choice-full-conscious living

Have you ever wondered what the skills are that support self-development and connection in our world.

I recommend you check out this new NVC-related web-site called "Pathways to Liberation" which gives a comprehensive list of skills. They have also created a skill matrix exploring the development of these skills from “unskilled, to awakening, to capable, to integrated”.

This week I am going to circle where I am on the matrix and then ask 2 two dearly beloved and trusted friends to do the same for me (to check if my self-perception aligns with how others experience me)…

I really like how it is articulated here. You can check out this list of skills here:

http://pathwaystoliberation.net/skills/

These are the skills they list are:

• Presence: Being attentive to what is happening right now.  Not lost in thinking, emotional reactions, etc.
• Observing: Noticing (and possibly describing) our sensory and mental experiences, and distinguishing these experiences from the interpretations we ascribe to them.
• Feelings awareness: Ability to identify and experience our physical sensations and emotions.
• Self-acceptance: Accepting oneself with unconditional caring.
• Taking ownership of one’s feelings: Living from the knowledge that I alone cause my emotions – my emotions are not caused by others.
• Needs consciousness: Awareness of (and the willingness to honor) needs, the essential universal elemental qualities of life (like sustenance, love and meaning).
• Re-connecting to self & recovering from reactivity: Reactivity is internal resistance to what is.  Recovery is letting go of that resistance.  Re-connecting to self is being with one’s own experience with presence and compassion.
• Request consciousness & making requests: Willingness to ask for what one wants, with openness to any response; not attached to any particular outcome.
• Mourning: Transforming the suffering of loss; letting go of resistance to what is, and being willing to allow our experience to unfold.
• Empathy: Being present with another’s experience, with unconditional acceptance of the person.
• Dissolving enemy images: Transcending one’s perceptions that another deserves to be punished or harmed.
• Discernment: Clarity, insight, and wisdom in making life-serving distinctions and choices; recognizing one has choice.
• Living interdependently: Living from the knowledge that every individual is related to every other individual – every part of a system affects every other part.
• Honest self-expression: Owning one’s experience and having the willingness to express authentically without blame or criticism.
• Facilitating connection: Facilitating empathy and honesty in dialogue with an intent to create connection.
• Patience: Remaining spaciously present when one feels stress.  An ability to be with one’s own reactions, without acting out of them.
• Responding to others’ reactivity: Responding rather than reacting to others who are caught up in intense separating emotions.
• Openness to feedback: Receiving other’s perspective about our actions with equanimity and centeredness.
• Beneficial regret: Acknowledging and learning from one’s missed opportunity to meet needs, without guilt, shame, or self-punishment.
• Flexibility in relating: Openness and versatility in interacting with others.
• Transforming conflict: Using conflict with others as a means to connect and create a mutual outcome.
• Gratitude: Finding the value in, appreciating, and enjoying what is.
• Openhearted flow of giving and receiving: Transforming scarcity thinking into thriving creatively; joyfully contributing and receiving.
• Cultivating vitality: Tuning in to oneself to support balanced self-care; cultivating the energy to serve life.
• Sharing power: Transforming domination; valuing everyone’s needs with mutuality and respect; transcending submission and rebellion.
• Transcending roles: Aware that we are not the roles we play; having choice about what roles we adopt and how we respond to the roles others adopt.
• Awareness of response-ability: Freely choosing one’s responses to what shows up in life, owning one’s part in what happens.  Not owning others’ parts, and acknowledging that one’s actions do influence others.
• Supporting holistic systems: Consciously participating in the creation and evolution of holistic systems that foster general well-being.

And if you sign up for "the Matrix" for self-assessment for these skills through the box on the right-hand side of that page, you can then receive access to a document which further elaborates on the skill-set given here.

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