In part one of two special bonus episodes with CRR Global co-founder and CEO Marita Fridjhon, Marita and Katie discuss ways in which we can create space within the pace of change. How can we slow down upfront in order to speed up in the long run? Chasing the speed of change happens on every level and it’s inevitable. It’s part of being human. So we have to work really hard at slowing down in order to focus on the people in front of us and connect with where we are. Practising pause is essential for our relational evolution. Whilst everything else speeds up to around us how can we create moments of pause in order to reflect on where we are and connect with who’s in front of us?
Marita Fridjhon is co-owner and CEO of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. She designs curriculum and operates training programs in Relationship Systems Work for coaches, executives and teams. She came to this work from an extensive background in Clinical Social Work, Community Development, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Business Consulting and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has an international mentor coaching practice of individuals, partnerships and teams. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of Learning Organizations.
For over 18 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
In part one of two special bonus episodes with CRR Global co-founder and CEO Marita Fridjhon, Marita and Katie discuss ways in which we can create space within the pace of change. How can we slow down upfront in order to speed up in the long run? Chasing the speed of change happens on every level and it’s inevitable. It’s part of being human. So we have to work really hard at slowing down in order to focus on the people in front of us and connect with where we are. Practising pause is essential for our relational evolution. Whilst everything else speeds up to around us how can we create moments of pause in order to reflect on where we are and connect with who’s in front of us?
Marita Fridjhon is co-owner and CEO of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. She designs curriculum and operates training programs in Relationship Systems Work for coaches, executives and teams. She came to this work from an extensive background in Clinical Social Work, Community Development, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Business Consulting and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has an international mentor coaching practice of individuals, partnerships and teams. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of Learning Organizations.
For over 18 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
Key
KC – Katie Churchman
MF - Marita Frijon
[Intro 00:00 – 00:06]
KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe relationship matters, from humanity to nature to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and I’m delighted to be back with a special bonus episode with CRR Global’s CEO and co-founder Marita Frijon. In this episode, we’re discussing chasing the speed of change. SO much has happened already in this year, 2022, and we’re looking at ways of creating space within pace and looking to relationship before diving into our agendas. How can we slow down upfront in order to speed up in the long run? So without further ado I bring you the brilliant, Marita Frijon.
KC – Hi Marita, it’s so good to see you. How are you doing?
MF – I’m good and it’s been ages… it feels like ages since we last talked so I’m delighted to see you again and also to re-enter the conversation with you.
KC – Yeah, and it’s an interesting topic we’ve landed on, chasing the speed of change, because I feel like so much has changed since our last conversation. What are you noticing right now?
MF – Well, what’s so interesting is when we start talking about chasing the speed of change, it happens on every level. It happens for me personally, it’s happening for you personally, it happens in our lives. It would have happened anyway. But it also is happening with me and it’s happening with you and it’s happening with our teams, it’s happening with our employees, because everything changed for them as well. One of the biggest changes we see is the technological evolution and the fact that we now assume, sitting with somebody in conversation that’s a half continent away from us, it’s not the same as sitting with somebody in a conversation when we actually sit in the same room in the same country, or in the same city. And I don’t think we are aware of just how that has changed so much, of what we anticipate, expect and know about one another.
KC – That’s so interesting, so it’s almost like the technological evolutions that we see, we haven’t caught up in terms of our relational interactions and the way we be with one another.
MF – The way in which you said it, yeah, when I’m looking at, you know, just Google challenges for leaders at the moment, challenges for trainers at the moment, challenges for… There’s a theme that is how do you retain engagement during virtual situations. Because by nature the fact that we can go virtual, we can also go bigger in numbers. Is the meeting that I have with my organization, when we do a summit of some sorts and all of us fly to the same city, is that engagement the same as the summit or organizational meeting that we now have, whenever we fly in on Zoom in different time zones and different countries? No. It is different. It is a very different experience. From the difference of that experience we do need to focus more on paying attention to who is in front of me now and how do we really make that connection that we made over breakfast this morning when we’re staying in the same hotel? Or during the coffee break when you’re in the same course room. We don’t have that at the moment but that forces us to pause, because we don’t pause, and then we go to fast and we lose relationship. And when we lose relationship we lose the sense of belonging, we lose the sense of belonging and we lose achievement and sustainability, and then you can just see how then everything speeds up even more.
