problems

Fearlessness

| Mairead

(Nice chairs in Powerscourt)

It’s four hours past the time I normally write my post. Fortunately, still twelve hours before I send it to you. But today, I have nothing to tell you! As this has never happened before, I am confused. I am also a little worried. “What if nothing comes to mind?” Ooh now I notice a little panic…. “what if I can’t do this any more?”

(Rain makes very pretty pictures)

Oh ok, I remember fearlessness, right…. give me a moment. Ok I’m fine again now and I remember something I want to tell you…..

There are many times when we get the opportunity to practice Fearlessness – we should take them!

(Ciara and I had lunch at Avoca in Powerscourt)

Yesterday I met my friend Naomi for coffee. We haven’t known each other that long and as she lives “up North”, this is the first time we’ve met for coffee. We talk to each other like we’ve been friends for life. Yesterday we realised our beliefs are very similar, so that may explain it. She was the one who asked me to speak at the Enniskillen motorbike meeting.

(I don’t like cheese unless it’s hidden, so after the photo I took it out)

So in a way it’s her fault I was standing at the front of the hall on Saturday 28th May, wondering if I should have written something down. All the way across France and Spain I imagined my presentation going well. I even had a few ideas about how to make it more interactive (forgotten on the day…) But, as I stood up there with my pictures waiting on the lap top, an old torn Keycamp map stuck to the wall and a stick we found in the field for a pointer, I thought of how badly this could turn out.

(I love cookery books, if only they could cook the food for me too)

I did mean to make those 4×6 index cards, you know the ones with the little reminders on the front and back? But there wasn’t time……. or I didn’t make any……. So I stood up there and began to hear my own heart beating. It was two minutes to two. In two minutes these people sitting in front of me would expect me to speak. I was also expecting me to speak. But instead I was kinda occupied with fear.

(“One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.” John F Kennedy)

Now, fortunately, at some point on the back of the bike and feeling good I had chosen the title for the talk – Freedom through Fearlessness. It was up on the projector and as the time ticked down to zero and I looked up to read it….. oh, this is what that means?

(Like this shop very much…)

Fear doesn’t have to stop you going for the thing you want.

Bring it on! Mairead.

Help me to make time….

| Mairead

(Beautiful things in my mother’s house)

I have a request, so listen up!

If I’m going to continue showing you how possible it is to “make” time to do the things you want to do, then I’m going to need a little help. In a particular area – dinner! I’ll be specific (it’s always useful to be specific when you’re considering (or asking for) what you want)…….. I want recipes.

(My brother cooks Irish lunch)

In order to make time to do the things you want to do, something’s gotta give! Something that you give time to now will need to give up it’s time. Or, if it’s an essential task, at least give up some of its time. And that’s where you’ll need to be creative. So I’m going to start by being creative with dinner! I’m creating ways to allow dinner to give up some of its time. To be clear, I’m quite happy to keep the time I spend eating the dinner, it’s the preparation time I want back.

(Time to eat)

So…

… I need recipes. Very particular recipes: To feed four people. With a preparation time of ten minutes, maybe I could stretch to fifteen minutes but… no longer than that. Where a pot, dish, saucepan or receptacle containing some food goes into an oven and when the timer goes off, we eat. I don’t care how long the timer takes, because while it counts down and the dinner cooks I’ll be writing 🙂 I’m happy to make a salad to go with the dinner and I think I could probably do that in five minutes.

(The beautiful rain on Sunday)

Also, I like fish but one of the four people to be fed doesn’t…. He could go without, but I like him…. So, it would be a bonus if you know a great fish recipe (I’m thinking of the Cod in red pepper sauce that we got at Rosa’s Casa Rural near San Sebastian) where the fish looks like meat…. (any meat would do, but I’m thinking chicken already looks a bit like fish???) but that would just be a bonus, not essential.

(Unhealthy breakfast today)

Please, please send me your favourite, ten minute prep, in a pot, into the oven, onto the table recipe. One that you’ve tried and it works. (When I’ve sorted dinner I’m going onto housework next, so start thinking about that.)

Bon appétit, Mairead.

Stormy Seas

| Mairead

(Here comes trouble)

There we were sitting happily in our cabin about 9pm on Wednesday, last week. Me typing my blog, Denis doing something work-ish. And the captain comes on the speaker with the warning that things would be a little rough during the night and he was sorry…. We made a little joke and went back to our important little tasks.

(That huge truck reversed all the way off the ship!)

Well… it’s hard to believe any warnings of bad weather when the sky is blue, the sea is flat and you’re on your way home after holidays. So we didn’t…  we didn’t believe him. Not that believing him would have helped. We had met two bikers on the way onto the ship and had discussed the various sea-sickness options. They favoured the drugs while I was going for the bands around the wrist, Denis doesn’t get sea-sick so he wasn’t involved in the conversation. Anyway, that was all before the captain started predicting the future. As he spoke I realised my sea-sickness wrist bands were still down on the bike and all the doors were locked! We didn’t know which cabin the bikers with the drugs were…. but as I didn’t believe the captain’s warnings I wasn’t too bothered.

