized by:

• Genuine authenticity & vulnerability
• A willingness to name and deal with reality
• A willing invitation to co-create shared outcomes

and, most of all,

• The idea that our communication can be an act of service to others - rather the means to get something from others.

Unconditional Communication is thought-provoking, funny and surprising, and, above all, grounded in practical solutions for creating a better world. Together.

PART TWO

THE UPWARD SPIRAL

The central image for Unconditional Communication is the upward spiral.

Because that’s what life looks like. It’s how life is wanting to move.

Life is interested in rising up - through stages of development, through technological advancement, through more evolved, inclusive ways of organizing businesses or societies, and through higher levels of individual consciousness - from fear, for example, to love.

Life looks up.

Life is also interested in expanding, gathering new experiences and expressions, including the best of what went before, discarding what no longer works. Life includes and transcends, moves through everything we feel, think, and do – every boundary we break – every obstacle we overcome – every insight we glean.

Ever upward, ever outward.

The Circle of Life is not, in fact, a circle, but an upward spiral.

Your life is like that too, as long as you live it consciously. Close up it can have bumps and barriers, and they are very real. But if you pull back for the longer view, for all its pains and problems, you’ll see that your life is moving up and out. It is moving in an upward spiral.

There are three energies that cause the spiral to rise.

1. Presence
2. Connection
3. Created Outcomes.

PRESENCE

They say that Ayrton Senna - the Formula 1 driver who died in 1994 - had a presence that could stop a room.

Bill Clinton once told the story of being at a party when suddenly the energy of the room shifted to the door. Bill Clinton, no mean celebrity (this was before he became President), and a pretty compelling human being in his own right, was probably used to having most of the attention on him. But when he turned to see where all the energy was drawn, he saw that David Letterman had walked in.

I was once in the same airport lounge as Angelina Jolie in Heathrow. I found it difficult to take my eyes off her, mostly because how focused she was on her two children. It was almost as if there was a glass dome over the space she was in with them, and no other person was in the lounge, especially not staring strangers like me.

Presence means nothing in the way. Nothing at all. No expectation, neediness, desire, fear or anxiety.

I am Ayrton Senna and I am really, really here, and I walk into a room and the room stops. I am Ayrton Senna and I have no urge to make the room stop or hope that it will...In fact, I may not even notice that it does when it does. Because I am present only to being here, not how my being here will impact others.

Presence of this purity is as rare as rocking horse shit. And that it is why it is so compelling for others. They don’t get to be around it very often. They get to be around leaders who are keeping something back, or have a hidden agenda, or are just trying too hard to be really cool. None of that is in the same universe as presence1.

Your own presence will rise when three internal statements are true for you:

One: I want to be here.

Two: I am happy to be here.

Three: I am here.

Try these internal statements out when you are next in a situation where you want to find out if you are present or not.

I am changing my baby’s nappy. He has had explosive diarrhea and it has filled the diaper and shot up his back. There are stains over clothes, bedsheets, bodies and hands.

And at this point I ask myself:

Do I want to be here?

Am I happy to be here?

And: am I here?

Knee deep in baby poop, am I really, truly, happily here?

If I am, I am. The circumstance has nothing to do with it. I won’t be more present when the baby’s nappy is changed and I am relaxing in front of the TV with a glass of wine. Unless I am. I’m only ever present now, or I am not.

People say to me, how do I increase my presence, David?

To which the answer is ‘You don’t. You get rid of what’s in the way of your being here. Your presence - my presence - our presence - is the natural state. It’s the default. Your baby is really present, even when covered in poo. Your dog also, is an embodiment of presence.

What takes you away from that level of presence - what drags you away from that Heaven into the Hell of separation - is the workings of your mind.

I shouldn’t be here.

I don’t deserve to be here.

It’s someone else’s fault that I am here.

I don’t agree with why I have to be here.

These circumstances don’t allow me being present.

All that trash. All that internal dialogue, all that mind chatter.

Your baby doesn’t have that mind yet. Your dog never will.

You, on the other hand, are cursed with a mind, and you have two options:

1. If it is really true you shouldn’t be here, then you shouldn’t be here. Go. Stop explaining yourself to me. Just go, and be clean with going. That would be committing to more presence than you have right now. Or
2. Stop paying attention to that mind chatter; stop making it strong by telling it how sensible and accurate it sounds. Let it go. Think of it like listening to someone having a nightmare in the hotel room next to you. You can hear it acting itself out through the thin walls, but you don’t have to be in the same nightmare yourself.

How to be here

Put your hand on the table in front of you. Look at your hand.

Look more.

While you are looking at your hand, your mind will begin to chatter.

“What the heck is this exercise about? Why I am looking at my hand? I am so busy. I am so much smarter than whatever this exercise if about. Wow, look at those nails. They need cutting!”

Don’t connect to any of that chatter. It’s not really yours. It’s happening in the hotel room next to yo...

Table of contents

• title
• advancepraise
• copyright
• contents
• dedication
• acknowledgements
• poem
• 1introduction
• 2and
• 3we
• 4what
• 5our
• 6partone
• 7parttwo
• 8entracte
• 9partthree
• 10partfour
• 11acontrast
• 12nottheend
• 13the
• 14abouttheauthor
• 15otherbooks