Yesterday morning I caught the thought for the day on Radio 4’s Today programme. The Rev Angela Tilby started out about the powers of the new Supreme Court, but the rest of the thought was to do with the use of adjectives.  There is a bit in it about the use of  Holy Holy Holy in the Bible, but you can whizz past that if you aren’t religious.

It reminded me to go back to basics if I’m not sure of the purpose of a sentence or if I can’t see the bones for the froth. 

The Rev Angela ends with the injunction to ‘take a pencil and cut them(adjectives) out. Then you will see what’s really being said about places, people deeds and actions’. I like this advice – it’s what I was taught at school, but had lost sight of it.  

 To hear the peice, go to www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/thought, then click on 1st October 09 or to read it, go to www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes.thought and search Angela Tilby, 1st October .

 The message hit home and sunk in as I have been editing recently.  After a while, a person can get wound up in knots and lose a sense of proportion.

As it has hit home, I’m writing this without using adjectives (apart from Holy Holy Holy, which doesn’t count.).

The Rev actually said  ’blue pencil’ in the last sentence, but I applied rule no. 2 about adjectives to that and cut it out.

Rule 2 is that you look at every adjective you write and ask whether it has  a purpose and/or adds information. In this case and for the purpose of this blog, ‘blue’ doesn’t, so it’s out. It did in her piece, though, because a blue pencil was used to correct manuscripts by editors in the publishing industry before track changes software. So in the Rev’s piece, it added value by allusion to editing from an age when grammar was important.   

Now I’ve messed up – the last paragraph includes adjectives and rule 2 has had to be employed for ‘publishing’ and ‘track changes’ used adjectivally. ’Important’ is a predicative adjective, so doesn’t count.

Good work, that  Rev. (Rule 2 applied here – this would be nonsense without ‘good’ )

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When my memory first started to disintegrate  I panicked. Not because of what it might mean (dementia? alzheimers?) but because I had relied so much on it and didn’t know how to do without it. Since then, Ive been studying  the process in myself and in the people around me. I’ve arrived at some conclusions – some ridiculously obvious –  which I’m passing on to fellow sufferers.

• stress makes you forgetful
• getting older makes you forgetful
• worrying about memory makes you forgetful
• trying to remember makes you forget
• remembering something similar makes you forget (example: I forgot Obama’s ‘Yes we can’ catchphrase because it was overlaid by Bob the Builder’s catchphrase – also ‘Yes we can’. )
• evenings and a glass of wine makes you completely la-la
• sometimes, being asked a question makes you forget the answer (which you knew beyond doubt before the question was asked)

There are (in my experience to date – I’ll update when I find more) four  stages. You get familiar with the first stage before the more alarming second stage kicks in, then a bit later, the third, transitory stage arrives, followed by the fourth stage which really rattles you – if you remember it:

1. You just forget things – names, where you put your keys, etc
2. You forget things even if you’re prompted
3. You remember things but you’re not sure
4. You remember things wrongly and swear black’s white that you’re right

So what’s the remedy?

There’s a paradox here – for facts/events memory, relax and don’t focus. For losing things and forgetting appointments, focus.    

Facts and events

Think of memory as a visitor – it comes and goes. Sometimes you can remember the Latin name for snow-in-summer* or who first recorded Mamma Told me not to Come* and sometimes you can’t. It will be back once you stop focusing on it. And, actually, nobody cares but you, so let it go if only in the interests of clear communication.

• *Cerastium (aka Cerasticum)
• *Three Dog Night

Losing things and forgetting appointments

Preoccupation is memory’s enemy and focus is it’s friend here. If there’s a lot going on in your head (stress) your memory is going to suffer. If you put your keys down or scribble  cryptic notes to yourself  in your diary while whizzing around on autopilot as you’re chewing on a worry, you’ll lose them.

I lost a cheque recently because I tidied it away in a hurry by popping it between books in one of my bookcases. My best example was loosing a bowl of Chow Mein because the doorbell rang and I shoved it somewhere while I answered. I found it years later, when I moved house, between the attic bannister and an old picture frame. 

Pay attention to what you’re doing as you’re doing it – that’s all.

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What is it with the world of work, corporates and organisations? The words passion  and passionate  are slapped on anything from IT models to supermarket products. Emotion or emotional, however, produce a corporate reaction like a scalded cat.

Several things strike me about this.

One: both reactions are emotional ones, thus creating an amusing irony.

Two: passion is being systematically eroded and degraded. It’s about suffering and ecstasy. Christ’s or St Matthew’s Passions were not about keeping thier desks tidy or a new product range. (Try to ignore the religious thing, here. I needed to make a point}

Three: and this, I think, is what it’s about. Passion and  passionate’s conotations and associations (today) are sexy, strong and manly. Emotion and – paticularly emotional’s conotations are sappy, flaky, fluffy – female.

