It worked! One relationship at a time, spreading worldwide over thirty years and across all the generations and cultures, gradually, deeply, from the inner heart outwards, we changed the world when it had looked like disaster was looming.
How did we do it? Well first of all we had a doctor (that was me) who was so interested in the health of families and organisations that he went out on a limb, and despite the criticism and rejection by his colleagues he taught how to make good sense out of the seemingly random unpleasant emotions that come with loss, or the worry about possible loss. He taught how they all fit together into one healthy adjustment process around naming what is important to ‘me’ in any changing or challenging situation. It was a big step on from Kübler-Ross and emotional intelligence. He called it Emotional Logic, and said, “You only know what you truly value when you see the risk that you might lose it, or have already lost it. So your unpleasant loss emotions are NOT negative, nor signs of bad character or weakness! They are the evidence that you have values. That makes you a person of value.” Learning how to name those values changed the world because, when they previously had remained hidden and unrecognised, the loss emotion energies came out all distorted and dangerous; but if they were linked instead to a named value and spoken out as such, people could see that these emotions are reasonable. Then they more naturally find ways to cooperate and secure life around those named human values.
Learning that ability to name personal values changed people from within really fast! They stopped mucking up each other’s lives, and started working out how to build their future relationships on their explicitly named personal values. People learnt to listen to each other’s values, rather than kneejerk react to their behaviour. That introduced empathy, sustainability, more realistic decision-making, cooperative support, healing from past emotional traumas, you name it… People’s lives were transformed one relationship at a time, and others noticed it and wanted it. So that’s when the second important bit happened.
Some big shot’s daughter had been getting messed up and depressed about the way the world was going, when she and her friends learnt to use the Emotional Logic language that this doctor and his wife had worked up into book and a set of training packages online. He saw the change in the next generation’s hopefulness and energy to get out and do something about it, and he decided then to get a training package together for his company staff, who had been getting pretty stressed about the risk of job losses and change of work practices for those left behind. The staff noticed he had had this compassionate change of heart after they had gradually picked up the new language of the Emotional Logic of healthy adjustments. They had noticed how it gave them new hope, having named some key personal values that they could work out how to rebuild a future on. They ended up called this package “The Good Grief Energiser!”
The feedback comments were brilliant. Even those who had to be retrenched took the language back to their homes, where their families, friends and neighbours were surprised to see how they had such a positive approach to making the necessary changes, approaching interviews for new jobs with an infectious energy that improved their chances of a good outcome.
The big shot saw all this happening, and his change of heart went deeper still. That’s when the third important bit happened.
He and his partner, having seen how their daughter’s life had improved and their own with it, decided that everyone ought to learn this constructive ‘language of loss’, which turns setbacks and disappointments into the energy to build a future on these named personal values. They had watched it successfully change relationships from sinkholes of stress and worry into springs of renewed life and hope, one relationship at a time. They decided together that they would put their family fortune into making this teaching available through television, radio, podcasts, videos, everyway that they could in order to seed hope even where despair had been building about the way the world has been going. And they did it. It worked!
Marriages and partnerships started to find new ways through their disagreements, valuing their differences instead of seeing them as threats. When reality started to be more about named and spoken-out values than anything else, the use of street drugs to escape decreased as people amazingly began to team up to address the underlying hurts and traumas, feeling less powerless or empty, filling each other’s lives. The streets became beautiful again as people started planting up their shared spaces or setting out street art or making music. Dance became popular in the streets. People also knew now how to say a word of comfort and to stay alongside those who were grieving without feeling awkward and helpless, because the language of loss started conversations about what had been truly important, and which of these many newly-named values they had to let go of, and which ones they could try to recover – with a bit of teaming up and shared helpfulness. Transformation from within became palpable in the shared spaces and times of life, one relationship at a time. Loneliness decreased. Acceptance of differences blossomed into a love of diversity shared and named without fear of offending. The Good Grief Energy started to heal the separations and fears that had trapped people.
And then the fourth thing happened, as over those first few years of spreading awareness around the globe – namely that loving companionship is made known in two modes, both joy and grieving on separation, brokenness, or misunderstanding – and that the ‘good grief emotions’ are not the end of love. Those unpleasant emotions are love turned into the energy needed to rebuild a future on personal values named, which brings heart and mind into a working partnership, so that together we can face constructively the deep challenges that life brings.
The fourth thing that took decades to spread, but did spread, was when the politicians, generals and warlords in power over nations and territories applied what they were hearing and seeing on the Internet and television to their own families, and saw a change in the qualities of relationships there, one relationship at a time. With the change of climate to violent extremes, many formerly fertile environments had become barren. With population displacements and the breakdown of the insurance system, their ruling of national economies and borders was in disarray. Fighting had been widespread, but out of that anarchy it became clear that trust groups were also emerging all over the globe, who adapted together and adjusted to their changing circumstances in less violent or self-centred empowerment ways. These budding communities were showing how to cooperate around allowing this newly widespread language of loss to turn hurt around into a welcome for those who could name with them the important values on which each community-with-diversity could thrive and hold together.
Naming values rather than only criticising behaviour became the higher consciousness during those two decades that shaped the material world’s re-ordering. It’s vision and hope for shared adaptability re-energised commitments to respond mutually. It opened doors in mind and heart to welcome those who constructively differ from us. A depth of mutual understanding could be felt in the atmosphere of these trust group communities. The leaders of nations began to doubt that violence and domination yielded power in their hands. The ecology of this globe had rejected the greed of the old materialistic and power-mad humanity, whose ways those former leaders had learnt when they had themselves been brought up as children and educated into the old lower consciousness ways of thinking. A renewed humanity was replacing it, and it worked!
Here we are, in just twenty-five years, re-stabilised into small, adaptable, values-based communities respecting each other’s diversities and allowing each other to be different, enjoying our differences even! Now our renewing global scale technology is no longer defensively war-based. And amazingly, our settlements are no longer repeatedly disrupted by grief-induced crime, which had been misunderstood as bad character. The technologies can support our shared thriving, releasing creativity, while a new type of responsibility has emerged, to know each other’s heart-level values. I guess that’s how we saved the world – one relationship at a time.