patience Archives - Activate You

There is no magic bullet: true grit as the key to achieving your goals

So often, if we’re really honest, we would love to be given the magic bullet that will fix our problems quickly.

The secret to playing that semiquaver passage.

The key to losing those last few pounds(kilos for me – I’m a metric girl).

The one thing that will make that bit of writing better.

Because if we were given that magic bullet, we wouldn’t have to go through the stress, struggle and frustration of not being sufficiently good enough. We’d be able to skip that nasty bit, and go straight on to the ‘doing it easily with no effort at all’ stage, quickly and easily. And there’d be no problems ever again…

Reality check 1: there is no magic bullet

There just isn’t. We know this. Dreaming about it is fun for a while, but ultimately doesn’t help us progress in our endeavours.

Reality check 2: even if there was a magic bullet, it wouldn’t mean the end of struggle

The simple fact of the matter is that, if we are progressing, we will always be running up against things we can’t do yet. This means that we will always experience some level of frustration.

I think the notion of the ‘struggle-free zone’ is a false belief based on the idea that there is some kind of condition of ‘perfect’ where, once our problems are sorted, everything will be easy. But a lot of problems just aren’t like that. There are a lot of activities and problems in the world that have no end point. For example, in his book The Myth of the Garage, Chip Heath relates the story of the program manager for the anti-smoking initiative in North Carolina, and how she approached the goal of reducing smoking across the state.* Even with the best will in the world, the chances of 100% success in stopping smoking across an entire state seems highly unlikely! To use a very different example, most actors will tell you that you never really finish working on a character – there is no point where you know everything that there is to know about Hamlet.

And on one level, we know this to be true. We know that, to quote FM Alexander, “if a person is to make [a] change successfully, it must be by a gradual process of change from day to day”**

The difficulty is that we don’t get much in the way of feedback when we’re in the midst of this gradual process. Students often report having the experience of feeling as though they aren’t making sufficient change when they’re working by themselves, or that they aren’t ‘doing it right’ because things aren’t changing as fast as they hoped.

And this is where grit comes in. Chip Heath describes grit as “endurance in pursuit of long-term goals and an ability to persist in the face of adversity.” What I like about this definition is that it has no reference to results, only to pursuit of goals. The reality of the creative life (actually, not just the creative life) is that most things aren’t easy, and very few of them have definite end points. We are making improvements one step at a time, one decision at a time. We don’t get (to borrow Heath’s words) the obvious “psychic payoff” of a categorical success; just the knowledge of another step taken.

How do we avoid the mystique of the magic bullet?

By making sure we keep our heads straight, and asking ourselves some simple questions.

Is it a problem with a definite end point? (Baking a cake? Yes! Learning and performing a piece of music? Probably no)
Am I prepared to look for, accept, and celebrate even small changes that move towards my goal?
Can I find a way of helping me measure small improvement? (Recording my practice sessions, finding a friend to listen to me every couple of weeks, etc)
Can I programme a periodic review, so that I can look back and assess how things are going over a longer time period?

Try these ideas out, and see if they help you deal with the frustration of the daily battle for improvement. Value grit, and eschew the magic bullet. And be sure to let me know how it turns out.

* Heath, C., The Myth of the Garage, Kindle ed., loc.747.
** FM Alexander, Universal Constant in Living in the IRDEAT ed., p.585.
Image by papaija2008 from freedigitalphotos.net

Impatient about results? Tips for a great year from Alexander and Caesari.

This week I’m continuing my mini-series inspired by the singing teacher Caesari’s warnings to singing students. Last week I talked about the dangers of unbridled enthusiasm. This week, we look at the second of Caesari’s warnings, that of being impatient about results:

Let the student beware, however, of three prominent evils:

Unbridled enthusiasm which leads to precipitancy and excesses;

Impatient expectation of rapid measurable results;

Discouragement in face of temporary or occasional failure.*

We’ll look first at why we want measurable results fast, then at why this is unrealistic. Finally, I’ll leave us with a couple of ideas to help counter our thirst for results.

Impatient about results: I want improvement, and I want it NOW!

On any new activity or goal we’re working on, or even if we’re working to improve something we’re already doing, the one thing we’re looking for is improvement.

If I take singing lessons, I want my singing to get better.

If I go to French classes, I want to come out after a few lessons with at least a smattering of French.

If I go running, I want to start feeling fitter.

But we don’t just want improvement. We don’t just want results. We want those results to be measurable, and we want that measurable improvement quickly. We suffer, to use Caesari’s words, impatient expectation of rapid measurable results.

And life often just doesn’t work that way.

Why results (often) don’t come quickly.

