There are days to celebrate the uncomfortable...

Today started like any other.  Then around 11 a.m. my boss walked by and impromptly decided that myself and my co-workers were going to have a meeting.

At the world school, such a meeting would be something like "lets envision our future!"

At my job, its presented more as "our workspace is dysfunctional, lets talk about whats not working'."  The feeling of the approach are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The World school situation, I have a feeling of hope.  The second, the job situation, I have a feeling of dread.

In the past, if I was presented with that statement (the dysfunction statement), I would take the statement personally, like I myself was personally responsible for this situation and everyone's bad feelings about it.  (Anybody relate to that one?)

I recognized today immediately that this deep down a discussion about who we all are as individuals, my co-workers, myself as real people.  I didn't want to start the meeting off in a tone of dread, critical of people, of the "perceived" wrong.  Who wants to listen to that anyway? 

I suggested that we as a group, state from the start, what is our intention for the meeting.  What do we want to accomplish?  I also suggested that we all need to agree to this intention and not blindly think that everyone agrees because they are silent.  I followed up that I think it would be a great benefit if we can see what we are needing in the situation, each individual, because then we can actually address what is going on.  I spoke of the deeper needs of consideration, warmth, respect. 

I have to admit, I was shaking somewhat during this. Physically. For anyone that has had a chance to do TRE exercises, it felt like that.  (here is a link about TRE:  http://www.yogadventure.com/yoga_and_tre.html).  While I was shaking, I was sort of smiling.  I got that my body was taking care of itself by shaking out the trauma, my internal chatter of "its my fault" or the "oh god, its going to be a meeting of a million complaints!"

I used my voice, even though I was scared to use it.  I was uncomfortable, and I chose to voice aloud the concerns that I had about us as individuals. I did shake, maybe people saw it, maybe it was a subtle awareness about myself that no one did see...I felt very confident in how I presented my ideas. 

I'm celebrating that I did it!  And how powerful it was and what a difference it made!

So many times, in the past, I've been in meetings where I've had the perception that I had have no choice about the tone of the meeting.  I'm at the mercy of a dictatorship. 
Today, I voiced what was important to me.   I remembered we always have a choice.  For me, it was whether I was letting my uncomfortable feelings keeping me from speaking what was personally important to me.

I would like to celebrate that by turning that ship around, the meeting was of a completely different nature.  The tone was one of what are we trying to create and how can we get there.  Afterward one of my co-workers mentioned that she appreciated my thoughts and was glad I voiced them.