The new year has arrived after an eventful 2005 marked by monumental natural disasters as well as dedicated and generous acts of kindness, compassion, and love. It was a year that taught us that we are all are connected, not isolated beings living isolated lives where what happens in one corner of the world can be ignored in another.

This is good news. The bad news is that we have a long way to go before we learn to live and behave with that truth firmly in mind. When, as a culture and a world, we get it, much of what we've been taught and accepted as truth will crumble. Sooner or later, we will have to realize that what we do to one person or one country comes home to profoundly affect us in the end.

Fast travel, internet access, instant communication, and more information easily at hand than ever in the history of the world have transformed our reality. We use the technology, love the travel, spend hours on the internet, and enjoy it all. It's time we also wake-up and reflect on the necessity of updating the beliefs, attitudes, and platitudes we've blindly accepted that often are more suited to the days of the horse and buggy than to the world of 2006.

Here are some recommended updates for your internal mental software that you may want to consider:

"Us and them" are no longer applicable. All of us share this planet which gets relatively smaller every day.

It is no longer a question of who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys" or who is "right" and who is "wrong". Dualistic thinking is much too limited and simplistic for dealing with today's world. Each of us can be both good and bad, right and wrong, wonderful and terrible. We must move beyond polarized black - white thinking.

Our survival depends upon discovering the power of seeking to understand divergent points of view without labeling them as bad or good, right or wrong, politically acceptable or politically unacceptable. When we seek genuine understanding, third possibilities that are new and synergistic tend to emerge. Such synergistic possibilities take both perspectives into account and shift thinking into expanded dimensions of consciousness where we discover possibilities we wouldn't have considered previously.

In order to truly understand other people and other points of view, we must learn to listen to them with open minds and hearts. We may be sorely tempted to react to what is different from our own ways of thinking and seeing. Such differences can feel as if they threaten our survival and trigger our old brain survival modes that tell us to fight, flee, or freeze out perspectives we don't like to hear. Our challenge is to notice our knee jerk impulse to react and instead contain our reaction. Once we put the reins on our reactivity, we can engage our brains' more evolved frontal lobes and reflect on what we are hearing. Then we can respond thoughtfully to the one who is speaking. This is much harder to do than it may sound. Old habits of knee jerk reacting don't die easily.

One way to help contain reactivity is to learn to mirror what we hear before making a response. This is especially important when we feel reactive and find it difficult to hold onto ourselves.

Mirroring gives us a chance to digest more thoroughly what we have heard and to allow it to penetrate our consciousness. It also allows us to keep a healthy boundary between ourselves and the person we are hearing. By giving that person an accurate recounting of what he or she has said, we make clear that we are hearing accurately without inserting our own editing, interpreting, or modifying into the process.

In effect, we hold up a mirror that allows the person speaking to hear himself or herself more clearly. If we invite that person to continue speaking, we will learn more about what is beneath the words we have heard. Both speaker and listener will discover more of what the speaker wants to communicate. By speaking and being mirrored, the speaker also comes to more fully understand and articulate what he or she is thinking or feeling.

Mirroring another person is a great gift. As babies and children, we need mirroring to discover who we are. As adults, being mirrored is healing, relieving, and respectful. It is a gift all of us need to experience, especially from the people who are closest to us and affect us most deeply. Even with strangers, mirroring is a respectful gift that recognizes our connection with each other. By making the effort required to understand and accept what others tells us, we'll also come to more fully understand and accept ourselves. Everyone wins in the process.

Another essential dimension of effective communication in the small world of 2006 is developing the capacity to validate someone else's point of view even when we don't agree with what they say or believe. To validate another person's perspective is not to agree with them. Rather it is to put yourself in their shoes and make the effort to see how other human beings might think and feel as they do. In effect, you say to them that you respect them, that you value what they share with you, and that you are willing to make the effort required to understand what they tell you. It requires that you stretch yourself and step outside the familiar, comfortable box of your own beliefs and convictions and explore how life and the world looks to those whose belief boxes are different from your own. This assists you in realizing that no one has total access to the ultimate truths that affect us all. By opening our minds to others, we expand our capacities to embrace more facets of the larger picture that includes the whole of mankind.

Beyond validating what others tell you, there is also the vital dimension of expressing genuine empathy for what they feel. Empathy means being tuned into the emotions that are verbally expressed as well as those that may be felt and seen by the listener but not mentioned by the speaker. Feelings are described by one word like angry, sad, happy, anxious, frightened, disappointed, confused, hopeful, excited, discouraged, successful, or blessed. When you express empathy by saying something like "I imagine you might be feeling....," you are sensing and guessing. The other person is the expert on how he or she feels. If he or she disagrees with the guess you make, you accept what they say and simply mirror the different feeling or feelings they express. You say something like, "So you're not angry, you are confused and disappointed."

Listening for feelings that are verbally and silently expressed helps you more fully tune into both the person who is speaking and your own emotional state as you listen. It conveys your interest in and sensitivity to the dialogue you are sharing.

By making the effort required to listen so carefully, you recognize that you are both a distinct, unique individual as well as a participant in a world much larger than you. It helps you grow beyond simply being absorbed in yourself and your opinions into being cognizant of and genuinely interested in the connection you share with others. It conveys your respect for them and your honoring of both your common bonds and the ways each of you is different.

There is another important point to consider. By being open to caring about the needs of others you also open the way for others to be more concerned about yours. It is not that you discount yourself to please others, hoping that they will reciprocate by discounting themselves in your favor. Rather it is that you know that you count, other people count, and the context you share counts as well. Each person is responsible for himself or herself as well as responsible to others and to their shared connection with the larger whole they jointly create.

You may be wondering how careful listening, mirroring, validating what you hear, and expressing empathy for others can make a difference in the relatively small world of 2006. You are one vital part of this world. What you do affects you and all others whose lives you touch - even in casual encounters. Your commitment to mastering these skills and using them means that one more person in today's world has become much more conscious of and open to living the "I count, you count, the context we share counts" ideal. Every person who grows into practicing this vision has a multiplying effect on all the rest of humanity.

Perhaps you've heard the story of the hundreth monkey or of Rupert Sheldrake's principle of morphoic resonance. Sheldrake discovered during research and observations he made in the 1940's, that when one member of a species develops a new skill or takes a skill to a new level, the way opens for other members of the same species to master that new skill as well. Sheldrake recognized this truth through his observations of birds and their habits.

The hundreth monkey story tells about a monkey living on an island where sweet potatoes were a diet stable. One day one monkey took a sweet potato to the beach and washed the dirt and mud from it before eating it. Soon other monkeys on the island were washing their sweet potatoes too. Then one day, on a different island, a monkey native to that island washed its sweet potato for the first time. It wasn't long before others joined suit. The point of the story is that when enough monkeys adopt a new behavior, a critical mass is reached. Suddenly there is a quantum leap in consciousness that affects all other members of the species. The hundreth monkey is the one who creates that critical mass.

Each of us can contribute to creating that critical mass for mankind so that we adopt new and more evolved ways of thinking, speaking, listening, and behaving. Watch for blogs to come about speaking and behaving in ways that respect self, others, and context. In the meantime, I invite you to make conscious listening one of your goals for the 2006. It will help make yours a truly Happy New Year!