Mind How You Go!

Just a sneak preview of the Front Cover of Mind How You Go - which will now be available very soon!
Big thanks to Cheryl Laidlaw from Reyl Design group for her expertise!

Becoming a Martian

Play

A lot of my sports coaching centres around the concept of play, how we react to play, how play can liberate us, and how we can get to play better.

When I first learnt how to ski I was 17. I could ice skate and roller skate pretty well anyway – and of course the idea of sliding down a mountainside at speed, with the wind rushing past my ears and through my hair, was not far away from pure pleasure! So I signed up to the school trip.
On reflection I was really fortunate in that the trip was for almost 2 weeks and not just the one. As a “nursery slopesman” for the first week I got to understand all the ins-and-outs of controlling myself using ‘snowplough’ techniques. My more accomplished peers would talk all about ‘stem turns’ and ‘parallel turns’ – and having really good fun going much faster than I was, and so I began wonder when I’d get to do these amazing skiing mysteries, and get away from the exhausting inexhaustibility of ‘snowplough’ stuff.

At the end of week 1 we all got to do our own thing. A group of us set off on a trail with our packed lunch for a few hours – and it was in those hours that I took the big leap forward. We’d all had a lot to drink the night before and, to be fair, I was the little worse for wear – but that probably also helped me get out of doing too much thinking about what was to come. We skied along narrow paths through trees, sharp turns, quite steep inclines, moguls, rocky bits – for me this was akin to an assault course. But by the end – having used my snowplough skills AND trying out all those new ‘mystery skills’ because they were essential – I really got what it was all about!

I, along with all my mates, had been at play. And for me, this particular play just took me out of myself and into a place of unfettered learning – learning how to play better at skiing.

Week 2 was brilliant because I went up a couple of groups in the Ski Schule and got to know more about going faster, parallel turns, and just how wonderful this sport is.

Interestingly, my very first real coaching experience was some 12 years later, teaching skiing to beginners. I loved it and – as I recall, my learner group loved it too!

Work

There’s an overarching concept about work, in that all the rewards are set in the future. We work at a job for pay at the end of the week, month or some arbitrary period. We work at school, learning skills that will stand us in good stead for when we go out into the big wide world. Whilst the rewards and the purposes for play are set in the Now, work is future oriented. And of course in a society or a culture that has a good work ethic, the citizens are generally future oriented too – they comfortably wear the idea of savings, and keeping things for a rainy day. Play is accepted as being something healthy, but is not entirely viewed as being totally essential – in spite of sayings such as “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
There is a widely held view in this kind of society, that being a professional sports person, a musician (especially a rock star), an actor, comedian, dancer, artist – these aren’t “proper jobs”. To quote a phrase from an old BT advert, “You’ve got to be qualified, get yourself an ‘-ology’. That’s a real job!”
And yet in a society like Brazil for instance, these ARE all proper jobs – in fact they are highly sought after jobs! The ‘workers’ in these jobs are revered and inspire their fellow citizens - and to follow in their footsteps is, for many, their passport to a much better life for them and their families.

The thing is – the people who have “play” oriented jobs, still work at what they do! They know if they want to get better at what they love – better at their play – they have to work at it. The thing I discovered about my skiing was that when playtime eventually came around, it was THEN that I realised the value of my work. And I also realised that thereafter – when we all worked out educating our bodies to be better at doing the parallel turns - this work was integral to making the whole experience of play even better. The work was fun in and of itself – and the more open-minded the ski coach, the more fun the work can be.

“What do you want to be when you leave school?”
“We always knew he/she was going to be an X – they were so dedicated to what they did.”
“What job would you do if it didn’t matter whether you got paid or not because everything was taken care of?”

Consider the familiarity and impact of these remarks and questions. There are a lot of assumptions and presuppositions in each one, and at this point you may have already begun to notice your thinking around how they sound, and to how many different places your feelings and perceptions are now going.

Rest

Before I start talking about rest, I’d like to just throw this comment into the pond and see where the ripples might take us.
“What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”

The general linguistic notion about rest is – a change or ceasing of one activity in order to engage in a period of repose or recuperation. And in this regard “a change is as good as a rest” can be seen as a useful mantra. If we’ve just run a marathon, then a change is going to be the act of ‘not running’. Stop doing ‘A’ in order to start doing ‘B’.

