Dubious Honour?

February 6th, 2012

The UK honours system has been very much in the news recently with the story that retired banker Fred Goodwin has had his knighthood removed by the Honours Forfeiture Committee (hands up if you didn’t know there was such a thing).  I should say at the outset that I have no opinion on the rights and wrongs of Fred’s individual case; it is the honours system I am interested in.

Let’s start with a definition; what is honour?  It seems to be a virtuous thing, and the honours system reinforces that, and yet I have some reservations. For me, honour has connotations of vanity or pride at being recognised for achievement.  It offers motivation for acts that need the term ‘honourable’ in case they are viewed more sceptically.  Shakespeare’s Falstaff denounces honour as a means to drive soldiers towards violence during his diatribe at the Battle of Shrewsbury in in Act II Scene V of Henry V:

“What is honour? A word. What is in that word “honour”? What is that “honour”? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon” (a scutcheon is a cover or a shield).

Then there is the wonderful ancient ritual of ‘honour killings’ whereby male members of a clan or family were allowed/expected to kill female members of the same clan or family if the said clan or family’s honour had been besmirched, in order to restore the honour.  Today this ‘honour’ is still bestowed on an estimated 5000-20000 women per year

The royal honours system in the UK is over 650 years.  I grew up believing that the monarch chose people to get honoured, as was the case for much of the system’s history.  I was then led to believe that the prime minister picked the lucky recipients, followed by the government.  As I got older I realised that civil servants and subject-matter experts in committees were driving the honours bus.  And now, following Fred being relieved of his honour as a result of ‘overwhelming public opinion’ I am expected to believe that we, the masses, are the key stakeholders in all this.  Well I don’t know about you but I feel no sense of accountability or ownership for this dubious system.

Perhaps a couple of examples might illustrate my point:

Sir Bruce Forsyth:  Brucie already had an OBE and CBE when, in 2011 and following a long campaign which included 73 MPs signing an early day motion, he was made a knight of the realm for services to entertainment and charity.  I don’t know much about his charity work outside of the golf events but his ’services to entertainment’  seem to involve being paid millions of pounds to sing, dance, present and tell corny jokes whilst swanning round the world receiving industry awards and marrying increasingly young models.  I have nothing against Brucie, in fact Play Your Cards Right is one of my all-time favourite game shows, but I am struggling to see the need for him to be honoured.

Sir Mark Thatcher:  Mark became Sir Mark in 2003 via a more circuitous, and arguably incestuous, route. It started in 1992 when his father, Denis, was made the 1st Baronet of Scotney in Kent by the queen on the recommendation of the prime minister, a Mrs M Thatcher.  This hereditary title (the last hereditary title given to anyone outside the Royal Family) passed to Mark in 2003 when Denis died.  So Mark is being honoured for being the son of the husband of a former prime minister, and has retained this honour in spite of his admission of guilt in a case involving an attempted coup in Equatorial guinea in 2004, not to mention allegations of extortion in South Africa and racketeering in Texas.

Finally, it is worth noting that Fred Goodwin joins a small illustrious group of ex-knights, including Lester Piggott, Nicola Ceaucescu and Robert Mugabe.

PS - bang goes my chance of a gong!!

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My competitiveness and self-obsession

January 30th, 2012

I ran in an organised race yesterday.  As I stood on the start line with 373 others I found myself thinking what a strange thing I was doing…

As you may know from previous blogs I enjoy running and aim to get out 2-3 times per week.  We have beaustiful countryside round here and it is a joy to plod round, either alone deep in thought or with a friend (we are slow enough to be able to chat whilst running).  So why did I pay £10 to enter a formal event, involving a 20 mile round-trip in the car, the hassle of pinning a number on a shirt and clever timing gadget on my shoe, and standing around in the cold waiting for a start for 20 minutes?  I don’t know, but here is a selection of self-reflective possibilities

1. I have a need to test myself in a competitive environment.  It is ridiculous really as I didn’t know any of the other competitors and the field was made up of a vast spectrum of ages and capabilities.  I came 213th out of 374th.  And yet there were a few mini-contests throughout the race and in the final half mile three of us were competing for 211th with an increasingly fast and tiring sprint finish.

2. I know that I run faster in these conditions, which is satisfying.  I am not a big one for timing myself or measuring the distances I run.  However I know I usually run between 9 and 10 minutes per mile.  Yesterday I completed the 5 mile course in 41 minutes 14 seconds, which means 8 minutes 15 seconds per mile.  This makes me feel good about myself - sad isn’t it!!

