where do you find the time?
“Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink,
dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.”
Clay Shirky
“Where do you find the time?” is a question I hear a lot. Actually, it is not often asked as a question but more often delivered as an incredulous statement when I talk about whatever else it is that I am doing at the time.
As my About page says I am or have been “at various times a Chartered Professional Engineer, mediator, Barrister, actor, director, father, art gallery guide, Fate of War, friend and husband.” I am a student of Aikido, an avid reader and a fan of ABC Radio National and TED. I don’t meditate nearly enough and have as many books and podcasts on my iPhone as music (which creates the possibility for the most amazing connections to be made from a random shuffle). I am re-learning guitar and piano with my daughters and am about to re-release a meditation CD I produced a few years back. I have undergraduate qualifications in Chemical Engineering and post-graduate qualifications in Chemical Engineering and Law. I hope to continue my studies in Kinesiology, create a bronze sculpture and build a guitar from scratch when I get some spare time.
Now if that sounds normal to you I recommend that you read Refuse to Choose – What Do I Do When I Want to Do Everything? by Barbara Sher, because we are not alone and there are others in the world like you!
If it sounds completely insane then you are probably one of the people who want to ask “Where do you find the time?”
For the first few years I didn’t have an answer. I did most of my law study and assignments at night – after work and after the kids went to bed – so I started joking that I just stopped watching TV and got a degree. Then today I came across a talk given a couple of years back by Clay Shirky about what he called a cognitive surplus and I found out I didn’t need to joke any more.
He argues that the five-day work week created for people something they had never had previously – free time. But then television came along and provided a way to spend that time. Passively. The constraints of the medium meant that you could not interact with it let alone produce it and share it with your friends. Many people developed a habit of consumption that continues to this day and is often passed down to their children.
What struck me about Clay’s talk was the statistic that over 100 million hours are spent each weekend in America just watching the ads on TV. With over 300 million people in the USA it is easy to see how that could be.
The question is what could be produced and then shared, if those hours were spent a different way? Apparently the effort required to generate every Wikipedia page that existed in every language in 2008 was roughly 100 million hours. I can tell you that a couple of years on a restricted TV diet (some early episodes of Desperate Housewives were pretty good and you do need a break sometimes) can get you most of the way to a University degree. An episode of Survivor – Good vs Evil gets you most of the way to a new blog post.
And while you might argue that sitting here alone at my Mac while I write is no more active than watching TV I would agree with Clay. The act of writing is a creative one and one that I can share with the community who read my blog. My intention is to contribute by creating something of value that occasionally touches something in you the reader. To be fair, I am sometimes touched by the programs I see on TV … but hardly ever by the ads.
The challenge comes about when you consider what a 1% change in our collective behaviour could create the space for. The cognitive surplus in the USA alone would be in the order of 2 billion hours a year. Just think of the music and the books that could be written let alone the letters and emails to the people we are always going to get in touch with “but just never have time.” The relationships that could be built or just maintained. The conversations that could be had. The life that might be saved.
So now when people shake their heads at my latest activity and ask me “where do you find the time?” I will be able to answer confidently “I just don’t watch that much television” and know that I am not alone.
What will you be able to achieve and share now that you know exactly where to find the time?
not practicing is practice
“Forgetting or neglecting to be mindful can teach you a lot more than just being mindful all the time. Fortunately, most of us don’t have to worry on that score , since our tendencies towards mindlessness are so robust. It is in the coming back to mindfulness that seeing lies.”
Wherever You Go, There You Are – Mindfulness Meditation for Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Having kids can really eat into your free time…
I had my first lesson in Aikido in Hitatchi, Japan in 1992 and have been a student of Aikido ever since. My fate was sealed in that respect the night I shared the mat with one particular uke – a fragile looking, elderly Japanese man. We were practicing a wrist grab technique – katate-kousatori tenkan – and I was trying my best to be respectful and not harm this kindly old man with the energy of my relative youth.
