empathetic social spaces

Cutting and pasting pieces from articles is getting more and more complicated every day. Why do we need all these format options? Can’t we just get what we want, instead of all the META data, formats, tags, links, and crap added in.

 

Like this is a great piece, from: https://medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/coaching-circles-third-space-revisited-1a5a4543f45a  Of course I’m in a public social space here now after Hurricane Ian and I posted how it was the only place open with power and hot coffee ready for anyone to visit, and the place got packed.

But it’s pulling teeth to share a clip here:

In a recent talk I gave about the transformative potential of social spaces, I invited my audience to share “their go-to empathetic social spaces”.

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Answers included being in nature, time with pets, and spiritual practices. These are all good options. But by definition they are not “social”, because they do not involve other people. Only one person answered “taking a walk with my best friend, who listens to anything I have to say”.

My answer was coaching circles.

I am often dismayed at the lack of vulnerability and empathy in most social spaces. In the United States, people often casually greet each other by asking “how are you doing?” How many times are we really there to hear how the other person is doing? How many times are we open to share how we are really doing? The answer we hear most often is “I am doing great. Things are going well.” What does that response really mean? Life is difficult. How and where do we process difficulties and challenges? What happens when we do not process them properly? No wonder mental health professionals are overloaded, and we are having a nation wide, if not world wide, mental health crisis. In my article about nonviolent communication, I hypothesized how processing pain in social spaces could help ease mental health problems. In my experience coaching circles are one of the most effective social spaces for this purpose.

The concept of coaching circles as a “third space”, the space outside family and work, was outlined in my earlier article Coaching circles: A prototype for the third space. The tagline “where vulnerability is safe and empathy is abundant” describes the essence of such spaces. Vulnerability and empathy are pre-conditions of each other: if you are not vulnerable, I am not going to be empathetic; if you are not empathetic, I am not going to be vulnerable.

That’s a trip as I sit in the Coffee Shop. And I’ve listened in on hundreds of random conversations all around me. Mostly neighbors who see each other and start talking about whatever. These small coffee shops get a lot of regulars. I’ve loved visiting these places, I’ve met so many cool people, and have new friends I’ve met at the local coffee shops.

Of course this is a great industry too. Several coffee shops in this area are great for meeting other entrepreneurs and professionals to develop new projects and businesses, as if I hadn’t done this too much already!