Categories: uncategorized
Date: 12 June 2007 08:37:30
I'm great at living my life in boxes.
Mum is the role I have at home, teacher is the role I have in the classroom, courseleader is the role I have in the office when I'm doing the paperwork, heretic in the corner with a gifting for chairs is the role I have at church ;), friend is the role I have when I'm sitting laughing drinking, wine or coffee with friends, daughter is the role I have when I'm on the end of the phone to my dad and chair is the role I have when I have I am trying to keep order in a meeting.
In each of these roles I use a range of skills and have a tool kit of strategies that I use in different situations to find solutions. I have tended to take the idea that the tools are situation specific, but I am starting to change my mind. I am realising that perhaps the most effective way of "thinking outside the box" is actually to just look in a different box.
An example of this is recently when I set up a meeting, with a friend acting as facilitator, between Third Party and myself to discuss the everyday issues that we have and to look for mutually acceptable solutions. Now this does require you to find somebody you can trust who has the appropriate skills to act as facilitator, but for most of us this shouldn't be too hard. Why did I do this? Well I'm not going into details, but basically I recognised there were some everyday things that needed to be dealt with and I wanted to deal with them in a practical, non-emotional way.
Now at this point you're probably sitting there thinking this is just a family meeting - why did it have to be formalised? The answer is as a lone parent family meetings with just the child and one parent don't have anybody to act as referee if required and so can easily turn into negative affairs. Therefore, by setting it up in the same way I would a meeting at work if two people needed to discuss issues which had arisen amongst them it becomes a much more positive experience.