How do we view ourselves ‘at rest’, how do we feel about it, how do we represent it to ourselves?
If we view rest as ‘inactivity’ then we’ll most likely feel differently about it than if we viewed it as doing ‘something else’. For even in ‘inactivity’ we are actually ‘active’.
The other thing is, seeing it as ‘inactivity’ actually opens the door to ‘laziness’ – as a judgement of both ourselves and others. If we think ‘doing nothing’ as being ‘lazy’ – then we will always be ‘on the go’ and, dare I say, judge others who aren’t ‘on the go’ as ‘lazy’.
If you were like that and didn’t know I’d just run a marathon, when you saw me resting my weariness you’d think (and perhaps say) I was lazy.
It’s not a well grounded notion though, is it?

So take a good look at how you view rest – because the rest of your life might just start to become different when you do.

So what about the rest as being the remainder? In temporal terms it’s what is left to come; in resource terms it’s what is left in the tank; in conversational terms it’s what you haven’t yet said – and so on.
These remainders all come about after some things have been done, used, spent or told. And that reminds me of another question that is designed to get us to stop and consider the importance of things to us.
“If I only had a year to live, how would I organise my life differently?”

Conclusion

There is an intricate balance between Play, Work and Rest that is absolutely crucial to the way we think, the way we act, the way we learn, the way we play, the way we earn, the way we recuperate, and the way we enjoy ourselves.

And by now you’ve perhaps already made the connection between these ideas and a well known advertising slogan.

Now if there is life on the red planet, then how much easier would it be for us to live there if we’d already taken steps to becoming a Martian? Alternatively, you may wonder what on earth all this is about!
It’s just a thought.

Wooden Perspectives

Grainy

I was in a conversation with some good friends online when I found myself using the phrase “... insights, ideas and connections come bubbling up out of the woodwork ...” and then I added, “... of my mind.”
Not the windmills of my mind, I might add – but the woodwork!
Then, as often happens with my experience, there’s a moment where motion stops and time stands still; and in those moments all thoughts and incoming sensual data seem to fuse with a flash, so I’m left wondering and considering “where has that come from – and where is it leading me to?”
And, as is usually the case, this got me answering my curiosity by thinking along different lines – following a certain train of thought.
Or, as it then morphed, “following a certain grain of thought.”

Now when we think of a grain of thought we might imagine this is a small particle, rather like a grain of sand.
So I’d invite you to reconsider this for a moment - what if the grain could be represented rather like the grain in wood. A grain, a patterning within the strata or the layers of wood, a grain formed when that wood was a living and breathing entity; a grain of character. A grain to be utilised, to be admired, to be polished so as to enhance the beauty, the contours and the nature of that grain.

Another feature of the grain within any wood is that each one is totally unique, rather like a fingerprint. The grain that we see came from a live tree, perhaps one of thousands of similar types of trees - and yet this one particular grain is never totally replicated in nature. This is rather like each one of us – totally unique – each with our own minds, and with every grain of thought different.

It’s a fascinating perspective.

Next, I pursued the notion of things that come bubbling up out of the woodwork.

Insect ideas

That metaphorical phrase, coming up out of the woodwork, has its origins with the nature of certain dormant insects at some stage of their life cycles. They then suddenly appear active, inside and on the surface of the wood, triggered by certain conditions. Now in the nature of insects, they all have a purpose, even though we might scratch our heads over what that purpose might be. Now some ideas, and some insects, are ‘good’ (i.e better for us) and others are not – even though those ideas all have a purpose too.

Of course certain ideas can stay in the mind and grow and feed in the mind and start to eat away at the fabric, rather like woodworm – using the energy of the mind for its activity, and at the same time sapping the mind from being able to use that energy elsewhere.

Not unsurprisingly, the metaphor of the wood-like nature of the mind becomes more multi-layered the more you consider it.

