Sunday Reclaimed
Today I drove the short distance to a beautiful English countryside pub, popular but in no way succumbing to the need to appeal to the demands of the 21st century. I had a simple but wonderful meal, freshly cooked with pride and no pretention
I wandered around the graveyard of the church opposite the pub feeling the history and the lives that had shaped this wonderful village
I walked through the marvelous arboretum adjacent to the grounds of the pub. Stunning and peaceful, the most profitable £2-50 entrance fee I have paid for a very long time. The care, pride and attention paid to creating something so beautiful that it instantly calmed my chattering mind
We are designed to be close to nature, to connect with it to be connected to it. It feeds us in ways we can’t explain; I imagine Evolutionary Psychologists could explain it.
It wasn’t silent but it was quiet, as if the noise I could hear was in rhythm with my own body and mind, these are the noises we are supposed to hear.
I sat on the wooden bench at the viewpoint and didn’t so much look at the view but absorbed it, time passes. It did.
Thirty minutes later I walked back towards the entrance. I met a family, with a wonderful dog. He looked at me, as if to say “when are you humans going to understand what you really need” He then ran on chasing the stick his master had thrown for him. Following behind him, a beautiful little girl running to her mother with a handful of bluebells and tomato sauce all around her mouth from her lunch. She knew what the dog meant in a way that adults don’t.
The weather was wonderful the best Sunday of the year so far. Where were all the other people? Twenty miles south of the great metropolis, and yet I only met three families.
Not disappointed for myself but disappointed and concerned for Us. Is it really the case that our collective wit and imagination cannot see beyond visiting the Trafford Centre, Meadowall or one of the tens of American style shopping malls on our Sundays? To buy stuff we are told we need, following the slavish doctrine of the consumer religion; only by shopping for stuff will you be truly fulfilled, when did we swallow this nonsense?
Perhaps when we banished an equally dangerous doctrine of traditional religious observance. Only to find that we have replaced one religion with another; a vacuous pursuit of perfection, never to be attained, the new opium of the people. More dangerous, addictive and pervasive than drugs our policy makers are so keen to outlaw without allowing the scientists to even conclude their initial studies.
Give the people what the want- “tough on crime tough on the causes of crime, freedom to shop whenever they want-a free open entrepreneurial society”
Irrefutable? Of course, but it asks the wrong question it mis-directs us. We look forward while a gigantic fraud is perpetrated behind our back.
Where is our aspiration? Our desire to better ourselves. To understand ourselves, to apply ourselves to the very real problems our society faces.
Who is sponsoring the debate on these crucial areas, who is inspiring our children to think, challenge and provoke?
"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." – Einstein
Where do we hear this truth? Amongst the din of X Factor, TV adverts, lose weight in 21 days plans, and endless mind numbing reality television-No. We don’t hear it anywhere.
This debate is labeled highbrow elitist, the preserve of Radio 4 and obscure website and blogs. But is it?
There is surely a yearning in us all to understand more, to have a deeper sense of fulfillment achievement and peace. How long will it take for us to realize that in the same way a sugary satiated diet of fast food will not nourish our bodies? Nor will a diet of the Trafford Centre followed by “I’m a celebrity………” satisfy our soul.
Sunday 18 April
Saturday 29 May 2010
Blog 4 Do we like the truth?
Do we like the truth?
I imagine that for most of us it has been difficult to avoid the pantomime of the recent election followed by the farcical comedy of the coalition negotiations.
We all know that politicians have a very loose definition of the truth. The late Alan Clark summed it up perfectly with his phrase “I admit I was economical with the actualité“ in relation to the Matrix Churchill case.
Politicians clearly refrain from telling the truth, and have on occasion admitted as much. They assess that the public don’t want to hear it.
That has caused me to ponder of late, whether we do really want to hear the truth, not from politicians, but from each other. Similarly do we tell the truth all the time?
I am talking about truth and lies in the context of not wanting to deliberately take advantage or exploit someone. I am suggesting we lie or avoid telling the truth to navigate our way through the complexity of relationships and organisations. Whilst at first blush this is “normal” and acceptable I want to suggest that, actually it is harmful to everyone involved, ourselves, the people we are in relationships with, and organisations we interact with.
We tell our children to tell the truth, we tell them they should not lie. At a surprisingly early stage of their development they work out that it is not such a good idea to tell the truth all the time. The payoff for lying is simply better than for telling the truth. All of us who have siblings will have legions of memories of getting away with something by blaming it on our brother or sister and similarly getting blamed for something they had done. Whist writing I can instantly recall a couple, I have no doubt my brother can too!
