Why is any of this important? Stretching beyond ourselves to connect with others can be work. Sharon Clement provides inspiration and stories that will help us value setting our own issues aside to grow in our relationships with others.
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Speaker 1:
Welcome to the OCL Podcast. Our vision is to create people-centered leaders at home, at work, and in our communities who lead through the powerful lens of empathetic listening. Our podcasts will help refresh your skills and sharpen your tools as we do the important work of truly human leadership together.
Adam Salgat:
Hello and welcome to the Our Community Listens Podcast. My name is Adam Salgat and with me today is Sharon Clement, an OCL Professor. How are you doing today, Sharon?
Sharon Clement:
I’m good, Adam, how are you?
Adam Salgat:
I’m doing good. I’m excited to start talking about connections. So that’s what we’re here to speak about today. Sharon and I are going to discuss how to connect with others and why it is so important. Go ahead Sharon, and take it away.
Sharon Clement:
Adam, I want to thank you first of all for doing this, I am so excited about the opportunity to talk about connections. We touch on it in our three-day class, but even though it’s the foundation of everything that we do, we just kind of mention it. We assume that people are going to connect. But the reality is, that isn’t easy for everybody. And as I said, everything that we do in the three days is founded on making that connection and then building a relationship. So if you’re ready, let’s delve into what connections look like.
Adam Salgat:
Let’s go for it. Yeah.
Sharon Clement:
I want to start with a quote from Frederick Buechner who said, this just profoundly moved me, “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life. And that in turn another until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.” This is such a good illustration of what happens when we’re willing to make even small changes in our lives that impact the relationships we’re in. And in turn, if we can impact relationships for the better, and those people go out and impact other relationships for the better, we’ve started this ripple effect, this movement that will reach much further than we can ever imagine.
Adam Salgat:
That’s what I imagined seeing right away when I was visualizing that quote was that ripple effect. One little change, one little thing can ripple out into others. So when we’re talking about connecting, how easy is it? And what if I’m considered a loner, which at certain times some people might say that about me personally? Who doesn’t see the value in connecting though?
Sharon Clement:
Adam, that’s a great question. And I want to preface the rest of this discussion by saying, for some people, connections are a little more difficult and some of us only need maybe three or four close relationships, close connections in our lives. There are others, I personally find it easy to go out and connect with every waitperson that we encounter when we’re out eating or with the clerks in the grocery store. But it’s okay. Whichever way you are, it’s fine. I guess that’s just what we want to say is, play to your strengths and know that whether you have hundreds of relationships or just a few close ones, you have the power to change lives, to make an impact.
Adam Salgat:
I like hearing that reassurance a little bit because I’m one who does lean towards more, more is merrier. But my brother for example, is definitely a bit more of a close knit, those that are around him, that’s who he’s good with. And it’s nice to know that no matter which way we might fall, everybody’s all right, one way or the other.
Sharon Clement:
You know, that kind of ties into the whole OCL philosophy. Everybody matters. So wherever you fall on the spectrum, you are important and you bring something to the table. So having said that, let’s talk a little bit about connection. I want you to think for just a minute, what’s the worst punishment that we inflict in our penal system currently?
Adam Salgat:
One of the things I think of is solitary confinement, that you get to a point where you can’t even be around others or that’s your punishment. You’re not going to be around others.
Sharon Clement:
Exactly. That isolation from other human beings can actually have profound mental effects if it’s sustained for any length of time. So even those who claim to be loners, if you look closely, you will find that they still have relationships in their lives. And that’s what keeps them going. We’re built for that. We’re wired for that. There are chemicals released in our brain when we make connections that help keep us healthy, that motivate us, that drive us, that give us a sense of purpose.
So I want you to think about something else. If you look at the animal kingdom, this kind of fascinates me, in the grand scheme of things, human beings are really pretty low on the size and strength scale. And yet we are the species that have managed to avoid extinction. We’ve built cities, nations, technology, industry. How did we do that?
Adam Salgat:
Well, we didn’t do it alone. We did it together, correct? It took a community. It took connection and working together to accomplish those things.
Sharon Clement:
Absolutely. I’m smiling when you say that, and I just realized that smiles don’t translate on podcasts. So bear with me here. So what do we do with this information? I think about my own grandkids and they’re still in that innocent phase. They don’t have the worries, the responsibilities of being an adult. They’re basically uncorrupted by everything that we’ve dealt with. And if you think of your own, do you have young children?