KC – Yeah, I love that term chasing because it really lands with this. We’re trying to do things the same, aren’t we, when we’re working virtually. We’re showing up just as we would in the room but we’ve missed all those other conversations and interactions. And even the fact that, you know, we can see how tall or short someone is – that’s gone!
MF – Exactly. You mentioned earlier, before we started talking, about Faith and how you’ve now known her for, I don’t know how many meetings, but you realize you’ve never met her in person. And how many people, for everybody that’s listening, how many people do you have a deep connection and working relationship with but you’ve never met? And you assume that you know the person. And yes, you do know them, but it’s very different from knowing somebody when you’ve walked through the same hallway and you’ve sat down over a drink or a cup of coffee and you could slow down, you could slow down the conversation because the moment we sit for coffee or a drink or a meal, that immediately slows it down to a different pace. Which is very difficult to attain in meetings. In meetings we really are working with that principal of emergence. In meetings we have to deal with what is emerging from this particular team or this particular individual or this particular organization. What is emerging now that we have to work with before it becomes and emergency? And you can see how immediately if we think emergency we are in speed. If we begin to back out and feel into emergence we have to take a little bit more time to actually meet one another in what’s emerging before we try to act.
KC – I’ve never thought about that before Martia, that all those things we do that seem so often silly, small interactions on the side, they actually slow us down. They don’t only connect us, they also orientate us towards the relationship itself.
MF – It is a ritual that has been created by humanity to have connection. A cup of morning coffee with your partner. A drink with somebody in the evening. A meal together. It’s actually a ritual that supports relationship. And that deepens relationship. How do we begin to do more of that in our virtual world?
KC – I wanna bring Faith back in, she can be a ghost role on this call because we do have a really deep, meaningful friendship and that’s why I’m amazed that we haven’t met in person. I’m wondering what’s happening there that isn’t happening in loads of the team conversations. Clients I’m working with are saying I haven’t met my team so I haven’t got that thing. What’s happening in Faith and I’s dialogue, or you and I, compared with so many other virtual interactions?
MF – So now I’m going to switch roles from a systems inspired perspective. I now am going to be the interviewer.
KC – You’re switching this up?
MF – Katie, yes. Katie if you think about your relationship with Faith as an example, what happens between the two of you when you come together virtually that creates that? What is it that makes that possible, that it feels like it’s a deeper relationship, it’s a relationship with depth.
KC – Yeah, I was gonna say check-in initially and I think that word’s thrown around but what I mean by that is really checking in where the other is. So not assuming that they’re in a certain place and really creating space for that. Sometimes it’s a really big chunk of the beginning of our call, meeting each other and allowing the other to see you where you are.
MF – So it’s something about, I love the example, it’s something about meeting the person first before you meet the agenda.
KC – Yes. Yeah, that’s it.
