“Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind.  If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
[Arthur Somers Roche, 19/20th-century US author]

“Worry is like a rocking chair – it gives you something to do but doesn’t get you anywhere.”
[Anon]

“The warrior’s approach is to say ‘Yes’ to life.”
[Joseph Campbell, 20th-century US author, teacher & philosopher] 

(1041 words, approx 6-9 mins to read.)

Anxiety is one of those things we all experience from time to time – it’s natural as it’s one of the methods our unconscious or intuitive self uses to get us to pay attention to the future. However, it’s supposed to be a very temporary condition that passes when we decide what to do and then take action.

Sometimes though we let anxiety get out of hand and it grows into worry. And if we still don’t take action it can become paralysing fear.

But have you ever noticed how some people just don’t seem to worry much at all, whilst others can appear to do it all the time, sometimes over details that you might feel are small and not that significant at all?

If you aren’t sure you know exactly what I mean, let me tell you about Sally. All her friends call her Sal.

Sal looks after a venue where various sections of the community meet for different events and she’s usually there when the events are running. Officially, she’s responsible for the health and safety stuff, as well as a few other things. But she was a bit of a worrier.

Actually, to be honest, she was a lot of a worrier! From the moment the doors open to the moment the last person left, she’d be rushing around from room to room, making sure that everything’s OK, wondering if there’s something she hasn’t checked up on. She may check the same thing several times over the course of a few hours because in the rush and worry she’d forgotten she’d already checked it.

You see, part of Sal’s problem is that she has very clear and fixed ideas of exactly how things are supposed to be and when they aren’t, she gets jittery.

This means that she often doesn’t get time to join in, or just relax and enjoy what’s going on around her, simply because she’s too anxious on the inside. And if something isn’t quite right, she’s even been known to get into a panic because she’s already worried about what she’s still got left to check, or what she’s forgotten and this means that she hasn’t room in her head to focus on what needs to be done right now.

This worry also meant that every time something needed adjusting, repairing or fixing, she was calling the caretaker to let him know, ask his advice, or get him to come in and fix it. On some days it seemed like it was every few minutes, much to the annoyance of the caretaker, especially when the repairs couldn’t be done there and then because the venue was in use.

She sometimes even worried that if there was a fire, no-one would know what to do, so she began practising emergency drills at almost every event, and when she wasn’t making everyone do them, she was making sure they thought about them! Of course this meant that other people began to enjoy the events, and her company, less and less.

Fortunately before too long, Sal decided it was time to do something different, something that, if she did it, would mean she could make sure all was healthy and safe enough and yet still enjoy the events she was responsible for.

So here’s what we did, and to many it’ll seem like common sense, but when you’ve been a worrier, sometimes it can take a little help to see a way through to a more calm way of life.

We sat down and wrote a list of all the things she thought she needed to check at the venue. It started out as a very long list! But then, as we went through it item by item and keeping only those things that really mattered, and letting go of all those that made very little difference, the list became smaller and smaller.

We did need to negotiate a few items, but when I asked the question “What would actually happen if you didn’t have that exactly the way you think it should be?” she began to realise that a lot of things she was worried about didn’t matter much at all, and only some of them were truly important.

Now Sal just goes around with her much shorter and very manageable list, running through it from top to bottom, inside and outside too. She ticks off each item that’s OK, having realised that so many things don’t need to be perfect, just workable.

For anything that does need some attention – we all know things do from time to time – she notes down the problem, and what she’s going to do right now to work around it.

Just as an example, recently the edge of the carpet near one of the doors came loose. But this time instead of panicking that a child might trip up and hurt themselves and have to go to hospital and then the centre might get sued and its reputation damaged , she simply got some black and yellow hazard tape, firmly taped down the loose edge and made a note of what she’d done.

She also now leaves a note for the caretaker so he can come along later, when the event is over and the space is empty, and make an adjustment or proper repair, and that’s exactly what he did with the carpet.

Now if you met Sal, you’d wonder if I’d been describing the same person. She’s relaxed and so much more in control. And instead of being at the mercy of what’s going on in her head, she gets to enjoy what’s going on around her instead.

That’s not to say she doesn’t get anxious from time to time, but now she knows all she has to do is ask herself if it’s really that important, and if it is, what she can do to solve it now, and if that’s not practical right now, how to work around it, knowing that she, or the caretaker, can sort it out later when everything’s quieter.

Remember, whilst the future can be seriously sabotaged by our present fears, it’s also supported by and spun from our present actions.

Worriers dwell on future failure, whilst warriors get busy now to build future success.

‘Til next time,

“Who finds hidden treasure?
Some of those who seek it,
And none of those who don’t.”
[Anon]

“The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.”
 [Michael Gerber, US author]

[1064 words, estimated reading time 6-9 mins]

(NOTE: This is a re-publication of an article I wrote four years ago, so it’ll be a reminder to some of you, and new to others. With it I’m sharing, free of charge, a process that many of my one-to-one clients have found useful – I hope you do too.)