Adam Salgat:
I have a two-and-a-half year old.
Sharon Clement:
Oh, awesome. So what happens when you walk in the room and your child knows you’re there?
Adam Salgat:
She is upset that I got in front of the TV. I’m just kidding. She oftentimes does meet me at the door. She wants a hug, and that’s, I almost get emotional thinking about it because it’s the best feeling when you step in from a long day at work or even just 20 minutes from being outside and they want that hug. They want that connection. And so do I.
Sharon Clement:
Yeah. And I know kids have short attention spans, and they can get excited and go off on other things, but they need that instant where they meet your eyes. They become one huge smile. And you can tell, you have just lit up their whole world just as they light up ours. So I think one of the things that I’ve thought about a lot is, if this is so important, if this brings such joy naturally, what makes it hard as we become adults to foster those connections? And one of the things that happens is we, well we go through things, everybody goes through stuff, right? We get hurt, we’re betrayed. We lose people we love.
And what we do also is we create stories in our head to explain the world around us. I’m thinking even when I was a child, when mom and dad acted a certain way, or I was disciplined about something or something happened, there was immediately in my head, there’s a reason why all this happened. Right? And especially in those formative years, the stories kind of focus on us. What did we do to create the situation? So those are the stories that are in our head as we go through life.
Well, add to that, the situations that have happened, and we build this persona and we try to protect who we are inside. We become very careful about what we let out into the world. And when we do that, when we limit ourselves, we limit others in their ability to connect. We put up walls. And that encourages others to put up walls. So when that happens, we have to consciously work to get around that.
And one of the amazing stories that I found in Ted Talks is, I hope I say her name right, Hedy Schleifer, she is a clinical psychologist and a relationship expert. She talked about her mother. Her mom and dad were both prisoners in a concentration camp. And the end of 1943, beginning of 1944, it was her mother who actually orchestrated their escape. So she got herself and her husband out of the concentration camp. And then in 1944, when they were reunited in the free country, Hedy was conceived. So of course, this woman, her mother was her hero and the strength that she had radiated, how she saved that family, just all of those things through life were really moving to the girl.
Well, fast forward to the present. And Hedy’s mom is in a care facility. She has dementia. And for some time now she hasn’t even recognized her own daughter. And as Hedy was sitting there one day talking to her mom, she realized that even though she was there, she wasn’t there. What was there was all of her emotion, her anger, her sense of loss, her frustration that this woman who was her hero, who was so strong, was reduced to this, to not even knowing her own daughter. And in that moment, Hedy made the conscious choice to step aside from all of those things that were weighing on her, to leave that, to leave that hurt, to leave all those walls that she had built and to walk, to cross the bridge she called it, into the world where her mother lived now. She came alongside her mother with nothing but her presence and her love. She wrapped that around her.
And if you know anything about OCL, the next thing that she did was just listen. And in that moment, in that connection, she allowed her mother to open up. And she said for the first time, in years in their native Yiddish, her mother looked at her and said, “You are my daughter.” And Hedy said that moment just moved her. I mean, can you sense the power in that connection and what happened?
Adam Salgat:
Yeah, and when I’m hearing you tell that story, I’m just thinking about everything that she had to let go to get to that place. And that’s not easy. Those walls of anger, those walls of frustration. She had to move past them. But when she did, she got her mom back in a certain way.
Sharon Clement:
She did, she did. And not only did she get her mom back, but her mom got a piece of herself back. And when I heard this story, this is nowhere near as dramatic, but I thought of my own mom. Well, I’m going to share that we have a pretty adversarial relationship at times. I love my mom, but I’m the oldest. I sense that I never quite lived up to my mom’s expectations. I don’t do things the way my mom does. We are, if you know anything about the disk, we’re at opposite ends of that spectrum. So it’s difficult sometimes when we get together and I have a tendency to immediately look for the hurt when my mother says something to me. And I was thinking about this story. And I thought, what if I put my stuff on the side and crossed the bridge to where my mom is and just let her be who she was.
Adam Salgat:
And have you been able to do that in certain situations with your mom and How as it turned out?
Sharon Clement:
I’m so glad I can answer this in the affirmative.
