Day 19 – WorkStep Nine – What Is The Worst Thing That Can Happen?


One of my mentors once talked about two kinds of fear: wise fear and stupid fear. Wise fear is getting attentive when driving a car at night down an icy mountain road. Stupid fear is getting sick with worry about having a fatal car accident. I am stuck between those two places with the thought: “Something can go wrong with BCLA.” Or “I will lose all my money.” Or “I don’t know enough to do this.”

What are your thoughts about what you want to do?

These are also “Directions” i.e. thoughts that are guiding your co-ordination to re-engineer your career as a teacher of Alexander Technique. Andy Grove, ex-Chairman of Intel, published a book “Only the Paranoid Survive” which aptly describes my state right now. The ghosts of my Sydney failure are rising up through the cracks with noisy whispers of ill-begotten wisdoms that woke me up at 4am this morning!

Our brains are geared to look for disasters, so it is no surprise I am constantly imagining them. It is not the fear itself to fear, but the lack of a constructive plan to meet the paranoia. Your brain’s attentiveness to disaster is what is right about you, not what is wrong about you.

It’s the churning inside, the slightly sickening feeling that arises as you contemplate stepping into a new realm that is unnecessary. Put another way: it’s possible to consider disaster with a happy, peaceful mind. Actually, it is essential to consider disaster with a happy, peaceful mind.

One method I use to accomplish this state of mind is to first ask: “What is the worst thing that can happen?” Then second, check if that is OK by asking: “If this happened, would I still be OK?” Then I use this ability of my brain to hallucinate the future to see if I can be OK with whatever scenario is haunting me at night.

Try it out your Self about your career changes, your 12 Point Plan: what is the worst thing that can happen? For me three biggies are: 1. I lose all my money. 2. I lost credibility 3. I damage other people. I can work with the first two, but the third is harder. So I need to do more hallucinating and find out what I mean by that…

It is the indistinct nature of paranoia that fuels it’s emotional baggage. Unidentified obstacles are always more frightening that the real thing. When I was actually in a car accident, it was nothing like how I imagined it. There was something calm about it, something fatalistic. That was my experience.

So giving flesh to your paranoia is the best way to neutralize it: give it free reign to produce a list of every, possible thing that can go wrong. Then go through your list, using that remarkable capacity to imagine, and see if they are really as bad as your emotions are telling you they are…

If I lost all my money, would I be OK? Yes. I might even be happier with no money to worry about. If I lose credibility, would that be OK? Well, the only credibility I can lose is my own creditability with me, and luckily I am the one who makes the decision about that. Finally – I will damage others. How is that possible? Any damage others experience comes from the decisions they make, not decisions I make.

Slowly I get calmer, clearer and ready for the challenges ahead…

TOMORROW: WorkStep Nine – I don’t Know How To Do This…

Your comment will get my feedback when you post it on my FaceBook page at:
 www.facebook.com/AlexanderTechniqueCareerSuccess

Comments

Post a Comment

Comments will get more feedback if you post them directly on my FaceBook page at www.facebook.com/AlexanderTechniqueCareerSuccess

Popular posts from this blog

The One Thing Your Website Needs To Do That Most Alexander Technique Websites Fail At: 15th Letter to BodyChance Students

This is the 15th letter to my students in BodyChance in Japan: helping them to think in a way now that will ensure they build Alexander Technique careers that will nurture them in the future… SUBJECT: The One Thing Your Website Needs To Do That Most Alexander Technique Websites Fail At. Dear Seito-san, Alexander has a fabulous story – do you? I was scouting around Alexander Technique websites recently, and I came across one teacher who is telling his story. Go to his top page and first thing you see is… not about Alexander Technique (no-one really cares anyway) not about Alexander himself (thank heavens!) nothing about his studio or lessons (they’ll ask when they need it) Instead, what first hits you is about: •     Your back problem – credible medical authority says “It can be fixed.” •     Teacher's back problem – empathetic person ready to help you out. That is the kind of simple, eleg...
Read more

The Blog Is Dead, Long Live The Blog

It’s 21.09 on April 30 th 2013 and I am finally sitting down to write my goodbye post at this site. If you have arrived here by word of mouth, or search, this blog has a rich and diverse archive of over 300,000 words on how to make a successful career as a teacher of Alexander Technique. You can spend many fruitful hours browsing my 12 Step Plan for Financial Success As A Teacher of the Alexander Technique. I have a facebook page, or you can click here and sign up for a free email seminar on my 12 Steps. In this blog you will find the full version of these ideas, 12 case studies of Alexander Technique teachers, and lots of practical ideas and suggestions for getting more financial oomph into your teaching practice. Of course I am still coaching – but not here any more. I have opened up a new membership site, sign up for the email series and I will put you in touch with it.  I have already built a strong community of teachers. To be pa...
Read more

Minister For Everything

I am a cowboy at heart, not an intellectual. I try to make it look right, but it's not really me. It's a constant struggle, as many of my goals depend on an enlightened mind that understands and can navigate so many different worlds: business (me?!), neuroscience (me?!), anatomist (me?!), language (hopeless at Japanese still), writing/communication (this), Buddhism and of course Alexander discoveries, with all the pedagogical issues that howl around the propagation of his work. These last two are most treasured and important to me - the study of human consciousness itself, primarily my own, hence by extension everyone else's. In 1996, when I was on the small Working Group that organised His Holiness the Dalai Lama's visit to Sydney to offer the 11 day Kalacharka ceremony, my nickname was "Minister for Everything". It was meant as a derogatory remark to accentuate my maddening tendency to want to know everything about anything. And this has always been central...
Read more