So as children we learn that lying is expedient we have less interest in longer-term future consequences, because at that age consequences are only foreseen in minutes and hours.
As we progress through childhood towards adulthood, we learn this complicated dance of truth and lies, interwoven with cultural expectation, societal norms and relationship conventions. The outcome being that we, just like politicians, treat telling the truth as something with relativistic qualities, to be weighted against the consequences. As we evaluate these consequences we are making all sorts of calculations and assumptions. Based on past experience, guesswork, the appropriateness to the situation, who we are talking with and so on.
I want to explore the consequences and see if we can determine whether there may be some unhelpful outcomes as a result of our desire/need to subordinate truth to other things that we are valuable to us.
To take a couple of crass examples, they may appear too trivial on first examination but I think they illustrate where this flexible approach to telling the truth can lead us.
For the male readers, we will all have reacted with horror when asked the question “Does my bum look big in this?”
For the female readers, I assume you may on occasion have had a similar reaction to the question “how was that for you?”
Our minds immediately go into overdrive carrying out millions of calculations by the millisecond knowing that if we delay too long, that will be indicative of our real view. We calculate consequences, feedback, energy levels, available time, tiredness….and so on.
I presume only to speak for the men in the following; “You look great!” is our usual response. Remembering to actually look before saying it! I will, of course leave it to the female readers to draft their own version of the answer to their question.
Although these may seem clichéd examples, if we follow through some of the possible consequences they may serve as good examples of unhelpful results.
So if we assume for a moment that her bum does look big. She wants to look good, we know that. We do not need to assume that because we know she takes pride in her appearance. Now suppose she visits the ladies as soon as she arrives she sees herself in a full-length mirror and is horrified. What now…..frustration hurt disappointment on both sides.
Similarly, “How was it for you?” cannot go on for ever, when eventually it is brought up (pardon the pun) it may be met with “why didn’t you say before” and the conversation goes all over the place, as hurt feelings, frustrations, shame, pain and anger all confuse and obscure the source issue.
In so many ways we are acting just like we did when we were children our “consequence horizon” is too short, we can see the immediate consequences, or be more precise we think we can, within the next few minutes, but ignore the longer-term consequences, or perhaps don’t even see them in the moment. In carrying out our rapid calculations we apply a discount factor by reference to time. We are blinded by the immediacy of the issue. Our evolutionary past kicks in. We wouldn’t worry about not having any firewood to cook a meal if we came face to face with a sabre-toothed tiger, we would do whatever it takes to avoid it.
So we lie or fail to tell the whole truth for expediency’s sake, to avoid immediate conflict or in deference to other people’s feelings. All seemingly laudable reasons. They seem laudable because we only evaluate them against a short consequence horizon. What is to be gained by replying with the truth when your mother-in-law asks if you liked her specially prepared cauliflower cheese? Or when a colleague asks you how you are?
I suggest there is a huge amount to be gained by doing so and equally importantly a huge amount is lost every time we fail to do so.
To avoid getting sidetracked on this point, I am going to assume that we each have the skill and vocabulary to share our true feelings and thoughts in a caring and sensitive fashion and that we are not gratuitously offensive. This will ensure that we do not confuse the content of the message with its delivery. I accept that this may not always be the case, but unless we assume that I think it will obscure what we are trying to uncover.
As with most things in human behaviour, Shakespeare has got it covered!
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans’t not be false to any man.
—Hamlet.
Each time we fail to truly say what we feel or believe we chip away at our own sense of self we lessen our presence in the world, and undermine our sense of self worth. I appreciate that this may sound all a bit too grand and touchy-feely new age nonsense but… indulge me for a moment.
As we get into the habit of consequence prediction we also begin to try to manage other people’s reactions and feelings. We do this under the pretence that we are managing our own feelings and taking care of ourselves. Eg “I don’t like conflict so I will say this rather than the truth” Yes we may well avoid the conflict with the other person, but we have not avoided the conflict, we have simply moved it to ourselves. We have said one thing, presented one thing as a truth about us to the world and yet have another opposing truth within us. A cognitive dissonance of sorts. We have chosen to keep the conflict within ourselves rather than share it with someone else.
It is this conflict that is bad for us, not only is it stress inducing, it also chips away at our sense of self. We have all had those moments when we have failed to say how we feel or what we think at work to come home feeling stressed and angry, precisely because we have the conflict within us. We endeavour to dissolve by post rationalisation, but we know it doesn’t work, we can feel the conflict within us. The intensity may diminish over the next few days. But it remains ready to be re-awoken at the hint of a similar situation.
