Week 6 Coaching Assignment - Reflective Entry: Mastering the Practice of Suspension

by Muriel Guillod

It was really interesting to share the experience where we practiced suspension, as every situation was very different to one another. One story was about a very close relationship, another one about a relationship with a colleague, and the last one with a good relationship, but less close. Therefore, we explored issues in very varied contexts. One thing we all practiced was the phase of cooling down, in order to avoid escalating in the conflict. To achieve that, a very useful step is to become aware of the reactions happening in your body and control them, e.g. by taking deep breaths and trying to relax your muscles. Furthermore, we all worked on developing our empathy skills, by trying to understand the point of view of the other party and put ourselves in their shoes. We also tried to analyse the underlying informal relationship pattern when possible, especially when the relationship has been lasting for a longer period of time. By discussing together and sharing our experiences, we learnt that sometimes we unconsciously create barriers to protect our ideas, and even strengthen them when we feel under attack, which most of the time is just a creation of our own mind and not a reality in itself. Something I personally found really hard to do is to differentiate my point of view and my beliefs from who I fundamentally am, when the topic is one that deeply matters to me. In the story I shared with my two teammates, I was debating with my flatmate about a subject that is so important to me that it is anchored inside me, in my roots and in my values. I explained them how I couldn’t separate it from my own personality and how this was a huge challenge to me. Still now, I feel it is really hard not to fight for your ideas, when you strongly believe in them. However, still, rephrasing what I was experiencing and explaining it to the person I was talking to, first helped me to be conscious of how the matter at hand was important to me, why I was experiencing so much tensions in my body and then calm down, but also really helped the other to understand what was upsetting me. As a result, the conversation happened to be much smoother and softer than expected. Even though we couldn’t reconcile our standpoint, we could accept and understand the perspective of the other. Another of my learnings for the future is never to let a situation fester. We should be proactive and take responsibility for our relationships straight ahead. It’s too easy to “wait and see”, but also very pernicious, as we let ourselves be trapped in a relationship we didn’t intend to create in the first place. Finally, most of the time, we enter a discussion with pre-assumptions, either about the other person or the way the discussion will turn up. This process acts a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is the reason why we should avoid as much as possible to have such assumption beforehand.

As a conclusion, I’d say that this week’s topic was, to some extent, more challenging that the ones we had until then. However, I think what we are doing is like a journey, and it requires several steps, like a path, or going up a ladder. We have to do the first step, before being able to do the second, and so on. So we have to learn incrementally, as we did so far. Thus, at each stage, we are able to work on our abilities and implement what we learnt earlier while practicing new skills. To sum up, this exercise made me learn a lot, and by continuing to practice suspension I will improve many of my soft skills, like active listening, empathy, cooling down, reflect and reframe, controlling my emotions and body, become aware of my reactions, and understand how relationships work. I feel that I’m learning more and more every week and that I’m growing as a person.