Nots

Knots in the fabric of wood are imperfections lying at the base of a side branch or a dormant bud. Now if we view our own developing lives rather as for a tree, then when branches form there are going to be knots within the fabric of our minds. These metaphorical knots might be viewed as being triggered by imprints, traumatic experiences, periods of hormonal or chemical change and alignment.
Now the knots, when viewed as part of the grain-like nature of our minds, can be things of beauty – even though they might mar the technical nature, the functionality or the usefulness of the wood, in terms of grain. They are all part of the richness of our character, of our nature – and yet they also can cause us irritation when our minds don’t quite seem to work in the way that we want.

The thing about knots is this - they are only part of the tree’s history and not its Now, not its present; because in the Now of the tree, the knots are not yet formed – they are “nots”.

Sometimes, due to the fabric of time within the mind, we can even get to imagine what those knots (or indeed any knots) might be like for us – whether they exist in our history or not! And if you feel somewhat detached from the argument at this stage then consider someone with a phobia about flying. Someone who takes a past knot and develops it to such an extent through their imagination that it is distorted in their future, and then applies that imaginary future knot back into their present - applying it with such convincing belief that a whole range of protective mechanisms of thought and action kick in. 

So what if the knots in our mind were to be “nots” too?

Seeing them as “nots” rather than knots just lets them go completely, and consigns them to the history of where they were really intended to be. Unravelling or untying the knots is another way to deal with them, by stripping out the emotional content and allowing them to take their rightful place in and around the smoothness of the grain of where they are.

Of course our understanding of the nature of the tree, the context of the knot, and the properties of wood, makes the seeing of “nots” easy – and the keeping or the letting go can become a very simple choice.
When we just decide to unravel or untie the knots, our wood requires a lot more regular care and attention. And for some of us that is the preferred way – an ‘easier’ way than getting to understand the nature of the tree and the properties of our wood.

We do need to remember though, that we can never eradicate the knots for they will always be there. So - it is probably best to let them be nots - then having to treat them (with treatment!) will never get the chance to be an ongoing necessity!

It’s all a matter of choice - but things become much clearer when we get to see the wood of the trees.

The Worry Exams

The University of Life is the one educational establishment that we don’t know we’ve enrolled in until we’ve been working at some of the various courses for a few years. And for most of us, even by the time we’ve realised what’s going on, we’ve already mastered quite a lot of the course material. We’ve already become very good at doing certain things.

Setting the Scene

The first “School” we get to study in is “Me”, and in this school we learn first about the spectrum of comfort and pain. Later we learn about the spectrum of nice and nasty, and also learn about the spectrum of good and bad. The first spectrum is purely based on experiential feedback, whereas with nice-and-nasty and good-and-bad, these are more related to an interpretation of where they also lie on the spectrum of comfort and pain.

Of course part of our learning and understanding is that we do get to recognise that nice and good are not comfort per se, but are part of separate methods of measuring. Likewise with nasty and bad; these lie more in the area of unpleasant or dangerous than necessarily being measured in terms of pain.

An adult describing a “Bad dog” or “Nasty man” can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways by a young child, depending upon their understanding of the 3 spectra I’ve already mentioned. And, unless we engage the child and find out where they are on this particular learning curve, how will we ever know what their subjective interpretations are? Their modelling and ‘learning how to learn’ is, pretty much, left to their own devices – prompted and guided of course by their living family of origin.

Now there are many “Schools” and “Faculties” in the University of Life and one particular thing has always been one of my curiosities – at what point in our childhood do we encounter worry? So, I’d like to stay with the "School of Me", and examine some of the activities that go on within the Faculty of Worry.  

This is a very well attended Faculty with huge numbers of students, some who go on to become true masters of the art! And yet, it is – believe it or not – non-compulsory. It is an optional faculty, and we can choose what and how much to learn there, what and how to practice, and adopt the requisite thinking and behaviour to show the world our level of capability as a worrier.

The Faculty of Worry

Now we all, at some point in our studying at the University of Life, get to spend some time in the Faculty of Worry. It is an important experience, for how else might we know whether to stay with it, or whether to discard it as being “not my cup of tea”?
And there are people, like that, who discard their worries; people for whom the concerns of the world, and the way they process all the meanings of the world and the people they interact with, are not given much subjective emotional interpretation, or to put it another way they are not given ‘a second thought’. We tend to describe these people as ‘sailing untouched through life.’