Now, I do of course appreciate that I may be stretching it to say this sort of stress and conflict could arise as a result of willingly eating your third helping of your mother-in-law’s cauliflower cheese! I agree, what possible harm can it do to smile and say “oh yes please”? Other than the knowledge that you will have to do eat it on every visit for the rest of her life, or yours, which may well be shorter as a result of the diet.
The problem arises because it is habit forming, it is a slippery slop, which once we are on it is very hard to prevent ourselves from sliding to the bottom.
When does the failure to tell the truth move from potentially being harmless, to potentially being harmful? Impossible to determine I think.
We can best illustrate the corrosive effect of not telling the truth by looking at what happens in the work place. Telling the truth has been sacrificed on the alter of avoiding conflict.
How many of us have gone through a whole year being told we are doing a great job, only to arrive at a year-end assessment to be told we are average? The consequences of this are obviously no good for anyone and yet it is done year after year after year.
The rollout of a new strategy or operational structure is fraught with difficulty if people fail to tell the truth. The proposed impact is nuanced here, adjusted there, spun somewhere else so as to avoid conflict, As if avoiding conflict was the corporation’s mission statement! Are we really saying we are only prepared to make these radically important changes if we can do it without conflict?
The cumulative impact of Chinese whispers on an organisation can be devastating. By the time the message reaches only the third person the minor compromise proposed to accommodate a specific circumstance has become an opt out clause for all.
Leaders simply have to tell the truth. Again it is the “consequence horizon” problem. Avoiding conflict and putting a positive spin on things can seem entirely appropriate. However the longer-term consequences of this are potentially horrific, involving a quite phenomenal waste of time, energy and effort. Leaving aside the hidden costs of stress, absence and health.
By promoting truth telling as an option, leaders promote and sub consciously encourage their managers to do the same. The cascaded impact of this breeds confusion and fear and a culture that can easily move to one where people begin to believe that being truthful is detrimental to their careers. The organisation then becomes a toxic place to be. Every day people will be in internal conflict, permanent cognitive dissonance, creating underperformance, stress and ill heath. So the leaders get precisely what they were seeking to avoid in the first place. If you cannot tell the truth, you cannot be who you are, and if you cannot be who you are, you will not perform to your best.
A leader’s responsibility is simply to create an environment where people can be the best they can be. She will not achieve that unless she is married to the truth and committed to telling it all of the time.
Will Schulz suggested that over 80% of organisations problems are rooted in not telling the truth.
Think I am exaggerating? What is office politics if it is not playing around with the truth? Some of it may be deliberately vindictive which is outside the scope of our discussion here, but a lot of it is considered the norm, gossip and just human nature.
It’s human nature; you can’t do anything about that! I hear people cry. Is that really true? Is human nature the same as it was in the middle ages? Do we drown people we believe to be witches? Do we execute people for stealing bread for their hungry children? No we don’t. So why should we accept the human nature defence for this or for that matter anything.
So to re-cap we have shown that a failure to tell the truth will
1. Create a harmful internal conflict
2. Lead to a deterioration of a sense of self
3. Be corrosive to an organisation and the people who work within it.
Two areas I will explore in a further note. Firstly to examine the deterioration of the sense of self in more detail. Secondly to examine the impact on our personal relationships.
Finally, I invite you to choose a day next week during which you note down the times you don’t tell the truth. Try to keep a piece of paper with you all day and jot them down. Maybe expanding on them later if you have the time, and reflecting on why
The next thought, is the obvious one, a whole day of telling the truth. I propose to choose a day next week to do just that, and will share how it felt with you afterwards. Naturally if any of you would like to do the same it would be great to hear about your experiences.
I imagine that for most of us it has been difficult to avoid the pantomime of the recent election followed by the farcical comedy of the coalition negotiations.
We all know that politicians have a very loose definition of the truth. The late Alan Clark summed it up perfectly with his phrase “I admit I was economical with the actualité“ in relation to the Matrix Churchill case.
Politicians clearly refrain from telling the truth, and have on occasion admitted as much. They assess that the public don’t want to hear it.
That has caused me to ponder of late, whether we do really want to hear the truth, not from politicians, but from each other. Similarly do we tell the truth all the time?
I am talking about truth and lies in the context of not wanting to deliberately take advantage or exploit someone. I am suggesting we lie or avoid telling the truth to navigate our way through the complexity of relationships and organisations. Whilst at first blush this is “normal” and acceptable I want to suggest that, actually it is harmful to everyone involved, ourselves, the people we are in relationships with, and organisations we interact with.
