What Is a Three Practice Group?

What’s A Three Practice Group?

• Do you want to be a nicer person?
• Do you want to learn how to out-listen people?
• Do you want to know what it feels like to not enter into an argument?
• Would you like more self-control?
• Are you worried about how you’re going to relationally navigate Thanksgiving?
• Have you lost friends over political arguments? Is your business suffering productivity because people won’t talk to each other?
• Are you tired of being right but not being kind?
• Have you discovered that people don’t change because of better information?

I do, I have, and I want to. But where do you go to practice getting better, stronger, and more consistent? Where do you go to translate these desires, these good intentions into habits?

Practice III – I’ll Stop Comparing My Best with Your Worst

This post comes from the pen of Cara Highsmith and the Three Practices folks in Seattle.  These idea-filled posts will appear weekly at this site.  Be sure to visit again and again for new content.

August 28, 2018

While Practice II might be the toughest ask of the three, this Practice is the one that you will probably identify with the most. This comparing my best with your worst is a normal human tendency. But, it is one of the most deceptively divisive ways we interact with others. It may not be as blatantly critical as ͞At least I don’t [fill in the blank with some counter-criticism],͟ but it shows up in many subtle ways all the time. Maybe you pass by a homeless person and wonder why they can’t get a job and take care of themselves like everyone else. Perhaps you hear a screaming toddler in a grocery store and think, I wouldn’t let my kids behave that way. Or you look at the way someone is dressed and comment that they are too old, too heavy, too young, too whatever to wear that.

Practice II – I’ll Stay in the Room with Difference

This post comes from the pen of Cara Highsmith and the Three Practices folks in Seattle.  These idea-filled posts will appear weekly at this site.  Be sure to visit again and again for new content.

August 21, 2018

This might be the biggest ask we’ll make in the Three Practices. Being unusually interested in others is going to come a little more naturally and only requires a bit of elevation in intention. And, being willing to stop comparing your best with another’s worst comes down to a similar degree of surrendering ego and shifting focus to someone else. But, staying in the room with difference well, here we are asking you to do the thing you are most instinctively inclined NOT to do. We are asking you to intentionally make yourself uncomfortable; to submit yourself to frustration, possibly even anger, outrage, and fear. You won’t like it at first. Yet, if you are willing to sit with discomfort, knowing there is a purpose, you can come away from the experience with a great opportunity to expand your mind and your world, and possibly your friend base as well.

Practice I – l’ll Be Unusually Interested in Others

This post comes from the pen of Cara Highsmith and the Three Practices folks in Seattle.  These idea-filled posts will appear weekly at this site.  Be sure to visit again and again for new content

August 14, 2018

So, what exactly does it mean to be unusually interested in others? Well, first, it obviously goes beyond cursory or superficial curiosity, though curiosity is a key component — in fact, it starts there. We all have the compulsion to peer into what another person is doing, how they are living, what they think. We are, after all, a society of voyeurs who have made Reality TV a perennial goldmine for networks. But, being interested, even more, unusually interested, requires more than a desire to observe; it means digging deeper into whatever has captured your attention.

What are Three Practices?

This is the first of a series of blog posts from the pen of Cara Highsmith and the folks at Seattle No Joke.  These idea-filled posts will appear weekly at this site.  Be sure to visit again and again for new content.

August 7, 2018

Welcome to the Three Practice blog. If you’ve found your way here by way of the No Joke Project, you may already be familiar with the idea of the Three Practices. This concept was the brain child of Jim Henderson and was cultivated over years of observing and experiencing an increasing difference divide that has hobbled our culture’s ability to have meaningful and respectful dialogue around topics that are emotionally charged.

The idea of engaging with an ideological opponent in a way that yields something other than vitriol and division is a remedy we all clamor for and long to see, yet believe is hopeless, and the refusal to accept this as a foregone conclusion is what drove Jim to find a better way.

Otherization

Otherizing is the act of treating others as different, odd, abhorrent, or unclean.  It gets expressed in a variety of ways which include, but are not limited to, mistreatment, disrespect, indifference, and outright condemnation.

Otherizing occurs as a way to explain failures.  For example, Hitler used it as a say to blame the Jews for the economic conditions in Germany.  In wartime, the enemy is often otherized through the use of slang names in order to create distance and justify killing him or her.

Three Practices in Action

These are stories from Jim Henderson’s upcoming book, “The Three Practices.” Thanks to Jim for sharing this and others with our Merced No Joke Blog.

What it looks like when we refuse to compare our best with the other person’s worst in a Three Practice Group.

Tom is a few years away from retirement.  He has an infectious smile and is a great salesman, helpful since that is how he makes a living.  When Tom participates in meetings he takes notes because it makes him feel like he’s saying something important.

Liz and the Wrong Question

This is a story from Jim Henderson’s upcoming book, “The Three Practices.” Thanks to Jim for sharing this and others with our Merced No Joke Blog.

At a recent Three Practice Group,  twenty people gathered to discuss their political differences.

Liz is an elementary school teacher. She and her husband have been married for over 30 years and have raised three sons. She is a Christian and lives in an upper-middle-class section of her city. If you met her you would immediately want to send your kids to her class, she’s that teacher.

Crossfit Civility

This is a story from Jim Henderson’s upcoming book, “The Three Practices.”  Thanks to Jim for sharing this and others with our Merced No Joke Blog.

Why We Desperately Need The Three Practices?

Like someone who has suffered a heart attack and needs to lose weight, we recognize that we’ve gotten so far out of shape that we need to submit ourselves to a set of rules that force us to develop muscles that have become flabby. We no longer trust our good intentions. They’ve failed us. We need to follow the lead of someone else….[and] let them tell us which exercises to do and for how long. We need Cross Fit for civility.

In a recent Three Practice Group, “Guns” were the topic. My wife Barbara used her two minutes to passionately express her view that no one should ever have access to assault rifles and the fact that our nation valued access to guns more than the right for high school kids to be safe appalled her.

Three Practices

Facebook is too often an accurate model of what it looks like when conversation occurs without respect, curiosity, and kindness.  Comments following the posting of a political or religious opinion are too often judgmental, even vulgar.

A rule of discussion often heard today is, “never discuss religion or politics.”  However, there is a problem with that rule.  It ends all possibility of progress.  Without discussion, people cannot reach solutions to challenges and problems.  Nor can they learn to understand one another.

Three friends in Peoria, Illinois have allowed their friendship to become the centerpiece of a movement designed to model practices that embrace, rather than avoid, huge ideological differences.  Differences that, in some places, have caused wars or social estrangement.

The Great Valley Chapter of American Leadership Forum is committed to sharing the Three Practices with the Central Valley, beginning in Merced.  We’d love for you to join us in this project.

To learn more about No Joke, you can watch a TEDx Talk about the Three Practices, and you can watch a 30-minute short about the Peoria Three who started this all.  Let us hear from you.