But here’s the thing – most of us sign up for years to the Faculty of Worry. Even when young, we might already have begun to “see” that worry can protect us, in advance, from things that may (or may not) be painful, nasty or bad. We are being cautious - we are looking out for ourselves. That makes it all right and valid and a sensible thing to do, doesn’t it!

As we work through various modules, doing and handing in (i.e showing the world) our coursework, we are all the while getting feedback to reinforce our learning and understandings.

Finally - at the end of every year - we usually get to take our Worry Exams.

These are a set of hypothetical upcoming experiences and scenarios that we have to interpret, to satisfy the criteria that allow us to move on. Of course, graduating and moving on to next year is something we would be at pains to ensure – for being ‘stuck’ in a year and having to retake those end of year exams would be a real bind. It would say so much about us as a student in the University of Life.

Exam days in the Worry Exams are a bit like most other exams. We know we should have revised well, and have a good night’s sleep beforehand – but we’re probably lying awake, burning the midnight oil, just going over things again and again in our mind. We might be hoping for questions on ‘X’ because we’re particularly good at ‘X’ and could probably worry about ‘X’ with our eyes shut. On the other hand we’re worrying about getting questions on ‘Y’, and there’s nothing more debilitating than worrying about questions on worrying.
Outside the exam hall there are people standing around looking studious and concerned. Then there are the ones who stroll around with an air of grounded calmness – you just know these losers are SO going to fail.

I was sitting a paper on Anxiety the other day when someone put their hand up and asked if they could leave because they’d finished. The idiot didn’t know that you must stay until the end of any paper in the Worry Exams – because there will always be something left in mind to write about. Why, if I did that I’d be so worried about having not put down everything I know, or thought I knew, about Anxiety that I’d spend the rest of the time before the results came out - worried about the fact I’d not given it my best shot.

Confidence

So where does confidence lie, for the best worriers? Are those that get the best grades in the Worry Exams confident of their ability in this domain? Well I think it might be akin to the joke about the guy who was in two minds as to whether or not to go to a Symposium on Schizophrenia – but then again I can’t be sure.
To be honest, in my experience the best worriers are so busy doing what they’re good at, that they haven’t got time to consider their confidence or the lack of it.
 If they did, confidence might be seen as a betrayal of an ability to worry – which might, in turn, give them very deep cause for concern.

Luck

So does luck have a role to play in the life and times of a serious worrier? Does luck get in the way of his or her ability to win that annual Certificate that is so much part of their raison d’etre?
To anyone with a Worry Exam tomorrow I would say just hope and pray you don’t get a paper full of easy questions, because that would be really unlucky for you. Easy questions are a challenge because they’d be like setting the bar too low in a high jump competition. Everyone would pass!

Confusion

So is it silly to worry about your Worry Exams? Is being confident about your Worry Exams actually going to jeopardise your chances of passing through to next year? Will Bad Luck play a good part in your Worry Exams or vice versa? What does getting a good grade in your Worry Exams really mean to you – what does it say about you?

Let’s face it – in theory, worrying is not about not knowing all the questions to ask yourself about what all the possible answers might be to a set of given criteria, contexts and scenarios. In the comfort of the mind, worry pays no attention to there being any gradient of probability – all likelihoods are likely!
So if you are about to take your practical Worry Exams you’d do well to remember the theory for starters.

At the End of the Day

At this stage it might be a good idea for you to take a deep breath!
In a roundabout kind of way, you should have arrived at a point round about now, where you’ve become sensitized in a different way than before about the Faculty of Worry and why anyone – especially you – might have signed up to their courses in the first place! You can actually change your mind here in the University of Life. Opt out of this faculty and go for another instead, perhaps one that is more suited to your outlook, your personality, your worldview and your considerable skills.

And as final thought I’d like to offer you this story about Dr Richard Bandler and the client who said to him, “I’m worried about having a heart attack.”
“Then why are you behaving in a way that means you are asking for one?” was his reply.
The man was agog, even though Dr B is well renowned for such bold responses!
“Look,” he continued. ”Worry increases your blood pressure and pushes up your heart rate – two factors that bring on heart attacks. What do you want to do? You can keep right on with your worrying until you get chest pains if you wish – shall I call the ambulance right now?”