To avoid any confusion, the first thing I need to explain is what I mean by ‘Active Living‘. I’m NOT talking about getting regular exercise, going to the gym, not spending hours in front of the TV, cycling instead of driving, using the stairs instead of the lift etc., although those are all great things.

What I am talking about is an attitude that I’d like to introduce you to by first talking about the early work of Martin Seligman, a psychologist that I’ve mentioned in previous articles.

In a series of studies in the 1960s and 70s (that would probably be ethically tricky these days) he and his colleagues put animals and people in situations where something distracting or painful occurred repeatedly and randomly and, importantly, over which they had no control, i.e. they couldn’t stop it or escape it but instead had to wait it out until it stopped.

They repeated this quite a few times, and then changed the situation so that the subjects COULD stop the distraction or pain, or escape it in some way, for example by moving to a different part of the room or enclosure, or hitting a switch, sometimes a new one, and sometimes one that previously didn’t work.

What they discovered was that around two-thirds of the subjects defined their current situation wholly by their past experience of not being able to change things, and so even when they could control what was happening or escape it, they didn’t bother. This phenomenon is now referred to as ‘Learned Helplessness’.

However, the remaining one-third DID use their new powers of control or escape to get away from the pain or distraction, and a proportion of them even continued to seek a means of control or escape when none seemed available.

The first two-thirds essentially became PASSIVE in their situations, accepting what was happening as their lot and not trying to change things at all, even when they could.

However, the other third remained ACTIVE, always seeking ways to change their lot when it wasn’t pleasant.

Seligman and his colleagues then decided to find out whether the passive two-thirds could un-learn their helplessness, and happily found that they can, with time and training, and become more and more active.

We can extend these concepts to life in general, in which we can decide whether our mode of existing is Passive Living or Active Living.

Passive Living is, at its most basic, living a life from day to day waiting for things to happen to you, those things you wish for, long for, or just hope for – a better job, a better relationship, time to yourself, or waiting for the bad things that are in your life to somehow end or go away of their own accord.

Essentially, passive living is about waiting for opportunities to present themselves to you – waiting for someone to offer you that job you really want, waiting for that special someone to come into your life, waiting until things calm down a bit or life isn’t so busy so you have some time to relax. At its worst, passive living might even have you not notice when these things do come along, so they pass you by unnoticed and untaken. And even at its least detrimental, passive living still tends to mean that you only take action when things have become really bad, and then it’s usually only just enough to return things to the same old status quo.

Passive living can also be linked to an unwavering belief in fate or destiny, that your life has a path that must be inevitably followed, no matter what your choices, and that whatever happens in life was meant to happen that way.

Active Living, on the other hand, is a mode of existing where you decide what it is you actually do want and, without waiting for it to come to you, you set about making it happen. If you want a fulfilling relationship, you take the opportunities offered to socialise, go on dates, join a group or society of people interested in the same activities or hobbies as you (or even form one!). If you want a new job, the active mindset says that you look through the job ads in the relevant places, you keep your CV up to date and your interview skills polished, you network and ask around through personal and business contacts. And if you’re in need of some time to yourself, those with an active mode of living plan for it, taking a day here and there to relax, planning holidays in advance, understanding that you perform at your best when you do make regular time for yourself.

The active life is one lived with a belief that my choices create and change my ‘fate; - that my destiny is in my own hands and that opportunities are largely made rather than stumbled upon.

Active behaviour was shown by some prisoners of war in WW2 who, despite repeated recapture, continued to try to escape, whilst others just accepted their lot. It’s seen in patients with debilitating conditions who, despite setbacks or pain, continue to push themselves forward. It’s evidenced in the lives of political and social activists who push for change, who protest, lobby and keep going until something happens. It’s even seen in some of the most successful business people who, despite losing fortunes with one venture, start another one that’s even more successful than the last rather than playing it safe.

Passive behaviour is all too prevalent in many sections of society, especially at lower income levels, who decide not to work hard, get an education, improve their own circumstances and even try to stop others from doing the same, accusing them of ‘forgetting their roots’ or ‘trying to be better than everyone else’.

But passive living is also seen in areas of our own lives, personal and professional, even when we might be really active in others.

So, on that note, to this month’s challenge. However, it’s a little more in-depth than previous months and you’ll need to download it from here:

activeliving2012 (PDF)

Take an active role in living your life or someone else will make your choices for you, decide what’s best for you and have you live it their way, which is usually only what’s easiest and best for them.

Your life is in your hands – do something with it!

(~870 words, approx 5-7 mins to read)

Where were we…? Oh yes, EVOLUTION, REVOLUTION…

Oh, before we go any further, I want to introduce you to ‘gloop’..!