MF – And it’s, how do, because, in the moment, I’m just thinking about a call I had this morning with part of our global leadership team, where we were sitting in a fire with something that has to be acted on. And I went in there with a very clear desire for us to check in with what is positive so we could get better access too, but there was too much that had already taken the field with we don’t know what this is, we don’t know how to work with this, we’ve had this complaint, and you can feel even in the tone of voice that there’s a speeding up. That’s part of what we talk about as quality and arbitration. Ventilation. Then you have to, that’s meeting. Meeting at the place where you and I realize we have to ventilate first. That’s the thing that’s driving the speed. So sometimes I think about a great check in question but when I really meet it is let’s meet where you really are. Ok. Let’s get those things that are driving us nuts. So contrary to what I was hoping to do, because I knew all those things, it wasn’t about creating positivity because my agenda was to meet in positivity. That’s not meeting. That’s my agenda. And literally it was being able to sit in that soup of fire together, that could then, from that work that I’m besotted with that comes from psychological field that talks enantiodromia, if I go deep enough into that what is bad or whatever, it naturally begins to go up to that which is good. It’s like a figure 8 symbol. Enantiodromia. So the enantiodromia perspective, we have to go into what’s troublesome first and really have that experience of not just blaming others, it’s I’m so tired, I can’t… it’s only my experience of overwhelm. That naturally begins to go to a recognition that happens, what happens with others, and then we begin to go to… so from all of this what are some of the things that if we look back over the last year or the last three weeks that we can mark as change, that was successful, that we have already implemented? But if I try to meet with that question I am no longer meeting the other person in front of me or the team, I am meeting my agenda and that will increase speed. So it’s that, and I think that I’ve just taken it to a team and organizational level but that’s part of what you’re talking about with check in. It really is curious and vulnerable in asking the question what’s going on for you today, as we’re sitting here. And trusting that they are capable and willing to bring, and then sit for a moment in that and then go back to well, this is what’s happening over here. From there, from that kind of meeting, we can begin to move to a deeper revealing of what needs to be worked with and what the emergence is, but we needed to sit in the emergency quadrant for a good 10 minutes before we could make way to emergence again. And we can’t do emergence unless we have a retrospective of what the past change that was successful, because we don’t count the change and we don’t credit for that.
KC – You said 10 minutes and I knew that would terrify a lot of my clients, the idea of losing 10 minutes at the beginning of an already really busy, packed meeting that’s probably squeezed in between other meetings. So, you know, what are your thoughts for those people that are terrified by that?
MF – I’m sitting in that same quadrant with everybody, how do we do that? But I do believe, and what I’ve seen in my experience and observed in teams I’m working with, is the truth of the whole saying, I don’t know who created it, but it’s this – we have to go slow, we have so little time.
KC – We have to go slow, we have so litte time. I love that.
MF – If we don’t go slow we will keep messing up because if we go at that speed we’ll have to, that didn’t work, that didn’t work, that didn’t work. So we have to do a lot of going slow first. That’s revealing that it’s really about let’s look. What is here? What have we changed? What can we change now? What is oh my goodness, I don’t even wanna think about it? Then from that, that’s revealing, now let’s begin to see where can we find the one place that we can align and act on and celebrate. But unless we go to that meeting and find people where they are, it’s a basic competency in coaching. What is the client’s agenda? I can’t get to that agenda unless we emotionally and with vulnerability and curiosity meet them where they are, because that will shape the agenda. But I think it’s one of the biggest challenges for us as coaches, that we go in, and leaders, and people, we go in with the image and the memory of where people were the last time we saw them. They’re not there today. They’re not there in the same set of achievements, they’re not there emotionally, they’re not there. So we can’t move ahead unless we know where we are today and in this moment.
KC – Yeah, it’s a disservice to them, isn’t it? Not really see them where they are.
MF – Yeah.
KC – I was just thinking about, a co-leader did a recently, a very packed course, ORSC fundamentals as you know, so much in day one and I came up with the mantra space and pace because there’s a lot to get through but also how can you hold those questions, say, in a spacious way? And that really sort of landed for me because it’s like you can hold space within pace.
MF – Correct. That’s a great way. Say that again. Space and pace?
KC – Space and pace.
MF – Space and pace, space and pace. Because the speed place is in this strategic part of the brain, and the brain can’t do it, unless we go back a little bit to the relational aspect, we will ramp up against one another. So there is something about, what I think is the pace of evolution, it depends very heavily on practicing the pause.
KC – Yeah.
MF – So space and pace is similar to practicing the pause. That is, let’s just sit with it a little bit before we make the next question, because that’s the old tradition, the aboriginal tradition, dialoguing with questions. The more I have suggestions for what we should do, the more I speed up. And you can hear, just even talking about that, it’s going faster. But if going fast is getting us nowhere it’s a waste of time! We don’t have enough time for that. That’s the old thing about we gotta go slow, we have so little time.
