Share Immanuel

(book review)

Wilder, E. James, and Coursey Chris M. 2010. Share Immanuel – the healing lifestyle. Pasadena, CA: Shepherd’s House.

“Share Immanuel” is the latest publication from Shepherd’s House in Pasadena, CA. It was written in collaboration by Jim Wilder (director of Shepherd’s House) and Chris Coursey (www.thrivetoday.org)

The booklet has only 21 pages but is an excellent introduction to and summary of the Immanuel approach, which was developed by Dr. Karl & Charlotte Lehman and is part of the Life Model teaching at Thrive! conferences and Thriving recovery classes. It has already been used successfully in several different countries and cross-culturally situations.

The healing lifestyle of “Share Immanuel” includes only three simple steps:

• Sitting with God
• Sharing minds
• Speaking

1. Sitting with God means spending time in God’s presence, so to say “on the hill top.” This works much better as starting point for working through painful memories, than sitting in your pain, waiting for God to intervene and trying to “climb uphill.”

A good starting point is either remembering a situation where we experienced an interactive time in God’s presence (called the “Interactive memories seat”) or remembering things that fill us with appreciation (called the “Appreciation memories seat”). The later can include thankfulness for God’s gifts, or just special moments like a sunset or the smile of a child.

2. Sharing minds means synchronizing our perspective with God, understanding how he sees things, and thereby making sense of things that trouble us. This results in “God peace” – a peace that is so perfect that you can’t improve on it.

This step often includes a “question time” with God, where we can ask him, for example, where he was in the painful moments, what keeps us from seeing him in the painful memory, and what we need to know about a certain situation. Once we have received his perspective on things, we can share the joy with others.

3. Speaking refers to telling the Immanuel story you just experienced to others. It helps us to consolidate the new perspective and it creates hope in others.

We can tell the story from two angles: the “Once I lived in thorns” version has the bottom of the hill perspective, elaborating on all the pain we experienced – this will trigger similar memories in our listeners and depress them; while the story “What I appreciate about Immanuel” is told from the hill top perspective and encourages both story teller and listener.

This is the basic idea of “Share Immanuel.” The booklet includes of course much more, such as more details on how to tell the story, explanations on how we process pain, a chapter on solutions when you get stuck in the process, frequently asked questions, and links to more resources. I found that the booklet explains the process very well and in a way that anybody can understand, even without knowing the Life Model.

It is exciting to hear how the booklet has already been used in workshops in different countries and caused a snowball effect – participants who learned the basic steps, then shared their Immanuel story with others, and through this helped others to start “sitting with God” and experiencing Immanuel.

The booklet is a great summary and tool to share the Immanuel process with others.

I found one phrase in the booklet especially descriptive:

God offers hospitality!

Let’s accept the invitation – come and sit with Him!

The booklet can be ordered here.

Anniversary and new series

Those who have been reading my blog for some time know that there are certain regular occurrences.

• On Sundays I usually post a quote under the title “Quote for the week.” The idea is to provide some “food for thought” for the week.
• On Wednesdays the post is called “Wednesday without words” with photos from Mali, or as Eddie called them “Mali without words.” You can see them all under the category WWW.

I just went back to see how long I have been doing those, and was very surprised to discover that both had started during the first week of January 2009. The first “Quote for the day” appeared on January 4, 2009 and the first “Wednesday without words” was posted on January 7, 2009. So these series have their first anniversary this week!

For some time I had the intention to add a few more series like the above. In a way, some of them have already started ‘incognito.’

• Life Model bites – For some time I posted topics related to the Life Model in Monday or Tuesday. You can find them in the category Life Model. I want to continue this more purposely as I announced in a recent post.
• Anthropology and culture topics – These posts have been rather irregular. So far I managed maybe one post per month. You can find them under the category Anthropology and Culture. I will post them on Thursday or Friday.
• Book reviews – This is the most recent addition. Apart from one lonely book report in April, the idea to do this in a regular form started in November. You can find them under the category Book Review. I plan to do them more often, namely on Saturday.
• Personal news – At one point I had planned to post personal news in irregular intervals under the heading Sammelsurium / Smorgasbord but this never happened. I guess this is due to the fact that too few of my personal (real life) friends, who might be interested in this kind of detail, are reading my blog.

The idea is more to follow a pattern, even if it is only semi-regular, have certain ‘weekday slots’ for certain topics. ‘Quote for the week’ and ‘Wednesday without words’ will certainly remain my most regular series, while the others will be posted whenever I have enough time.

