As a child, Claire’s mum was a senior leader in the Girl Guides. Claire was happy to join Brownies and then go up to Guides but, when she was around 13 or 14, her interests started to lead her elsewhere. She wanted to leave but her mum “heavily encouraged” her to stay.
One of the things about Guides that really irked Claire was the frequent, long hikes that her leader organised that Claire was expected to go on. She felt that she had no choice in going and grumbled along, staring at the floor and kicking stones in anger at every opportunity. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t make her brilliant company, so the other girls would forge ahead and leave her to her negativity, which flourished under such excellent growing conditions.
Claire was at War. With her mum, her leader, the other girls, herself and every tree, hill and stone on each walk she went on.
Fast forward thirty years and Claire is a well-respected coach who came along to one of the War to Peace workshops. In her spare time, Claire loves to take any opportunity she can to walk in the wild, and she shared a revelation about this that she’d had in the workshop with the group:
“I’ve just realised how I went from being at War to being at Peace when it comes to walking, and I think this may be the key to being able to change my mood quickly.
“Towards the end of my time in the Guides, we were staying on an outward bound style residential in some army barracks in Bavaria. I was moaning to Nick, one of the guys stationed there, about how much I hated walking and he really ‘saw’ me. He challenged me to come out with him the next day on the nearby Five Peak Trail, but he had some conditions: we could stop and rest whenever I wanted for however long I wanted; we could stop and go back to the barracks any time I wanted, and that he would carry lots of water and I only needed a daysack. I thought about it. It sounded better than the tree replanting exercise we were scheduled to do the next day, so I said yes. I figured I could bail out early and be back in my room eating chocolate by the afternoon anyway.
“The next day was a beautiful blue-sky day, and we set off up the first hill of the trail. I surprised myself by really enjoying it and, when Nick asked me if I was ok to go on, I was astonished by my own enthusiasm. We stopped frequently, drank water and admired the views and each time Nick asked me if I wanted to go on, I really did. We completed the trail and I enjoyed every step. For the very first time, I felt that I’d had a choice to hike or not!
“Since then, I’ve realised that I tend to go to War if I feel boxed into a situation or feel compelled to do something by someone else. I’ve become well practised at noticing when I hear myself saying “I had no choice” – either in my head or out loud, because the truth is, I always have a choice, even if it’s a difficult one, or even if it’s only a choice about how I’m choosing to view a situation. So these days, in situations that start to feel uncomfortable, I start to consider all my choices (even the difficult ones) and it seems to be a way to manoeuvre myself quickly back to being at Peace. As does going for a long walk, ironically! Thank you for helping me to make this connection to my relationships with other people I find difficult – I really feel that I have at last ‘joined the dots!’”
Over to you
- Have you ever felt as though you had no choice in a situation? How did you feel?
- How could looking for (maybe not immediately obvious) choices in a situation lead you to viewing the situation differently?
- Have you unconsciously taken away someone else’s choices about something? How could you help them to feel they have more choice next time?
Could you, or someone you know, benefit from War to Peace®?
If you, or someone you know, could benefit from learning more about how to remain effective and untriggered at work and at home, consider War to Peace®. These workshops can be held in your workplace and away from it. Spaces for our next public course that anyone may attend can be booked here:
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