3. Running with hundreds of other people creates a sense of belonging and bonding with my fellow humans.  There is something very inspiring to be in the throng on the start line and then to be part of a tide of lycra-clad movement that slowly thins out.  As the race proceeds there is occasional conversation with people and a general supportive feel of well-being.  The range of people might be enormous, but we are all there with a common purpose.

4.  Variety is the spice of life.  This race was in Broadlands estate in Romsey.  The scenery was fantastic and different and the course much flatter than I am used to.  Also there is something about punctuating the sameness of running with events like these that helps maintain my commitment to the sport.

5.  Finally, and this is the point of my blog, there is much to be learnt from whatever we do.  Even the simple act of running round a private estate with 373 other people can offer opportunities for self-observation and discovery.  I noticed the way I reacted to the course, my body, the other runners, the spectators, the distance markers and particularly the workings of my own mind.  There was much to be gleaned.

If you think I am being self-obsessed in this blog you are probably right.  I am realising that the work I do on my self in terms of consciousness and psychology is an important part of my life.   Whilst this might sound narcissistic, there is a paradox here that by focusing on myself I feel I can appreciate better the connectedness of us all and be of more use to others.

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No-sight to hindsight to now-sight to foresight

January 22nd, 2012

Sometimes I find something and think “well that is a statement of the bleeding obvious”.  I have learnt to realise that often it is a good thing, a sign that it might be useful.

This week I was working with someone on some personal development and we noticed that these things always seem to be ‘journeys’.  People go on a learning journey, or a journey of discovery, or their life is a journey.  We talked about this and I started to wonder about this in relation to some of my studies on consciousness and mindfulness.  I remembered a model from college and pieced together the following model - I hope you find it useful.

The journey starts with no-sight.  This is stuff that other people may know about you but you may not be aware of. The johari window calls this a blind spot.  For example I was working with someone (let’s call him Dave) who didn’t notice that he often cut people off before they had finished a sentence.  Dave could have gone through his life without ever discovering this - permanent no-sight.  However he got some feedback from his boss one day about it which he struggled to accept - this became part of the reason he asked for my help.

During our first meeting I noticed Dave cut me off a few times but didn’t bring it to his attention.  At our second meeting he mentioned the feedback from his boss and questioned whether it was fair.  I told Dave I had experienced this myself with him and this intervention moved him into hindsight.  We were then able to discuss something that had happened in the past , which firstly enabled him to accept the issue, secondly help him to think about the impact it might be happening and why he was doing it and thirdly to get him working on what to do about it.

Part of Dave’s work involved hime becoming more of cutting people off in the moment, i.e developing now-sight.  This took some time but after a while he was able to notice what he was doing while he was doing it.  This meant he could apologise to the other person and sometimes even stop himself at the point of interruption.  Either way he learning a lot more about what was going on at that moment.

Over time Dave started to explore the underlying causes for his interrupting and what situations were triggering it. He realised that the he was more likely to cut people off in conversation when he became stressed by what they were saying.  It was almost like he couldn’t bear to hear it and need to to get a defensive or attacking response out immediately.  Dave developed enough foresight to be able to be more resilient and also to spot likely stressful conversations and consciously work on not interrupting.

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Playing Devil’s Advocate

January 17th, 2012

Over the last year I have been studying toward a master’s degree in psychological coaching.  This has been a heady mixture of experiential learning, dull theory and traumatic, introspective self-discovery.  I won’t burden you the more painful elements of this - and believe me there were some - but I thought I would publish some thoughts I had on playing devil’s advocate.

I have a pathological need, apparently from birth, to stand out from the crowd.  One of the ways I achieve this is by playing devil’s advocate.  This means that, no matter what position someone may take on any given subject , I manage to instinctively and intuitively take the opposing view.   What I have come to realise is that this can really wind people up, particularly within social settings where norms dictate that people make small talk harmlessly and receive encouraging support for whatever they say.  I am often seen as opinionated (which is ironic given I am prepared to sacrifice most opinions for my devil’s advocacy) and mouthy, as well as a pain in the posterior/neck.

Having woken up to my hitherto unconscious, habitual behaviour it took quite a while to appreciate the virtue in this. It turns out that my customers appreciate my devil’s advocacy more than my friends.  My ‘talent’ for offering a different perspective appears to offer creativity and help people who are stuck.  And so this flaw in personality turns out to be a bit of a money-spinner!

