Nancy Love’s Weblog

I had the opportunity to pick up a book called Changing Behaviour.  It is written by a nurse educator and has some powerful thoughts and images about how to immediately transform relationships.  It is more like a work book than a text book on communication tools.  It has some ideas that are interesting especially when applied to coaching.

Nothing says a need for coaching skills like a life and death situation where behaviours must change or the alternative is death.  Even so many people, as the book points out, with rather die than switch their behaviour patterns.  The book goes back to the old Pain and Pleasure formula that are powerful motivators and reviews the wisdom of the theories that grew out of the 1980’s shift in consciousness, attributed in the book to “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”.  The TV show worked to create a whole nation of people who now knew what they didn’t have which caused pain.  Gone were the happy days.  Since that time Americans have worked harder and faster to win that prize of joining the moneyed people in their midst.

As a result, disease related to stress is up and Americans are working themselves toward heart attacks, cancer, obesity and many other life threatening conditions.  Changing behaviour takes it back to the relationship and provides researched evidence of how having good relationships trumps even being rich.

For me the most important part of the book was the list of factors that contribute to the potential for change. Three that stood out … intention, skills and abilities and anticipated outcomes.  The author presents a set of Behavioural Engagement skills and an attitude she calls Pure Presence that closely resemble the PULSE Frame and the associated skills of Gentle, Honest, Open, Specific Talk, affirming that PULSE is a discovery of how good conversations occur.  “Changing Behaviour” provides the evidence from research for promoting collaborative conversation for coaching and facilitating especially in health care but also in our daily lives.

Travelling is always invigorating to me even when the getting ready for it is a little rushed and the preparations take more time than you had planned. Isn’t that they way life is too? We prepare and prepare and plan and plan and then we blink and the whole thing is over.

Spring has sprung … There is a silly little poem my dad would always recite in the spring that is running through my head… “The bird is on the wing I heard… but that’s absurd… the wing is on the bird”.  That poem intrigued me and it was that kind of play on words that has always caught my interest.  It is especially interesting when both  phrases are right in their own way.

I was writing something the other day at my new job with Parks Canada and my colleagues read the sentence with the word “work” as a verb and corrected my adjective by adding LY to make it an adverb.  I read it again.  I had intended “work ” as a noun but it could have been either.  Language is so intriguing sometime…  simple and complex.

So I am working (verb) for Parks Canada at the Western and Northern Service Centre in Calgary.  I am an Informal Conflict Management Advisor.  It is a demanding job and will likely become more so as people who need conflict coaching and training and mediation find out that I am there.  This first few weeks have been taken up with settling in and become known to the organization as well as getting to know it.

So far I love it.  The people are great and the work is exciting.  Because I am in a term position, replacing someone on leave for one year I don’t  have the luxury of time to get up to speed. I have had to hit the ground running… 8 hours a day…5 days a week.  This is new and exciting to me, the entrepreneur who has had control of her time for the last 14 years. I plan to enjoy the ride.

My word for the day is vision. Mine is still blurry. Louise Hay would say that there is something I don’t want to see. That is probably true. My eye seems to be recovering very slowly. There is still a significant amount of discomfort and pain so something about my future looks painful to me. Or something about my present is painful to look at. I guess that’s what I need figure out. Once I have my vision for my future clear, I know my vision will respond accordingly. Don’t you love inner work?

I’m writing a short note about vulnerability today.  Three weeks ago I received an eye injury at a spa.  The doctor said that 80 % of my conrea was damaged.  My eye is still patched.  i can’t drive and only yesterday was told I could use the computer fora couple of hours a day.  I have been at home usually flat on my back with my eyes closed while the healing takes place. I am vulnerable.  I was vulnerable when I went to the spa and had only one inkling that things were not quite right between members of the staff.  I remember thinking..” These peole could use some coaching.  They seemed happy with each other but procedures were changing and they all seemed just a little angry or frustrated about it.  The person who was going to do my treatment was talking to the one who had treated me before and suddenly there was a change in who I was assigned too.  I wondered if it was a commission thing.  Any was Number 1 still but the eye covers in and then left.  Immediately felt that the left one was uncomfortable but not ever having had the experience before I could only say…”It doesn’t’ feel right”

There were lots of things that could have happened to make the outcome different.  many things I could have done and said and some that they could have done or said.  Because it was my first time ( and my last) was at a disadvantage.

Any way … the blog is not about that.  It is about vulnerability.  More precisely about how we accept hte responsibility for a vulnerable other.  That is what has fascinated me as I convalesce .  I have been rather helpless.  It is not a role I enjoy.  I have had to depend on other people to meet my needs and have had to find ways to adequately make t6hose needs known.  I make assumptions about how to do things and so do they.

How can we anticipate the needs of the vulnerable?  How can we honour them while waiting on them?

How do different BEACHs arise when we are most vulnerable and when we are faced with giving or taking care of some else who is vulnerable?  What is the difference between care giving and care taking?  Which do you do?

So. I spent the weekend in Atlantic City New Jersey. We visited some friends we meet in the fall on a cruise and attended a rodeo. It was interesting. It was my first visit to the city where Monopoly started. The Boardwalk is amazing. We rode a chariot pushed by a guy along for quite aways. It was wet and cold and a little run down but the potential for warm summer days and prosperous economy are there. The North Atlantic is fierce in the winter. It pounded that jersey shore yesterday. Today was a little brighter and I could almost imagine Stephanie Plum playing the sleuth in the backyard and alleys in the older parts of town. The hotels and casinos are grand but this is NOT Vegas. It has it’s own unique character like all of us. Thanks for the memories Atlantic City.