Some of you may have met this wonderful stuff before. It’s a mixture of cornflour and water and has some odd properties. Unlike a normal thick liquid, this mixture forms a dilatant fluid. This simply means that the quicker you try to move through it, or the more pressure you apply, the more resistance you get – it actually gets thicker in response to change..! Go slow and it’s a liquid, go fast and it gets more solid. There’s a nice 5-minute video of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPrCuIgX2_I

Just tuck that away for now whilst we get back to where we were last time…

We’d got beyond the idea of stagnation to those two conditions for revolutionary change to work – that the process has to be carefully planned beforehand, and the environment in which the change is taking place needs to change too.

From these two conditions, we’d drawn the two main reasons why evolutionary change often succeeds where revolutionary change fails:

1. Our behaviour carries momentum.
2. The environment (including other people) is resistant.

Let’s tackle these reasons one at a time, starting with the fact that our behaviour carries momentum.

You can think about it like this: For everything we do, think, say and feel, we have a recipe, a pattern. From the trivial to the deep and emotional. For example, you probably put the same leg in your trousers first when you put them on. With me it’s left, then right. You may have a routine you do without thinking when you walk into the house – where you put your coat, keys, bag etc.

We do the same with larger, perhaps more impactful aspects of our lives too. Our organisation (or lack of!) around time, the way we handle conflict or cope with stress are good examples too.

Once we’ve created these patterns or habits, they act like an articulated lorry carrying a large load. The more pervasive and important the pattern, the larger the load and the correspondingly larger the momentum. Now try to imagine turning a lorry like that around at 60mph? You can’t simply yank the steering wheel around and expect it to defy the laws of physics and suddenly change direction successfully.

We all know that whilst it is completely possible to turn a huge lorry around, you have to do it gently – slow it down first then turn at walking pace, perhaps requiring a little three-point back-and-forth before you get it pointing in the new direction and then accelerate gently up to the new speed.

Our behavioural patterns have their own momentum, and making small changes then checking that they’re working means that much of the rest of our lives can adapt around those small changes.

Now the second one: The environment is resistant.

We can stick with the lorry analogy here because it works quite nicely. Imagine now that the road the lorry is travelling along is packed with traffic - you’d have to take account of the impact of your actions on those vehicles and their drivers too. This makes a change of direction for the lorry even more tricky because you have to account for what’s happening around you, unless you want movie-scale pile-up carnage to result!

Another wonderful, example is the ‘gloop’ I mentioned before. When we move through it slowly and steadily, there’s not much resistance at all and slow changes are easy. If, however, we decide to try to move faster or change things abruptly (like hitting it with a hammer!) it gets more and more resistant until it becomes almost solid.

None of our lives operate independently from the environment around us. This includes people, whether that’s significant relationships, children, other family, friends, work colleagues, customers and clients, associates, contacts – the list is very long! And people can be the most resistant of all for the simple reason that they know us as we are, they too have patterns for relating to us as we are, and if we change radically, that would mean they too have to change. And many aren’t ready, or willing to do that.

All these reasons mean that evolutionary change is often much more sustainable and effective than revolution, no matter how appealing the idea is of everything suddenly being different, better or new*.

So, given the time of year we’re already in, the New Year is approaching every closer, and you may already be making New Year Resolutions.

More often though, what people are looking for are New Year REVOLUTIONS – big changes that will somehow mean 2012 is going to be hugely better in some way than 2011.

What I’m going to suggest is that this time, if you you’ve not tried it before, you go for New Year EVOLUTIONS – small changes that you can make step-by-step and sustain.

Whether it’s to do with your job, health, finances, your mental and emotional life, spiritual side, or something else, look to evolve.

Because, if you stop and think for just a moment, if you add up enough EVOLUTIONARY changes, guess what..?! You have yourself a REVOLUTIONARY change!

Until 2012 I wish you all the best for the Christmas and holiday season!

*I’m not saying that radical and revolutionary change can’t work – they often can as long as they’ve been carefully planned and all they knock-on effects accounted for. And therein is the key to successful revolutionary change – the bigger the change you wish to make, the more concentrated planning and effort it requires.

(~760 words, approx 4-6 mins to read)

The world we live in today is not the same world as it was yesterday, and it will have changed again by this time tomorrow too. If we try to stay the same while the world changes around us, we stagnate, and slowly but surely get left behind. And resisting change sometimes requires even more energy than keeping up.

We change too. The simplest changes happen moment by moment via the accumulation of time – today I am a day older than I was yesterday, and no matter how much I refuse to believe it, try not to let it happen, or spend on fancy foods and creams, or a nip here and a tuck there, I can’t stop it. I also have a day’s more experience than I did yesterday, and I can no more erase that than I can erase the existence of the last 24 hours. What I do with that experience, however, is up to me.

Other personal changes may be deliberately made because we want to do something other than we currently do, want to have something other than we currently have, or want to be something other than we currently are.

Sometimes those changes are subtle, gentle and slow, like shifts in car design and fashion. Other changes are radical and take only a moment in our awareness, like the 9/11 terror attacks. I’d like us to focus on those two types of change – EVOLUTION and REVOLUTION.