My studies require me to analyse stuff so I have taken the cocept of ‘devils advocate’ apart to find out what it is made of.  There seem to be 4 main ingredients contained in me that combine to create this feature:
1. Scepticism: a dangerous poison that needs treating with utmost care in case it degenrates into it’s more toxic sibling, cynicism
2. Optimistic non-judgment: an aspirational virtue drawn from Atticus Finch that allows for free-thinking  ”even Hitler had his virtues”
3. Creativity: A wild, scary catalyst that unlocks stuck thinking by living on the edge of anarchy
4. Extroversion: A habitual propensity to speak first and think later

Apparently the term “devil’s advocate” dates from the late 16th century.  It was a job created by the Roman Catholic Church to test out the authenticity and credibility of candidates being proposed by ‘god’s advocate’ for sainthood.   His job (of course it was always a man) was to question the validity of the miracles being attributed to the prospective saint or to challenge their character and integrity. 

Unfortunately for my career the role was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983, although I suspect my protestant upbringing and subsequent lack of faith may also have counted against me!

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Happy New Year Part 2

January 10th, 2012

I realised that I had more to say from my blog last week on the subject of health.

The day after I wrote the last blog I was reading a book on coaching (not for pleasure I might add; it is part of my studies).  I came across the following:

“People who seek coaching are usually doing well; they want to realise even more of their potential and they know that they do not have to be sick to get better.  Happiness is not just the absence of misery, in the same way that health is not just the absence of illness” (How Coaching works by Joseph O’Connor and Andrea Lages)

Leaving aside the co-incidental nature of this and resisting the temptation to explore the coaching and happiness elements of the quote, it struck me as a very pro-active approach to health.  This made me think about how passive we tend to be about our health (or is it just me?) and, in turn, how ineffective this can be.  How many of us are in a cycle of diet - stop - diet? Or we joined a gym in response to our fitness and then soon gave up going?  Or made a health-related new year’s resolution that did not survive through January?

My Uncle Jack was forever looking after his car; he never waited for something to go wrong.  As a result his car seemed to run reliably and last forever (White Austin 1700 Maxi).  As a drinking smoker with a sedantry life-style he would arguably have benefitted considerably if he had applied his philosophy on cars to his own health. As it was he died at 70 after a long battle with poor health.

The other side of this coin is the impermance of life and the thin thread by which we all cling on to existence.  Last year a fit, non-smoking friend died aged 42.  I have lost a 38 year old friend to a road crash and a 25 year old college mate to a freak gas-leak in a caravan.  None of these people reaped the rewards of a pro-active approach to their health. 

So the case for good health cannot be only about living a longer life, although it will improve our chances.  Good health for me is about waking up with the motivation, energy and resilience to live each day fully and sustainably.  This is a more holistic aspiration for health that includes physical, emotional, mental and (god forbid) spiritual elements.  It is a worthy intention as well being very ambitious and more than a little sanctimonious!!

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Happy New Year!

January 2nd, 2012

I always find New Year an interesting time, perhaps more so than Christmas.  There is something about new beginnnings, drawing a line under the past, even just raising our sights above the horizon that entices me.  There is also something about commitments to others or resolutions or both that seems to be a feature.

When I was growing up, Christmas was about family and New Year more about friends.  New Year was a celebration of what it was to be alive and amongst people I had chosen to build my life around.  (Being brought up in a pub it was also perhaps the most alcohol-fuelled night of the year!)

The only problem I have with New Year is that it is followed by a couple of months of winter, which feels like hanging around waiting for Spring.  I would have preferred new year to start at the end of March, as it did until 1751 when we officially switched from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar.  The new year would be accompanied by the spring equinox and a feeling of a real fresh start.  It would tie up with the tax year again, be more synchronous with nature and create a much healthier gap between Christmas and New Year.

One of the features of New Year is the resolution and for the first time ever I actually completed one last year.  I resolved not to have a reoccurrence of previous back/neck problems during 2011 and made it with a regime of daily exercises, regular visits to the chiropractor and a greater focus on posture.   What I learnt is that ‘resolution’ was the wrong word because I did not have control over the outcome.  It was more of an intention, underlined by hope, with some commitments in support.  So this year I am going with a similar theme of an intention to stay healthy this year.  I realise this is risky territory as I am getting older and the only thing I can be certain about is that life is uncertain.