After a couple of minutes he indicated that I was not grabbing his wrist properly so I gave him a little bit more a little bit faster, mindful that I was forty years younger than him and about a foot taller than him! ‘Not enough’ he said, so I figured I should make my point by quickly grabbing his wrist and preventing him from moving into the technique. That was the nature of the attack that I committed to …
As I lay flat on my back looking up at this old man, not entirely sure how I had gotten there from my previously upright and arrogant position, I knew that I would always be a student of Aikido and that I would continue to practice.
And I have. I returned to Australia in 1993 and began looking for a teacher who, after a couple of false starts, I found in Sensei Michael Stoopman. Under his patient guidance I practiced and in 2001 I graded for my blue belt. In 2002 the demands of a young family made getting to class more difficult and I stepped off the mat and began what would turn out to be seven years of not-practicing.
It would be Sensei Frank Bloksberg and a visit to his Dojo in Grass Valley, California who brought me back on to the mat in April 2009. It has only been since then that I have come to realise how much I have learnt while I have been not-practicing.
In an exercise from Wherever You Go, There You Are that follows the quote that opened this post you are encouraged to see if you can become aware of “how you carry yourself in your body in those periods when you are practicing and when you are not”. No problems doing that this morning… as I write this a great class last night has made me aware of a number of muscle groups that can obviously tell the difference!
So what have the seven years of my practice of not-practicing taught me? The importance of not just moving your body but of being in your body when you move. The consequences of not being present in your relationships with… well with everyone really.
My feeling is that I am able to recognise these things because of my time spent not-practicing. I wonder if I would have learned these lessons if I had stayed on the mat? Perhaps. All of the techniques we practiced last night I was taught over a decade ago. I demonstrated that I could “do” them in the gradings that culminated in my blue belt.
Now as I start to practice again, revisiting those techniques shines a light on the habits that I laid down over ten years ago. The teachings point to the same things that my elderly Japanese uke tried to draw my attention to almost two decades ago. Size, speed, strength – these things are not important. Indeed if you continue to rely on them you will often find yourself flat on your back grinning sheepishly. My old patterns of behaviour were based on big movements, on doing the technique to other people.
Now, I have begun to understand that true Aikido happens with other people and arises out of your relationship with them. Being fully present and listening respectfully while maintaining the integrity of your own being creates a shared space in which small, gentle movements allow you to lead others and move forward together.
No strength is needed. The appearance of speed arises from the ability to slow things down.
Less is more. Not practicing is practice.
the fear of change
A conversation I was a part of earlier today:
Them: “This policy applies to all contractors on site.”
Me: “I am a contractor working on site.”
Them: “It doesn’t apply to you.”
Me: “But I am contractor.”
Them: “It depends on how you define contractor I suppose…”
If change is, as they say, the only constant and it is so important to communicate clearly around change, then why can’t we do it properly? If people don’t understand the nature of the change I think they are justified to be worried or even fearful about what might come.
At the heart of it all is the importance of a common understanding. In my younger days I was fond of responding to an apparent mis-communication by saying something like “I know you believe that you understood what you thought I said, but please be clear that what you heard me say is not what I meant.”
Communicating change can be a lot like that.
I was surprised today to find fruit growing on a lemon tree that has never managed to do so before. It isn’t that it has only just matured or reached a certain size where it can support fruit, it is that it has been raining here in Brisbane lately. A lot. And much more than it has in the past nine years. The recent drought was a long one and the rains we started receiving last year were almost universally welcomed – except by my youngest daughter.
She was born around about when the rain stopped and it wasn’t until she was about seven that she experienced the long, soaking, heavy rains that are for me a fond memory of my childhood. The green tree frog in the drain pipe outside my bedroom always sent me off to sleep happy. Not so for her.
Her initial anxiety around heavy rain was put down to a lack of understanding about the nature of the thunder and the lightning. We would sit together and watch the lightning and count for the thunder to work out how far away it was. We talked about how beautiful the lightning was and how good the rain was for the plants and the animals (including us). Nothing seemed to work. The more it rained the more anxious she became.
