Present Perfect July/August 2010

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"Positive and negative emotions come in the same box. How can you feel joy if you deny your anger?"

Phillip Hodson

IN THIS ISSUE

1. Dear Present Perfect readers: How do we react to uncertainty?
2. Outer world, inner selves
3. Diverging from the script
4. Could you possibly?
5. Food for Thought: Obliquity or approaching sideways

HOW DO WE REACT TO UNCERTAINTY?

Dear Present Perfect readers,

Like many people I don't relish getting unsolicited sales calls. To avoid them I've registered with the Telephone Preference service which is supposed to stop them coming. Inevitably a few get through though and I'm normally polite knowing that telesales is not an easy occupation.

The phone rang one busy morning and a rather brisk male voice asked to speak to Chris Carling. 'Who's speaking?' I asked cautiously. A name I didn't catch from a company with 'financial' in its name. 'Is he there?' the caller insisted and I realised he thought I was my secretary (one of the consequences of being a female Chris is that I'm sometimes assumed to be serving the 'real' male Chris who is too important to answer the phone!).

As I didn't like his manner I replied that we were registered for the Telephone Preference Service and if this was a sales call he really shouldn't be ringing this number. This drew a blustering response along the lines of 'I'm not interested in that, and he (me!) asked me to call'. 'Well you really,' I started to speak when his voice exploded into fury: 'PUT HIM ON!' He really was shouting. I was shaken in the way you are when someone aims raw anger straight at you. I put the phone down.

It took a while for my aggressed feelings to subside. Unbelievable! I thought. That someone could expect to succeed in sales with such a bullying manner. And then I wondered: was his outburst pure frustration? Was I the twentieth target he'd failed to get through to? Was his need to sell so urgent he grabbed at any way of trying to force the door open however counter-productive? Was his bullying born of desperation?

Closing up vs opening out

I can't know, of course, but these are uncertain times what with austerity budgets, massive deficits, looming cuts, shrinking markets, wobbly banks, high unemployment and all the other threats that go with a downturn. And uncertainty, especially about fundamentals such as money and jobs, rarely brings out the best in us. Uncertainty is likely to beget fear and fear can play havoc with  judgement and as well as performance. The Italian World Cup team coach summed it up after Italy, last time's winners, played with such lacklustre they didn't get beyond the first round. The team, he said, had 'terror in its heart and head and legs'. A team in the grip of fear (fear of losing) is unlikely to play with the élan needed to win.

In uncertain times our tendency is to be self-protective. Fearing loss we hang on that much harder to what we have. As a result our bodies tense; our shoulders hunch and round as we close up into a protective stance. It's as though we are trying to be invisible, waiting for the worst to pass.

The trouble with this very natural response to fear born of uncertainty is that it can easily make things worse not better. As not just the Italian World Cup team found, tension impedes our natural flow of energy. Say we have a job interview, the more we need the job but fear not getting it, the less likely we are to show our best selves. The boldest of us know that in uncertain times we need to open up rather than close down. We need to be more not less than usually relaxed and fluid, open to new ways, new perspectives rather than clinging to what we had.

How do you react to uncertainty? What would help you open up rather than close down?

Very best wishes for an open hearted summer

Chris Carling

OUTER WORLD, INNER SELVES

In challenging times we need to dig deep into our inner resources. Though the blows or threats come from the outer world, it is in our inner selves that we experience them. Some of us prefer to maintain an outward focus, keeping busy so we don't have to deal with what we feel inside. Others recognise that in order to be strong in the face of buffeting from the turbulent world we live in, we need a strong inner foundation, a grounded sense of self. 

What can help?

What can help build up our inner strength? Essentially we need to work on our three centres: body, heart and head. With our heads we need to:

• Acknowledge to ourselves what's happened or threatens to happen, and how we feel about it, in particular any negative feelings. We live in an age of positive thinking and, valuable though thinking positive can be, it can suggest we shouldn't have negative responses such as fear, anger or anxiety. But of course we do have them, but if we can acknowledge them, be explicit with ourselves, 'I'm hurting because I'm afraid everything will fall apart', if we can stay with our hurt, accept it and let it gradually subside, this process of 'not being afraid of feeling fear' can give us access to our own strength.
• Assess what's happened or threatens to happen. Again we need to be explicit with ourselves, this time about the reasons. Was what happened totally out of our control or did we turn a blind eye to what was looming? What have we learnt? About the world? Our firm? Our friends? Ourself? What will we do differently next time?
• Accept where we are now as the place to move on from, not the place we were or the place we think we should be. We need to avoid the 'it's not fair' trap: resentment can easily be paralysing whereas accepting where we are allows us more easily to access our resources and find a new path.