KC – But I think that’s it, because like course are so packed and you obviously want to give them everything because it’s just the most rich, wonderful tapas bar of tools, but you can deliver that in a rushed way or there’s also that piece of is that enough for now? That’s a question, it’s a spacious opening and it gives them space to say yeah, actually, if we can come back to that later but that’s fine for now.
MF – That’s one of the other things in the systems inspired leadership aspect, it’s that makes meeting, really if I’m sitting in that space where I don’t have to have the answers. I don’t have to answer every question. I don’t have to solve every problem. I can say let’s sit with that for a little bit. I can say over our next coffee break when you turn your video off to go grab a coffee or whatever it is, walk with that. Let’s pause that for a little bit and come back to it. Or the question that you had is a really great question. Just think for a moment to yourself who it is that you’ll have in a dialogue about that. Because I think as trainers and educators within the curriculum timeline we think we have to answer all the questions. We don’t. There are some that we can answer, there’s others where we need to be able to say to people we don’t have time for that one right now. And my answer may be different from the solution that you come up with. Make a note of that. Go and have a dialogue with somebody about that and then go and bring it back to us because it probably will be really useful for everybody else. So it’s not about cutting people off, it is about help do the work because you might have a better answer than one I can think of for you right now. So there’s a difference between dismissing and trying to have all the answers that then get forced out of you and forced upon people.
KC – Yeah, you could almost feel it with the breathe, there’s that ‘ok well we’ve got quite a lot to get through so let’s move on’ and it’s up here and it’s in that throaty space, or there’s that kind of that’s a really great question, I’d love you to hold that and we’re going to come back to that section in a moment.
MF – In the meanwhile, noodle with it and see whatever we’re going to say right now, begin to provide answers. But it really is that invitation to collaborate. It is the normalizing that in this moment there may not be a right answer. It’s not a bad question – keep holding it.
KC – Hmm.
MF – So there’s something about that, that’s a very different dance. From the rush of we need to have a right now because we can’t have it all… we can’t. And there’s something in the moments that we practice that pause, that we name this space and pace, that we begin to educate not only ourselves but everybody else around us in a different way. Because in a restless society and in other societies as well, in a different way, culturally, we got groomed to beat the speed of change. That is an evolution that all of us now need to go through. To evolve, give up beating the speed of change. It’s possible. We can make, and you know, in evolution, we know that the nature of evolution is that it births something new and something different. So the evolution that we access now, it’s not going to stay forever, that’s the nature of evolution, there’s going to be another evolution that happens.
KC – Yeah. That’s so true, and it’s so obvious isn’t it, and yet we always are, most of us, in this sort of race – the race to what? And as soon as we say space and pace there is this sort of yes, you yourself as a leader and coach, a facilitator, you take on that space, but then you’re also modelling it, aren’t you, for the group that you’re with?
MF – Yes. And that’s one of the things that I want to acknowledge, you know, when I sit with my CEO hat on or when I sit as the trainer in a course or when I sit in the coach that is, to some extent, it is easier for me to hold that hat. Because I’m not sitting, I’m observing you, coming in to hear about the fires that they’re sitting in. And again, from a leader perspective, I want to solve all of that in the moment. But actually it is, somebody renamed the title of CEO as chief emotions officer. It is being able to sit in the fire with them and help slow things down. Do I then need to go to somebody else that I can go you’re my coach or you’re my mentor on this one, I need help. Because what happened there, that’s why we go to coaching and that’s why we need to continue to ask for help. Whether it’s peer supervision or whether it’s a trusted ally or whether it is what has become known in the book that got written about US presidents, the president had what they called a first friend, it’s not a person that’s on the staff, it is not somebody that is in the senate or that… it’s a first friend. It’s somebody that they can go and sit and have the conversation with so that they can unpackage their speed of change and their failure or whatever. I think all of us need a version of a first friend, whether we call that a mentor, whether we call that a coach, whether we call that a first friend. But there’s gotta be that place because otherwise all of us will get overloaded because responding like that is normal, abnormal response in an abnormal situation is normal
KC – Yeah.
