Month: March 2008

Stop asking yourself “Why am I so Stupid?”

| Mairead

Watched a movie called The Fastest Indian on DVD last week. It’s about a guy called Burt Munro from New Zealand who had a dream to set a land speed record on his Indian motorbike across the salt flats in Utah. It’s based on a true story and set in the 1960’s.
In his sixties himself, Burt had perfected his bike to run at speeds above 100 mph, so he worked his passage from New Zealand as cook aboard a ship on route to California. In the end the bike went even faster and the record Burt set is still unbroken over 40 years later.

Anthony Hopkins plays Burt, and really nicely introduces us to a friendly man, with his own ideas and a determination to follow his dream.

He reminds me of my daughter!

I attended a workshop recently where the learning is experiential and particularly about seeing the big picture first. Only then do get to notice the little bits and pieces and to put those bits and pieces into your own jigsaw puzzle. For me this is a very different way to learn and I sometimes struggle and fight with it. But when my picture starts to emerge it is both magnificent and solid.

What’s emerging for me at the moment is the connection between the movies, The Fastest Indian and The Shadow of the Moon and the concept of dealing with problems. In the past when there was something bothering me I thought about it, figured out what I had done wrong, figured out what that meant about me and about others and about life, asked myself over and over “Why did I do …?’, wrote about it, talked to others about it and in general felt terrible about it. I had been doing this for years and had ‘perfected’ my problem-based strategy!

Then I learned a possibility-based strategy. This is where you start at your best and you deal with everything from that place. So, I learned how to use this nearly three years ago, and I am learning to understand it slowly, since then.

Today another piece of my jigsaw fell into place.

When I saw In the Shadow of the Moon (see Recent Post) it had a very strong impact on me. As in life the details of this impact slowly unfold…

When President John F Kennedy predicted that the USA would land a man on the moon and return him safely within the decade he set up a goal for his country and particularly for the men and women who worked in the space program.

The Apollo artifacts in a museum in Cape Canaveral are very flimsy. The pod they parachute down to earth in looks like its made of golden tin foil. The processing ability of the computers they used then is no more powerful than a calculator (just a little heavier!)

Yet… they did it.

Burt Munro had a dream to set a land speed record with his Indian motorbike. When manufactured, this motorbike’s maximum speed was about 50 miles per hour. He worked on it for hours every day, making new parts out of scraps of metal smelted in a pot in the run-down shed where he lived. He used his neighbour’s carving knife to turn his ordinary tyres into high-speed tyres.

Yet…. he did it. Funny enough both stories are set in the 1960’s, but that’s not the link.

When the astronauts and space craft builders were starting to create something that would go to the moon their space ships kept exploding. Lots and lots of problems. I’m not sure but I’m guessing they didn’t spend a lot of time criticising themselves for getting it wrong AGAIN. If they had spent the time going over and over what they did wrong they may never have got to the moon. Their timeframe was set, they had to do the job within 9 years. (Because President Kennedy said they would….)

So they had to look for ways around their problems.

Burt had many, many problems – the biggest – he didn’t have enough money to go to America, was solved by his friends. But when he got to Utah he realised that he could not enter the trials – he hadn’t registered. He didn’t beat himself up and use his energy asking “Why am I so stupid?” His timeframe was set, the event would be over in 3 days.

He looked for ways around his problems.

Both the people in the space program and Burt Munro kept the dream in sight and looked for ways around the problems. All the time assuming they would make it to the moon or to the line drawn across the salt flats in Utah.

Stop wasting your life beating yourself up for doing something wrong. Stop asking yourself Why am I so stupid? Use your problems as feedback to find a way around them, That didn’t work, what else could I try or how could I do this another way? Use the energy saved to keep your moon in view.

By the way, it’s not the dream that’s all that important, they come and go. But the dream is really, really useful because….. in that direction lies your bliss. But that’s another story!

A message for all those who have teenage daughters.

| Mairead

We went to see Juno last week.
It’s a story about a 16 year-old girl, Juno, who gets pregnant, and her journey through the pregnancy and birth and beyond. What’s different about this version of an old story is the comedy, “Yeah, I’m a legend. You know, they call me the cautionary whale.”