(Greystones on the map and off the map)

It wasn’t until two o’clock in the morning that I became bothered.

My beliefs started to shift…. as the ship was shifting, with the wind. But I was lying down, it was dark and very easy to imagine I was a child again and my brother was gently pushing me on a swing. By six am he was pushing too hard and I wanted to get off.

(More Irish clouds)

Imagine with me if you will, toss, rock, toss, rock, bang. Where the bang is the best bit because at least it’s solid? Then it would stop and…. the moment before you think maybe it’s over… it starts again. I lay there, eyes closed completely present to every movement, I had no other option, because as soon as I thought of anything else I felt frightened and sick. I couldn’t even complain to Denis because talking made me feel sick (it’s an ill wind……). Never realised how much “work” is involved in thinking, talking and complaining.

(Calm Seas)

I wanted the storm to calm down.

I started to say the word “calm” over and over and something changed. The storm didn’t stop but my stomach started to relax. And for a brief moment I realised the storm that was really bothering me wasn’t the one outside (although that was disturbing). The big storm was the one inside me. The one that made my stomach clench and tightened lots of other muscles too. Brief moment over, I went back to experiencing the movement….. and started calming the storm inside. Eventually the one inside stopped and later so did the one outside.

(Now I know why they have the cup holders…)

None of us needs to be on a ship to experience the storm inside. Calm….. Calm…… Calm……

Calm, Mairead.

The story of Zac and the pooh.

| Mairead

During December I spent some time with my nine year-old niece, who seems to attract trouble, skillfully! She has inspired me to write the following story. (By the way, my sister, her Mum, discovered that she had started to re-write the story using a new spelling for the stuff that was attracted to Zac. She guessed adults might not like the word poo….. I respect my neice’s wisdom so I have changed the spelling in the following version.)

Story for Caoimhe.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who had an unusual skin problem, pooh of all kinds was attracted to him. Wherever he went pooh flew to him like iron filings to a magnet. His Mum and Dad and his Granny cleaned off this pooh so that the boy could walk among the people of the village without being laughed at or shunned. But the boy hated this cleaning. He shouted and raged against his parents and Granny. You see he didn’t know that he was constantly covered in pooh and he didn’t smell it. One day he was so angry (about the cleaning) that he ran out into the garden and screamed and screamed. When he finally got tired of screaming he stopped and immediately heard a quiet voice whisper,

“Zac, would you like to see my magic mirror?”

Over by the compost heap stood a little fairy girl and in her hand was a tiny little mirror. The little boy was astonished because he had never seen a fairy before and he didn’t realise fairy’s could speak.

“Yes, please”, he whispered.

So the fairy girl held up the mirror in her two hands and Zac looked in, and for the first time he saw that he was covered in pooh. He jumped back in fright and landed in a patch of carrots, on his bum. He was very surprised and nearly missed what the fairy girl said next.

“Now Zac, look as I turn the mirror over.”

And he looked and what he saw was so… so…. so…. beautiful and so handsome and so lovely that he smiled – a very big smile. And when he smiled that very big smile he saw himself in the mirror shining like a bright light for everyone to see and admire. Then the fairy girl whispered,

“Zac, its time to let go of the pooh.”

But the little boy didn’t know how to do that so the fairy girl gave him instructions:

“First, every day for the next 21 days while your Mum and Dad and Granny clean off the pooh you have to stand very still. Second, after the 21 days are up, come out here and meet me again and I will give you my magic mirror and further instructions.”

Zac did exactly as he was told and 21 days later returned to the spot by the compost heap where the fairy girl was waiting. She held up the mirror and he saw how gorgeous he was and when the mirror was turned over he saw that he was gorgeous on that side too.

“How come I look so great on both sides, now?”, he asked…. and the fairy girl replied, “Because now, Zac, you are as beautiful on the outside as you always were on the inside.”

And the fairy girl gave Zac the mirror and told him to check from time to time how he was doing on the outside, but to always know that, “you are beautiful, radiant, and shining always, always, always on the inside, where it matters.”

From that day on only small bits of pooh clung to Zac and when he looked in the mirror and realised they were there, he stood still and cleaned them off, himself. But always, always when he looked at the other side of the mirror he was beautiful, handsome, gorgeous and radiant.

The End.

What programs are you running?

| Mairead

I’m reading a lot at the moment, and different ideas are popping into my head. I’ve started to call this “organic study.” One of the books I’ve been reading is called Using your Brain for a Change by Richard Bandler. He was the architect, back in the 70’s, along with John Grinder of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). There is one quote in the book which I particularly love,

“People aren’t broken, they work perfectly. The important question is, How do they work, now? So that you can help them to work perfectly in a way that is more pleasant and useful.”

I love that, it makes me feel better – I am working perfectly. I’m working perfectly to get the results I get at the moment. If the results I get at the moment are unpleasant or not useful, then how I work has to change. Just how I work.