MF – Who do I go to with that? Without offloading all mine on you?
KC – I love what you’re saying Marita because you’re firstly acknowledging that it’s natural in a way, we’ve been conditioned to be this way, and also if we can slow down it’s going to be a superpower. In fact it’s essential isn’t it to our relation evolution.
MF – Yes. And then if I go to my partner or if I go to my CFO or if I go to whoever and I want to back it, and say I’m not asking for your advice, I don’t want for you to pick it up and fix it, I want for you to just listen for the next 10 minutes of me being complaining and unskillful. Don’t coach me, don’t pick it up because if you do it’ll become about you. That alone, if you can being to build those bonds with somebody that you know will hold that as my unskillful expression of my unskillful self. It is not the identity of the person or the situation about which I’m complaining, it is my reactive response. What I need to be able to trust that person that they will not hold whoever and whatever I talk about as true for the person or the situation that I talked about. Because it’s not. It is my unskillful reactiveness to it. Every one of us is human. Every one of us has that kind of reaction to some kind of situation.
KC – Yeah, so would you say then that ventilation has the potential for us slowing down because we are going to get tripped up.
MF – I think there are places where we need to be able to do that on a team but name it like that and do not think of ventilation as a place to act from.
KC – Ok.
MF – It’s a place to get us through enough of a situation. Ventilation actually is one of the examples that we sometimes use metaphors, it’s like a pressure cooker, where you just need to let off a little bit of a steam, a little bit of a steam, a little bit of steam, otherwise the thing is going to explode. And we can’t solve an exploding problem, that’s a bigger problem. So it really is normalizing that that is part of what we as humanity and humans, that’s what we need. So all of us have a baby inside of us that we need to scream and have a temper tantrum, as long as we recognize and own that. It’s my screaming and it’s not yours. It’s my screaming so, and it’s a tricky one because we do assume that who we do it with and who we ask to do it has enough emotional intelligence and social intelligence to really hold that as not messed up, it’s me doing my thing. It’s us sharing the difficulty. And then put it aside and go to now put that emerging challenge in front of us and how’re we going to work with it?
KC – You know what Marita, I’ve realized as well, that pressure cooker, I love that metaphor. That is, in a way, slowing down, but you’re slowing down in order to save yourself time later because you’re not going to have the big eruption or the meltdown or whatever it may be. So it may seem like that little check in of how are you really doing today? That 20 seconds at the start of the meeting, that’s going to save maybe hours, maybe days, maybe months of organized time because they’ve allowed that.
MF – Yes. One of the thing that I have done and many of us have done with our teams, in team coaching for example, and I’ve done it with some of my teams that I’ve led as well, is when you sense something like this, literally set a stopwatch, set it for two minutes and everybody at the same time vent. Let it out. Whether you speak it in words or scream or shout or whatever you do – let it out. That’s a safer way because not everyone can listen to my issues, listen to my ventilation, we all have to vent at the same time. But sometimes people write things on notes, draw pictures and then tear it up and throw it in the trash. Anything like that that can allow it to happen without creating further damage, I think that’s what I’m saying, there needs to be enough protocol and there needs to be enough emotional and social intelligence that we can hold as quote, unquote normal, human question and not the thing that we can act from because if we don’t do that the pressure cooker will begin to continue to build steam, as we’ve begin to go in the direction of strategy, and it will interfere with agility in order to some kind of decision that will actually serve us.
KC – Yeah, you can see it can’t you because it won’t have that sort of boundary around it, it’ll be part of every dialogue, every communication you have. It’s just there, it pervades the air as opposed to being a 2 minute thing contained at the beginning, it’s now the whole meeting or the whole day.