“What is it that you are worried about?” I asked one night. She talked about floods and stories about Noah and his boat and wondered if we would get flooded and whether a boat would come for us. We talked about the advantages of living on the side of a reasonably sized hill and how water always runs down hill. “Anyway”, I said, “you needn’t worry about our house flooding… if our house flooded the whole of Australia would have to be flooded!”
The next time it rained she was even more anxious.
Sharing my stories of how it was when I was younger, how it had not rained much for the first eight years of her life and how it was understandable she would be anxious about the changes she was experiencing seemed to help calm her down.
Until it rained again.
Sitting with her on our bed in the dark, looking out the windows at the rain and the lightning and listening to the drum of the rain on the roof and the occasional clap of thunder, I had run out of things to say. All I could think to do was to ask her why she was still worried despite all the information I had given her, all the stories I had told her and all the reassurances I had given that she had nothing to fear.
In her small quiet voice she answered my question and taught me a lesson I will never forget. It wasn’t the thunder or the lightning so much anymore she said. She told me that she knew it took a lot of rain to cause a flood and that she understood that water always runs down hills to the lowest part.
(At this point I was feeling pretty good. I was obviously being successful in managing this change as I had clearly managed to communicate that much to her!)
“But,” she said, “isn’t Australia at the bottom of the world and won’t all the water run down to the bottom of the world and cover us up?”
I should have been quiet and listened and lot earlier. Maybe I would have heard what was really troubling her about the change she was experiencing. Maybe I would have heard my own voice offering me the same advice I offered all those years ago…
“I know you believe that she understood what you thought you said,
but please be clear that what she heard you say is not what you meant.”
Communicating change is a lot like that.
only courage
I was at a primary school swimming carnival today. It takes dedication, long hours training in the pool, a good (or great) coach and maybe a few lucky genes to get to the point where you are first off the blocks and one of the best swimmers in the school over 50 metres.
To start from your position clinging to the side of the pool and struggle over 12.5 metres, it takes only courage.
Both blue ribbons equally deserved.
Children have so much to teach us if only we are open enough to let them remind us of the things we once knew but have since forgotten.
slowing down to the speed of life
“Be Here Now”
Ram Dass
“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
Albert Einstein
I have just finished reading a book recommended to me by Lance Giroux of Allied Ronin (www.alliedronin.com). It is called Slowing Down to the Speed of Life – How to create a more peaceful, simpler life from the inside out by Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey. Lance had suggested I read it during one of the Samurai Game workshops we ran together last year.
In the closing chapter the authors pose the following question: What do these activities have in common?
- Making love
- Reading a thoughtful letter, or an exciting or emotional book
- Rock climbing
- Watching a moving film
The answer is that they are all activities in which it is possible to lose ourselves, to become so totally engrossed in the activity that we forget about everything else that is going on in our lives. In my mind it is the same concept of being in the ‘flow’ that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discusses in his book of the same name.
Depending on how you spend your day you could create another list of flow activities:
- Writing a report in your area of interest and expertise
- Editing together a video or audio track
- Coordinating a response to an emergency
- Developing a spreadsheet to manage complex data
Athletes and sportspeople will often speak of being “in the zone” – they are aware of everything on the court or field but don’t hear the crowd until the end of the game. You can be so engrossed in the book or the movie that you don’t hear people entering the room and speaking to you, so focused on your lover that you do not notice the passing of time. There is something about being in this state of flow, of being present that feeds us. Something that makes us want to return regularly to the activity to try to recapture the feeling.
Csikszentmihalyi says that we are at our most productive while we are in flow and that in our workplace we should avoid interruptions as it can take a while to get it back. Carlson and Bailey illustrate the same point by asking what the reader imagines the effect of the question “Have you seen my briefcase?” would be when asked by a lover in the middle of a particularly passionate period of lovemaking?
