Before I get into the article, I wanted to remind you that today, at noon eastern, Irish peace activist and storyteller Gareth Higgins and I are holding a free webinar on Gareth’s new book, How Not To Be Afraid. The book is, itself, medicine for the soul. I’ve been deeply touched by Gareth’s presence, and this book carries so much wisdom and beauty.
Please join us. You can register for it here.
I was thinking about this topic of “how not to be afraid” when a member of our Learning Community told a story and asked a question in one of our weekly calls. You see, she was running a class and her internet went out because the cable company was doing work in her neighborhood. She dropped off the call she was leading and couldn’t get back on.
I’ve had this happen to me, and it’s a terrible feeling. The question she had, that many people have in these situations, what do you owe your participants?
Remember, we’re talking about a missing 45 minutes of a class. She ultimately decided on something that felt really good, but I want to spend a few moments with the process that pops up for many people.
It’s really easy to have all kinds of fearful thoughts pop up. Thoughts like, “It’s so unprofessional, I look like I’m sloppy and unprepared.” “They are going to hate me, with big judgements about not getting what they wanted.”
These thoughts can run rampant, especially in such a helpless situation where you lose contact with your participants.
Because of the fear that they are angry, judging you, and perhaps going to disappear or come at you, I’ve seen folks go into overgiving mode. What does overgiving look like? Because they had agreed to show up for a specific schedule, and any make-up offering would not be on that schedule, the idea that you need to please them, to soothe their anger and reaction, means that overgiving might look like offering each person an individual call. Or multiple group calls to accommodate different schedules. Or offering a large refund, way beyond the percentage of what was actually lost.
All of those are overgiving, an act of self-harm that responds not to the reality of the situation, but to the fears in your heart.
I want that to really sink in, that overgiving is an act of self-harm, that you are hurting yourself by giving too much unnecessarily, in a way that probably also feels painful and out-of-proportion to your participants.
The truth is that your participants are rooting for you. They like you, they like what you’re doing, and they have room in their hearts for you to be human. They aren’t sitting there all judgy, waiting to pounce the moment you stumble. Instead, they were drawn to you because they liked and trusted you, and wanted what you were providing.
What’s more, when you stumble, it actually makes your teaching more accessible to them. It shows them they don’t have to be perfect in order to take on whatever you are giving to them. It helps them realize the truth that they are equals to you as human beings, even if they are trying to receive from you a bit of experience and wisdom that they haven’t yet had.
It really is true, they want you to be successful.
Instead of overgiving in reactivity, I want to offer three steps that can help you walk through this.
First, gentleness, empathy, care. Love. It totally sucks to get kicked off a call, or any other mistake you might make with clients. The fear that rises up is a real emotion, and your body and heart are affected. Instead of trying to craft a response from within that reaction, I want to encourage you to give your nervous system and heart some soothing, some empathy, some time to just be with the feelings.
I also want you to think about times that you might have been on the receiving end of a similar mistake, and what happened for you. It might be that in comparing the two, that you can see that your reaction as a participant is way smaller than your reaction as the facilitator/teacher.
Breathe. Remember the Divine. Remember the love and the compassion. Remember your participants like you and are rooting for you.
Second, identify what the effects of the mistake really were. In the instance with our Learning Community member, half a class was missing. Most of the teaching had been delivered, and there was some class discussion time and a little bit of teaching that the participants were missing out on.
Crafting the solution was simple, and she had a couple of options. One was to record the teaching portion as a video, and provide it to her students, and then hold a secondary discussion time alone.
The second option is to reschedule that one particular class, and to accommodate people’s schedules, to extend the course by one class. Whether it’s just the discussion time, or the entire class redone, she realized she could schedule the additional class on the same day of the week and time of day as the others, just one week later than the end date, a day and time when all the participants had been available for previous classes.
No refund. No individual calls. No financial credit for other services. Just a make-up class.
Third, consider building this accommodation into future classes. Some mistakes or problems can’t be guessed at, and you just deal with them if they happen. Some can be guessed at. For future classes, you can then have this remedy built into the policy of the class. “If any of the group calls is interrupted or fails to happen due to internet problems or other technical issues, or due to sickness or emergency on the part of the instructor, a make-up time will be provided on the same day of the week and time of day on a different week.”
The solution itself, you probably noticed, is not drastic, overly creative, or difficult to provide. The real medicine here is the first step of caring for your heart and emotions, and even before that, recognizing with empathy that reactive over-giving is self-harm.
With love,
Mark Silver, M. Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.
Webinar: How Not To Be Afraid is at noon today – May 12
You might notice that the core of this article is about telling yourself a different, more true story. The first story, which isn’t true at all, is that your clients are judging you, waiting to pounce, and you need to give a lot to them to mollify their anger. The second story, which is the true one, is that your clients like you, trust you, and are on your side. All they want or need is what you were wanting to give them in the first place.
I highlight the story aspect because it’s a big piece of what the webinar today is about. Living your life in fear causes so many problems- health problems, relationship problems, it undermines the ability for communities to come together and care for each other.
Gareth Higgins is someone who has lived through terrible violence and deep fear, and he brings a beautiful medicine. Please join us. And even if you can’t be there live, you can still register and receive the recording.
