We do this all the time, making choices. We are making choices about the behaviors that we bring into the world. And the choices that we make have a direct impact on the conversations that we have, the relationships that we form, and the quality of our lives in general.
So, what can we do at a practical level to help us be more conscious about this? What can we do about the behaviors and attitudes that we bring into the world at every moment? The idea of the five chairs is designed to help us slow down how we are behaving in every moment of our lives and to analyze what's going on.
Louise Evans shares with us the 5 chairs technique
The red chair. [ATTACK]
This is the jackal chair
Jackals are incredibly clever, incredibly opportunistic animals. They are always on the lookout to attack. And in fact, this chair here is the chair where we misbehave the most. In this chair we love to blame, to complain, to punish, to gossip; but our supreme game in this chair is to judge.
The yellow chair. [SELF DOUBT]
This is the hedgehog chair
When we behave like hedgehogs, we feel very vulnerable, and we curl up, we protect ourselves against what we feel is an evil world. And what we do is we mercilessly judge ourselves in this chair. So we turn, the red chair, on ourselves. And we say things like, "I'm not intelligent enough. I cannot do this. Nobody believes in me." And we have certain fears, we have fears of being rejected, fears of disappointing, fears of failing. And we also play the victim.
The green chair. [WAIT]
This is the meerkat chair.
Meerkats are incredible. When they are on sentinel duty, they are incredibly vigilant. And when we are in this chair, this is what we do, we're mindful; we're very aware; we are observant; we stop; we pause.
We take a deep breath, and we're conscious. This is the WAIT chair. W-A-I-T. What am I thinking? What am I telling myself? So here we become very curious. If somebody is angry, we think, "I wonder why that person is angry?" And we feel interested.
The blue chair. [DETECT]
This is the dolphin chair
The dolphin is such a wonderful animal. It's playful; it's intelligent; it communicates beautifully. In this chair we go into the world of detection. We can be here for our whole lives because in this chair we become detectives of ourselves. We take a magnifying glass, and we look at our behaviors. It's a beautiful chair because we become self-aware. We know who we are. We know what we want. We know where we're going. We're not afraid to speak our truth. But we also create our boundaries. We look after ourselves in this chair. But we're very very powerful. We don't give our power away. So here we grow, we become free. We come into our full power. We become assertive, but not aggressive.
The purple chair. [CONNECT]
This is the giraffe chair.
It's a very beautiful chair, yet a very difficult one as well. When we are in this chair, we are displaying empathy, compassion, and understanding. And in this chair, we put our egos on the back burner, and we listen to people. We hold people in our presence, and we care for them. Stepping into somebody else's shoes and understanding them is a great act of generosity.
So in this chair, it's an invitation to look at other perspectives, to embrace other realities, to embrace diversity, and to become tolerant. The intention in this chair is to stay connected whatever happens
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