That reminded me….. I used to be a software programmer in the 80’s in a company in Dublin. I worked with interesting people and I loved solving problems, but other than that I hated my job! People were always complaining. Well, to be exact, the users who used the programs I wrote were always complaining to me!  (The programmers called the people who used the programs “users” and the users called us “computer experts” as in, “Well you’re supposed to be the computer experts, aren’t you?”) The programs never seemed to do what the users wanted them to do.

Let me, in my defense, explain the problem. The users I dealt with were from the finance department, and they needed programs to analyse their financial figures. For example, they might need a report showing how much the company spent on parts in the last quarter, with details sorted by supplier. Nowadays all this can be done easily in (probably) half an hour on a laptop by someone who’s done a day course in databases. Back in the 1980’s there was a special room to house the computer and another room to house the programmers and a simple program might take a week to complete!

In order for someone from finance to get a simple report they first had to explain to me what they wanted on their report. They had to do that in a way that a non-financial person (me) would understand. I, for my part had to ask questions to understand exactly what was required, and I needed to ask in a way that a non-programmer would understand. Added to this was an atmosphere of animosity between the users and the programmers, which made communication a little difficult!

Very early in my programming career I wrote a program for one of the people in the finance department – lets call him Jim. I got some information from Jim about what he wanted and set to work. It took me a week to write and test the program and when it was ready, I rang Jim and let him know. He had to wait until after the weekend to receive the new report because the computer was so slow that any extra programs must be run at quiet times, like overnight or weekends. So he waited patiently (or more likely impatiently), until Monday for his report.

Monday rolled along and I got a phone call from Jim, shouting something like, “It’s not #$?!!#@ working! The stupid computer is broken! I wanted it sorted by part within supplier and it’s coming out supplier within part!”

I couldn’t tell Jim but the program was working. It was doing exactly what I had programmed it to do.  A program always does what the programmer programs it to do. Unfortunately, what I had programmed it to do was not what Jim had wanted! It did not produce the results he wanted. My code was wrong.  Eventually when he calmed down I got some more information from him and changed the program so that it produced the results wanted.

Like computers, we run programs. The programs were written by programmers called mother, father, teacher, and society in general. The programs do what they wanted us to do at the time. We “work” exactly as we were programmed. The programs we run produce results. If the results you are getting now as a mature adult are unpleasant or not useful for you, then you can change the program.

How do you change the program? First step is to realise that you are running programs. Once you are aware of that, the next step will become available to you

Before I left my job in 1987 the company  introduced personal computers for each department. Teaching the users to use their own personal computer was the most enjoyable work I did during my time at that company. They learned how to produce their own reports, make changes and get the results they wanted. In a way I’m still doing that job. I work with people who run programs and get results and I show them how to change those programs to get the results they want!

I don’t want to feel calm when I have no money!

| Mairead

It’s a beautiful day outside as I write. In the past it was for days like this, that I waited to feel content. Seems strange now but its the truth for me.

At that time I didn’t know but I was getting up and checking the weather and then deciding how I would feel on a given day. I didn’t even know that I had a choice. If I did, why would I ever choose to feel less than content? (Funny enough sometimes I would choose to feel miserable.)

Of course I’m simplifying it by saying it was just the weather that I checked. There were lots of checks! What do you check? Just this morning a friend told me that he always felt down if the cash flow wasn’t good. So I guess he checked how much money he had and if it was enough (whatever that was on the day) he could choose to feel well otherwise he chose to feel down. At the time it struck me that his cash flow was more important to him than his state of mind. Money was his priority; how he felt, had to be decided on afterwards. This is not unusual, lots of people do it, but is it useful?

Surely our state of mind is more important than money or the weather or the other stuff we can’t change? I can change my state of mind. I can choose the state I want for this moment. You can too. Consider a moment in time when the weather was fine and you were feeling content/calm/peaceful/glad/joyful (choose any), take a deep breath and enjoy. If you’ve chosen to follow those instructions then you’ve chosen your state of mind. Would you like to consider a time (real or imagined) when you had enough money and you’re feeling content/calm/peaceful/glad/joyful or whatever. Again, take a deep breath and enjoy.

When you do this every day some things become clear. For me – it wasn’t my circumstances that made me happy/sad/glad. I realised it is possible to separate my circumstances from my state of mind.

Let’s play around with that concept with imagination: On a really wet day, for a moment add in happy; with nothing in your purse, for a moment add in calm; your boss/mother/spouse is in front of you pointing out your faults, for a moment add in peaceful. And for that moment it works. So maybe it could work for every moment. (Remember earlier I mentioned that sometimes I used to choose to feel miserable? Did you notice at any point during this playing that you thought “but, I don’t want to feel calm when I’ve no money” or “I can’t feel peaceful when ….etc”, if you did then you’re choosing to feel not-calm, not-peaceful, so we understand each other?)

It’s simple isn’t it? Well it is, but it’s not easy! It’s not a quick fix, it’s a life’s work, but it is possible.

Do it soon, it could be the start of your life’s work!

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!