Session 3:
Speaking for Yourself

One of the most useful Liberating Assumings is: the goal of the relationship is understanding, not agreement. It is indeed liberating to realize you don’t have to argue your case to the other person, but rather to make sure you are fulling hearing each other. In order to fully have this you must first understand yourself. You need to pause long enough to tune into yourself. When people share open, honest, direct and complete information they have a far better chance of being understood.

One tool that Don Baughman introduced us to was the Awareness Wheel (copyright ????). We found using this was very helpful when we had difficult conversations. While it takes time and effort to use this, the results were almost always worth it. After all the alternative of continuing with conflict, misunderstandings is also very time consuming and energy draining (and gets you nowhere).

We used it by first asking each person to fill out their Awareness Wheel. We found it most productive when we wrote down our feelings/thoughts about each of the five areas of the Wheel (sense date; thoughts; feelings; intentions; actions). We then shared that with each other in a non-confrontational/non-judgmental setting - sometimes using one of our healthy communications coaches.

Due to copyright restrictions we are not able to show you the segment of Don’s lecture. But if you search “Awareness Wheel” there are a number of useful sources. One we like is a four page description found at:

https://tamarathrope.com/having-difficult-conversations-the-awareness-wheel-a-tried-and-true-method