MF – Yes. It’s a little bit like, in order for, when you think about out our gardens, in order for the roses to bloom in summer there needs to be some pruning.
KC – That’s so true.
MF – In order for a lawn to look great it needs to be mowed on a regular basis. That’s nature. There are things that we need to be able to do, snip the branches off, not because it’s bad but because there’s a new thing that’s trying to come out and they can’t get past. A long shot. If we can begin to normalize that this is part of humanity. As long as we don’t go with that and contaminate social media or the press or whatever because these are the facts, no they’re not facts, they are responses to something. And if we only look at those and call them facts or lies then we’re working in the wrong currency, we can’t get to the facts, we can’t get to what needs to happen. But you can feel how there is a lot of complexity to this, it’s not a simple, easy topic. I think the thing that I probably want to close with is that I think it’s one of the biggest evolutionary challenges in the vertical development, every single one of us as human beings, we need to be able to really do enough reflection, enough introspection, to know who are all those selves in me that is going to this meeting. And I need to make some space and time for some of them, to speak it out whilst I’m alone with myself and ask them to probably not attend this meeting because there are some other parts of me that can do better. It’s my work and how do we normalize it enough that all of us will be able to sit with ourselves before every meeting and just check in, who are the selves I’m bringing to this meeting? Who’s the judgmental one and who are they judging? And until I can do some of that with myself I walk in blind. How can I, for heaven’s sake, if I walk in blind how can I be not blind to who you are, it’s my blindness that’s painting the picture. And I really do think that for us as human beings it is one of the biggest evolutionary challenges is that vertical development that I think is part of what the origins of spirituality, whichever one you look at, has been trying to do. Is give us, whether you call it meditation, whether you call it reflection, whether you call it… it’s the space to do that. Be self-reflective and then be more aware when I meet somebody else.
KC – Look what’s happened. We’ve slowed down because we started with as a leader how can I slow down my team, and we’ve kind of skipped it didn’t we, the idea of, well I’m not really considering what I’m doing with myself and that’s the whole step that comes before.
MF – That’s it. Yeah. And I think as we evolve in the coaching industry as well and some of the programs that we are working with now, it really is how do we, as coaches, but I’m always looking at us as human beings on the street, how do we bring that reflective nature? Because that’s a systemic process. The first system is me – I have a systemic response from me to what’s happening out in front of me, and I’m learning, unless I have some idea about who the players are and what the responses are, there’s no way that I have space to meet the same thing happening across from me. So it’s one of the things that, for example, if I know, consciously or unconsciously, you drew a version of that in your rehearsal for a podcast, I know that, I believe it. That creates a different safety and it creates a different interactive nature between who we are. And I think that that’s what, that’s the confidence and that’s the trust that all of us are looking for when we start talking about the need for belonging and the need for sustainability. It’s this piece. And it’s deeply personal, in the moment it is deeply personal to that system that is me. It’s deeply systemic for the personal we and it is part of the person of it or the third entity is responding to.
KC – Yeah, and what I’m thinking about, Marita, as we sort of close this conversation is how whilst this isn’t easy to do all the time, there are simple ways we can show up and slow down. I notice sometimes how I rush through say at the supermarket, the grocery store, just rushing through not seeing people, not seeing human beings, just seeing bodies and faces. And just slowing down for a moment to smile but it’s not much time actually, I’m taking the same time, just as I was in my demo about asking questions a minute ago, it takes the same time but there’s space in the other one to smile and to see the person as opposed to just me rushing through with my shopping cart because I’ve got millions of things and I’m looking at my phone, yeah it’s not easy but it’s simple isn’t it? We can show up in those ways.
MF – And I think that as we begin to do that we begin to feel and see the impact of that in how we are working with emergence, because we become more effective. It sounds contradictive but we actually do become more effective. But it’s, that is the spiritual journey on which ever religion you are looking from it, that’s the evolutionary journey and how do I bring more of that from me, to my everyday life, from me inviting, from you, them, it, in our negotiations together. If you think of our dialogues, we’ll just briefly touch on this as well, our dialogues, we’re not working off a script.