Adam Salgat:
That’s good.
Sharon Clement:
A week ago we had an instance where we were taking dinner over to mom, my husband and I, and I made the decision to try this when I went over there. So we got there, and my husband dropped me off because mom needed some help with Facebook. I thought, man, this is a great place to start because I get really frustrated. And what my mom had said to me was just listen to this. She said, “Sharon, if you have time, could you help me out with Facebook? But really helped me, not just roll your eyes and be exasperated.” And I thought, oh, this horrible conviction. And I’m like, “Yes.”
So I sent my husband off to pick up dinner for us and sat down with mom. And I says, “Mom, let’s let’s work on your Facebook.” And so she got in her chair and I said, “No, come sit next to me. So you work through this instead of me just telling you. I think that’s going to help you more.” And she said, “Yeah, yeah.” So we went through it and I just listened and showed her what to do and let her go through the steps, no matter how frustrating it was. She really did well with it. We got all done. And she said, “Thank you.” And I said, “You’re welcome. It’s no problem.”
So by that time, my husband has showed up. We go into the dining room to eat dinner. And as we’re talking, my mom shared a story about, I’m trying to think how much detail to go into here. She shared a story about talking to the priest. We’ve had some issues in the church. We had left our church and were going to a different one. And so talking to the priest, she said, “I know that my kids don’t go to the Catholic church, but I feel like they do such service. And they walk the walk even better than other people I know.”
And I got up and walked around the counter. I gave my mom a hug. She looked at me and said, “Why’d you do that?” I said, “Thank you mom, for seeing what we do and for recognizing it. Your approval means so much.” So the rest of the evening went on and it was amazing. This woman just blossomed. She just opened up. And when we left, my husband looked at me and he said, “Did you do that intentionally?” And I said, “I did.” And he said, “Well, I got to tell you, that was really fun. When you like your mom, it makes it easy for me to like your mom.” I was like, “Aw.”
Adam Salgat:
That’s cool to hear. That story that you shared with your mom sounds like, and what we’re speaking about here, is a connection, the connection you got back with her, the connection you’re continuing top make.
Sharon Clement:
Yeah.
Adam Salgat:
It’s important.
Sharon Clement:
Yeah. And it didn’t come really natural. I had to put all of my baggage on the side to really make that connection with mom.
Adam Salgat:
It sounds like it really did make a difference with you and your mom in the story you just shared. But you did mention having to set some baggage aside. It doesn’t sound like that came completely natural, to step into the situation and ready to do it. Talk about that a little bit.
Sharon Clement:
That is so true. And here’s what’s encouraging to those of you who we’re trying to tell you make connections. Here’s the good news. This is a simplified version of what happens when two people connect. Two brains, right? Two limbic systems are coming together. Now there have been studies that show that as soon as this connection is opened up, our central nervous system in each person actually starts to calm down, and these amazing things called mirror neurons start firing.
Adam Salgat:
Okay. Mirror neurons. I have a hard time even saying that. Mirror neurons. What are these exactly?
Sharon Clement:
These are really interesting creatures. They fire both when a person acts and when they observe an action. So normally neurons fire when you’re acting. Mirror neurons also fire when you observe an action. So stop and think about that. That’s where empathy and compassion come from.
Adam Salgat:
That’s what I was going to say. It’s your brain making connection to what it’s seeing in front of it.
Sharon Clement:
Exactly. Exactly. That’s what allows us to feel with another person when we haven’t even been in that exact same situation. And here’s the other cool part of that is as those mirror neurons fire, they open up new pathways. So they make it easier to connect, to feel compassion, to feel empathy.
Adam Salgat:
So maybe the more we’re doing it, the more we’re trying to do it, the easier that empathy and those connections will come to us?
Sharon Clement:
You got it. That’s exactly what it is.
Adam Salgat:
Awesome.
Sharon Clement:
So the first few times we’re going to feel awkward and then a little less awkward, and then it becomes easier and easier as we go through this.
Adam Salgat:
That’s amazing.