The flow is lost and we would struggle to get it back. We lose touch with the present and feel cut off from the joy we were feeling. In response to this feeling of loss of flow we buy shoes and harnesses so we can rock climb every weekend, we join the fire brigade or we hunt for the latest best-selling trilogy to keep us engrossed. We focus on the activities that we believe cause us to experience the feeling of flow.
In Slowing down the to Speed of Life a different view is offered – that the nature of the activity itself has very little to do with our experience of joy and of flow. Just think about the implications of that for a minute.
If the experience or activity is the cause of our feeling of flow then interruptions would have no impact. We could read the book one line at a time and still be engrossed by the story, or watch a film in thirty-second bites and still be moved to tears.
It is not the activity. Rather it is the attention that we bring to the activity.
The assertion is that for the activities listed in the original question “the more present we are, the more positive our feelings, the more joy and satisfaction we will experience and receive.”
Where it really hit home for me was that the implication is that it doesn’t really matter what activity you are doing. If you can bring your attention to it, if you are able to ‘be here now’ you will be able to experience the same joy, the same nourishment that you get from your rock face, film, lover or book.
When applied to ‘boring’ routine tasks at work – joy; the difficult and argumentative customer – joy; the washing of a very dirty pot at the end of a very long day – joy!
From there it is apparently only a small step to Nirvana – literally. All of the meditative practices that I have come across, and many of the religions, are directed towards being present in each moment, to finding God (in whatever form they might take for you) in each leaf, in the clouds in the sky or in the eyes of your beloved.
So it seems my friend Lance is right when he says that the biggest tip he can give you for getting the most out of a workshop (and life itself I suspect) is “to be here now.”
Nothing more is needed … but nothing less is required.
takeaways from TEDx Brisbane
Wow. What an amazing day. Ten out of ten and a koala stamp to TEDx Brisbane co-hosts Paul Fairweather and Carl Lindgren! A great start to what I am sure is going to be an annual event here in Brisbane that will sell out pretty much as soon as it opens.
So many great speakers and so many great people who I met throughout the day. (Thanks to Shane, Dave, Graeme and Tim and everyone else I shared the TED experience with). For me, all of them were carrying the same message – make a decision and then take the action that follows.
Kevin Finn from Finn Creative (http://www.finncreative.com.au) started the day sharing his unique ways of seeing the world and the joy of what can happen if you have the strength let go of the rope and if you have the strength to hang on.
Robert Perkin the founder of Food Connect (http://www.foodconnect.com.au/) who aims to supply local, sustainably produced food to the community and in the process create a new, more equitable way of distributing local produce in a socially responsible way. An amazing contribution from a man who admits he was on the way to his neighbour’s farm to borrow a gun to kill himself when he heard a friend had just taken his own life. Robert let go of the rope, turned around, went home and sought help. The world is a much richer place as a result.
Richard Slater, a Brisbane boy who is the GM behind We Are Hunted (http://wearehunted.com/) a music chart site for the 99 most popular emerging songs in the world. His message – release now, then iterate. Don’t wait.
Sheldon Lieberman from bigfish.tv was a great example of what can happen if you make a decision and take the action that follows. You might have seen his work on YouTube before but check out his site and stuff like this: http://www.bigfish.tv/fest/films/view/global-warming
Chris Sarra was great and spoke about the power of the expectations we put on others saying, I think, that people will always live down to your expectations of them. His challenge to us all when faced with a “challenging” kid – don’t ask ‘what are we going to do with this child?’ instead ask ‘what would I want done if this was my child, my grandchild, my sister or my brother?’
The TED talk videos during the day were also great. Temple Grandin extended Chris Sarra’s theme in the context of the kids society brands as autistic. She points out that her autism means that she sees the world differently to most other people and that is why she has been so successful. You can check out her TED talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html
In a lovely piece of synchronicity the people at bigfish.tv have just finished a series of animations for ABC TV3 called “Laser Beak Man” based on the artwork of Tim Sharp (http://www.laserbeakman.com/). As his website says:
Tim was diagnosed with Autism when he was three years old. Such were Tim’s enormous difficulties that the doctor’s advice was “that the best thing to do was put him away and forget about him.”