And as for body and heart:

• Get physical: combat stress by getting on the move: running, walking, digging in your garden. Get out of your head and into your body as much as you can. Lose yourself in movement, refresh yourself and give your unconscious a chance to throw up something new.
• Keep doing the things that give you pleasure: relaxing, nurturing yourself are doubly important in difficult times. If money is tight, get your imagination working on treats that don't require any. Feed your inner self with the satisfaction of finding inexpensive pleasures.
• Keep seeing the people who help you feel good, who champion you. This is the time to be seen, not hide away. Spend time on the relationships in your life that matter. Who needs your help and support right now?

DIVERGING FROM THE SCRIPT

What can happen when life feels more uncertain because we may lose our jobs or money gets tight is a feeling of no longer knowing the script. I was chatting about coaching to an Apple store sales assistant. He'd had a coach at one point, he said, because he'd had no idea what he wanted to do. His coach had suggested that career wise he try doing what he enjoyed rather than what he thought he should be doing. 'That was new to me',  he said, and now here he was in a job he enjoyed in a company he respected.

Clearly he hadn't been aware he'd been living a 'what I should be doing' script, just as many of the rest of us aren't aware of our script till suddenly we don't have one any more. Are you living according to a script you're not aware of? If you were aware, what aspect of your script would you change?

PS: Manufacturing cheerfulness

There are forces at work that want to make us stick to our scripts, literally in some cases. Fortunately they're not difficult to subvert. A friend of mine regularly takes her coffee in a branch of a global chain where she's known and likes the staff. 'The manager was looking unhappy yesterday,' she recounted. 'He told me they'd had a mystery shopper in and they were criticised for not being cheerful enough.' That's quite a script, apparently even specifying acceptable levels of cheerfulness. Do those not smiley enough get extra training in playing their role?

Soon after I was in a global stationery chain, served by an OK but not especially lively assistant at the till. As I turned to leave she muttered 'Ha' gd da', or at least, after a moment's puzzlement I realised it was 'Have a good day' she'd said. Here was someone sticking to the script but her delivery spoke volumes!

I COULDN'T POSSIBLY

For most of us our life script includes things we readily do and others that we 'couldn't possibly' do. My 'couldn't possiblys' include all kinds of activities that would have me hurtling through space such as bungee jumping and parachute jumping. For some people it's speaking in public and for others it's modest 'couldn'ts' such as 'I couldn't possibly read a novel in the morning' not because they would be incapable but because they would feel such guilt at not doing something they judge more useful or productive.

In times of uncertainty when we can find ourselves forced to change our script and find new ways, we also have an opportunity to revisit and revise our 'I couldn't possiblys'. What couldn't you possibly do that actually you could?!

 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

OBLIQUITY OR APPROACHING SIDEWAYS

I couldn’t resist this from John Kay (theschooloflife.com) in the Guardian magazine:

'Obliquity is the notion that complex goals are often best achieved indirectly. For example, happiness is the product of fulfilment in work and private life not the repetition of pleasurable actions, so happiness is not achieved by pursuing it'.

But surely, he then asks, we'll be more successful in achieving something if we make achieving it our goal. 'That would be true', he answers, 'if we were clear about the nature of that goal.'

However: 'We find out about the real nature of our goals in the process of accomplishing them, and our understanding of the complex structures of personal relationships or business organisations is necessarily incomplete. The world in which we operate changes, partly as a result of our actions.

The great utilitarian John Stuart Mill recognised in his autobiography that happiness was best achieved indirectly: 'aiming thus at something else [happy people] arrive at happiness along the way'.

'The paradox of obliquity,' Kay concludes, 'is all around us.' 

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