Our word ‘evolution’ has its roots in the Latin verb ‘unroll’. Evolution results in strengthening or tweaking behaviours and other characteristics that work in the environment you’re in or the goal you seek, whilst reducing or culling characteristics or behaviours that no longer work to your advantage. Those changes that have worked are kept, those that haven’t are let go. In it’s purest form, evolution is driven largely by random mutation, without conscious direction or design, and is focused on the survival of a genetic code – the blueprint of a species – not just a single individual.

However, since we are conscious beings, we can actually direct those small changes, keeping those that work for us (whether as individuals or collectively) and take us closer to our goals and desires, and reject those that don’t.

The key point, though, that I’d like  you to focus on is that in essence, EVOLUTION = making small changes what’s already there.

Revolution, however, does something different, hinted at in its Latin origins ‘to turn over’. It means radical step-change, sometimes reversal or the destruction of one complete set of behaviours and the creation of another in its place. Revolution in history has involved people acting to change their environment because the current one wasn’t working to their advantage, usually either social or political rather than simply personal. However, the term ‘environment’ can be thought of as covering all the external conditions you live your life in.

In short, REVOLUTION = replacing what’s there with something different, something new.

Revolutionary change is appealing. Winning the lottery, having surgery to take years off your face or transform your body, getting your ideal job, finding the parter of your dreams, relocating to another country are all examples of revolutionary change, and I’m sure if I was to ask what you’d love to have happen in your life for the coming year, there would be a few revolutionary changes in your list of answers.

Revolution holds the hidden promise that things can suddenly be different, instantaneously better, with only a short burst of concentrated effort.

But this is a lie…

You see, revolutionary change can only succeed well when two critical conditions are met:

1. The change in behaviour is carefully planned, and that plan includes how to support and maintain the change until it sets in fully.
2. The environment impacted by the change has to change (or be changed) in a revolutionary way too.

When one or both of these conditions aren’t met, revolutionary change quickly fails. For example, we’ve all heard stories of new-years resolutions to get fit and healthy, go to the gym three times a week and change diet, but which never lasted more than a few weeks because the changes in behaviour weren’t really thought through or supported, and they didn’t change their environment, e.g. their working hours, family routine etc.

Evolutionary change is usually much more successful because of two simple facts that often scupper our attempts at revolution:

1. Our behaviour carries momentum.
2. The environment (including other people) is resistant.

And next time (next week in fact!) I’ll reveal exactly what I mean with those physic-ey metaphors!

Until then,

IN SHORT: Let others play the blame game and wallow in the mess while we move forward.

“A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.”
[John Burroughs, 19/20th-century US essayist & conservationist]

 ”Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.”
[Chinese proverb] 

(~923 words, approx 5-8 mins to read)

Last time we talked about how we play ‘the blame game’ as a way pushing responsibility or the need for action away from us and onto others when there are problems. We concluded that if everyone plays the blame game, nothing changes – the problems we’re seeking to blame others for don’t get sorted out, the mess those problems caused never gets cleaned up, and the things that got broken stay broken.

However, we did take a look at those who take a different approach – the ‘cleaners’. These are the people who leave blame and accountability to one side to begin with, and start out by taking some responsibility to sort, clean and mend, just like the street clean-up collectives did in the days following the riots back in August. What this also does is give time for the anger, frustration and bitterness that often surfaces at times like this to subside, and let a little rationality back in.

And I promised that we’d take a pragmatic and practical look at how we might be able to apply the ‘cleaner’ mindset to our own lives.

To illustrate how the ‘cleaning’ process works, I’ll share the basic gist of things a few past clients have said:

• “It’s my school teacher’s fault I’ve got no confidence – they were always putting me down when I made mistakes or didn’t know the answer.”
• “My parents raised me to never cause offence, so I never really stand up for myself.”
• “My grandma always gave me biscuits and sweets if I was feeling low, so it’s got to be her fault I binge when I’m down, hasn’t it?”

Think about where that would leave you if  one of those was true for you, i.e. that’s how you thought and felt.

If you play the blame game with each of those examples, then you’d leave the responsibility for fixing the problem squarely with the person you’re blaming. And even if you make an attempt to understand the ‘why’ behind what happened, you’re still left stuck in the past –  it’d be like saying that once we understand who started the riots and why, the streets will somehow clean themselves up. That understanding may help us take action to prevent something like that happening again but it’s no use to us right now.

Think about the ‘teacher’ example – is that teacher ever going to want to, or be able to, fix that problem for you? They may even have the misguided belief that their actions were right at the time.

Are those parents going to be able to erase their actions from your past? Even if they did, would it change your present significantly?

Is the kindly grandma going to see her biscuits or sweets as anything other than her well-intentioned attempt to help you feel better?

No, none of them are.

Instead we need the approach of the ‘cleaners’, who first and foremost look to what can be done right now to help sort the mess out.

