How to Remain Present & Empowered in Difficult Dialogues
At the end of this blog post, you'll find a guided meditation designed to awaken compassion in your relationships, helping you experience greater peace in your connections, particularly when dealing with challenging conversations.
There are various moments in life when we are faced with having conversations about tricky topics. This can be telling someone some bad news or standing up for yourself after being disrespected. It can even just be talking about something that makes you uncomfortable. How we choose to communicate in these moments is highly influential.
Being able to handle difficult experiences with people increases our confidence in various relationships, from friends to romantic partners. Naturally, in different long-term relationships, there are uncomfortable periods. Remaining present and empowered as we handle these times supports the deepening of those connections.
The habit of blaming and pointing fingers at others can quickly create a downward spiral in dialogues. In the short term, this can create heated arguments, and over longer periods, criticism can chip away at the foundation of trust with that person or community. I lived with a group of people in Colombia for six months, where this was a significant issue.
It was a community project with a healing center and forest school. They wanted to expand into having more residents and growing food. Each week, there was a community meeting late in the evening that would go on until midnight, if not the early hours of the next day. Ideas and concerns were shared for the development of the project.
After being there for a few weeks, it simply felt like the communication was sending everyone in circles. Many people in the group had lengthy opinions about what other people were doing, and it took up a huge amount of space. This was tiresome when talking about general topics, and when a heated debate arose, the meetings dissolved into chaos.
I realized, reflecting on that experience, that these types of meetings can be greatly supported by the wisdom of the elements to make them more productive and enjoyable. Communication can be challenging to observe; however, using fire, air, earth, and water, it becomes possible to see imbalances and therefore opportunities to harmonize.
The air and fire elements are wonderful teachers that share guidance about how to maintain focus and direction while communicating. Fire inspires us to be clear and direct, while air allows for communication to expand and be heard by those we are speaking with. When dialogues become difficult, you can focus with your inner fire on why you need to have the conversation.
Focusing on the Purpose of the Conversation
Using the fire element, you can support yourself to consistently come back to the purpose if things start spiraling off topic or in another direction. Oftentimes, when bringing up uncomfortable topics, people will try and veer off into other things to avoid facing what needs to be spoken about. As you remember the original intention, you can continue to refocus the conversation.
Fire can awaken a sense of empowerment that fuels us to stand up for what we believe in. Collaborating with other people can become frustrating when we are being taken off track from our purpose. It is possible to observe this in companies or communities. People join because they believe in the cause. If that cause or mission changes, the communication can break down.
We are united by our passions and purpose. It is exciting to connect and create with those who have similar visions for life as we do. If I am in a situation where, in the beginning, I was aligned with a person or business’s direction and now it has changed, that is a great moment to embrace a constructive conversation.
This can oftentimes be the root of passive-aggressive behaviour or procrastination that creates micro-frustrations. It is not enough of a disturbance to send someone walking because they still have hope in the original vision, but it makes the connection challenging to work with. Going back to that original purpose and viewing the situation from there can bring an abundance of clarity.
This works in various relationships from friendships to marriage. We all have intentions for the things that we do and create in life. My cousin and her husband did a ritual at their wedding where they both wrote letters to each other and put them in a box with a small bottle of champagne. If the relationship became challenging, the idea was that they could then open the box.
The champagne and letters served as reminders of why they began to build a life together. The box was there in case they needed some support in the future to sustain the relationship. Coming back to the beginning intention is wonderful to re-awaken that initial passion and clarity that is there when making big life decisions.
Your fiery purpose and direction for the conversation can be tapped into in the solar plexus of the body. Breathing into your stomach can reinforce your strength, giving you the courage to do what you feel is best in the situation.
Maintaining Presence
Coming up into the heart, you can then work with the air element to maintain presence during the conversation. Only a portion of the communication that we receive comes through words. Messages are also being sent through body language, tone of voice, and also intuitively. Someone may say something, and you can get the sense that they are lying or that they actually mean something else. There is an abundance of cues that can help us to understand the other person.
To be able to pick up on those signs requires us to be present. The mind often has better things to do than be in the now. It is thinking about what happened this morning, analyzing what the person is saying to create an eloquent response, and even deciding what to have for lunch, all while the other person is speaking.
On the other hand, focusing on the heart keeps us centered in this moment and allows us to pick up on the more subtle cues of what is being communicated. In challenging dialogues, people can be hyper-sensitive to signs that you are not paying attention, and that can trigger the conversation to go into a heavy energy.
Moving your energy down from the mind and into the heart while being in connection with the fire in the stomach supports you in being present and focused as you listen and speak. Easier said than done! There are moments in conversations when the mind can go wild and come up with a multitude of things to say.
These things can circulate around the belief that one person is right and the other is wrong. If we allow those ideas to stream straight out of the mind, this usually results in separation, and we get farther away from being able to resolve the conflict or share about the uncomfortable topic. However, if we can channel that information through the heart, it comes out with more compassion.
The heart supports you in speaking from the first person with more ease and keeps you in connection with your body while you share. After seeing the difference in how challenging conversations unfold in my life, I have learned it is worth the effort to train my mind to work in collaboration with my heart.
Embracing being present in difficult dialogues is greatly supported by having a consistent meditation practice. The ability to control the workings of the mind is not mastered during conversations. Our inner air is moving too fast to be able to be stopped at that stage. Especially if there are heated emotions fueling the conversation.
Even with meditation to calm the mind, conversations with heated emotions can still be challenging because the energy within is moving so fast that it is easy to get disoriented and overwhelmed. This is when we can also work with the elements of water and earth. Water cools things down and welcomes emotions to be a part of the dialogue.
Earth energy is a grounding force that can support us in being silent, which, in some moments, is the best way to facilitate the conversation moving in a positive direction. The elements within the body are each a tool to support an honest and open dialogue to unfold, to bring the truth of the matter to the surface.
The Influence of the Physical Location
We can use the elements in the world around us to support the conversations as well. Cleansing the air with incense and sage can remove heavy energy from a meeting space before a conversation, making it easier to have a clear mind space. This can support the dialogue being more expansive and open.
Where we choose to have the conversations is significant. If I am speaking while sitting at home, in an office, or a forest, these locations all influence how the dialogue will unfold. If I want to have a deeper conversation with someone, I find it easiest to do that while hiking in different kinds of natural spaces.
If we are struggling to see the larger vision, it is helpful to hike to a place with an expansive view to support the conversation. When the topic being explored is more emotional that is when visiting the ocean or walking along a river can be helpful. For particularly challenging topics, I like to meet by a fire because this element provides strength and direction.
In many moments, synchronicity can take over, and we find ourselves in the perfect place to have a conversation with someone without planning anything. Noticing the elements around you can help you to understand what desires to come to the surface in a connection at a particular time. The universe has many magical ways to support us in challenging moments.
If you feel called, connect with the elements within and around you to support you in any difficult dialogues when they arise, and notice what happens. Working with the elements is a practice that evolves over time, and we each have a unique connection with these ancient energies.
Guided Meditation
Awakening Compassion in Your Relationships
€3.33
Listen to the meditation below to cultivate compassion in your relationships. This practice is designed to help you find greater peace in your connections, especially during challenging conversations with loved ones. Working with air medicine, I will guide you in expanding the energy of your heart to release any stagnant energy that may be affecting your relationships.