Here is my weekly blogging grid:

• Sunday – Quotes for the week
• Monday / Tuesday – Life Model topics
• Wednesday without words – Malian photos
• Thursday / Friday – Anthropology and culture topics
• Saturday – Book reviews

I think that this grid also reflects very well the main topics I have covered on my blog.

Now it is your turn:

What were you favorite topics last year? Which is your favorite category of blogs? Or which topics would you like to see more often?

Life Model bites

Every time I want to explain to somebody what the Life Model is about, I realize that there are so many aspects to it, that is is nearly impossible to explain all of them at once. In addition, they are so interrelated that it is sometimes hard to understand one, without understanding the other one. It’s only over time that I started to understand and appreciate the different aspects, but probably I am not yet done.

The subtitle of the Life Model book is of course a good starter: “Living from the heart Jesus gave you.” The Life Model is about living out who we were meant to be. What does it take to really be the person God has created us to be? In a way, all the other aspects – mentioned in the book, addressed in the Munchies CD teaching, taught and practiced at Thrive conferences and in Thriving classes – flow out of this. But as I said, there are many different aspects and it is easy to lose the overview.

In one of the recent webinars at Deeper Walk International (already mentioned here), Jim Wilder gave the following summary of the main characteristics of the Life Model:

• Multigenerational community
• Immanuel lifestyle
• Relational brain skill training

That’s a great summary.

Nevertheless, there are many subtopics that are essential for understanding even these points. This gave me the idea to try and describe different aspects of the Life Model in ‘bite size.’ I want to do this in a new series – called “Life Model bites.” I will try to post once a week Monday or Tuesday, but I know from experience, that I won’t manage every week. So please be patient with me.

Caveat:
There is no guarantee that I already understood everything perfectly that there is to the Life Model. Neither am I officially associated with Shepherd’s House. But I am happy to share what I have learned from them, what I found interesting and helpful.

Why Western Christianity Failed 3

In September/October Deeper Walk International brought an interesting series of webinars on the topic of “Why Western Christianity Failed.” The speaker was Dr. Jim Wilder from Shepherd’s House in California.

- The first part was about a 300 year old philosophy that heavily influenced Western Theology (which I summarized here)
- The second part looked at how medieval psychology influences us until today (which I summarized here)
- And the third part explained how we ended up with a false dichotomy because of these two influences.

In this post I will give a summary of part three:

The theme of part three is the false dichotomy in Western Christianity that resulted from the Voluntarist philosophy (part 1) and the medieval psychology (part 2). Christianity became a matter of giving people the right information so they can make the right choice, but this did not help to change people’s character.
As a result Western Christianity paid a lot of attention to belief errors, for example, in cults (e.g. Jim Jones) or in other theologies (liberation theology) but did very little about character failures, for example, when church leaders run off with somebody else’s wife, addictions, divorce among Christians, pedophile priests, pornography and many other character failures among Christians.

It is not a matter of picking one or the other. Christianity needs to change both sides.
One result of this false dichotomy is legalism. It easily develops when you think that ideas and choices are the key to being a ‘good’ Christian.

What is needed to change this?
We need to understand how our brain works. The control center of our life is situated in the right hemispheres of the brain – not the left thinking side of the brain! It is this right side that takes over when we are under stress or in trouble. Therefore it is the right side that needs to become Christian to influence our whole life, including our character.

How is the control center trained?
The right brain can learn to stay true to ourselves and our God-given identity under pressure:

- through relationships with others who can model for us how to handle pressure
- visual examples
- emotional story and song, similar to the minstrels in the past or hymns that use a lot of imagery
- but NOT through propositional truth or didactic teaching!

Our character can be changed

- when other people are glad to be with us (a joy that is communicated non verbally between our right brains by just smiling at each other)
- when they are glad to be with us even in difficult situations
- when we experience Jesus’ presence in these situations
- when we learn to synchronize with God while we are under pressure
- and experience his joy of being with us even when we fail.

All of this has to happen in the situation itself, when we are under pressure, when we experience suffering or temptation, not when we are sitting in church and are not tempted.

The left hemisphere can help in this process,

- find the resources needed for training the right brain
- make strategies for change and growth
- learn truth and use it as a standard of reference, but …

“Memorizing Bible verses alone does not help to do the right things, but when we live in relationship with the person that is behind them.”