Fortunately, the ‘cleaner’ approach can be simplified into just five easy steps:

1. REMOVE ALL BLAME from your description of how things are, so you’re left with just the core issue or problem.
2. REMOVE ALL ABSOLUTES from your description – i.e. get rid of all words like ‘never’, ‘always’, ‘none’, ‘every’, and instead, make it relative to where you’d like to be, with terms like ‘more’, ‘less’ etc.
3. CREATE ROOM FOR CHANGE by rephrasing it so the issue is just ‘now’, and not fixed forever. You can do this by adding in words like ‘currently’, or ‘yet’.
4. REFLECT by creating a question from what you’re left with, a question about what your next steps should be to move closer to where you’d like to be.
5. TAKE ACTION!

Let’s try this on the first example above:

• Step 1, removing ALL the parts of the sentence that have anything to do with blame leaves us with “I have no confidence” – the core issue.
• Step 2, removing the absolutes and making it relative, creates “I have less confidence than I’d like”
• Step 3, adding in some time-related word(s), makes it “I currently have less confident than I’d like”, which subtly creates the possibility of movement instead of ‘stuck’.
• Step 4, creating that question, makes it “I currently have less confidence than I’d like, so what steps will I take to increase my confidence?”

Before we go any further, let’s just compare what we started with to what we’ve now got. We started with a sentence full of blame and bitterness towards that critical teacher with our issue buried somewhere in the middle of it all, and no sign of a solution anywhere. But now we have a clear statement of the issue and the real possibility of a solution.

There’s always room for some help from others too on how you might proceed, whether that’s friends or family you trust to give you honest advice, or a coach or other professional who can guide you to discover the best path for you.*

You can try the same process with the other two problems for yourself.

Step 5, however, holds the key to the problem actually being solved. No matter how well-meaning those who wanted to clean up the post-riot streets were, unless they actually got out the door, brooms in hand, and started sweeping and cleaning, nothing would have been solved. They TOOK ACTION to finally solve the problem of the messed-up neighbourhood.

And we need to do the same. Let others play the blame game and wallow in the mess while we move forward.

——

*  A good coach will ask you some extra questions to get right down to specifics, such as “In what contexts do you feel you need more confidence?”, “What difference would having more confidence make to you?”, “Is there anything that having more confidence wouldn’t change?”, “How would you know you had the confidence you want?”, and even guide you in exploring whether a lack of confidence is the real issue and whether working on something a little deeper would be more effective in making the kinds of changes you want to your life.

“The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behaviour and dress.”

[Commonly attributed to Peter the Hermit,
11/12th-century French priest & pilgrim]

“It’s all the parents fault – decent parents wouldn’t raise their kids to do that sort of thing!”

“I say it’s down to the government. If there weren’t so many cuts being made, there would be jobs for them.”

“The blame lies squarely on their own shoulders. They could’ve chosen not to, but instead they joined in. They have no-one to blame but themselves.”

You probably heard, saw or read many similar responses to the riots a few weeks back, with people trying to make sense of it all and doing what most of us naturally do as a first step when there’s a problem – look for someone to blame. We want to know who we can point the finger at, who we can hold responsible and accountable for it, who to direct our anger, our disappointment or frustration at.

And in finding someone to legitimately blame, what we’re also seeking is someone to hold responsible for putting things right so it doesn’t happen again. This is the basic rule of

THE BLAME GAME

i.e. when we find someone to blame, we’ve found someone who has to put it right. Not us, them.

Basically, we play the blame game so we can be lazy.

With the riots, various groups want parents to raise their children better (whatever ‘better’ may mean…), they want governments to improve social mobility and young people’s prospects, they want the police to take a stronger and at the same time a more compassionate approach, they want the ‘youth’ to be punished severely enough to deter others from acting in the same way.

However what really struck me about the riots was something else: the large groups of people who simply got together to clean up the damage and assist those who’d lost possessions, homes and livelihoods, and did so a little more quietly without making a huge fuss or seeking the limelight.

While the ‘blamers’ were venting their frustration and anger by directing it at others, the ‘cleaners’ were directing their energy into something altogether more immediately useful.

Whilst in many circumstances anger is a valid and totally understandable response, vented anger accomplishes nothing except generating more anger and resentment – research is fairly conclusive on that matter. During the riots many people lost property and some lost entire family businesses and even family members and had every right to be angry, but let’s imagine for a moment that no-one sought to help in the aftermath, and instead everyone used their anger in playing the blame game. What would that be like?

I imagine that the streets would still be littered with debris, shop-fronts still destroyed, burn-out and overturned cars left in the roads. It would all serve as a pervasive reminder of the violence, hurt and loss, keeping the embers of anger burning, just waiting for the next harsh word or pointed finger to fan them back into roaring flame and set the cycle repeating itself. Nothing less than a war zone would result, and you only have to take a cursory look back into world history to realise that’s exactly what’s happened time and time again.