When I’m writing material for organisations, I make a point of substituting ‘enthusiasm’ for passion, if I can. Emotion, though, has to stand, with some sort of qualifying phrase about it’s not being fluffy. Unless you slip in intelligence very quickly afterwards.

Put intelligence after emotional – or , even better, avoid the word completely and call it EI -and you get a more acceptable form. Intelligence has a sharper, cleaner – more manly – edge to it, particularly when it’s combined with some kind of neuroscientific half-knowledge.

I think we need new words to describe that state of connectedness between  the world and the inner man (sic).

PS. I’ve had to add this. Paradoxically, emotion and emotional don’t have the scare-factor to the hardest, most butcho of all constituencies – sales people. They understand that buying decisions are emotional. Hurrah for the sales force!

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I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how to be positive. I’ve now got some kind of handle on gratitude as the way to stay positive. The next thing is how to be grateful without being Pollyanna or thankful without having to go to church and sing praises. Here’s how.

I’ve just finished an article on Naikan, which is a Japanese meditation/self reflection/instrospection practice used in mental health, business and counselling. It comes from a very rigorous Jodo Shinsu Bhuddist discipline and has been adapted so that you don’t have to live in a dark cave without light, water or food or sleep (I said it was rigorous, didn’t I?).

There are three questions to reflect on and ask about you in relation to other people, one at a time. In the Bhuddist practice, you start with your mother – whatever your relationship is with her –  then move on to others.

The three Naikan questions
* What have I received from (…..)?
* What have I given to (……)?
* What troubles and difficulties have I caused to (….)?

The third question is the most difficult – and you’ll notice that there isn’t a fourth, corresponding question. That’s because most of the time we are aware of how other people cause us inconvenience or difficulty and not the other way round.

Try it. It’s more interesting than you think.

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I went away on holiday, then stuff happened and in the process of that I lost my blog-voice. Sorry I’ve been silent.
This is exactly what happens with my diary writing, with going to the gym, regular exercising, diets. There’s something about regularity that my personality jibs at. I think it makes me feel nailed down or trapped.

I have, however, got a backlog of things to blog about, so I’m starting again now.

On yesterdays’ Today programme, there was a discussion about the Proms and the audience clapping too soon after a performance, to be precise. Whoever it was said that often, audience members ‘count down to the end’ of a piece so that they can be the first to clap to show that they know when it has ended.

Good to hear someone saying this as it’s one among many of the things I find difficult about theatre, particularly Shakespeare.

Example: to my mind, Shakespeare’s jokes are ghastly and not a bit funny. All that horsing about and clunking (or ancient and obscure) innuendo about pizzles etc. I can can well do without.
Not so the knowing audience who insist on chuckling or laughing theatrically to show that they’ve got it.

Can’t they just sit quietly, let everyone be amused and leave the showing off to actors on the stage?

Grrrr

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Something else that can happen is that an end goal, ‘the dream’, can become a fantasy, divorced from day to day life and from reality. Focusing on it too much, researching it, tweaking  and pimping it can become a displacement activity rather than an inspiration. The fantasy can take over and become counter-productive. 

Dreaming is easy; a lot easier than slogging on through.

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Congratulations to Sir Ranulph Feinnes – conquering Everest for the thrid time at 65 after serious surgery. During his interview on the Today programme and various other news programmes, he said something about goals and vision that struck a chord with me.

He said (and I have to paraphrase here as I can’t find the interview to listen to again and check) that the way he managed to go on in the face of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion was NOT to think about getting to the top. He had to think of the climb as never-ending, and to keep on going, step by step by step. Counter-intiutive, you might think.

It’s good to have an end goal, a vision. It inspires and motivates you. It makes you believe that you’re getting somewhere, that the rocky patches are worth negotiating and that they won’t last forever. 

However, there are times – particularly if you’re mired in a slough of despond -when lifting your eyes to the distant horizon makes your spirit fail and your heart sink. Sometimes all you can do is to keep looking down, at your feet and the next few inches of  path in front of you. Your goals shrink to taking a step, then another, and another.

It takes guts to keep going when all you want to do is to give up.  As the way gets tougher and tougher, your motivation comes from lower and lower down Maslow’s heirarchy of needs until you hit the very bottom  - the biological need not to die. Self-actualisation (ie. your dream- at the top of the Maslow pyramid) becomes irrelevant then. 

