[Advice] Absorption

This Thanksgiving, let us be grateful for the moments of silence, inside and around the moments of noise.

The most important voices, and the most attention, go to family on this day. And while there may be things left unsaid, conflicts left unaddressed and fights left unkindled, today is the day of absorbing less of the noise that doesn’t matter and more absorbing of the silence that does matter.

Have a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Being Alone and Being Left Alone

In the world that we have built, noise is confused with engagement and silence is confused with disengagement.

This is a problem, because in silence and disengagement, introspection and self-awareness are found. When the presence of noise is confused with engagement, distraction reigns, bouncing already limited attention from point to point, with seemingly no meaning, no deeper engagement and no resolution.

The presence of silence also implies the presence of being alone, which the modern noise distribution system cannot abide. When noise is a garden hose, limited and coming out at a trickle, opportunities to “be alone” or to “get away for a while” are seemingly unlimited. However, when noise is a fire hose, an endless barrage coming out at a flood, opportunities to “be alone” or “get away for a while” are viewed as precious oases, in a desert of meaninglessness.

What does this all have to do with conflict resolution?

When the noise of the world is turned up to fire hose levels, resolutions are less interesting than continuing a spectacle, avoiding learning, and dancing with immediate gratification. Conflict becomes less a static state of change and transforms into a series of endless emotional lurching from “one damn thing” to another.

Resolving conflicts takes time, attention and emotional “bandwidth” that silence, aloneness, and contemplation on solutions, rather than focusing on problems, brings. The pushback is always that “Well there have always been conflicts” and this is true. But there’s also always been resolutions, rather than a state of endless festering under the surface, encouraged by a fire hose of meaningless noise.

-Peace Be With You All-

[ICYMI] Stories We Tell Ourselves

The stories we tell ourselves about conflicts and our roles in them, tend to have three characteristics in common:

Stories We Tell Ourselves

They tend to be incredibly personal,
They tend to begin with the word “I,”
They tend to primarily be focused on self versus others.

And, with the rate of personal self talk averaging around 300-1000 words per minute, per day, there’s a lot of storytelling going on out there about the world and our place in it.

Is it any wonder that we have such trouble hearing other people’s conflict stories above our own noise?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

[Opinion] What To Do With A Barking Dog

Nothing is more annoying than a persistently barking dog, whether you are traveling in a Persian caravan across the desert or you are a mid-thirties single woman in Manhattan in the 90’s.

The majority of dogs bark, because of an instinct to do so in situations they perceive as being hostile to the community, or the pack. The dissonance of noise between parties in conflict, surrounding the feedback that many people get in a communication situation, can come off like the endless barking of dogs.

And yet, if we stop screaming at the dogs of conflict to “shut up” long enough to recognize what is actually happening in the conflict interaction. Or, we can decide that the barking is pointless noise, based in fear, apathy, avoidance and accommodation, and then we can move on from the conflict.

In the crowded desert of human interactions—or the empty desert of Manhattan—communication about the Truth of conflict, matters more than the noise around what we didn’t do, what we didn’t say or how we didn’t act, yesterday.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Goodbyes and Butterflies

Everywhere there are voices.

We wonder what the Five Man Electrical Band would have to say about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and on and on and on…

With so many voices, how does a person hear the still, small voice of the inner being?

When we were little children, our Grandmother used to tell us that “God doesn’t box with the world.”

Innate wisdom like that is lacking in the world today. All of the recent talk and interest about mindfulness, meditation and the like is indicative of a deep human desire to shut out the endless external noise and hear a deeper voice.

Historical perspective is something that’s good to note here: our Grandmother must have been in her 60’s when she told us that bit of folk wisdom and the Five Man Electrical Band serenaded us on Goodbyes and Butterflies about signs in the 1970’s, so this isn’t something that just started with social media.

The professional peace builder longs to go to the balcony, and take a break from the noise and shouting, to find the part of themselves that seeks to bring others to peace.

Perhaps this is the deeper reason why some peace building professionals struggle with creating content, marketing and some of the other core practices of entrepreneurship; and, why so many of them shy away from the crowed noisy social spaces, where voices are endless, loud and berating.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

The Artistic Part of Marketing

Brands and corporations assume that consumers are either always listening to their bullhorn and noise, or are never listening at all to anything and thus must be shouted at via a bullhorn.

However, if that doesn’t work, then brands get depressed, defensive or melancholy and stop trying. And ultimately disappear.

Or revert to ever larger and more unseemly spectacle.

The reality is something much more mundane–and hopeful.

Consumers’ interest and attention ebbs and flows like a river. It is fickle, unfixed and ever changing.

The hard work for brands is to remain consistently interesting, engaging and relevant so that when consumer attention comes back, the brand hasn’t changed.

The hard work of overcoming the fear of being irrelevant tomorrow and the anxiety to just keep yelling today, is the artistic part of marketing.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/