Sharon Clement:
So, yeah. And the benefits, the benefits are just beyond measure. I want you to think about, go back a little bit to when I was talking about crossing that bridge, Hedy went into her mom’s world, and when I made the choice to cross that bridge and go into my mom’s world, well, the research on this relationship stuff, what they talk about is the space between two people. So the relationship actually exists in that space, right? We’re on this side, they’re on this side, together we meet here in this space. That space always exists between two people. It’s between you and I right now. What usually happens is we corrupt that space with our bias, our judgment, our view of things, our persona, all of the baggage that we bring into everything that we’re involved in. Right? So crossing that bridge means taking all of that stuff out, transcending that. And instead of going in with all of that, I go in with nothing but openness and curiosity, just to see, just open to anything that happens on the other side, anything that the other person has to offer.
Adam Salgat:
You’re meeting them where they are.
Sharon Clement:
It’s exactly what you’re doing. Yeah, that’s exactly it. And what it does is it gives them the freedom to tear their walls down and to meet you in that same space, with nothing between, no judgment, no criticism, just accept.
Adam Salgat:
So Sharon, what you’re saying here, what I’m picking up on anyway, is that there’s little chance for a real connection if you’re just reacting to the other person’s issues.
Sharon Clement:
Oh, you nailed it, Adam, because what happens is when we have all of that stuff in there, our defenses are up, the other person’s defenses are up, right? And then we’re just in a state of reacting, like you just said. So what we have to do is we have to transcend that. We talked about that with the bridge. We have to let go of our issues. And here’s a key. We have to really live in the present moment.
Now here’s how we do this. That word again, listen. We live in the present moment when we truly listen. When we listen with an open heart, a spirit of curiosity and new eyes. When we do this, again, we open the door for others to be vulnerable, to open up and let their own light shine. And I’ll tell you real quickly, when we were in professor training, one of the things that they told us is when you teach the class as the professor, you set the level of vulnerability for the classroom. If on a scale of one to 10, you’re willing to be vulnerable at a seven, your class will come up to a six. If on the other hand, you’re only at a three, they’re going to stay at a two. So we open the door for others and in vulnerable we are willing to be.
Adam Salgat:
Right. In my class experience, I would 100% agree with you. The instructors that we had were very vulnerable, very open, and I’m a type of person that’s an easy share. And I definitely felt it was easy for me to get up there. And I could see people who I knew personally were a bit more reserved, were willing to share. And I’m sure that had to do with the professors.
Sharon Clement:
Yeah. And what happens when that connection takes place is we have that freedom and we have that affirmation. We realize we’re not alone in all of this.
Adam Salgat:
You mentioned something in there a moment ago about willing to listen and quiet your mind. Sarah mentioned that once in a past podcast about being quiet doesn’t necessarily mean just your mouth. It also means quieting your mind. And that reminded me a lot of what you were just talking about, sitting in the current space to listen. Correct?
Sharon Clement:
Yep. If I know Sarah, she may have alluded to the whiteboard of our mind. We just clear that stuff off, all of our baggage, all of our messages, all of our to-do lists gets cleared off. And we just leave that open for what the other person brings.
Adam Salgat:
That’s awesome. Is there anything you’d like to wrap up with here, Sharon, as we finish up our podcast for today?
Sharon Clement:
I am so glad you asked, Adam. There is a quote from Marcel Proust, and I just love this. He said, “The only true voyage of discovery, the only true fountain of youth would be not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others. To behold the hundred universes that each of them holds.” And that is amazing to me. If I am willing to look at someone with new eyes, I can see a whole new world that can’t help but bring depth and value to my world.
Adam Salgat:
Sharon, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you today about connection. And I will say, I feel like we have connected over the last 25 minutes. And I’m very thankful for that. I know you had something you wanted to bring up to our audience before we check out here, so go for it.
Sharon Clement:
Thanks, Adam. You’re right. We did connect. I just wanted to share with you that this was a lot of, I feel like really inspirational stuff, but on a very personal note, this has worked with my sister and I. We had a huge falling apart and through using this and being willing to do this, we’ve been able to restore that relationship. So I guess I just want to challenge everyone out there to approach someone today that means a lot to you. And even if it’s only in a small way, a small issue, just make the choice to leave your stuff behind, to cross the bridge and to meet them where they are and see what happens. Open and curiosity and just let it go. Thanks, Adam.
Adam Salgat:
Sound great. Alumni, if you have a story you’d like to share with us, we’d be happy to hear it. Be sure to contact us on our Facebook page and don’t forget, you are the message.
Speaker 1:
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