I had a retail job where I was just casual staff at a store. The person who was managing when I first started working there was not a compassionate leader. He didn't interact with his staff much, just sat in the corner on his computer. He did not trust me, and refused to give me a logon so that I could make sales. He always blocked out all popular holiday times a year in advance (christmas, new year, easter), and as only one staff member was allowed to go on leave at any given time, no other staff ever got those times off even though most staff's families lived in different cities so they would have to travel to spend holidays with their family. When one staff member applied for holiday leave to go to some football matches and spend time with his family and just relax, he was told that was not a good enough reason to take his holiday leave, even though it wasn't a busy time of year and noone else had applied for leave over that time. His leave was denied. When one of the staff got promoted to assistant manager over another staff member, the one who missed out approached him to ask the reasons why she missed out. She was told that as a lesbian, she would never be able to have kids, therefore didn't need the money to support her family. Nobody respected the uncompassionate leader, and morale in the store was low, and as everyone was getting told off all the time, nobody tried very hard because no matter howmuch effort they put in, they would still get into trouble. When that manager left the company, the assistant manager became the manager. He was a very compassionate leader, and as everyone respected him we all started caring a lot more because we didn't want to let him down or disappoint him.
I found it quite difficult to visualise the part where you multiply the goodness by a factor of ten. For me it was easier to think about it in terms of breathing it in, nurturing it and letting it grow, and then breathing it out, rather than somehow multiplying it out of nothing.
I thought the visualisation of taking the bad gunk and turning it into something else was very powerful. It felt like by breathing it in you were momentarily receiving all the weight of the issue, before releasing it and realising it can't hurt you.
I think that so far for phase 0 the main aspects of SCARF that have come into play are Certainty and Autonomy.
There has been quite a bit of uncertainty around whether phase 0 will be completed in time to start bootcamp, whether I'll survive the pressures of bootcamp, or whether I'll be smart enough to understand and apply the material.
With dealing with such new concepts you don't feel as though you have autonomy/control over the situation. It's hard/sometimes near impossible to figure out what is wrong with your code and how to make things work.
During bootcamp those same 2 concepts will still be in play, with the added concepts of Status (when working in teams or pairs someone is likely to take the role of leader), Relatedness (trusting that others are genuinely trying to help you) and Fairness (how much one-on-one time others are getting).
I did the written exercise as I don't have anyone to practice with this week. It was quite difficult to understand why I felt bad about the thought of bringing the conversation up. I still don't feel confident actually bringing up the conversation in real life so will definitely need some practice.
I will need to work on the Tonglen meditation as I feel I wasn't getting the full benefits of it.