We tell our children to tell the truth, we tell them they should not lie. At a surprisingly early stage of their development they work out that it is not such a good idea to tell the truth all the time. The payoff for lying is simply better than for telling the truth. All of us who have siblings will have legions of memories of getting away with something by blaming it on our brother or sister and similarly getting blamed for something they had done. Whist writing I can instantly recall a couple, I have no doubt my brother can too!
So as children we learn that lying is expedient we have less interest in longer-term future consequences, because at that age consequences are only foreseen in minutes and hours.
As we progress through childhood towards adulthood, we learn this complicated dance of truth and lies, interwoven with cultural expectation, societal norms and relationship conventions. The outcome being that we, just like politicians, treat telling the truth as something with relativistic qualities, to be weighted against the consequences. As we evaluate these consequences we are making all sorts of calculations and assumptions. Based on past experience, guesswork, the appropriateness to the situation, who we are talking with and so on.
I want to explore the consequences and see if we can determine whether there may be some unhelpful outcomes as a result of our desire/need to subordinate truth to other things that we are valuable to us.
To take a couple of crass examples, they may appear too trivial on first examination but I think they illustrate where this flexible approach to telling the truth can lead us.
For the male readers, we will all have reacted with horror when asked the question “Does my bum look big in this?”
For the female readers, I assume you may on occasion have had a similar reaction to the question “how was that for you?”
Our minds immediately go into overdrive carrying out millions of calculations by the millisecond knowing that if we delay too long, that will be indicative of our real view. We calculate consequences, feedback, energy levels, available time, tiredness….and so on.
I presume only to speak for the men in the following; “You look great!” is our usual response. Remembering to actually look before saying it! I will, of course leave it to the female readers to draft their own version of the answer to their question.
Although these may seem clichéd examples, if we follow through some of the possible consequences they may serve as good examples of unhelpful results.
So if we assume for a moment that her bum does look big. She wants to look good, we know that. We do not need to assume that because we know she takes pride in her appearance. Now suppose she visits the ladies as soon as she arrives she sees herself in a full-length mirror and is horrified. What now…..frustration hurt disappointment on both sides.
Similarly, “How was it for you?” cannot go on for ever, when eventually it is brought up (pardon the pun) it may be met with “why didn’t you say before” and the conversation goes all over the place, as hurt feelings, frustrations, shame, pain and anger all confuse and obscure the source issue.
In so many ways we are acting just like we did when we were children our “consequence horizon” is too short, we can see the immediate consequences, or be more precise we think we can, within the next few minutes, but ignore the longer-term consequences, or perhaps don’t even see them in the moment. In carrying out our rapid calculations we apply a discount factor by reference to time. We are blinded by the immediacy of the issue. Our evolutionary past kicks in. We wouldn’t worry about not having any firewood to cook a meal if we came face to face with a sabre-toothed tiger, we would do whatever it takes to avoid it.
So we lie or fail to tell the whole truth for expediency’s sake, to avoid immediate conflict or in deference to other people’s feelings. All seemingly laudable reasons. They seem laudable because we only evaluate them against a short consequence horizon. What is to be gained by replying with the truth when your mother-in-law asks if you liked her specially prepared cauliflower cheese? Or when a colleague asks you how you are?
I suggest there is a huge amount to be gained by doing so and equally importantly a huge amount is lost every time we fail to do so.
To avoid getting sidetracked on this point, I am going to assume that we each have the skill and vocabulary to share our true feelings and thoughts in a caring and sensitive fashion and that we are not gratuitously offensive. This will ensure that we do not confuse the content of the message with its delivery. I accept that this may not always be the case, but unless we assume that I think it will obscure what we are trying to uncover.
As with most things in human behaviour, Shakespeare has got it covered!
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans’t not be false to any man.
—Hamlet.
Each time we fail to truly say what we feel or believe we chip away at our own sense of self we lessen our presence in the world, and undermine our sense of self worth. I appreciate that this may sound all a bit too grand and touchy-feely new age nonsense but… indulge me for a moment.
As we get into the habit of consequence prediction we also begin to try to manage other people’s reactions and feelings. We do this under the pretence that we are managing our own feelings and taking care of ourselves. Eg “I don’t like conflict so I will say this rather than the truth” Yes we may well avoid the conflict with the other person, but we have not avoided the conflict, we have simply moved it to ourselves. We have said one thing, presented one thing as a truth about us to the world and yet have another opposing truth within us. A cognitive dissonance of sorts. We have chosen to keep the conflict within ourselves rather than share it with someone else.
