What's The Big Idea: Sara Ness: The Power of Authentic Relating and Social Technologies
“When we know the definition of a space, we will go to all the way to it’s edges. ”
Today’s guest: Sara Ness
Her big idea: Social technologies like authentic relating and circling are powerful practices for building community and meaningful connection with people.
Sara Ness is the Founder and Chief Instigator of Authentic Revolution. She began teaching Authentic Relating in 2012, founding a thousands-strong learning community in Austin, Texas and going on to train over 350 leaders and help found 30+ other communities worldwide. Sara is passionate about exposing the joy of human connection and exploring our creative potential through relationship. She has facilitated at schools, companies, yoga studios, a funeral, Burning Man, and more, bringing playful social technology into the mainstream and the non-mainstream. Sara is into suggesting ideas like push up contests in fancy restaurants and convincing other people to do them too. Hence, community leadership.
Sara works most of the time. When not doing that, she’s into acroyoga, Ecstatic Dance, cooking, and spending time with the many people she loves. She’s most lit up by creating things – projects, books, movements, systems, anything that her heart and brain can chew on at the same time.
Listen to What’s The Big Idea on your preferred platform below:
Key insights Shared:
Practices for communication can be taught.
Communication can be learned in a non-boring way.
Loneliness and disconnection aren’t inherent to being human.
A certain displacement in a lot of people that are starting to feel “normal” but it doesn't have to be.
We have physical technologies (like computers) and political technologies (like the government) we also have social technologies like authentic relating.
Social technology mediate how we interact with each other. A question is a social technology.
Set a timer for a social interaction. Help create structures for interaction because they help create boundaries.
When we know the definition of a space, we will go to all the way to it’s edges.
Authentic relating games create a structure that encourages us to be more creative.
The empathy game - direct nonviolent communication.
Finding the way to vocalize how to communicate a lack of connection in conversation.
Revealing the unspoken: noticing when someone is engaged or disengaged in a conversation and actually vocalizing this observation.
Best sentence stems for playing authentic relating games:
https://gumroad.com/authrev
So much of what creates frustration among couples is when one person isn’t being heard on the right frequency. Sometimes being heard means responding with the same intensity they are feeling.
You can hear someone and respond, but actually listening is trying to understand what’s underneath what they’re saying.
Repeating back is boring and surface level if you’re only “hearing” but if you’re listening you’re taking in the impact of what matters.
Making life choices that are a “hell maybe” they feel good enough, but they don’t inspire you or motivate a feeling of passion. It’s not as if the answers are obvious (the right partner, the right house)
To cure this pattern, start saying “no” to everything that’s just a maybe in order to find a hell yes.
From a place of openness, if the space is filled there's no space for anything new to come in. So clearing all the maybes out is an invitation.
Try saying the thing that scares you in a conversation and observe the impact. Ask if you can talk with someone, tell them the thing that scares you and ask them “how does it make you feel to hear that?”
The benefits of establishing these authentic relating frameworks in businesses: When work starts moving fast we’re ignoring the human aspect and we’re trying to accomplish the work. What happens is frustration and lack of understanding starts compounding.
Authentic relating tool: Name a rose, bud and thorn - Rose: something that’s going well - Bud: something that has potential - Thorn: something that’s causing you trouble.
Project Aristotle at Google, to find out why people work better together: social sensitivity, how aware people were with someone's emotions, and turn-taking, team members feeling like they have the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings.
Psychological safety: Do I feel like I have security in being myself at this company?
to learn more about Sara and her work:
Visit Authentic Revolution’s website:
Game Manual to see some of the many tools and games Sara uses with groups.