The Peaceful Guardians Project is dedicated to building and sustaining a more humane and civil society. We accomplish our mission by facilitating three workshops distinctly designed for different populations with unique needs: Bridge-Building, Caring for Caregivers, and Transitions.

Bridge-Building

“What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.”

John Gardner

Through our Bridge-Building Workshop, we seek to identify solutions to seemingly intractable problems among groups with often widely divergent views and desired outcomes. We’ve found consensus can be achieved once all parties feel valued, heard, and able to participate in finding solutions.

This workshop is highly effective with police and impacted communities, parents and school boards and citizens and municipal governments. The workshop has four essential components. They are:

1. Self-Care: First and foremost, this component communicates to everyone involved that their wellbeing is a paramount priority during this process and beyond. The process is not “rigged” to arrive at predetermined outcomes. The result is increased trust in the process and in each other. It also provides a common perspective and language that is invaluable during the collaboration sessions.

2. Agreements: At the beginning and throughout the workshop, all participants agree to abide by The Four Gateways of Speech. These foundational principles do not require agreement on what’s being presented but does require everyone to speak and to be heard respectfully. Before speaking, participants agree to filter their comments through four questions.

   • Is what I’m about to say true or just my opinion? If it is factual, I must be prepared to provide evidence. If it’s just my opinion, then I say so by using terms such as “I think” or “In my opinion.”

   • Is what I’m about to say kind? I must never engage in any blaming or shaming of anyone. I will critique only the issues before us and never another person.

   • Is what I’m about to say timely? I will seek the appropriate time to offer my comments to ensure they can be heard without distraction and digested fully. No talking over one another.

   • Is what I’m about to say beneficial? I will evaluate how my comments contribute to the discussion at hand. If it does not contribute, I’ll keep silent because my comments are probably more about me than the subject at hand.

3. Solution-Finding: This phase is the beginning of discussions on contentious topics and possible collaborations among stakeholders with divergent views. The first step is to identify all serious concerns and vet those with the highest priority, using our signature consensus-building process. This process helps to shape the scope of our work. Then participants, in groups of three or four with people of differing views, work through hypothetical situations to arrive at their best solutions. This exercise serves as a practice for eventual collaboration on real problems. Then, through the same winnowing process, each small group offers its best solution to the problem under consideration. Then the full group agrees on the best of the best solutions among those presented.

4. The Way Forward: Here participants evaluate what worked and didn’t work through the bridge-building process. They also agree upon procedures for ongoing communication and collaboration in the future.

Depending on the complexity of the subject matter discussed, the Bridge-Building workshop will run between 9 and 12 weeks with a two-hour session each week.

Caring for Caregivers

“Please remember to put on your oxygen mask first before helping others.”

Airline Announcement

During the pandemic, we developed a deeper respect and appreciation for “essential workers,” those individuals without whom many more lives would have been lost and the rest of us would have suffered even greater trauma through this catastrophic ordeal. To name just a few, some examples are police, EMTs, fire fighters, public school teachers and staff, hospital workers and nursing home workers. We’ve also learned that a disproportionate number of these caregivers suffered from being overwhelmed, burned out and traumatized themselves. These conditions persist today among this critical population. Care for Caregivers is designed to give these individuals practical tools for developing and maintaining an enhanced quality of life. It gives them a greater ability to navigate their personal and professional life rather than being overwhelmed by it.

The workshop has five key components.

1. Love - “Love is the cosmic glue that holds the universe together”. Buckminster Fuller

   • The goal of this session is to provide a deeper understanding of love, from romantic and sentimental to being perhaps the most essential tool for living a more fulfilling life. It offers exercises designed to incorporate this quality more into everyday life.

2. Fear - True courage is facing your fears and watching them back away. Swami Chidvilasananda

   • There is healthy and unhealthy fear. This session highlights the differences between the two as well as practices to keep from being emotionally paralyzed by those fears.

3. Intention - “Be the change you wish to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi

   • Nowhere can we exercise greater control than over ourselves. Often, many of us rely primarily on external cues for how to live our lives. This session helps participants learn how to live a more personally authentic and autonomous life by forming a personal intention.

4. Purpose - Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs are people who have become alive. Howard Thurman

   • In this session, participants will have the opportunity to discover “what makes them come alive” and how to incorporate specific talents and passions into their personal and professional lives.

5. Death - “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” Dr. Seuss

   • Death is inevitable both for our loved ones and ourselves. This session offers suggestions for how to cry and smile in these critical moments.

Threaded throughout the sessions are small and large group discussions, journaling, and meditation. The Care for Caregivers Workshop runs for six weeks with a two-hour session each week.

Transitions

Workshop Facilitators

The secret of change is to focus all your energy not fighting the old, but on building the new.

Socrates

What does it take to enhance our quality of life? In a time of tremendous uncertainty, polarization, and existential threats, how do we find peace, purpose and even joy in our daily lives? The goal of the Transitions workshop is to give each participant practical ways to achieve these incredible outcomes. These practices aren’t quick fixes to problems but rather profound techniques that have been proven effective for centuries. Certainly, many people who are retired or soon-to-be-retired tend to gravitate to this workshop because of the questions it explores. However, it can also be very helpful for people experiencing significant transitions such as divorce, job loss, or a serious medical condition, just to name a few.

SESSION TOPICS

1. Endings and Beginnings (Acceptance) - We can’t really move-on until we’ve made peace with what is being left behind. In any transition, we first offer gratitude for what was and then eagerly prepare for what’s to come.

2. Who Am I Anyway? - We sometimes think we are our titles, our public persona, our income, our networks and much more. When those things are taken away, who are we then?

3. What’s Love Got to Do with It? - When making any critical decision, always make the most loving decision. If love is not needed, then it doesn’t matter what you decide.

4. Facing Your Fears - Exposing our doubts, fears and uncertainty is often seen as a sign of weakness. But is it? Only by facing our doubts, fears and uncertainty can we become free of them.

5. No Time to Waste - Those who run from death and those who run to death suffer from the same problem. They don’t know how to live.

6. Living on Purpose - Finding our purpose in life is not for the sake of that purpose alone. It’s to discover what it feels like to be fully human.

The Transitions Workshop runs for six weeks with a two-hour session each week.