It is this conflict that is bad for us, not only is it stress inducing, it also chips away at our sense of self. We have all had those moments when we have failed to say how we feel or what we think at work to come home feeling stressed and angry, precisely because we have the conflict within us. We endeavour to dissolve by post rationalisation, but we know it doesn’t work, we can feel the conflict within us. The intensity may diminish over the next few days. But it remains ready to be re-awoken at the hint of a similar situation.
Now, I do of course appreciate that I may be stretching it to say this sort of stress and conflict could arise as a result of willingly eating your third helping of your mother-in-law’s cauliflower cheese! I agree, what possible harm can it do to smile and say “oh yes please”? Other than the knowledge that you will have to do eat it on every visit for the rest of her life, or yours, which may well be shorter as a result of the diet.
The problem arises because it is habit forming, it is a slippery slop, which once we are on it is very hard to prevent ourselves from sliding to the bottom.
When does the failure to tell the truth move from potentially being harmless, to potentially being harmful? Impossible to determine I think.
We can best illustrate the corrosive effect of not telling the truth by looking at what happens in the work place. Telling the truth has been sacrificed on the alter of avoiding conflict.
How many of us have gone through a whole year being told we are doing a great job, only to arrive at a year-end assessment to be told we are average? The consequences of this are obviously no good for anyone and yet it is done year after year after year.
The rollout of a new strategy or operational structure is fraught with difficulty if people fail to tell the truth. The proposed impact is nuanced here, adjusted there, spun somewhere else so as to avoid conflict, As if avoiding conflict was the corporation’s mission statement! Are we really saying we are only prepared to make these radically important changes if we can do it without conflict?
The cumulative impact of Chinese whispers on an organisation can be devastating. By the time the message reaches only the third person the minor compromise proposed to accommodate a specific circumstance has become an opt out clause for all.
Leaders simply have to tell the truth. Again it is the “consequence horizon” problem. Avoiding conflict and putting a positive spin on things can seem entirely appropriate. However the longer-term consequences of this are potentially horrific, involving a quite phenomenal waste of time, energy and effort. Leaving aside the hidden costs of stress, absence and health.
By promoting truth telling as an option, leaders promote and sub consciously encourage their managers to do the same. The cascaded impact of this breeds confusion and fear and a culture that can easily move to one where people begin to believe that being truthful is detrimental to their careers. The organisation then becomes a toxic place to be. Every day people will be in internal conflict, permanent cognitive dissonance, creating underperformance, stress and ill heath. So the leaders get precisely what they were seeking to avoid in the first place. If you cannot tell the truth, you cannot be who you are, and if you cannot be who you are, you will not perform to your best.
A leader’s responsibility is simply to create an environment where people can be the best they can be. She will not achieve that unless she is married to the truth and committed to telling it all of the time.
Will Schulz suggested that over 80% of organisations problems are rooted in not telling the truth.
Think I am exaggerating? What is office politics if it is not playing around with the truth? Some of it may be deliberately vindictive which is outside the scope of our discussion here, but a lot of it is considered the norm, gossip and just human nature.
It’s human nature; you can’t do anything about that! I hear people cry. Is that really true? Is human nature the same as it was in the middle ages? Do we drown people we believe to be witches? Do we execute people for stealing bread for their hungry children? No we don’t. So why should we accept the human nature defence for this or for that matter anything.
So to re-cap we have shown that a failure to tell the truth will
1. Create a harmful internal conflict
2. Lead to a deterioration of a sense of self
3. Be corrosive to an organisation and the people who work within it.
Two areas I will explore in a further note. Firstly to examine the deterioration of the sense of self in more detail. Secondly to examine the impact on our personal relationships.
Finally, I invite you to choose a day next week during which you note down the times you don’t tell the truth. Try to keep a piece of paper with you all day and jot them down. Maybe expanding on them later if you have the time, and reflecting on why
The next thought, is the obvious one, a whole day of telling the truth. I propose to choose a day next week to do just that, and will share how it felt with you afterwards. Naturally if any of you would like to do the same it would be great to hear about your experiences.
Blog 3 if
IF
Here is a thought to transform the education of our children. As a country we continue fall behind in the attainment of international educational standards. We slavishly follow the mantra of test after test after test. Our children emerge from school as the most tested young adults in the whole of Europe and yet still languish in the bottom quartile of educational attainment.
So a thought… How about we give children on their 8th birthday, a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s IF. And we dedicate one hour per week out of the timetable to explore it, play with it. Ask them to think about what it means to them in their life, review how they have applied it, how it felt, is relevant to them?
Worth an hour I think, don’t you?
"If”
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! (Woman my daughter!)