It begins with Juno drinking a quart of Sunny D in preparation for her 3rd pregnancy test of the day. All the tests were performed on site in the ‘restroom’ of a grocery shop, with a lot of input from the shopkeeper. “You better pay for that pee-stick when you’re done with it. Don’t think it’s yours just because you marked it with your urine!”

Juno is different. She doesn’t fit the norm and neither does the boy she picks to ‘experiment’ with. “As far as boyfriends go, Paulie Bleeker is totally boss. He is the cheese to my macaroni.”

I loved her Dad – there’s a scene where he and Juno’s step-mum are alone together having just been told by Juno that she’s pregnant. They’re in shock and the step-mum says something like “Did you see that coming when she said she had something to tell us?” and the Dad says “Yeah, but I was hoping she was expelled, or into hard drugs.”.
Please don’t tell my offspring but I’ve had thoughts like these. Where the one thing you feared was true became the worst possible outcome and you choose a “better” option. But if sanity had been around on that day there’s no way you’d ever, ever want that “better” option.

It’s a love story. A geeky looking boy, Paulie, in the light of Juno’s love becomes a really lovely guy who, although he wears awful running shorts, steps up to supports Juno when she needs him. “Juno: I think I’m, like, in love with you. Paulie: You mean as friends? Juno: No, I mean, like, for real. ‘Cause you’re, like, the coolest person I’ve ever met, and you don’t even have to try, you know… Paulie: I try really hard, actually. ”

This is a movie with a message for all those who have teenage daughters – they’ll be fine. And, for all those who have teenage sons – they’ll be fine. And for all those who are teenagers – you are fine. And for all those who were teenagers – it turned out fine, didn’t it?

Talking to a friend last weekend as we walked in beautiful sunshine along a path called the Cliff Walk helped me see this. My friend and her husband had spent many sleepless nights wondering what they were going to do for their teenage daughter who was failing to succeed. And guess what? Now ten years later all is fine! It didn’t take ten years for it to be fine, but maybe it takes a long time before we look back. She’s successful in a way that the parents could not have foreseen.

Sometimes sleep is all you can do, because sleepless nights help no one!

Sometimes we get involved in the business of our ‘children’ when all they need is an interested observer with lots of money (not really!) and an ability to listen.

In the recent past as an adult I have begun to do the things that were too fearful to consider at the normal age. For instance, 2 years ago I learned to swim. Now, we’re not talking about the graceful art of gliding through the water. This was learning to be comfortable in water and move through that water anyway I could, except walking. I learned at my own pace, I pacing myself for about 10 years. I had got to the point of holding the bar and putting my face in the water. Letting go of that bar was impossible. If I let go of that bar then I would be lost, like Alice down the rabbit hole. I was holding tight to past experiences in water.

Like the time I went to swimming lessons in the next town and as a good girl put my face in the water when the instructor told me, but somehow the message to hold my breath never got through and I took in water. Then on school tour where I felt so comfortable with my friends that I jumped into the pool with them and couldn’t stop choking up water. And again when my children were small and we went to a water park and I decided it was time to be brave and risk the big slide. Halfway down I decided this wasn’t such a good idea and if there had been a way I would have jumped over the side rather than go into the water. There was no way, it ended with choking on water again.

But something about the water kept calling me back.

I was in the middle of swimming lessons again when I attended a great workshop. There’s an exercise on the last day about doing something you want to do in the next three months. My choice was swimming. Within three months I was floating with my hands off the bar and my feet off the ground, I had sourced a one-to-one swimming teacher and I had started my learning with purpose. And something I didn’t expect – I loved the water. When I was floating and eventually doing a crawl I felt like I was flying.

Now I’ve taken up singing lessons…..

As an adult I don’t even consider that someone will be pushing me to keep going because they think it’s important. Or that someone will be disappointed if I give up. I go at it at my own pace. At my own pace something else comes to play, and I play with that. The joy of the task at hand is lovely.

Getting a good leaving cert, or a distinction in music exams, or a championship medal are types of success, but there are many more, which one will you be thinking about in your death bed?
Sometimes our kids mistake our interest in getting the best for them as the goal they must achieve, as the one way they must go, as the only option to be in this world.
Sometimes we mistake our experience as the truth, the only truth, the only way. Sometimes the truth is invisible to us and only visible to those who are involved and have to step up to meet it.

Ok, maybe learning to swim did take me a long time, but I had the time…… What’s the hurry?