He always told his mum that he wanted his stuff to be on the television. He made the decision, kept hanging on and he continues to draw today. What is your excuse?
Dallas Clayton and his book “A very awesome book” is another great example. His philosophy is that for every one that you buy he will make sure one is given away – but it has to be actually put into the hands of a person. Awesome stuff. Check his website out at http://veryawesomeworld.com/
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the incredibly successful book “Eat, Pray, Love” is another TED talk you should watch. She talks about the nature of creativity and genius. After my earlier post “why you are not your own worst enemy” I really related to the distinction she makes between having a genius and being a genius. The story she tells of the poem chasing the poet through the fields gives me goosebumps just writing about it now. Only Tom Waits could tell a song to come back later or go and bug Leonard Cohen! Check out Elizabeth’s TED talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
So much more I could write about but I will close here with my take home messages from Nigel Brennan the Australian photojournalist recently released by kidnappers in Somalia. The photographs he did manage to take before being kidnapped show the most beautiful country and the most amazing people struggling to live amidst the most terrible conflict. Nigel spoke of the short time every two weeks during his captivity when he was allowed out of his cell to wash his clothes and how he will never take for granted the amazing blue of the sky.
His description of the freedom he experienced when he managed to briefly escape with two others from his captors was riveting. He spoke of those 30 minutes as being the most liberating and joyful 30 minutes of his life. He said they were also the most terrifying. When his colleague was taken away and he heard a single shot from an AK47 he spoke of the calm that descended over him as he reconciled himself with his own death that he felt sure would quickly follow. He closed by saying that he felt he stood before those assembled at TEDx Brisbane not because he wasn’t killed but because he never gave up hope.
And that is what I took away from TEDx Brisbane. Never give up hope, make a decision, take the action and never give up hope. And that is an idea worth spreading!
do we ever change?
“The letters I wrote when I was fifteen reflect who I am and always have been, but the girl who wrote those letters was still largely unknown to herself“
The Dance, Oriah Mountain Dreamer
I was discussing with a friend the pro’s and con’s of engaging a solicitor to assist in dealing with the various tasks that have to be done after the death of someone in your family. His wife had recently lost her mother and, as her father had already passed on, that left her and her two younger brothers to deal with the estate. It is apparently a ‘simple’ will – the estate is to be split into thirds and being a practical woman she had her affairs in order.
Easy.
Except for the dog. There was still some discussion about where the dog would go.
And then there was the task of sorting through the things their mother had accumulated during her life. Deciding what to keep, what to donate and what to throw away. There was no argument that it had to be done. Just by whom and by when. The bulk of the tasks have apparently fallen to the eldest sister with a comment that it is no surprise as the younger brother has always been useless in situations like these.
What struck me was that even now, some 50 years on their relationship appears to be essentially the same as it was when they fought over whose turn it was to clear the table. Or the 40 years since the indignant howls rose into the air over the easy treatment, loose boundaries and lax standards applied to the youngest sibling – standards that were unthinkable when the eldest first tested the boundaries only a handful of years before.
She is still the big sister and they are still the little brothers.
As I approach the formal marking of my 40th birthday I suppose it is to be expected that I should pause to reflect on what progress I have made so far and whether I have changed at all since I was fifteen. I don’t have any letters from then but I do have a diary that I have kept on and off since I was seventeen and to be honest, I think the answer is that I haven’t changed all that much yet I am not who I was.
Oriah continues the thought that started this piece by suggesting that “the task is not to change, the task is simply to become all of who we are”. It is in that respect that I feel I can confidently say I haven’t changed but I am not who I was. I have a sense that I am becoming more of who I am but I have a long way yet to go.