By Rudyard Kipling
Here is a thought to transform the education of our children. As a country we continue fall behind in the attainment of international educational standards. We slavishly follow the mantra of test after test after test. Our children emerge from school as the most tested young adults in the whole of Europe and yet still languish in the bottom quartile of educational attainment.
So a thought… How about we give children on their 8th birthday, a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s IF. And we dedicate one hour per week out of the timetable to explore it, play with it. Ask them to think about what it means to them in their life, review how they have applied it, how it felt, is relevant to them?
Worth an hour I think, don’t you?
"If”
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! (Woman my daughter!)
By Rudyard Kipling
Blog 2-Fun
How much fun do we have in our lives these days? How does it compare to the fun we had as children or the fun that we see children have?
Less? A lot less? I imagine so for all of us. Why is that? Here are a few of the reason we might initially come up with.
Not enough time
Too busy with work
Too busy with stuff
Too tired
Too stressed
I don’t think any of these are true at all. The real reason is we don’t know how to, as naturally as we used to when we were children. We have learnt and been taught that after a certain age, fun is some thing in the past to be revisited occasionally, something childish, a phase we have passed through and now our lives are for something else. Where did this come from? Lots of places I imagine, the legacy of Victorian Britain, religious interference and doctrine, education, and our culture of aspirational progression perhaps.
A dear and wonderful friend of mine said in relation to work: “Work is what we do in between having fun.”
How many of us have fallen into the trap of getting this precisely the other way around? And knowingly accepting this as part of our life.
We are born as pleasure seeking creatures, Babies seek it out at every opportunity, they play, they learn; they learn they play. We are designed as pleasure seeking and playful and yet we choose to somehow unlearn this.
So much so that innocent play is now difficult for a lot of us. We seek to access it with the assistance of alcohol or other substitutes.
Occasionally and spontaneously we may access real fun, the type or fun that exists not just in the moment but resonates in our body long after. It can cause us to laugh so much it hurts but is really a delicious pleasure.
Ask yourself when was the last time you laughed like that?
That sort of fun and ecstasy is nourishing for us, it releases all sorts of positive chemicals into our system, it also balms our soul, puts us back in touch with our playful self; a part of us that we have accidentally abandoned somewhere along the way.
I think the problem or draw back with alcohol-fuelled fun is that it does exist in the moment but doesn’t deliver the lasting impact nor does it touch our soul. I wouldn’t want to come across a puritan I have had my fair share of alcohol fuelled fun nights and I am sure I will have more. But alcohol is after all a depressive and will counteract the positive chemicals naturally generated from real fun.
Whilst writing this, I wonder whether a better word for us to explore is play or playfulness rather than fun. These words seem to be to have a better quality to them; they bring to mind innocent enjoyment, a lightness of spirit, less about striving but more about being in the moment.
I don’t think young children set out to have fun to achieve anything they simply play, for its own sake.
I am reminded of a weekend I spent in Cambridge visiting with some friends. There were six of us, 3 couples, it was a glorious day, we walked out across the common, which prompted a severe hay fever attack for me. We arrived at the park and played rounders. Girls against boys naturally, I shall omit to mention who won for fear of recriminations if any one of the other 5 people should ever read this. I can remember now, over 4 years later the feeling, the expressions on other peoples faces, the playful shouting and arguing, the playful accusations of cheating. The lying on the grass afterwards exhausted hot, but totally satisfied and content, smiling and enjoying as much the smile on others faces too. A powerful sense that all was well with the world and this simple pleasure of 15 minutes of play had created that. And my hayfever had magically disappeared despite lying in the grass
I have had many fun drunken evenings, as I am sure most of us have, but they are incomparable to that day in Cambridge, or other moments of real play.
So how about conducting a playfulness audit of your life?
When was the last time you played?
Could you get some friends together and go to the park and play rounders?
Make a picnic?
Avoid alcohol?
Try it and let me know what happens.
Let’s Play!!
Less? A lot less? I imagine so for all of us. Why is that? Here are a few of the reason we might initially come up with.
Not enough time
Too busy with work
Too busy with stuff
Too tired
Too stressed
I don’t think any of these are true at all. The real reason is we don’t know how to, as naturally as we used to when we were children. We have learnt and been taught that after a certain age, fun is some thing in the past to be revisited occasionally, something childish, a phase we have passed through and now our lives are for something else. Where did this come from? Lots of places I imagine, the legacy of Victorian Britain, religious interference and doctrine, education, and our culture of aspirational progression perhaps.
A dear and wonderful friend of mine said in relation to work: “Work is what we do in between having fun.”
