About

Andrew Lightheart - aPeacefulResolution.com

I help thin-skinned, thin-masked, good-hearted,  smart, creative, spiritually-aware, groovy/kooky/nerdy-type people to freak out less and be more conscious in conflict and crisis.

(Mindful ittybiz owners? Come on in.)

My heart-tattoo

The main message here is:

Being less certain can be a key to peace.

Or

Open, already!

I see four loose categories in the exploration of crisis/conflict:

  1. Be less certain (that’s a major major major one)
  2. Emotions (I did say they were loose!)
  3. Shut up and listen
  4. Speak so you can be heard

A lot of what we discuss here is about:

  • the mechanisms the mind has that lead us into trouble
  • emotional fluency
  • the art of listening
  • the way words work
  • stuff – your stuff, their stuff, moving through stuff
  • some kind of loosely Buddhish stuff
  • the finding of space when things are constricted
  • opening rather than closing
  • ‘dealing with’ disputes, disagreements and differences of opinion without turning into, well, basically without turning into an asshole and maybe being gentle and calm enough to be helpful and find a way of sorting things so that something good comes out of it.
  • But not calm in an annoying, smug way. Obviously.

Opening is the way

I think that the major thing that helps us be better at dealing with crisis is what I call ‘opening’. Opening/softening as opposed to closing/hardening.

Stringing beads

There’s this lovely quote from Brenda Ueland about writing not feeling like Byron on a mountain top but “like a child stringing beads in kindergarten – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.”

I thought of saying that this blog is like a fieldbook of my attempts to practice opening, but that’s way more impressive and serious-anthropological than I can be on a thrice-weekly basis.

It’s more of a sketchbook.

You can see my doodles, and notes and thoughts and recommendations and stuff. Kind of public-private experimentation.

Also ‘sketchbook’ allows me to be like totally flaky and artsy. (Yay flaky!)

Am I qualified in this field? Yeah, no.

This is meant to be where I talk about my awards and qualifications and 15 years’ experience. My time in South Africa/Northern Ireland/Iraq/corporate negotiations/marriage guidance centre.

I’m not a conflict expert. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a shrink. I don’t even have a degree.

I know.

I do however have a deep interest in conflict and crisis and how we deal with it and how we can not be controlled by our biology and our programming and stuff.

My story is that I’ve spent years and years working with people as they learn how to speak to groups. And, much as that can be life-changing for people, the places they were often giving presentations about were situations where there was conflict and crisis.

And a presentation is not the best way of dealing with that.

So, I feel called/drawn to exploring this topic to see if I can find some stuff that might be helpful in an everyday kind of way.

(By the way, the everyday thing is more where I’m focused. Full on extreme scary situations – please find someone to help you who is more experienced, perhaps a professional.)

Really, I’m just some guy in a t-shirt who hopefully will come up with some useful stuff as things go on.

I strive to not be an expert as I got caught up with all of that in my last blog here which, whilst apparently useful and informative and all, was a bit bland and I ended up running out of things to say as I was always second-guessing what I was saying in case one of my corporate clients took a dislike to it.

Authentic-communication-expert authentic-communicate yourself.

Exactly.

It’s a little informal here

So… there are times when I put half-thoughts up.

There are times when I try to make some link between an experience I’ve had and it sounds like the beginning of a bad sermon (You know,  conflict is a bit like eating a muffin…).

There are times when I Blog About Blogging. (Meta-blogging.)

I also often let you see my progress, yuck and all, as I learn stuff about how to implement what I’m preaching.

Who knows where a year or two of blogging about conflict/crisis resolution will take me (us).

(NB: I love  LOVE speaking to groups. I would love to speak to your group. Yes please! Go on, ask me.)

Oh and…

… my name’s Andrew.

Hey.