We are often trying to use the left hemisphere to compensate for the lack of emotional skills but that does not help.

For example:
- addictions are a classic example of doing this, try to rationalize things
- borderline personality disorders, try to live by rules because they lack the relational skills
- anxiety, try to gather more information but information cannot compensate for relationships
- religions obsession or legalism, try to explain everything, and achieve ultimate spirituality
- work and control compulsions, try to set up rules to control people and things around them.

Unfortunately but not surprisingly, a lot of these can be found in Western Christianity. Many people who think their way through relationships are very legalistic, rely heavily on predicting the behaviors of others, box people in, expect them to behave according to roles (“you are … you should do …”), enforce compliance to their expectations, and look for explanations when things don’t go according to expectations.

This leads to “left-sided sins problems” that are typical among those who try to live their faith from the left-brain hemisphere:

- condemnation
- judgmentalism (by comparisons)
- sense of entitlement
- guided by own understanding and explanations (instead of Jesus’)
- depend on roles (instead of God-given identities)
- need to punish and justify punishment
- sarx (‘flesh’) based living, living according to my own understanding of how God wants me to live, instead of in dependence on Him!

This is in contrast to what Prov 3:5-6 tells us to do:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight. (NIV)

Trust GOD from the bottom of your heart;
don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for GOD’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
he’s the one who will keep you on track. (The Message)

***
If you are interested in listening to the whole webinar, go to Deeper Walk International Resources Center – Webinars and scroll down to

Webinars by Jim Wilder

How Western Christianity Failed

Each webinar is available for $3.00. Once you have paid, you will receive a link to download or listen online to it.

Why Western Christianity Failed 2

In September/October Deeper Walk International brought an interesting series of webinars on the topic of “Why Western Christianity Failed.” The speaker was Dr. Jim Wilder from Shepherd’s House in California.

- The first part was about a 300 year old philosophy that heavily influenced Western Theology (which I summarized here)
- The second part looked at how medieval psychology influences us until today (see summary below)
- And the third part explained how we ended up with a false dichotomy because of these two influences.

In this post I will give a summary of part two:
Many people don’t realize that our Western theology has been influenced by all kinds of things besides the Bible.

Among other things are:
- rationalism – is about thinking the right things
- voluntarism – is about making the right choices
- Pietism – had the tendency to neglect the body
- Northern European culture – influences people to live in survival mode, value stoic resolve, ignore pain and emotions

> all these affect our theology
> all these even affect how we do Bible translation
> they influence what we think is important

One major influence is the medieval psychology that divides human beings into two main parts:

Physical conditions, the body, emotions and anything related were considered of doubtful use for spiritual things. In contrast, the intellect and the will were seen as separate from the body. Today we know that intellect and will are tied up in the same body, and interact strongly with each other. They cannot be separated from each other as medieval psychology did.

Despite newer insights into how God created us (body and will interconnected), theology still uses these categories until today.

Our bodies are seen as something fallen and unable to please God, while the spirit and will were seen as more important because they can be affected by God, as something that God can transform. The will is fallen but can be empowered by God’s grace to make the right choices. The body and emotions are only causing trouble (implicit – they are beyond God’s power to transform). Therefore the body was left out of any teaching and considered unimportant. The soul was sometimes included with the body, and seen as causing trouble. The only hope was that God would transform the spirit enough to dominate body and soul. The solution to this problem is to have more “truth” (teaching, knowledge) to help the spirit dominate the body.

The result is a false dichotomy that influences our theology until today.

This made perfect sense in medieval psychology but not today!
It is in contradiction to what we know today about the brain:

Our brain is primarily relational. Any strategy that bypasses the dominant emotional and relational center of the brain, and emphasizes thinking and will, is not “Good News” at all. As a result we keep trying to think the right things, but we are still acting and reacting the wrong way.

Antonio R. Damasio in his book “Descartes’ error” pointed out that what makes the human mind run are our emotions not reason. For example, trauma recovery requires body awareness. The priority of our brain is to first ask what our body feels before asking what we think about something.

This has to do with our vagus nerve, which tells the brain what we feel like and influences our relationships and what we like. This vagus nerve does not sound very spiritual but influences everything we consider spiritual. It has two parts:
dorsal vagal – takes care of your own body
ventral vagal – regulates interpersonal relationships

Maybe it is more important to make our vagus nerve “Christian” more than our thinking!

