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Exploring Willingness

At any point in the CL process, any question, any inquiry, we can gauge constriction and expansion via willingness questions such as:

  • Am I willing to use the CL process?
  • Am I willing to pause and take some slow breaths?
  • Am I willing to investigate this further?
  • Am I willing to acknowledge, allow, accept, and even appreciate the situation just as it is?
  • Am I willing to work on resolving this?
  • Am I willing to take responsibility, to get curious, to allow feelings, to appreciate this learning opportunity?

Willingness questions have an expansive style. They can feel like friendly invitations instead of assertive mandates or commands. As long as we feel truly free to find and express any answer, the asking itself can help us to open up and actually find willingness. Of course, a constrictive imperative style might work well in some cases too. We can try different approaches and see how we react.

When we find unwillingness or non-acceptance, we can then apply the CL process to those feelings. We can attune to the resistance itself and then choose an appropriate resolution. If we try to resolve constrictions that we do not even accept having, we will be less likely to get clear insights, less likely to find appropriate, effective resolutions.