The First Sixty Seconds

This download is for you if this rings a bell:

Someone you love says something cutting. Your partner makes a comment that finds the exact soft spot. Your parent pushes your buttons (because after all, they installed them). And inside the next sixty seconds, before you have consciously decided anything, you do one of two things:

1. You leave yourself and rush to apologise, appease, over-explain and make it better, whatever it takes to smooth over the situation.

2. Or, you pull back and shut down. The move is to protect yourself which can often cut the connection.

So in the first one you lose yourself, and in the second one you lose the connection.

Both of these happen at the speed of light.

You probably already know you do this. You can name the pattern, you have read about it, you might even have a word for it. And still you cannot seem to do anything else in the moment that counts.

That gap, between what you know and what you actually do when someone you care about has hurt you, has very little to do with how clever or self-aware you are. It is a body that learned these two moves a long time ago, and has been performing them on cue ever since.

The First Sixty Seconds is a short, free practice that moving you from 'knowing' into connection with 'doing'. It walks you through what to do in that opening minute, so the thing you already know in your bones becomes a thing you can actually do while the in the heat of the moment.

There is no such thing as a perfect response. But it will show you how to stay with yourself long enough and protect the connection at the same time. Relational health can be built upon that foundation.