Centered and Exhilarated Memory Share Tool

According to a 2008 Harvard Study, the brain operates 31% better when we feel good about ourselves.

Wow! Really?! That’s a lot!

So then it’s probably important to have tools that help us to feel good about ourselves during difficult discussions, as well as the easy and fun conversations, right? Right!

The Centered and Exhilarated Memory Share is a tool for uplifting the quality of feeling good about ourselves and our experience of what thriving can feel like, both in normal everyday conversation but also in conflict navigation processes, restorative justice circles, business meetings, and some of the more difficult one on one interactions. Sometimes you’ll here this tool referred to as “CEO” and that just stands for Centered and Exhilarated Circling (sitting in a circle with other humans). It is important to feel calm and curious in stressful conversations if we want to allow space for perspective-taking. The CEO Memory Share tool can help us build the neural pathways to experience what support and replenishment can feel like in our bodies, even when the topic or situation is difficult or stressful.

The core of the CEO Memory Share Tool is to simply share a memory where you felt both centered and exhilarated at the same time. This is because when we feel both centered and exhilarated at the same time, we are stabilizing the parietal ridge, so that the occipital regions of the brain can join in the experience, supporting whole-brain participation. This is where feeling good about ourselves is actually allowing the brain to operate 31% better. Even if we are only feeling calm and curious, we are still on the spectrums of emotions of centered and exhilarated, and so we are still stimulating that whole brain experience, as you can see, depicted in this diagram:

In the early stages of practicing CEO Dialogue, the focus is placed on the CEO Memory Share Tool as experience in group practice. This is because of the importance of having a container present that can help guide the new practitioners to their own unique centered and exhilarated state. Once the practioner gets the hang of it, it’s like a light bulb goes on inside their head about all the ways this tool can actually be used. This tool is not only useful for helping us to feel better about ourselves, but it is very convenient and can be used almost anywhere , from dinner with your family to meeting a stranger at a bus stop. Once the principles of this tool are understood, it is no longer needed and the practitioner can move on to the next level of practice tools. It can be said that it is after you no longer need to use the CEO Memory Share tool that the practice of CEO Dialogue truly begins, guiding ourselves on the path of our own inner light. That is why the Buddha’s quote is so important here: “A raft needed to cross the river is discarded when the other shore is reached.” But in order to get to that place we all must start somewhere.

Bringing the CEO Memory Share Tool to Group Practice

We like to refer to the CEO Memory Share Round as the first Orbit, because it allows participants to bring the CEO experience into conversation in a reliable way, possibly for the first time in their life. This can be thought of as similar to the white belt in karate, when it feels like a group of new students who are curious and eager but don’t know where to begin. You’ll want to stoke the solar fires of the CEO experience to burn as brightly as possible and Orbit 1 is closest to the sun, so to speak. This can be done by giving each participant 4 minutes to share a recent memory where the felt both centered and exhilarated at the same time; the more recent the memory the better. The CEO Memory Share Round has three important aspects to it:

1. Anyone who wants to share gets 4 minutes, although time can very with group size. The share is best if it is a memory from their recent or past experiences where they felt both centered and exhilarated at the same time. The more recent the more vivid the feelings will be in the person relating their memory. This revisiting of a centered and exhilarated memory brings the CEO state present and becomes the start of practice for new practitioners.
2. Remind the group this is a game that is meant to be fun and playful and they don’t need to have a memory in order to play: they can simply receive by listening to others’ shares. In this way you can remind each member before they start by asking “would you like to be a giver and share a story, or a receiver and listen? Both are important.”
3. As soon as each person shares their story, ask if they would like to be asked the 4 follow-up questions, to which they can choose to accept or decline each question. This is really important for building the exhilarated qualities of saying “no” to things just for fun. If they accept, these questions help meta-process that memories can bring forward the CEO experience.
  1. What part of that memory felt centering to you?
  2. What part of that memory felt exhilarating to you?
  3. What part of you feels centered right now, now that you’ve shared that memory?
  4. What part of you feels exhilarated right now, now that you’ve shared that memory?

The focus of the facilitator here is to let the group experience the feelings of CEO that emerge, as each person feels centered and exhilarated. The orbit grows wider the more we let the feelings snowball, so if you want to experience this aspect, it is important to request that all cross-talk wait until after the full round and everyone has had a turn. It can help to have a stopwatch counting to 4 minutes for any members that are afraid they might talk too long. Most people do not want to over-talk but are not skilled at stopping talking and could easily talk for 20 minutes and we have found the stopwatch helps them to feel more relaxed and playful with the experience.

For a more in depth understanding about how this tool works, you can download the book for free (link) or visit http://ceodialogue.org for more up to date information.

“A raft needed to cross the river is discarded when the other shore is reached.” – Buddha