Open and Deepen!

The pathway to healthy growth

We are social creatures, and evolution has designed us to grow healthily in the presence of, and deeply engaged with, other people.

In a modern society, we have untold opportunities to engage with other people throughout our day.  In the work context, we have meeting after meeting where – potentially, at least - we have the opportunity to engage and build deep wells of trust and empathy.

Engaging with people who are different from us increases the amount of new information that flows into our neural networks and speeds up our growth.

However, we have learned, at school and elsewhere, to interact with other people in a transactional way that fails to open the deep connections that are a natural part of being human.

To open these deep connections, we need to practice encounter.

To do this, we cannot afford to dislike people, or feel intimidated, or superior, or inferior.  All these emotions arise from our red zones being triggered.  When we fully engage these emotions begin to fade away, and with them, the red zone itself.

Put another way, if we respond always with kindness and compassion then there is no space for our red zone to trigger and throw up anxieties or concerns.

Hard to do, but necessary to overcome our unhelpful conditioning.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.