The Old Testament refers to our “inward parts” (e.g. Jer 4:19, Lam 2:11) but they are often translated with ‘mind’ in Greek. In other places the Hebrew text speaks about the “bowels.” The translation of these verses often shows a lot of bias. Since the body is not important, bowels are sometimes translated as heart and sometimes as bowels and nobody cares if these are really referring to the same thing.

Conclusions from Voluntarist Philosophy

>> Western Christianity became about ideas and choice
>> Solution – all important life problems are corrected by truth and choice
>> This statement should feel true to you because your culture says it’s true
>> The Bible translations were made to fit that assumption due to language and culture.

Conclusions from Medieval Psychology

>> Choice is in the intellect
>> Will is in the reason
>> Intellect and reason are in the mind /spirit
>> Bible translation is made to fit those assumptions
>> The mind and spirit are changed by choices and knowledge
>> The body and emotions are not important for the spiritual life as will and choice.

Corrections to Medieval Psychology

>> What controls the brain, will, body and emotions is relationship not information.

“Who you love or who you fear, will determine what you’ll choose, how your body responds to it and how you feel about it. That relationship is actually experienced in your brain, not your emotions, not your body, not your will.”

>> We have more than one will and there can be conflict.
>> Emotions and related body responses are in executive control of the brain
>> Relationships based on love produce very different interpretations of the information in the intellect than the same information with fear.

For example, “your dad is coming” can produce two different reactions, depending whether your relationship is love or fear based. The same happens with biblical information – “God is watching you” can cause two different reactions.

Living with the Lord means having our “bowels” transformed.
We need a Christianity that transforms both sides of our character, also our body not just our mind. We need to overcome this false dichotomy (more about it in part 3).

***

If you are interested in listening to the whole webinar, go to Deeper Walk International Resources Center – Webinars and scroll down to

Webinars by Jim Wilder

How Western Christianity Failed

Each webinar is available for $3.00. Once you have paid, you will receive a link to download or listen online to it.

Why Western Christianity Failed

In September/October Deeper Walk International brought an interesting series of webinars on the topic of “Why Western Christianity Failed.” The speaker was Dr. Jim Wilder from Shepherd’s House in California.

- The first part was about a 300 year old philosophy that heavily influenced Western Theology.
- The second part looked at how medieval psychology influences us until today.
- And the third part explained how we ended up with a false dichotomy because of these two influences.

In this post I will give a short summary of part one:
The Voluntarist philosophy goes back to people like Réne Descartes. His famous “I think therefore I am” led to the idea that thinking is what makes us humans. Other rationalists and empiricists like John Locke, Gerorge Berkely, David Hume and Bertrand Russell followed. This emphasis on our left brain activity led others to the assumption that “it must be that the first beginning of faith lies in the will” (William Ames). As a result will and reason became the cornerstones of US theology. Conversion became a matter of the will and is based on right information and right choice.

Experience shows that this does not work. A lot of people have all the right information but make the wrong choices. More information (i.e. more training, more Bible study) is not the solution for everything. Why? Because this is not how our brain works.  It is not the left brain hemisphere (which stores verbal knowledge) that takes care of our decisions. Actually, it is the first part of the brain, that won’t work properly when we are under pressure, or just sleepy. It is highly unreliable and can’t change our character. It is the right part of our brain (the relational, emotional center which stores experiential knowledge) that makes a pre-selection before we even start thinking about a decision.

Wilder points out that

“We (the Americans) are the most well informed and best educated people in the history of our planet. We should be the best model of healthy community, character, maturity, and relational integrity in church and world history.”

I am sure the same could be said about other countries with a high percentage of Christians.

Why do our choices and emotions not line up?

“Could it be that we have developed a system that is focused on building our intellectual capacity – while our emotional, relational and character development have atrophied?”

Thinking and willpower are not enough to transform our character. The real control center of our life, including our cravings, is located in the right hemisphere of the brain. Any strategy that tries to solve our problems by bypassing the right brain hemisphere won’t work.  As a result there are many people who have all the right information and are still a failure in character.

Wilder mentioned another very telling example:
Today the WWII veterans are getting older and many of them develop dementia. As a result of their failing will power, a lot of old fears, other negative emotions, bad temper and character defects come up. Their will power did not change them, but just held these negative things at bay.

