Today’s education topic teaches a basic organizing skill.

Instead of readings, members were asked to come up with:

1. Something negative that happened to them that they don’t mind sharing. This could be something that happened in kindergarten, or something from yesterday; something embarrassing or unpleasant to something tragic. Whatever you’re comfortable sharing.
2. Something they are very interested in (or passionate about) but most people aren’t
3. Something positive that happened to them that they don’t mind sharing. Again, this could be from any point in their lives, as long as it’s positive. It could be something funny or joyous, something fun or a challenge that was overcome. Anything.

We did a very basic mindfulness exercise using M&Ms and Sour Patch Kids:

1. Pretend that you have never seen these items before in your life. You have no idea what they are; they might as well be form another planet. Take one into your hand
2. Hold it in your hand. Notice the color, shape, texture. Is it hard or soft? Rough or smooth? Does it reflect light? Does it feel warm or cold in your hand? Some of these items has a strange symbol on it. Does yours? Smell it. What do you smell? Use all your senses to learn everything about this strange object as you can.
3. Put the item in your mouth. Notice the taste, the temperature, texture. Take a bite. Notice the sensation of biting, how it feels in your jaw muscles as you crunch. Notice how the taste and texture change when biting into it. Learn everything you can possibly learn, noticing tastes, smells, textures, etc, and how these things change over time.

Next, we split into pairs. I kept time:

1. For four minutes, one person talked about topic #1 to their partner. The partner was not allowed to speak; she could only listen. The person listening was supposed to listen to the words with as much care, attention, and interest as when they ate the M&M or Sour Patch Kid, concentrating as much as they could to what they were hearing, and noticing everything they could notice about their partner and what she was saying.
2. At the end of four minutes, the partners switched roles listening/talking, for another four minutes.
3. At the end of four minutes, roles switched again and we moved on to topic #2
4. Switch roles for another four minutes on topic #2
5. Switch roles, moving on to topic #3 for four minutes
6. Switch roles for four minutes on topic #3.

In sum, each person talked about and listened to each topic once.

When I first did this, I so enjoyed mindful listening that I wanted to cede my time to talk to the other person.

Question for discussion: Why are we doing this?

All left organizing is about building trust. And you can’t build trust unless you listen to someone and really try to understand what they are telling you. People like to talk; it’s not natural to listen closely to someone, but that’s what successful left organizing relies on. This exercise gives us practice listening attentively to other people.

In particular, topic #2 is useful for this exercise because the listener will probably be totally uninterested in the topic. This is good practice to focus on the other person’s perspective–the listener should be able to sense the passion, excitement, and thrill of the other person, even though the listener herself thinks the topic is totally uninteresting.

Everyone thank your partner for sharing

Leave a couple minutes for this thank you. This gives people the opportunity to, eg, express condolences since they weren’t allowed to say anything while the other person was talking.