Now, take a moment to imagine instead that the blame game was set aside and all efforts and energy were focused on cleaning up the mess, soothing hurts as best as they could be for now, recovering losses, and setting the environment back to it’s former state, or at least as close as possible.

As you imagine that, the realisation will also come that ‘cleaning’ first instead of ‘blaming’ will be much more conducive to creating not just a positive and forward-looking atmosphere, but a climate in which justice, rather than blame, would be handled rationally, logically and objectively with people held to account for what they’d actually done, not how people felt about what they’d done.

When we play the blame game, we lock ourselves in the past, waiting for those we blame to fix things. The simple truth though is that those we seek to blame are usually the least equipped and often least willing to help us. Which means as long as we choose to play the blame game, we choose to stay stuck.

When we go into ‘cleaning’ mode, we unstick ourselves and give ourselves the freedom to move forward.

And next time, we’ll talk about how to switch from ‘blame’ to ‘clean’…

IN SHORT: If you want any relationship to remain healthy and positive, you have to keep your ‘emotional bank account’ in credit.

And, in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

[The Beatles, 'The End' - Abbey Road]

(1199 words – approx 7-10 mins to read)  

Just imagine that – being able to give less to others and yet get more back from them in return!

Let’s set aside the obvious possibility of duplicity and sneakiness, fooling someone else into giving you a lot in return for a little, and focus on remaining ethical and positive.

“Even if it is possible to do completely ethically, surely there must be a catch?” you’d say, sceptically…

And you’d be right. There is indeed a small catch and it’s all to do with HOW you give to others and what you’re expecting in return. It’s just like the world of financial investments – you can waste a lot on people or schemes that ultimately go nowhere or, with a little more care and attention you can invest just the right amount in the right place at the right time and reap large rewards.

Steven Covey, author of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, came up with a powerfully simple analogy – the ‘emotional bank account’ or EBA (to save me from typing it out every time!) that is a reflection of the amount of trust that person has for you and faith they have in you.

The basic idea is this:

• Every time we interact with someone for the first time, we open an EBA.
• Every time we interact with them after that we either make deposits into that account, or withdrawals from that account.

With me so far? Good – let’s keep going…

• To make a deposit into that EBA, the interaction has to be positive FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW.
• If the interaction is negative FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW, we make a withdrawal.
• In order for a relationship to function properly, we need to keep the EBA in credit.

Still with me? You may have wanted to ponder the bit about ‘FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW’, but if you stop to think about it, as the holder of the EBA, THEY get to decide what’s a deposit and what’s a withdrawal – we don’t. Like differing countries around the world, each person has their own ‘emotional currency’ which we need to understand because deposits only count if they’re made in that currency.

OK, just a few more key points to cover:

• Just like a real bank account (in a good economy!), deposits earn interest – the larger the deposit, the larger the interest earned.
• Just like a real bank account, overdrafts also incur interest.
• There are also penalties for unexpectedly going ‘into the red’.
• Every EBA has an ‘overdraft limit’ beyond which no more withdrawals will be possible without a seriously large deposit first being made. Or they might just decide to close the account, leaving you permanently overdrawn with them.

If we put all this together, it means that you really do get to take more out than you put in, i.e. get more from the relationship than you give to it, but ONLY IF YOU STAY IN CREDIT! The moment you go overdrawn, the situation reverses and if you stay overdrawn you’ll need to put a lot more in than you can take out.

Here, then, are six basic principles for staying in credit:

1. Understand the individual

   Make every effort to get to grips with the ‘currency of care’* of every person you deal with, whether that’s in your personal or professional life. You’ll need to make an effort to convert your normal currency to theirs if that relationship it at all important to you, remembering that every investment you make will earn interest.

2. Keep commitments:

   It’s almost universally true that breaking any commitment, promise or word given is the equivalent of a big withdrawal from that EBA. So make commitments clearly, and if you’re making something more fluid that a full commitment, be clear about that too. Which brings us on to…

3. Clarify expectations:

   It’s vital to any relationship that communication is clearly understood by everyone involved. This is especially important if you’re asking or expecting something of someone. Be concise and precise about what you want or need and any timings involved too, and then make sure the other person (or people) have the same understanding of the situation as you do.

4. Attend to the little things:

   Just as with our finances, we tend to take notice of big purchases but let the little things go by. But it’s the little things, those small expenses here and there that, if we’re not paying attention, can add up quickly to something significant. Many personal and business relationships break down because of the accumulation of arguments, niggles, conflicts, upsets and other things that were never really resolved or were ignored or left. Each problem on its own may be quite small, but when you add them up over time the total effect can be much larger than one really big problem. Eventually it may just take one more small withdrawal to hit the overdraft limit and the relationship falls apart.
   Instead, when we do take care of the little things, each is a small deposit into the EBA and over time those small investments add up to a sizeable balance, earning emotional interest, so as and when we do make a withdrawal, for example we have an argument or call in a favour, the cost is easily covered and there’s still a healthy balance left.

