About

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.)

Shouty? Snarly? Surely not…

This is a blog kind of loosely about ‘dealing with’ disputes, disagreements and differences of opinion without turning into, well, basically without turning into an asshole and maybe being 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.

My Year of Opening

I’m spending 365 days, whilst carrying on with my normal business, focusing on opening up rather than closing down, staying present to the present, working out how to be gentle and warm without being fake or glib.

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.

There are four habits/practices/principles/things I’m seeing if I can put into practice:

1. Be less certain
2. ‘Deal with’ and plan for emotions
3. Shut up and listen
4. Speak mindfully

I have an instinct that there might be something useful in all of this…

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. (Yay public-private! Yay 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.

I’m just some guy in a t-shirt with a cat who spends his days teaching presentation skills (in a suit, without the cat) but 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 promise (or at least intend) to look carefully about what I’m witholding from you or if this begins to feel like a chore and see what’s going on.

I also intend to let you see my progress, yuck and all, as I learn stuff about how to implement my Grand Manifesto.

See how

There’s a great phrase I’ve learned here in Singapore – it’s ‘See how.’

‘See how’ basically means – ‘Let’s wait and see when the time comes.’

And that’s the attitude I’m taking here. Who knows where a few months/a year or two of blogging about conflict/crisis resolution will take me (us).

See how…

Oh and…

… my name’s Andrew.

Hey.