How many of us have fallen into the trap of getting this precisely the other way around? And knowingly accepting this as part of our life.
We are born as pleasure seeking creatures, Babies seek it out at every opportunity, they play, they learn; they learn they play. We are designed as pleasure seeking and playful and yet we choose to somehow unlearn this.
So much so that innocent play is now difficult for a lot of us. We seek to access it with the assistance of alcohol or other substitutes.
Occasionally and spontaneously we may access real fun, the type or fun that exists not just in the moment but resonates in our body long after. It can cause us to laugh so much it hurts but is really a delicious pleasure.
Ask yourself when was the last time you laughed like that?
That sort of fun and ecstasy is nourishing for us, it releases all sorts of positive chemicals into our system, it also balms our soul, puts us back in touch with our playful self; a part of us that we have accidentally abandoned somewhere along the way.
I think the problem or draw back with alcohol-fuelled fun is that it does exist in the moment but doesn’t deliver the lasting impact nor does it touch our soul. I wouldn’t want to come across a puritan I have had my fair share of alcohol fuelled fun nights and I am sure I will have more. But alcohol is after all a depressive and will counteract the positive chemicals naturally generated from real fun.
Whilst writing this, I wonder whether a better word for us to explore is play or playfulness rather than fun. These words seem to be to have a better quality to them; they bring to mind innocent enjoyment, a lightness of spirit, less about striving but more about being in the moment.
I don’t think young children set out to have fun to achieve anything they simply play, for its own sake.
I am reminded of a weekend I spent in Cambridge visiting with some friends. There were six of us, 3 couples, it was a glorious day, we walked out across the common, which prompted a severe hay fever attack for me. We arrived at the park and played rounders. Girls against boys naturally, I shall omit to mention who won for fear of recriminations if any one of the other 5 people should ever read this. I can remember now, over 4 years later the feeling, the expressions on other peoples faces, the playful shouting and arguing, the playful accusations of cheating. The lying on the grass afterwards exhausted hot, but totally satisfied and content, smiling and enjoying as much the smile on others faces too. A powerful sense that all was well with the world and this simple pleasure of 15 minutes of play had created that. And my hayfever had magically disappeared despite lying in the grass
I have had many fun drunken evenings, as I am sure most of us have, but they are incomparable to that day in Cambridge, or other moments of real play.
So how about conducting a playfulness audit of your life?
When was the last time you played?
Could you get some friends together and go to the park and play rounders?
Make a picnic?
Avoid alcohol?
Try it and let me know what happens.
Let’s Play!!
Blog1 Airports
Well here I am, just arrived in Italy for a week, A surprisingly hassle free journey, Ryanair two-hour flight. Standsted was busy but efficient, no queues at passport control or security. And straight through security in Ancona, with no delay and the bags off in less than 10 minutes!! In Italy!! Not Germany.
So why can’t the larger airports work with the same level of efficiency?
“Ah but you see they have a lot more planes and a multiple of flights and passengers per day, so it is bound to be slower”
Well I just don’t buy that. It is lazy monopolistic management that is the route of the problem; there is no commercial incentive for them to increase their efficiency. They hide behind the volume of passengers argument, and the extra security measures required in these post 911 days.
They treat these as problems that cannot be solved, that are out of their control rather than business challenges that require their attention to find creative solutions. All global businesses have had to adapt the increased global security, expanding into emerging markets where new business models may be required as well as different market strategies. They find solutions to these problems otherwise they lose their customers. With such a stark consequence they apply their attention to the issue. It is clear that the major UK airports simply do not.
We are continually patronized with the “ you can’t compromise on safety”. “ What’s an hour in a queue when lives are at risk” These insult our intelligence, and frankly betray the simpleminded and lazy thinking of management.
How many times have you queued through security to find half a dozen of the x-ray machines not in use? Manned by frustrated prison officers who take a palpable delight in the discomfort of the customers who pay their wages, shouting repetitive instructions that each of us will have heard 25 times by the time we pass through their security.
Client service is a non-existent concept to them; again they are protected by the safety mantra trumping everything else. I imagine (I hope never to find out) that prisoners actually have more rights to complain that us poor users of airports.
And then when you get through there is no where to sit (absent those of you fortunate to gain entry to a lounge, where you move from being treated as a passenger to be processed and extorted with the ludicrous prices to, a human being. These lounges are of course managed and maintained by the airlines, where competition exists for the benefit of the consumer and not the airports)
So there is no seating and yet there is enough free real estate for every fast food franchise on the planet to be present, doubtless defended on the proposition of customer choice being paramount! Well my choice would be a have a seat thank you very much!