5. Show true personal integrity:

   If something has ‘integrity’ then we’re meaning that it’s ‘whole, consistent and complete’, not broken, fractured or fragmented. Personal integrity then is all about consistency, completeness, openness and honesty in everything we do, in line with a positive set of attitudes and values – it’s the conceptual opposite of hypocrisy. In the context of your EBAs with people, this simply means we need to be open, honest and consistent in our dealings with that person, applying the same standards to all and to ourselves, and therefore not manipulative, sneaky, duplicitous or hypocritical. Integrity makes deposits whilst hypocrisy, even in the most subtle or smallest doses, makes large withdrawals.

6. Apologise sincerely (when making a withdrawal):

   Although the best practise is to make as few withdrawals as possible, we first need to become aware of when we are making one. It helps if we imagine that you can’t have a truly neutral interaction with anyone – they’re either a deposit or withdrawal. When we are making a withdrawal, intentional or not, an apology lets them know we’re aware of what we’re doing and actually minimises the interest or other penalties we might otherwise incur for making the withdrawal. If it’s an open and honest apology you might even find that the apology itself counts as a small deposit!

So, there you have it – six simple ways to get more than you give!

Oh, there’s one more thing though. As well as you opening an EBA with them, they also have one with you! So for a truly positive and worthwhile connection, BOTH balances need to stay in the black, otherwise one of you is tolerating an overdraft and the relationship quickly becomes unbalanced and dysfunctional.

Remember that to keep all your relationships healthy and positive, you have to keep your ‘emotional bank accounts’ in credit.

Until next time,

* The ‘currency of care’ is basically the combination of words and actions that let someone know they are important to you – that you care about them. There are some universal elements, like courtesy, equity, friendliness, respect, honesty and appreciation. There are also subtler elements that may be more unique to that individual, which may depend on personality type, motivation and working styles, communication preferences, and even personal background and culture. 

I’ve been researching what’s best described as the ‘beyond confident’ mindset. I’m not talking arrogance or blindly optimistic here. Rather, I mean the mindset that’s best demonstrated by those who’ve survived the almost unsurvivable – weeks in the frozen wilderness of Alaska, months adrift at sea, or years marooned on remote islands.  It’s a mindset that is resilient, pragmatic and, while goal-oriented, is focused on what needs to be done in the present to make the next step happen.

A small yet powerful example of part of that mindset was admirable demonstrated yesterday on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga beat Roger Federer in a five-set match, and there’s the clue to the winning mindset – a men’s match at Wimbledon is FIVE sets. Although it can be won in three by a good player, if you step onto court only prepared for a three set match and you lose the first two, mentally it’s all over. Tsonga lost the first two sets, but instead of losing motivation and focus he turned the match around in the third set and went on to win.

If you want to succeed, you have to be prepared for the full journey and the effort and focus that’s going to need – no shortcuts, cheats or giving up.

You have to be ready for a five-set match.

Food is fuel

That’s it. It’s when we forget that, and make food something else that we have problems. Anything else we decide food is supposed to do for us is something we’ve invented or believed whether that’s culturally or personally.

Although we use food as part of social occasions, enjoy the range of tastes and flavours of food, have built businesses around it, create celebrities from those who make it, and all too often misuse it as a proxy for comfort, love and affection, control, reward or even punishment, food is simply fuel, no matter what form it takes. If you consume more fuel than you need, your body will store the excess as fat. If you consume less fuel than you need, your body will use its stores of fuel to make up the deficit.

What do you think of food..?

“Emotions are the wind and waves.
Unleash them and destruction follows.
Ride them, and you can conquer the world.”

[Anon.]

(~1315 words – approx 7-11 mins to read)

Before you read any further, I’d like to ask you to do something. I’d really like you to remember the last journey you took, no matter which mode of transport you used. As you recall it, think about how often you passed a sign of some sort. It may have been a road sign, or perhaps one pointing you in the direction of the station or some other destination. It may simply have been one that shows the name of a street or building. We pass them all the time, and sometimes even use them to confirm that we are in fact in the place our sat-nav is telling us we’re in!

One of the things we need to learn as road-users, whether you’re on a bike (excellent!) or driving, is what each road sign means. There’s actually a really simple way of giving yourself a head-start on them, based around the fact that there are only three basic types of road sign:

• WARNINGS: red-bordered triangular signs with a graphic in the middle
• ORDERS: circular signs, red are DON’Ts and blue are DOs
• INFORMATION: usually rectangular, sometimes with a pointy end

Yep, it really is that simple. ALL road signs fall into those categories, though there are a handful of oddities regarding shape and colour, such as the octagonal ‘STOP’ sign.

What’s important to remember though is that all road signs are really just SUGGESTIONS – on their own can’t force you to pay attention or obey them, though there may be serious consequences if you decide to ignore them.