This shows me that our will power can keep our negative emotions under control, at least sometimes, but it can’t change our character.
The same happens to us when we come under pressure in everyday life – our true self comes out and we are embarrassed about our behavior under stressful circumstances. This also happens to recovering addicts if they use cognitive approaches to overcome their cravings – this works fine as long as life runs smooth but as soon as the pressure is on (e.g. things don’t work out) this left brain oriented approach no longer works. Their (and our) good solutions go down the drain.

What we need is a character transformation that is right brain oriented. All the right information in the world, our intellect and the will are not capable of transforming us. If we want to see real transformation and the fruits of the spirit, for example, control our tongue or our cravings, we need to give the right brain what it needs to change – joy strength, relationships and belonging.

***

If you are interested in listening to the whole webinar, go to Deeper Walk International Resources Center – Webinars and scroll down to

Webinars by Jim Wilder

How Western Christianity Failed

Each webinar is available for $3.00. Once you have paid, you will receive a link to download or listen online to it.

Burnout

Yesterday’s webinar from Deeper Walk International was about Burnout. Chris Coursey shared his story, how he became a believer, got into ministry and got married, and what factors had contributed to his burnout. Among other things, he had all the theological knowledge but not enough relational experience of God. He also lacked the necessary maturity level for ministry and certain brain skills to deal with stress.

Next week he will share more in detail about these brain skills, which are taught at THRIVE and can help prevent burnout.

If you are interested in listening to yesterday’s webinar, go to Deeper Walk International Resources Center – Webinars and scroll down to
Webinars by Chris & Jen Coursey

Why I burned out in ministry: Chris and Jen Coursey $3.00
The webinars are availabel for $3.00 each. Once you have paid, you will receive a link to download or listen online to it.

If you want to participate in next week’s webinar, go to Deeper Walk International Webinars and scroll down to register where it says:

How THRIVE Skills Prevent Burnout: Chris and Jen Coursey
3:00 pm Eastern time on November 9

Or you can also click on the link above to go straight to the registration page. Your will receive an e-mail with a personalized login link. The participation in webinars is free.

Life Model Mondays

Have you ever attended a “Webinar”? It’s a seminar on the web. You can attend it from wherever you are. You only need a computer with an internet connection and speakers or headphones. You can even participate in the discussion by typing questions in a chat window.

On the next three Mondays Deeper Walk International offers three webinars on the Life Model and they are free. I have already participated in two similar webinars and really enjoyed them. It’s a unique opportunity – don’t let it pass! You can register for each Webinar separately. Just click on the “Register Now” link below each date.

.

Monday, July 6 – What the Life Model Says About Belonging

Dr. Jim Wilder, Ed Khouri, Chris & Jen Coursey

3:00pm to 4:00pm EDT

(2:00pm Central, 1:00pm Mountain, 12pm Pacific)

Register Now

Monday July 13 – Relational Brain Circuits & Your Intelligence

Dr. Jim Wilder

3:00pm to 4:00pm EDT

Register Now

Monday, July 20 – Addiction Prevention and Your Family, Lesson One

Ed Khouri

3:00pm to 4:00pm EDT

Register Now

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Space is limited.

Deeper Walk International sponsors these webinars and more! View their conferences, webinars & training!

There are also other Webinars which you can find here.

N.B. If you are in Europe 3pm EDT is 9pm West European Summer Time, or 7pm GMT.

Finding your calling

I just came across a blog entry on Gracious Uncertainty by Wayne Jacobsen and wanted to share the following paragraph with you:

A college student asked me Sunday night how someone could know what their calling is. I had answered that the best way to know our calling is to simply wake up every day in the love of the Father, and then let that love spill out of us through the day as we respond to the opportunities that cross our paths. Eventually we’ll find ourselves smack in the middle of what gives him and us so much pleasure. We mostly know our calling by looking back and seeing how God has fulfilled himself in us, rather than figuring it out in advance and setting a strategy to get there.

We are so trained to plan everything, and so we always want to figure things out in advance, instead of following the Lord step-by-step. Sometimes I wonder if this is because we like to be independent and therefore don’t want to depend on God’s daily guidance either.  I think it is challenging to learn to “live from the heart Jesus gave us” but it is a good thing to learn to follow this heart.

Belonging and Appreciation

Yesterday evening I attended the revised Belonging module of the Life Model program. It was taught by Dr. Jim Wilder and I found it very insightful.
Two points stood out for me:

1. It is important to create belonging, not search for it, expect it from others.

Creating belong is something babies are very good at (maybe because of their unconditional acceptance?). On the other end of the spectrum “Elders” (meaning persons with a high level of maturity, Life Model terminology) are especially good at it, because they want to include everybody into the belonging. This does not depend on their age, nor whether they are Christian or not but on their level of maturity. We naturally feel drawn to these people and enjoy being with them. The challenge now is not to look for people who can do this for us, but to become people who can do this for others.

