What does "compassionate communication for courageous action" mean?
As activists we also have personal needs - with friends, family and colleagues. We can be under a lot of pressure, in our personal lives, as activists and we can all benefit from practices that help our lives flow; as we may be able to ask for our personal needs to be met in our interactions with loved ones and comrades.
Political activists need a combination of personal qualities, skills, and an understanding of the political landscape. Personal qualities include integrity, courage, communication skills, empathy, resilience, and a commitment to social justice. We also need to be able to analyse information, build relationships, and effectively communicate our messages to diverse audiences.
One of the central skills needed to be a "leader" is effective compassionate communication.
Our current system quite often rewards individualistic, narcissistic and psychopathic behaviours - look at the people who head up global corporations.
If we are to be part of building a fair, equitable, decolonised, empathetic and socially just society we need to be able to communicate compassionately with our community members.
Many of you may have participated in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) training - please come along and share your experiences.
Many of you may not yet have been part of an NVC workshop - come along and find out about NVC in a Learning Circle.
If there is an appetite for more NVC workshop training, I will apply for funding from the Shire for a workshop in the future.
A video about the application of Nonviolent Communication skills:
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An article about self compassion for activists:
https://theconversation.com/how-self-compassion-can-help-activists-deal-with-stress-227304
Wikipedia article about NVC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication#:~:text=Nonviolent%20Communication%20(NVC)%20is%20an,the%20overall%20quality%20of%20life.
Selected quote from Wikipedia article:
Ellen Gorsevski, assessing Rosenberg's book, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion (1999) in the context of geopolitical rhetoric, states that "the relative strength of the individual is vastly overestimated while the key issue of structural violence is almost completely ignored."
Please share any other resources you come across that may add to the discussion.
Look forward to learning from you all!
Also check out other Workshops in Margaret River.
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