When it comes to navigating though life in its broader sense there are other kinds of signs that many people look to. The superstitious regard certain occurrences as lucky or unlucky (touch wood…!), some look to the movements of the stars and planets as signs about the future whilst others look for meaning in what might reasonably be defined as simple coincidence.

However, we all have a built-in signpost system that we carry with us every day – our emotions!

Now, before you begin to assume I’m about to espouse the benefit of ‘following your heart’, a word of caution. Remember that road signs, when read and understood effectively and acted on appropriately, are designed to make your road journey safer and more efficient. However, when they are misread, ignored, taken for more than they actually are, or acted upon inappropriately, your journey becomes trickier, perhaps more dangerous not only for you but those around you too. And sometimes they’re not in the right place, they get obscured, worn or broken and so become less useful and less effective.

Your emotions are just the same.

Some are warning signs, designed to let you know that there’s something to be careful about up ahead. They’re there to get you to pay a little more attention to your route, the conditions or surrounding environment.

Some emotions are there to give you ‘orders’ of sorts, moving you towards things that are good, enjoyable, positive and useful, or away from things that are bad, harmful, negative or damaging.

And some emotions are simply information about your current situation.

Of course, this is the ideal situation. In reality we often confuse emotions – our feelings – with facts, or we interpret them as stopping points allowing them to occupy out whole attention when they were just there to point our attention to something else. This make about as much sense as coming to a screeching halt at a ’30mph’ sign and pondering at length whether it’s worth completing your journey in case you do end up going over 30 and wondering how many points you’ll get on your license and whether you could lose your license and have your car impounded because you didn’t pay the fine on time and what people will think of you and that you could lose your job and even your relationship because you can’t be trusted to do a simple thing like obey the speed limit…

And if that sounds a little extreme to you, bear in mind that there are people who really do that with their emotions.

Let’s take anxiety as an example. Anxiety, when we read it properly, is simply a warning that there’s something up ahead that we’re not sure how to deal with yet. It’s purpose is to have us slow down a little, just like the signs you see outside schools, and focus our attention on the coming situation so we can come up with a plan of action. Anxiety is NOT a ‘No Entry’ sign, or an order to panic, nor is it information that the rest of your life is going to be a disaster because you aren’t certain about the next few steps. And neither is anxiety full-blown fear, though often it’s misread to be.

Anger, that really big emotion, along with its little sister Frustration, are simply information from your inner self that, rather than not knowing what to do yet as in our previous example, you think you do know whadt needs to be said and done but it’s not happening. It might not be happening at all, or perhaps just not as the pace you’d like. And, oddly, you may even turn it on yourself because you know something needs to be done but you won’t or can’t do it.

Anger then, is a call to assertive action to remedy the situation, but it doesn’t justify using any means to that end; anger doesn’t give you the right to step from assertion to aggression, into violence or threats, or even simply shouting and screaming*.

Let’s take one more example I’ve been asked about quite a lot; Attraction. Some might not label this as an emotion per se, but it’s definitely a feeling we all experience from time to time. We might notice someone and feel attracted to them, from a quiet appreciation to full-blown jaw-dropped staring. Attraction though is simply a sign that you find something about that person desirable, pleasing, engaging. It might be physical, but it’s equally as likely to be an attribute of their personality or philosophy.

For some though, attraction can be confusing. For example, if you’re already with someone but you begin to feel attracted to someone else, it’s NOT a sign of impending doom for your current relationship – it’s simply appreciating something about the other person, nothing more. Neither is simply feeling attracted to someone a license to act on that feeling. It might, however, be a subtle cue to check whether there’s something lacking in your existing attachment and take appropriate action.

There are scores of other emotions we could examine like this – sadness, guilt, regret, happiness, contentment, elation, grief, excitement – but every one of them would come to the same conclusion: emotions are signpost on the journey of life. Negative emotions are not something to be wallowed in, or ignored, but acted on appropriately. Equally, positive emotions are not there to be sought to the exclusion of all else, but are there to keep you on the right track.

So, before we finish, I’d like to ask you to do something. I’d really like you to remember the last 24 hours, no matter what they held. As you recall them, think about how often you experienced an emotion or feeling of some sort. It may have been an obvious one, or something more subtle, or even a mixture of several. Note each one and ask yourself three simple questions

1. “What was that emotion trying to get me to pay attention to?”
2. “Did I honestly give it proper attention and act appropriately?”
   (And if the answer is “No.” then ask “What were the consequences?”)
3. “What will I do the next time I feel it?”

Emotions are real life-signs and they let you know you’re still alive and journeying. What you do with them is up to you..!

Until next time,

*In fact, research shows that those who vent their anger like this are more prone to feeling anger, or using violence or threats in future, and are more likely to experience stress-related symptoms and eventual serious conditions such as heart problems. Conversely, those who focus the energy anger carries into constructive and positive action are more likely to deal with it effectively in future too, and also report feeling more content in general and more able to manage stressful situations.