• How do we create belonging? This overlaps with the rules for group interaction in this class:

○ Showing appreciation
○ No cross-talk
○ No advice giving
○ Supportive listening
○ Confidentiality
○ Creating space for imperfect attempts of doing new things (these are my own words, I don’t remember how he phrased it).

• Creating belonging is work: I need to work to have other people close to me and for us to appreciate each other. I definitely want to learn to do that more.

2. Showing appreciation: When we put the “flashlight” (focus) on positive things, we create belonging. Focusing on negative things does not create belonging.

Or as Phil 4:8 puts it:
Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. (NLT)

• Telling stories creates Shalom, (Hebr. lit. peace and rest) a condition where everything feels just right and nothing needs to be changed, everything is in the right relationship, right place, right strength, right amount, for God and people. Story telling builds appreciation. So we practiced telling appreciation stories. Yesterday we focused on telling a story where we appreciated an “Elder”. Until the next evening our homework is to collect other appreciation stories and practice telling them.

Both, a) the importance of creating belonging and b) the fact that focusing on negative things does not create belonging, were light bulb moments for me.

a) I realized that I often wait for others to reach out to me, especially in unfamiliar surroundings or new groups. I can create belonging and usually do when I feel responsible for (e.g.) an event, a meeting, a new person in the group. In most other situations I usually don’t do it but would need to make a conscious effort to do it. It does not come natural. I still have a lot to learn in this area. I think yesterdays insight will help me be more conscious about it, and not wait for others to do it for me.

Recently I experienced a practical application of this. I went to a women’s retreat of my new church where I hardly new anyone. When I arrived at the retreat place in the mountains, I hang around in the lounge, not quite sure what to do as everybody seemed to know somebody else and I did not want to intrude in their conversations. After a little while one lady approached me and invited me to join their group which I gladly did. Most of the weekend I hang out with this same little group of three-four ladies; we often sat on the same table or reserved seats in the auditorium for each other. It was only at a later point that I realized that this little group had not existed before the weekend, but was the result of one person “creating belonging” with people she did not know before arriving there. She hardly knew anybody but she reached out to others, made them feel welcomed and included; she created belonging. Already at that time, I thought that her situation was not so different form my own, and I could have done the same thing. This not only made me feel welcomed, helped me to relax among people I didn’t know, but also it made me want to learn from her and do the same thing for others.

b) Where I grew up the general attitude was that if something is right, you don’t need to mention it. You only mention what is not right, so it can be corrected. So, the affirmative teaching style I often observed among Americans, feels very strange to me. In one interpersonal skills workshop I even said to my American colleagues: “If you only focus in your feedback on what I did right, and think that I will understand that the things you did not mention are the ones I should improve on, most likely I won’t get it. I need to be told directly what is not ok, what needs to be changed.”  Now after having visited the USA several times, I got more used to the encouraging feedback and I quite like it. Sometimes to the point that I grow irritated when correction comes in the direct (and often harsh) way of pointing out the negative things, with which I grew up. Still, sometimes when I hear teaching about positive feedback, affirmations, etc, I wonder how much of this is cultural and if this might only apply to Americans.

But when Jim Wilder said yesterday evening that focusing on negative things does not create belonging, I had my Aha-moment. Deep down I realized that this is true, no matter which culture, even if it is expressed in very different ways. Every human being needs acceptance and belonging, and pointing out faults usually does the opposite – it builds walls. I even got my practical lesson right afterward: after I had told my little story, my neighbor criticized that I had missed one point of a good appreciation story. I felt put down and grew defensive. When I thought about it later, I realized that she could have pointed out the same thing through an encouraging question, but the way she had said it built a wall between us. Wow! So, this is definitely something I want to learn to avoid myself.

At the same time I realize that this is a difficult balance. For example, as a consultant or teacher, I can encourage somebody, showing appreciation, for example,  for the good start in a writing project. But this will not tell him/her enough about which parts still need improvement. Having grown up in a context where this balance was rare, I do not have a lot of role models for this.

Can you share examples from your own experience where somebody showed appreciation, and still managed to indicate the points that need improvement? How do you do it yourself?