KC – No, we’re certainly not.
MF – It really is that piece where there is the invitation into reflection of where we started, what’s happening in our lives, but then it becomes a collaborative process of building and weaving. And in my experience every single time we’ve had a session like this and we’ve had this kind of conversation, the world will call on my telephone [phone rings] and some of this will show up in that call when I answer.
KC – That’s unbelievable. We didn’t… we didn’t plan that.
MF – It’s like how do we take the pieces that we’ve done here now and work with my irritation of that disruption? So that I behave differently when I pick that phone up? And it stops very appropriately at the moment I stop talking!
KC – That’s unbelievable, wow. And it does happen all the time doesn’t it, and how can we create from rather than react to whatever is emerging?
MF – Yes, yes. So I think if there is one thing I want to take away from the two of us and also just for the people that are listening, it’s pay attention to the quantum flirts. Those unexpected.. the phone just rings, it’s like what is that, how can I choose to leverage that in how I go forward? It was something that interrupted me, how do I find the beauty in that? Or the usefulness in that if it wasn’t just a thing that happened, we became aware of it at a very specific point in time at a very specific point of the session, was it telling us to stop? Was it preparing us for the next thing that’s going to happen? Those are the questions and who knows what shows up as the answer…
KC – But it keeps us on our toes.
MF – That’s it.
KC – Marita, I think there’s a part two coming. I think there’s a whole piece around that listening, that yes and mindset that we can lean into. The space with.
MF – Yes, and paying attention to the signals around us because my phone just rang and then the gardener’s just stopped outside so in about five minutes there’s going be a lot of noise happening outside, so if we can begin to see all of these things as the universe sending us stuff to pay attention to! Like maybe it is time to stop because the phone has now rang and the gardener’s now here, what else? It’s that kind of curiosity and receiving these things as invitations to pause.
KC – Because I’m guessing you didn’t plan all of these things to happen so we could end our call now, did you?
MF – Er, no. I think you might need to stop talking because something else is going to happen.
KC – I’ve got a big thunderstorm outside so I fear that my internet is going to just.. yeah it’s crazy, this whole time, so I feel like my internet’s just going to drop off, there’s something telling us that this conversation is coming to its close.
MF – And how can we see these things as we’ve just shared something precious, it was a precious time, and the universe is saying time to move on.
KC – Aw, and that’s the beauty isn’t it? The beauty of the emergence of life.
MF – Yeah, thank you as always Katie for something that’s life giving at all sides.
KC – You too Marita, this was wonderful. Take care.
MF – Thank you, thank you.
[Outro begins 34:46]
KC – Thanks to Marita for that fascinating discussion around chasing the speed of change. Here are my key takeaways. Chasing the speed of change happens on every level and it’s inevitable. It’s part of being human. So we have to work really hard at slowing down in order to focus on the people in front of us and connect with where we are. When we allow ourselves to slow down we create space to feel into emergence. In doing so we can help prevent emergence from turning into emergency because we can create from rather than react too whatever is emerging. Slowing down doesn’t necessarily mean we have to take more time. How can we make space within the pace of change? Where might we ask questions as opposed to feeling we need to find all the answers? Practicing pause is essential for our relational evolution. Whilst everything else speeds up around us how can we create moments of pause in order to reflect on where we are and connect with who’s in front of us? Ventilation can help us to slow down in order to speed up. By creating boundaries for ventilation to happen, for example by using a stopwatch, we can allow the pressure cooker to let off steam so that the lid doesn’t explode off altogether. If we don’t allow for ventilation that pressure cooker will continue to build up steam as we move into our agenda. We’ve got to go slow, we have so little time. So the mobile phone ringing at the end of the episode has inspired another bonus episode so do join Marita and I for another discussion that’s going to be on quantum flirts and quantum curiosity. Until then, take care.
KC - For over 18 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. We believe Relationship Matters from humanity to nature to the larger whole.