However I have a an intention to stay healthy and a strong hope for it.  My commitments towards this intention were inspired by a young lady I worked with in 2011 who noticed that when she combined exercise, good eating and meditation she improved her wellbeing and maintained mometum and equanimity.  With that in mind I intend runing 500 miles, meditating for 100 hours and losing 1 stone in weight during 2012.  If I can manage these things I reckon I have a good chance of being healthy for the year.   …There are plenty of people who believe I have jinxed any chance of staying healthy in 2012 by making such a bold intention.  Let’s see if they are right…  

I wish you health and happiness in 2012, as well as success with any resolutions or intentions that you make.

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The Good Life

December 8th, 2011

I was asked today what I thought ‘a good life’ is.  My mind immediately went back to the sitcom of the same name from the 70s.  In amongst the knitwear and home-made jam there was probably some point to it all on the lines of a rejection of the capitalist system, but to this 10 year old (was I ever really that young!!) it was very funny, in a sweet slightly sickly way, and a good excuse to take the mickey out of posh people.

Needless to say my recollections of The Good Life were not what my questioner was looking for.  He was interested in what I considered to be a good life.  My next thought was that it depended who you are.  Sadly, for a sizeable minority of this planet a good life might be regarded as a regular supply of clean water to drink and never going hungry for long.

My questioner was more interested in what I might consider a good life for me (he was a persistent fellow).  I found this a much harder concept to grapple with.  My rambling answer started to sound like a version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that was getting me nowhere.  The idea that life is a pyramid of aspiration did not do it for me

We next got into the territory of ‘life is a journey’.  I found this to be equally dis-satisfying as it seemed to imply that there was a plan and a journey’s end.  I notice a lot of people talk about their journey and it makes me sad to think that it implies that where ever we are is not where we want to be; there is always somewhere else to go to next.

Throughout this it was becoming clear to me that the original question was prompting far more questions than answers. Deconstructing the words didn’t help.  The word ‘Life’ was easy - the moment you are born to the moment you die.  But what is ‘good’?  In the context of life could it mean long, full, rewarding, happy, peaceful, active, varied, fulfilling, vibrant, inspiring, or eventful?  Or could it be refering to the idea of ‘doing good’, ie helping others?

By now I was spiralling down in a whirlpool of increasingly pointless analysis.  How can I judge a life whilst I am living it?  What is good?… We ended our conversation without an answer. 

As I sit here now ramble-typing I still don’t have an answer.  And that it is my point.  I don’t know what a ‘good life is’ but I do know that if I spend too much time worrying about what it is, I will have less time to actually live it.

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Time is a Many Splendoured Thing

November 21st, 2011

I can’t believe it has been six months since my last blog entry.  For my small and trusted ‘regular’ readers I offer a full and heartfelt apology.  Time waits for no-one.  It seems to me a great paradox that I either have loads to write about but no time to do it, or stacks of time but nothing to write.

It is strange looking back; June seems such a long time ago.  In that six months I have been camping four times, completed the first year of my masters course, lost an old friend, found a new sister, lost and found my meditation practice, and most recently written off my car.

In fact it was the writing off of my car that sparked me into writing again after so long.  Early Saturday morning I pulled out of a junction in front of a large, slow moving horse lorry.  It was totally my fault and I cannot really explian what happened.  There were 3 children in my car (thankfully all are ok, as am I, the two ladies in the other vehicle and the horse) but they were not distracting me.  It is a puzzling, and therefore very scary, scenario.

What I do know is that time slowed right down during the 1.5 seconds (approx) between me realising I was going to crash and then crashing; then the further 2.5 seconds (approx) as my car was turned round 180 degrees.  I can replay these moments vividly, to the extent that they feel like entire movies in their own right.  As part of my studies I had described, earlier in the year, the timelessness of being totally present to a situation.  This 4 seconds (approx) was the most present I have felt in a very long time. Time truly is a relative concept.

The other time-related factor sparked off in me when my son (who was in the car) asked me if we would have had the crash if he had been quicker getting dressed.  It was a logical enough question but really freaky.  The reality is that there were a 100 or so things that could have realistically delayed us by 5 seconds or more and a further 100 that could have allowed us to be 5 seconds or more in front of where we were.  In either case I am guessing we would have missed the lorry.  Would the unexplained phenomenom that cause me to pull out still have occurred?  Would we have hit something else at the same point?  Would something else have happened earlier, or later?

The incident has provided me with much to consider.  Perhaps not the most important, but one of the more curious, is the nature of time.

I promise to make time (if only I could actually make time!!) to blog more frequently than my current rate of twice per year.

