Author: Tessema Haskins

The last step of my project is to continue in the direction i’m headed in. I have learned a lot during my journey and I think I have all the mental tools needed to be effective,in due time.  With the end of the physical project near, I will continue to meditate throughout the rest of the school year to relax and decompress from the day, think about how I can better my nonviolent mindset. Through meditation, I have had a clearer mind and can focus of the things that are important in moving forward with the end goal of my project and school work in general. It was through meditational practices that I thought of ways to nonviolently communicate better.

I have discovered that there is a way to communicate that insures no one is offended by what you say. Further more, I have found that offeering an observation is more efficient than phrases of accusation, especially when something needs to change for the better.  There is a problem on the football team that is “hidden” and not talked about, but encouraged to change. I cannot guarantee that it will change within a year of the start of the project because of adversity faced this semester, but I can guarantee that it will change! A collective conversation will be had, and the first phase to my project was building a relationship with those on the team on a personal level first. Second, making observations of the many things that need to be addressed, and the conversations and actions will be the third and and forth steps to this project. The work has only begun, I am grateful that I had the chance to begin this project. I am excited to see where it goes and all the new things Lafayette Football will be able to accomplish because of nonviolent forms of communication.

While meditating about positive thoughts, I came to the conclusion that nonviolence in practice is a mindset that one has to have. Meditating has helped me form the mindset to stick to the ultimate goal of the project. To impact those one the team to provoke them to want to win games and dominate. Unfortunate for football players, but fortunate for this project it  had to be in a positive way. It has been difficult adapting to the nonviolent side of the practice, with football being the vessel, due to the violent nature of the sport, but with nonviolent communication skills learns through the process of embodying nonviolence I am perfecting the techniques everyday.

After a week of routine meditation, through nonviolent practices noticed that I have grown farther away from meats, naturally. Consuming less meat was not a problem for me because for the first 6years of my life, I was a vegan. My family and I slowly began to transition from vegan to vegetarian, and soon after unfortunately, with our busy schedules could not afford to keep up with the diet. By logging back into to that during this personal project I have noticed that my diet has become a lot healthier. I began to eat more leafy things, spinach and greens and for a snack I would find my self eating an orange or apple. I am a lot more awake throughout the day. I think that anyone can benefit from doing this once in their life because it is a learning experience. You learn how to handle situations differently due to the information you know about nonviolent techniques. Knowledge is power! With the projects coming to an end, I plan on continuing these practices going forward with the seasons here at Lafayette College. I am not trying to leave here with a couple of wins. I did not come here for that, and it needs to change. Nonviolently.

As the season came to a close, I began to think about the project in a different light. I continued with my conversations with people on the team in hopes of better communication by being on the same page. While I think the team is coming along better with communication, I figured the project should shift more internally and personally. I adopted meditating as my nonviolence tool to achieve.

I remember meditating in middle school and rarely in high school. With and busy schedule, I found the time to meditate 45 minutes before I go to bed. For 20 of those minutes I would sit still listening to my breath, my mind in thought. I would think about nonviolence and all the ways it can help us navigate life positively. With the season sending the way that it did, frustration surely built up inside and I found meditating as a way of relaxing and clearing my mind. Instead of verbally communicating something, that might have been taken negatively, I would reframe from saying them. I would then meditate.

My mind naturally drifted to those instances and because I did that, I had better night sleeps. Waking up after meditating is mind refreshing, and I would not have discovered it without this project. Going into off season workouts, I will incorporate both nonviolent communication skills and meditation techniques to further promote nonviolence.