Often, the difference between success and failure is perseverence. You can start with a dream, but that isn’t enough. Something other than a dream  - something real, hard, dirty, bloody and sweaty – has to kick in.  It’s resiliance, willpower, determination that get you to where you want to be. 

But you need the dream too. Without one, why would you bother?

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I don’t believe that I’m lucky. I regard competitions, lotteries and the fall of dice with a dubious eye, never believing that I have any chance of winning. I feel I have to do more; that I must work for it and earn good fortune. So I leave well alone.

However, I see with my own eyes that luck does exist. I know that some people are blessed with luck and good fortune. What I also know is that these are people who believe in it and expect to be lucky. Not that I think belief is enough to make it happen. No. I just think that without belief, it really won’t.

I also know, without any doubt, that confidence has so much to do with everything. (For today’s purpose, I’m thinking confidence = belief).

Recently I wrote a piece on the Law of Attraction. If you don’t know about this: very briefly, you attract the same kind of ‘matter’ from the universe as you have in yourself and that you give out (success/good fortune or failure/pain). I’m sceptical of the quasi-science rationales that are often given as evidence for this, but I glimpse a truth in it.

On plenty of reflection, it seems to be connected to my understanding of luck and luckyness and the ‘success builds on success’ maxim. The point is to be the thing you want to attract. Just wishing and hoping aren’t going to get you anywhere (because they come from negativity?). Belief, pure positivity and receptivity is.

That’s belief in the fact that you will get what you want, that you deserve it, that it will happen and that you can rely on its happening. And that you are completely positive about it and about yourself.

Now I’m wondering if this receptivity, faith and positiveness can have any connection – however tangential, secular and frivolous – to do with the religious activity of praising. I’m not religious, not Catholic and I haven’t done any research on it, so I don’t know. What I do know is that there’s an awful lot of it in the Christian religion, and that I haven’t, until now, been able to see a reason behind the most obvious reinforcing of the idea of God as almighty and wonderful, etc.

I wonder whether this is the same idea  that  giving thanks and gratitude is a way of being and staying positive.

I’ll probably delete this post when I find out that I’ve been hopelessly muddled in my thinking. Halfway down a motorway, when I can do nothing about it, the penny will drop and I’ll see how I’ve displayed my ignorance and foolishness and gone live with only half an idea.

That last thought isn’t very positive, is it?

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Successful leaders and businessmen have it
Despite the fact that intuition is not valued in our society, we are told that really successful people all have it. Have you noticed that? It is true, of course. So what the hell is it? This is my take….

What it isn’t

First, I want to get a popular confusion out of the way. Intuition is not the same as instinct, which is to do with basic survival: food, procreation, life or death.

Neither is it just any old feeling about a situation, which can be triggered by fear, bias, prejudice or mere preference.

What is it, then?

Intuition short-circuits the lengthy process of rational assessment and analysis.

It’s a gut feeling, made up of your awareness and responsiveness to the world and other people (sensitivity to the external environment) as well as your knowledge, understanding and experience (awareness of your internal environment).

The intuitive process takes in information from the situation and filters it though

• all your five senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch)
• your bodily sensations/responses (tightening of the diaphragm, feeling faint, nausea, shakiness, holding your breath, the ‘hairs on the back of your neck’ – different people feel it differently) 
• your intelligence, experience and knowledge.

It then processes the information, sorting and assimilating it, arriving (if it’s working well) at accurate and fine-tuned judgement.

Find it, respect it and trust it

Everyone is born with intuition, but under the cosh of rationality and scientific reasoning, our educational system teaches us to dismiss it. There’s a whole lot to say about this, but not here!

Thankfully, people manage to keep and develop it despite all this. It has to be looked after, respected and honed. Sometimes it even has to be found! All this before it can be trusted and relied upon.

Develop it

To develop it, you have to be aware of everything that’s going on around you. You also need to be able to identify, access and process your emotions. That includes your habitual ways of responding: your prejudices and biases, hopes and fears, ways of dealing with people or situations.

Beware!

Intuition can easily be confused with prejudice, bias, fear or wishfulness and a host of other psychological responses like projection, introjection …..etc. It feels the same. That’s why you have to know yourself well, acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses and your default ways of perceiving situations, however unpleasant that acknowledgement may be.

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I’ve just watched Seth Godin’s video on ‘This is broken’ (go to Seth Godin’s Blog and search the entries for this title). I wish I could give you the right address to click on, but I can’t.

It’s not Important or World Shaking and it won’t tell you much you don’t know, but he’s good and funny.
I forgive him for thrusting Chris Guillebeau on me (who is all fur coat and no knickers. Writes really well – no substance other than look at me, me me.)

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