I have to grudgingly admire their wonderful PR propaganda. The footfall of the two major UK airports not to mention the generally appalling regional ones must rival that of the combined figure for our major high street retailers. Yet they are allowed to jettison any notion whatsoever of client service and get away with it, without a murmur of compliant from us. Security is sacrosanct, anyone suggesting anything that challenges this is a heretic and quite likely to be put on a no fly list. Certainly voicing any criticism to our “prison warders” will result in you being late and possibly missing your flight.
Our beloved government seeks to apply market forces to the teaching profession, with endless and pointless testing. To the caring profession with waiting times, and out of hour coverage and doubtless numerous other pointless self serving ideas, which actually achieve nothing, but they seek to do it because they believe service levels are important (they are misguided as to how to do it!) but they do at least recognize the importance. Well that is probably being too generous to them, they do it because they know we the people care out these things, and they need to be able to pretend they are doing something about it.
Private companies bidding for rail franchises risk losing their franchise if they don’t run their trains on time. There we go- a perfect example of good state intervention in the private sector where near monopoly conditions apply. With a bit of thought this can easily be made to apply to the Airports.
But no, there is no government appetite, “the public are quite content to be treated worse than farm animals, to be ripped off with usurious prices” Because we have been told and have bought the lie that this is a necessary part of the war on terror.
Commercial businesses exploiting, and being allowed to, the oldest technique in marketing- fear. Outrageous.
So why can’t the larger airports work with the same level of efficiency?
“Ah but you see they have a lot more planes and a multiple of flights and passengers per day, so it is bound to be slower”
Well I just don’t buy that. It is lazy monopolistic management that is the route of the problem; there is no commercial incentive for them to increase their efficiency. They hide behind the volume of passengers argument, and the extra security measures required in these post 911 days.
They treat these as problems that cannot be solved, that are out of their control rather than business challenges that require their attention to find creative solutions. All global businesses have had to adapt the increased global security, expanding into emerging markets where new business models may be required as well as different market strategies. They find solutions to these problems otherwise they lose their customers. With such a stark consequence they apply their attention to the issue. It is clear that the major UK airports simply do not.
We are continually patronized with the “ you can’t compromise on safety”. “ What’s an hour in a queue when lives are at risk” These insult our intelligence, and frankly betray the simpleminded and lazy thinking of management.
How many times have you queued through security to find half a dozen of the x-ray machines not in use? Manned by frustrated prison officers who take a palpable delight in the discomfort of the customers who pay their wages, shouting repetitive instructions that each of us will have heard 25 times by the time we pass through their security.
Client service is a non-existent concept to them; again they are protected by the safety mantra trumping everything else. I imagine (I hope never to find out) that prisoners actually have more rights to complain that us poor users of airports.
And then when you get through there is no where to sit (absent those of you fortunate to gain entry to a lounge, where you move from being treated as a passenger to be processed and extorted with the ludicrous prices to, a human being. These lounges are of course managed and maintained by the airlines, where competition exists for the benefit of the consumer and not the airports)
So there is no seating and yet there is enough free real estate for every fast food franchise on the planet to be present, doubtless defended on the proposition of customer choice being paramount! Well my choice would be a have a seat thank you very much!
I have to grudgingly admire their wonderful PR propaganda. The footfall of the two major UK airports not to mention the generally appalling regional ones must rival that of the combined figure for our major high street retailers. Yet they are allowed to jettison any notion whatsoever of client service and get away with it, without a murmur of compliant from us. Security is sacrosanct, anyone suggesting anything that challenges this is a heretic and quite likely to be put on a no fly list. Certainly voicing any criticism to our “prison warders” will result in you being late and possibly missing your flight.
Our beloved government seeks to apply market forces to the teaching profession, with endless and pointless testing. To the caring profession with waiting times, and out of hour coverage and doubtless numerous other pointless self serving ideas, which actually achieve nothing, but they seek to do it because they believe service levels are important (they are misguided as to how to do it!) but they do at least recognize the importance. Well that is probably being too generous to them, they do it because they know we the people care out these things, and they need to be able to pretend they are doing something about it.
Private companies bidding for rail franchises risk losing their franchise if they don’t run their trains on time. There we go- a perfect example of good state intervention in the private sector where near monopoly conditions apply. With a bit of thought this can easily be made to apply to the Airports.
But no, there is no government appetite, “the public are quite content to be treated worse than farm animals, to be ripped off with usurious prices” Because we have been told and have bought the lie that this is a necessary part of the war on terror.
Commercial businesses exploiting, and being allowed to, the oldest technique in marketing- fear. Outrageous.
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