Underestimating the Power of Obvious

Many years ago I worked in the tourism industry, in a holiday cottage letting agency. One of the add-ons to the price the customers were asked to pay was cancellation insurance. Now, our CEO had worked in advertising and was very knowledgeable about the power of words – and so when it came to conveying to potential customers that the insurance was compulsory, (which was a very harsh word), he couched it in softer and more obscure terms – obligatory. And he insisted that none of us would ever use ‘compulsory’ or indeed any other word.

It was amusing to listen to new sales office staff endeavouring to explain to punters what obligatory meant, because this is not a word in out-there everyday parlance. However, for our business it was everyday parlance – and everyone of us would habitually use it without thinking. It’s the same with all professional and industry specific words and phrases.
These fall into the category of the obvious – and just as it is with language it’s the same with various practices and methodologies. And the fact is - once something is committed to the obvious, then we say and do these things verbatim, parrot-fashion, to the script. Rather like the way I learnt multiplication – the ‘times tables’. Of course, all subsequent usage takes place without us really considering the impact or power that these things have on the uninitiated.

The Visualization Routine

I have a little routine which demonstrates the power of visualization, which is particularly useful for groups since the effect works almost 100%. It’s a great one for setting out the scene for “what I do” – and essentially it shows people the power of their own mind to change something in their physiology. The thing is. this routine has become SO familiar and routine for me, that now I totally underestimate the effect it can have on people.

One of the players I coach, who is now a university student, was talking to me at a function recently. “I always remember that first session you did with us,” he said. (Nearly 3 years ago). “That visualization thing you did just blew me away and started me thinking about so many other things to do with how I play, the body and the mind.” For him this was clearly a ground-breaking series of ‘light bulb moments’ – whereas for me it was just a routine demonstration of visualization and the mind-body link. For me it was a gloss-over and I totally missed the power of the obvious.

I have a couple of other ‘routines’ I use in group situations, and here too I’ve made them so familiar to me that I again underestimate the power that lies in the message.

‘The Mayonnaise Jar’

This routine is all about recognising what is REALLY important in our lives, and ordering what we do into a hierarchy of relevance. For many it’s their first practical encounter with the logical levels of NLP – without NLP ever being mentioned. By way of props there’s a big empty jar, some golf balls, some stones or pebbles that are slightly smaller, some gravel and some sand. The jar represents Life and the balls etc represent things we do and spend our time and energies on. Depending on how the jar is filled up, it is possible to get very much more (and conversely very much less) into Life. The key is recognising the really important things (the golf balls), and to put them in first. The day to day trivial stuff (sand) can go in last.

There are many young players (and fellow coaches too) who have spoken to me about how relevant this has been for them – but for me it is just a little ‘piece of theatre’ designed to engage them on an unconscious level.

‘The Folded T-Shirt’.

I saw a YouTube video once entitled ‘Learn a new skill in 15 seconds’. I watched intrigued as a Japanese man was filmed in the street showing passers-by how to fold a T-Shirt so that it looked like a new product in wrappings on a shelf in a shop. As all his instructions were in Japanese, I had to pay close attention to how he did it visibly. And, amazingly for me – I got it very quickly, almost in 15 seconds as it happened!
Now here was the key, as far as I was concerned – visible modelling. If I could do it then I could use it as a demonstration of how new physical skills can be best acquired. I first used the routine on a group of 11 year old young sportspersons, first demonstrating and then asking for volunteers to have a go themselves.

It’s very engaging and shows us how to (a) notice certain beliefs that may be detrimental to our progress, (b) notice that too much thinking can get in the way of our learning and executing certain physical tasks and activities.

Here again we witness the power of the obvious – and because of familiarity with the routine I often devalue its usefulness.

Obligatory

So it’s important to remember that something simple and obvious to you may well be novel and meaningfully relevant to someone else. And in that novelty and newness there will be power, perhaps power for change; a change for good; a change of mind; and all because we’ve broadened their perspective.

Once you acknowledge the power of the obvious, using it becomes obligatory – because we are all instruments of change, of evolution.