Part of that process has been coming to accept that there are parts of me that are not who I think I should be. Ram Das says in one of his lectures that after 30 years of therapy, meditation, yoga, drugs, free love and just about anything else you can think of, he is yet to overcome a single neurosis. They are all still there – he has not changed – and yet he is not who he was. Now, instead of being huge monsters that he battles with constantly his neuroses are more like small furry animals that he occasionally invites in for tea.
One thing I know that will never change is that I will always be the eldest of my siblings. That is part of who I am. What has been interesting of late is that while I have spent a time over the past 20 years being a husband and a father, a businessman, a friend and a mentor, I don’t feel like I have spent much time being a big brother. Or the eldest son. They are parts of me that remain largely unknown to my self.
My dad turns 60 next month and I have a feeling that I am going to be spending more time revisiting both those parts of me, my roles of eldest son and elder brother, over the next 20 years. Recently I have been fascinated to watch my reactions as they have been called back onto the stage unsure of just who they are meant to be and the lines they are to deliver.
Perhaps that is a good thing as I have a growing certainty that I don’t want to just be who I was.
It is not that I have any certainty about what those roles require of me – more a willingness to be open to all who I am and how I can serve my family from that place of being. But then the past holds a great deal of inertia and old habits can be hard to break. And I will always be someone’s big brother…
who is responsible?
A friend of mine has decided to that she wants to do some work in the community as an interpreter. Her skills in her second language are apparently pretty good and she has taken the next step by enrolling in a course so that she can be certified to translate.
While we were discussing the course, the step up in skills required and the challenges that came with that (over 50% apparently do not receive certification) she made a comment that damn near whacked me over the head:
“I am really feeling the level of responsibility that will come with being a translator. You are responsible for accurately communicating what one person is saying to another person and you are often doing that in pretty charged situations.“
I wonder if we all consciously felt the same level of responsibility when communicating the thoughts that are in our own heads if we might have a lot less misunderstanding and conflict in the world?
I know that often times when I get into charged situations that the words just fall out and I fail to correctly communicate what I am thinking and feeling. I think my friend would say that is the time when we all should behave like translators for our own minds – listen to the thoughts as they form in our heads, carefully select the words we will speak so as to accurately convey what we want to say, speak them and then listen. Listen as if we were going to have to translate the response into a different language.
I think she is on to something.
We went on to discuss the particular challenges that arise in trying to translate the spatial aspects of the language into English and it got me thinking. How do you put into words the relationships in space that are part and parcel of Australian Sign Language? The speed of the movement and the force used to bring the hands together to emphasise a point? More on that next time…
why you are not your own worst enemy
“Beat … beat … beat … beat.
Excuse me! Can’t you see I am busy beating my heart here!
Beat … beat… beat… ”
An excerpt from a teaching story told by Ram Das
Have you ever looked back over your list of goals for the past couple of years and found that there is one or more that seem to reappear every year – one you just cannot manage to get across the line? It might be about getting fit and losing weight or maybe there is some financial goal that you just cannot seem to get a handle on.
I have both of them on my list. In past years I made an effort to start walking and I sat down and put together a budget for the coming year. For the first few weeks things went OK … and then there is our birthday month (February) when both goals were put aside for a couple of weeks – to facilitate the proper celebration of the gift of another year of life! And then … well I am sure you know how the story ends.
While I could possibly make an argument about how I am not the only one responsible for my failure to reach my financial goals, I am literally on my own in regards to my health goals. So why am I always my own worst enemy?
As you will know, I have been reading a lot around NLP lately and one of the principles is that people always act with a positive intention. I think we would all like to believe that of ourselves and of others, but it wasn’t until I connected ‘always acting with a positive intention’ with the role of our subconscious in achieving goals that I heard the click and the answer became clear.
We are all well versed in setting conscious goals for ourselves. We set them with the best of positive intentions and we often succeed. There are however times when we do not. When I would reflect on my past failures there was a tendency to beat myself up about it – “If I can’t even achieve this simple goal what chance do I have with my ‘bigger’ goals!”
