Ep. 96: Listening with Your Heart with Dr. Scilla Elworthy- Author, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, and Founder of Oxford Research Group

Dr. Scilla Elworthy is a peace builder, policy maker, and three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee. A world renown advocate for peace, Scilla founded the Oxford Research Group in 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. Later she also founded Peace Direct, a charity supporting local peace-builders in conflict areas. She was an advisor to The Elders, a group brought together by Nelson Mandela to implement peace making around the world, and is currently a member of the World Future Council. Scilla is an author, publishing The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War in 2017, and most recently, The Mighty Heart. Dr. Elworthy is also well known for her TedTalk on the best ways to combat force without using force in return.

Scilla and her team are also offering a brand new 10-week training journey called the Mighty Heart Online Course to become more effective when facing challenges. Throughout the course, you will learn the skills and tools to help you address the kind of crises you and colleagues are facing; deeper self-knowledge, compassion and presence; the ability to make wiser and more grounded decisions, and connection to a diverse and aligned community working powerfully for change. Registration closes in two weeks and space is filling up quickly. If interested, please register now.

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Show Notes

[4:27] That was what I was going to do was to try and stop people killing each other.
[5:52] Leadership has to change radically. It has to be far more balanced between feminine intelligence and masculine intelligence.
[6:10] During the pandemic, those countries that did best were led by women.
[6:45] And so it is feminine leadership. It is listening leadership. Most of our leaders certainly want to hear the sound of their own voices. We know that when listening really happens, we get progress, because when we listen to somebody that we disagree with and then ask them to listen to us in such a way that we could really read back or report back to the other one what we'd heard, that person then feels heard, and then you move into a different way of relating.
[7:29] We're so used to the one who has the loudest voice being the one who's right, that has to change radically.
[7:49] I think it's 32 times we've been within minutes of an accidental nuclear war. And that's too much risk for the planet to take.
[8:03] We need a leadership that actually listens to what the majority of the less vocal, less empowered people need and want.
[10:47] Unless we move out of the brain and into the heart, we have more difficulty.
[11:22] The UN did some study of how many women sit around peace negotiation tables, and in 2009 they found that only 2.5% of those around peace tables were women. When it moved up to 10% even, the peace agreement would last 15 years longer.
[12:28] Women can humanize politics.
[14:34] I often go and stand on the grass or in the ground before I have something difficult to do because I need to feel the support of Mother Earth.
[16:00] The key thing I think working with corporate leaders is to teach them the basic skills of good communication. And listening often doesn't come easily to self-made entrepreneurs.
[17:14] I love to help companies and corporations shift their whole system into the kind of system that the planet is going to need, because if corporations, big corporations shift, then we got a much better leverage to shift the international and global values that we espouse, which is the only way we're going to survive as a species.
[19:25] We're all interconnected throughout the planet and we need to act as though we were.
[19:43] The other thing that was hard for me to learn was not to override my intuition, first of all, to identify my intuition and then to act on it. The worst mistakes I've made in my life have been when I overrode my intuition.
[22:46] You have to be quite tough with your inner critic.
[23:21] That is the secret of fear, is that if we can face it and open a dialogue with our fear, it has a brilliant secret for us.
[23:48] If we spray out our anger like gasoline and throw a match, it creates an inferno and it's ages to put it out. But if we use our anger like gasoline within our own system, as if we were an engine, it keeps us going.
[25:22] It took me a while to learn to love my body as it aged.
[25:41] I began to go to my heart and breathe in my heart and then look more kindly and lovingly at myself. And I think that's really important to give you the love that you would give to a child or a grandchild or a teacher to a pupil, that lovingness to apply to ourselves.
[28:18] You always become your own companion and guide.
[29:01] I feel that generosity is the antidote to loneliness.
[34:30] I believe that the younger spokespeople are very often the voices we need to listen to.
Thank you for joining us on Health Gig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.

“That is the secret of fear, is that if we can face it and open a dialogue with our fear, it has a brilliant secret for us.” - Dr. Scilla Elworthy
“If we spray out our anger like gasoline and throw a match, it creates an inferno and it's ages to put it out. But if we use our anger like gasoline within our own system, as if we were an engine, it keeps us going.” - Dr. Scilla Elworthy
“The UN did some study of how many women sit around peace negotiation tables, and in 2009 they found that only 2.5% of those around peace tables were women. When it moved up to 10% even, the peace agreement would last 15 years longer.” - Dr. Scilla Elworthy

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