 ”The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”  C. S. Lewis

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20 + 980 = 1000

June 22nd, 2011

There has been a lot written and said recently about ‘mindfulness’ so I thought I would add my perspective, not least because I am involved in this stuff and have just been part of a website launch! (www.theother980.co.uk).

My own meditation practice has been going for nearly two years now.  I have found it an interesting experience; sometimes frustrating, sometimes satisfying, sometimes intense, sometimes absent, always just practice.  During this period I started working with my teacher and a fellow practitioner on offering mindfulness-based experiences and this has evolved to the extent that it now feels like it may grow into something sustainable.

At its simplest the concept is that 20 minutes per day spent in mindful meditation is good for you.  There is now much research to support this from a neuroscience perspective, and our experience in this work suggests most practitioners derive a number of benefits from it, such as reduced stress, greater resilience, improved empathy and better sleep patterns.

Many of the mindfulness-based meditation experiences on the market focus on the relaxation-based benefits of a practice, what you might think of as ‘blissing out’.  Our angle is a little different to this; I like to describe it as ‘waking up’.  Let me explain…

Let’s say there are 1000 waking minutes each day (that means 7 hours 20 minutes sleep - it makes the maths easy!!) If we spend 20 minutes per day in mindful meditation, how do we chose to spend the other 980 minutes?   Are we truly awake to the way we are living our day to day lives?  Or are we sleep-walking along an ever-decreasing path to our inevitable end?  Or put another way…

I think of there being three boxes for our time each day.  In box one I put time spent reliving or analysing past events.  In box two I place time spent dreaming about or contemplating future events.  In box 3 I put time spent totally focused on the present moment.  How much time do we put in box 3 each day?  Our aim is to put more and more time in box 3.  That is what theother980 is all about.  Once we start to put some decent time into box 3 we find we are better equipped to cope with the lives we have chosen and more interested in understanding why we chose those lives.

The other concept I find useful is the varying shades of mindfulness.  I describe meditation as mindfulness with a ‘large M’, where as simply eating lunch without the distraction of a PC/paper or TV as mindfulness with a ’smaller m’. Not continuing to do something else whilst on the phone is a ’small m’, focusing on the sights and sounds around me whilst out walking is a ”middle-sized m’.  You get the idea.

If you are interested in waking up to your life, or you want to develop a non-drug related way of improving your mental health, or you are just curious about mindfulness, why not pop along to www.theother980.co.uk

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Tolerance vs resilience

June 14th, 2011

One of the features of working as a coach and facilitator within organisations is drawing parallels between individual psychology and company culture.  I find myself working a lot in the domain of resilience and notice how often it is confused with tolerance.

The more I work in this area the more I see tolerance as a potential enemy of resilience.  Let me explain.  Often when I work with someone their starting position is often a self-perception of high tolerance.  In other words, they provide examples of how they tolerate things around them that they might disagree with or that offer a different point of view.  During our work it often emerges that, in order to be tolerant, they are having to suppress and become disconnected from their own values, beliefs and emotions.  There appears to be a disconnection, and in some cases a growing chasm, between the internal and external factors; the upshot is that ‘looking good’ dominates over ‘being real’.  And because tolerance is seen as a virtue, they seem unable to prevent it happening.  When we start working on resilience, with its focus on a strong core, attunement and the felt sense, it becomes clear that tolerance is often getting in the way of resilience because of the emerging incongruence between action and feelings.  Strange as it sounds, it often feels easier to arrive at resilience from a position of intolerance.

So what does this mean in terms of organisations?  Most organisations I work in show great attributes on the surface.  There are clear values printed on the walls, progressive personnel policies and ethical agendas.  There is a clear sense that they are ‘looking good’ but are they ‘being real’?

I would argue that organisations are better equipped to be successful if they are resilient, by which I mean that ‘being real’ is paramount and ‘looking good’ merely a non-essential by-product.  For example, a resilient organisation may feel the need to publish its values, but they are a reflection of the real values in play every day in the company.  A tolerant organisation may publish aspirational values  but if they are not witnessed in the everyday life of the company then they might be causing more damage than having none at all.

 I worked with a company recently that scrapped its Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) department because it was inhibiting their ethical agenda.  By ‘looking good’ at CSR they discovered they were in fact giving tacit permission for everyone else in the company to ignore their own corporate and social responsibility.  “Being real’ for them was facing into what was truly going on in the blood of the company and dealing resiliently with the paradoxes inherent in their ethical practices.

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