My ‘a-ha’ moment was when I realised that when we have subconscious goals we always succeed! Where we get into trouble is when our conscious goals are in conflict with our subconscious goals. When we seem to always fail to keep the resolution to get fit and lose weight chances are that we are succeeding in achieving some other subconscious goal.
One simple example might be a hypochondriac who consciously desires to be healthy and sets themselves goals accordingly. An unconscious goal aligned with a value of feeling loved and nurtured may be opposed to the conscious goals and so nothing changes.
So this year I have taken a different approach with my past failures. I have asked myself “What subconscious goals might I have and what positive intention does my subconscious have around that goal?”
For me, the answer explained why I don’t seem to be getting any closer to achieving a very real and conscious goal of living in a “sustainable home”. I couldn’t understand why I seemed to oppose any steps in that direction even when the goal is clearly aligned with a number of my values and beliefs. I have since come to realise that I have a deeper (subconscious) belief and goal around what is sustainable in terms of debt. That is the goal I continue to succeed in achieving while I fail to make any progress on my conscious goal.
When I have suggested this approach with a number of the people I work with I have seen the light going on when we talk about the goals they have had difficulty in achieving.
For me the key part is being gentle with your self. There is no point in beating yourself up. Your subconscious always has a positive intention – when it attempts to screw up that new relationship remember it is only trying to protect you from (potentially) getting hurt. Your mouth dries up, your hands tremble and you get the urge to run the other way just before a big presentation? When it happens to me before some workshops I now believe my subconscious is trying to align my actions around my values of appearing skilled and competent. It is doing that by trying to keep my out of situations where I might fail.
Once I realised that, I sat down and had a conversation with my subconscious (my NLP book suggested it – it wasn’t an idea I came up with on my own) and I negotiated a way that we could achieve both sets of goals – conscious and subconscious.
My subconscious is going to do those things that it is best at:
- so that I don’t talk beyond a reasonable length of time it is going prompt me to look at my watch every fifteen minutes;
- so that I don’t leave anyone behind it is going to remind me to make eye contact with everyone in the room at least once every session;
- so that I can be the best that I can be during each session my subconscious is going to give me a full rundown of where I can improve after the event instead of during it.
I am going to let it get on with beating my heart and it is going to support me in doing my best to touch the hearts of the people I am speaking to.
It might sound a bit crazy but give it a go. Once you understand your deepest values and beliefs and can reframe your conscious failures as an unconscious success, you can begin to make the move from being your own worst enemy to being your greatest friend.
So far I am feeling much more relaxed about my next workshop at the end of the month – I will let you know how things turn out.
the significance of ‘doorway conversations’
“Frank, do you know what a hero is? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred,
he’s somebody who’s tired enough and cold enough and hungry enough not to give a damn.
I don’t give a damn.” — Hawkeye
Some things just stick in your mind and will not leave.
In the past two years I have read two books by Alan Alda (‘Hawkeye’ from MASH) – “Things I Overhead While Talking To Myself” and “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I Have Learned“. There was a small section of one of them that has stuck with me and comes to mind a couple of times a week.
Alan Alda identifies what he calls ‘doorway conversations’. They are the conversations that often occur at the end of an interaction with someone – as they (or you) are standing in the doorway on the way out. They take place then, he says, because the subject is very important to one of the people involved but they just haven’t found a way to introduce it into the preceding conversation, or haven’t found the courage to raise it directly. That can be a problem because we are often not in a position to give the time or the focus to the issue that it needs – we are often already on our way (both mentally and physically) to our next commitment.
It is his experience, and mine, that once you are aware of the phenomena of ‘doorway conversations’ you will see them in all sorts of situations. You will also have a better appreciation of the significance to the other person of that seemingly throw-away comment delivered just before you part company with them. Taking action from that space can create a number of opportunities for you both.
Or perhaps you will be like me and find yourself thinking “That was too important for me to leave to a ‘doorway conversation’!” and resolve to create better circumstances next time. Either way, I am guessing after reading this that you will find doorway conversations appearing in a surprising number of places.
finding my own Way 