Even if we are learning a whole new skill (as I did last year with tennis), we still are likely to have preconceptions about what the activity involves, how it is meant to be done, how successful we are likely to be, and what body parts we are going to have to use to do it. We are full of preconceptions.**

Part of learning anything is learning to give up what you think you know in order to take on board the ideas that you could never have dreamed of. And this is sometimes a hard task. We are almost preconditioned to hold on to the things we know – they are ours, we thought of them, and we like them. Letting go can be difficult. And yet this is what we must do.

Sometimes it will be fast. We will make terrific process.

Sometimes it is slow. It feels like it is taking forever. Sometimes I feel like I would rather chew my own foot off than have to wait any longer for improvement in the areas that I’m working on! But change comes. In its own time. And it probably won’t look anything like what you thought it would.

At this point, it is practically irresistible to begin feeling impatient about results, get frustrated, ‘chuck a wobbly’, ‘throw your toys out of the pram’. But let’s not, just for a moment, because it’s usually at this point that I remember my all-time favourite quote from FM Alexander.

…where the “means-whereby” are right for the purpose, desired ends will come. They are inevitable. Why then be concerned as to the manner or speed of their coming? We should reserve all thought, energy and concern for the means whereby we may command the manner of their coming.***

I love this quote because it reminds me that if I’m following a well-designed process, if I’m keeping my enthusiasm in check and using my head, then I cannot fail to have success. I just don’t know how long it will take.

How to avoid impatient expectation of rapid results

These are my tips:

Keep a list (either mental or on paper) of things that have improved. My own favourite example is playing musical passages that I used to find too difficult, but that I can now play easily. Look at the list whenever you start to feel impatient, and remind yourself of how frustrated you used to feel about the thing that is now simple for you.
If you feel frustrated, take a break. Go for a walk or a run. Put on some music and dance around the house. If you release some of the mental energy, you may well find that you’ve solved the issue blocking your progress without having to ‘think’ about it.
Remember that frustration and impatience are also signs of growth. When you think about it, this makes sense. If we always stay within what is comfortable and easy, then we don’t ever reach the limits of what is possible for us.

Impatience and frustration, of themselves, are not detrimental. What is truly destructive is allowing impatience and frustration to be the excuse to quit. Why not dance instead?

* E. Herbert-Caesari, The Alchemy of Voice, Robert Hale, London, 1965, p.22.
** See FM Alexander’s wonderful chapter ‘Incorrect Conception’ in Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual for a fuller description of this.
*** FM Alexander, The Universal Constant in Living in the IRDEAT complete edition, p.587.

Make Allowances! Patience, Creativity and Alexander Technique

This is the third post in a short series on what FM Alexander can teach us about steps to creativity. The first post was called Make Mistakes! Last week’s post was called Make Decisions!

A friend of mine sent her 4 year old son for his first day of school. When she picked him up, she asked him how the day had been. “It’s not right, Mummy,” he replied. “They haven’t taught me to read yet!”

It’s a funny story. We laugh because my friend’s child had unreasonably high expectations, both of the teacher and of themselves. But how often are we guilty of just this sort of impatience, this brand of unwillingness to make allowances for ourselves and others?

I subscribe to the newsletter produced by Michael Bungay Stanier, productivity expert and author of Do More Great Work. He told the story this month of how he (briefly) considered writing the year off as a failure after he fell behind schedule with his plans of writing four books this year.

Often my students come for their lessons and complain bitterly about how the thing they most want to improve in themselves hasn’t shifted, or hasn’t shifted fast enough. They wonder why they are so stuck. I look at them and marvel at how fast they are changing.

Wondering why we aren’t fixed yet / finished yet / better yet is really a potent form of cognitive distortion. We are demanding of ourselves perfection, and becoming impatient when we fall short of the mark.

There are two important things to remember about creativity and change.

1. It isn’t a linear, constant progression.

Oddly, most of us seem to expect our progress to be a constant, steady movement forwards over time. This is a fallacy. Progress in the real world so often happens in fits and starts, giant leaps punctuated by long gaps of frustration.

Why?

First of all, we are human beings with lives and families and commitments. There are so many external variables that could go awry.

Second, because we are human, sometimes we get ourselves stuck. FM Alexander likens us to a man standing at a crossroads. We’ve tried one road and know that it doesn’t lead to where we want to go. But sometimes we would rather try that road again and again rather than take the other road. Or as AT teacher Frank Pierce Jones put it, “changes take place when you are ready for them and can permit them to happen.”

2. Success is guaranteed.

Yes, you read that correctly! This is what Alexander wrote:

Where the “means-whereby” are right for the purpose, desired ends will come. They are inevitable. Why then be concerned as to the manner and speed of their coming? We should reserve all thought, energy and concern for the means whereby we may command the manner of their coming.”

If we are following a good process, if we are following it faithfullyand with a sense of direction and control, we are guaranteed to have a positive outcome. Eventually.

So what is your relationship with perfection? Are you willing to allow yourself the time you need to do the process well, and leave the results to come when they are ready?

Image by Federico Stevanin from FreeDigitalPhotos.net