Mind matters

A couple of weeks ago I decided to increase the amount of time I spend on training. Besides Aikido och weight lifting, I’ve picked up running again.

The typical week looks like this:

Monday - Weight lifting, aikido
Tuesday - Running, aikido weapons practice
Wednesday - Weight lifting, aikido
Thursday - Running, aikido weapons practice
Friday - Weight lifting, aikido weapons practice

Saturday and sunday I do aikido weapons practice by myself, and occasionally I take a walk.

This way I exercise aikido every day during a week, and today was my 14th consecutive day doing aikido, and it feels grrrreeeat I’ve noticed that my weapons techniques have gotten much better and more powerful, and I also get the chance of correcting the mistakes I make in them, hopefully I correct them the right way

If you can read swedish, I recommend visiting Funbeat, which is a site for registering all your exercises so you can keep track of how much you move that body of yours. If you register there, and search for my name, you can even see my training calendar.

It’s quite fun, and it’s thanks to Caroline that I started using it, and I must say that the aspect of viewing my friends training times gives an extra incentive to do my training, because otherwise I will lose my lead position!

Technorati Tags: Aikido, Weight lifting, Funbeat

I went to an IIT (International Intensive Training) in Nonviolent communication (NVC) in the summer of 2003. And ever since I’ve been wanting to expand on my understanding of  NVC.

Now the time has finally arrived! This fall I will be starting a study group here in Linköping that will meet for 12 times and try to together learn the basic concepts of NVC.

I created a page for the study group, unfortunately only in Swedish.

I can tell you that I feel a bit nervous about it since I don’t view myself as capable of teaching the basic concepts of NVC to anyone. And I hope people who attend the group will understand that and see the group as a community opportunity for learning, instead of seeing me as a teacher who is going to teach them something. But I suspect that will sort itself out once we start and I explain this to the members of the group. I hope

I’ll try to keep posting about my experience as a study group “leader” and “member”

Technorati Tags: Nonviolent communication, Study group

I went downtown today expecting to run some errands, and lo and behold, it was almost dead silent in the city. I went to the bank, and it was closed! I was baffeled and wondered what was going on. The sign clearly said it would be open to 3 pm, and it was only 2.50 pm! Holy frustration!

Then I noticed that Clas Ohlssons also was closed and they were kind enough to have a sign up saying why. It is because 6:th of June is Swedens national day, the day we celebrate the declaration of goverment (it’s probably not called that in english, in swedish it’s Regeringsform) approved in 1809 which gave us freedom of speech and many other important rights.

This day wasn’t a holiday until last year, but that’s not the reason I missed it. I missed it because I really had no idea what day it was Oh, the woes of the unemployed!

I’ve long known that I have a great need of acceptance from others, but until now I was not sure about the main strategy I use to try to gain this acceptance. Last week a friends friend said ‘I used to think I needed to impress people, but found it a lonely life, so now I try instead to be someone who is fun to be around‘.

At that moment I understood that what I have thought to be a separate need, to have the attention of others by impressing them, is actually a strategy for the need for acceptance. I try to get people to accept me by impressing them.

This does indeed result in a lonely life, since impressing is doing an act and waiting for a favourable response from the person I try to impress, which can lead me to do or say things that don’t resonate 100% with my core values. This means that I don’t openly share what is going on inside of me when I communicate with others, which leaves my needs of connection (of two people sharing what is going on inside them at that present moment), authenticity (to be true to my values and act upon them) and honesty, especially around people who I don’t know so well.

Note to self: There is nothing wrong with impressing people. They might be impressed by things I take for granted, like doing high falls in aikido. But using it as a strategy for gaining acceptance has it’s drawbacks since it leaves some of my needs unmet.

So the first part of changing this strategy is done, that is Becoming Aware Of It. The second part is Choosing Another Strategy that meets my need for acceptance and includes the needs for connection, authenticity and honesty.

One way is to further implement the belief that ‘My self value has nothing to do with how others view me, it is determined by how I view myself‘, which will lead to the need of acceptance to become less urgent.

I must say that I’m currently at a loss here, how to find a strategy or several strategies that will meet these needs. This must be why I haven’t replaced the impress-strategy yet, because I have not found another that is better…

So, if you have any ideas, toss them at me How do you get your needs of acceptance, connection, authenticity and honesty met in interaction with others?

Technorati Tags: Connection, Authenticity, Needs, Strategy, Acceptance