In an attempt, dear reader, to give you a more friendly experience, I am swapping blog providers to go to Wordpress.
You can now find The Zentricity Blog at "thezentricityblog.wordpress.com", where hopefully you will find it easier to interact – read on your mobile device, post comments and subscribe by email, for instance.
It has been a pleasure to connect with you via Blogger, and I trust you will still visit me at the new destination.
David
I spent many hours in the nineties, without my consent, listening to a band called Pearl Jam, who played with many other grungy bands on the soundtrack of my parenting-teenagers gig. One of their signature tunes, to which I was subjected over and over, was called "Rearview Mirror". I thought about that chorus after I caught up with my friend Emily recently.
It is always a pleasure to see Emily's insouciant blonde bob bounce into the cafe. I haven't seen her for a few months, and she seemed to bring a certain lightness with her this time, which was a bit different to the tone of some of our previous catch-ups.
We have had an occasional mentoring relationship over the past 3 years. As I have frequently advocated, and as I confirmed again to myself looking in my rearview mirror, I get at least as much out of those connections as I may impart as mentor.
Here are two things of the many things I have to thank Emily for.
Emily is the CEO of a national organisation, and the first successor to the long-serving founding CEO. A solid phalanx of the old brigade remained on the organisation's board after her appointment, and mounted a concerted rear-guard action against the transition to a new and progressive CEO.
Personal attacks in board meetings, behind-the-scenes plotting, rumour-mongering and the spreading of misinformation were the most vicious of the tools used, abetted by the complaints of some of the senior staff unable or unwilling to cope with the change in tempo.
Throughout that process, Emily managed to cling to a sense of self-worth, a desire to see the transformation of the organisation to a conclusion, and a conviction that "this too shall pass". We had a number of harrowing discussions during that time, each time concluding with Emily's resolve to keep the mission going.
The old guard has now quit the field, to take up their pipes and slippers elsewhere; the organisation has been fully unshackled and is flying. Emily's resistance to slipping into a downward spiral, or just to giving up and walking out, has kept an important operation alive and able to move forward with renewed focus.
Emily and I developed, in an organic way, a technique in our mentoring sessions which I have termed "The Spill". She would start by just letting everything on her mind tumble out, whether in any logical order or not, and we could then pull things out of that for investigation, discussion or observation.
I have found The Spill to be an invaluable tool when mentoring people who are under significant pressure – particularly CEOs, who are otherwise expected to be measured and dispassionate. But you have to be prepared, as mentor, to sit quietly, listen intently and resist the temptation to intervene until the flow has become a trickle. Only then should you start the unpacking together – as mentor try and use your scalpel rather than your cleaver in that process. Then build the plan to deal with the issues uncovered.
Thank you Emily. As ever, you teach me more than you know.
"Stories are pointillistic paintings in text, not slabs of paint slapped on vast, plain walls." I just read that in the intro to a book about using a clever piece of software for writers, but it clicked with something else that has been banging around in my head the last 24 hours or so.
Memories, the things that create your own story of your life, are like those bits of pointillism as well. (I guess you have to call them "pixels" now, don't you?) But if you just focus on the little dots, you don't get to see the whole picture.
Thoughts drive feelings, and vice-versa. I've struggled with multiple minor health niggles recently, which when aggregated have knocked around my usual aim of equanimity. The lack of well-being somehow triggered a string of memories, about a collection of bad things I have done in my life.
Believe me, it wasn't hard to find a bunch of them. That process has a fair chance of either starting or exacerbating a downward spiral, where you end up getting really down on yourself and in all probability further lowering your physical well-being too.
The only way I managed to dodge that next slide into the spiral was to retreat into what was going on right now. I was walking to the station to go and see the unveiling in concert of the Australian Chamber Orchestra's new Stradivarius – how could you feel bad about that?
It was a bit of a diving catch, but enough to escape a further descent into negativity. One of my gurus, Tara Brach, says we are Velcro for bad and negative thoughts about ourselves, and Teflon for good and positive ones.
While there is no doubt that I have done plenty of bad things, they do not have to define who I can be now. I am pretty sure there are other pixels which would hopefully join up to show a picture of countervailing good things I have done, and which help to adjust the karmic balance.
So if you get assaulted by the bad vibes of your past, or even your present, maybe you can stand back, unhook the Velcro, and look at the whole picture. You are bound to look a lot better on the big screen than in that little slice of negativity you have been watching.
My aim has been to post something on my blog each week. Often it has been more than that. But it is now two weeks since I posted.
I have some stuff in the pipeline, 7/8ths ready to go. Nearly all of it, though, is more than a month old. Inspiration for new material to post has been hard to come by recently. I have been pondering why.
There are a couple of possibilities:
You may know from earlier posts that I have been doing home renovations. In the earlier stages I was quite engaged in the actual activities of the building process. I was learning new skills, and achieving progress which gave a personal sense of satisfaction.
Inspiration for writing never seemed to be a problem.
In the last few weeks, while renovation has still been all-consuming, the process has mostly been marshalling different gangs of tradesmen, and then cleaning up or fixing up after them.
It's all been so much of the same; too much admin and not much hands-on. Inspiration has been a scarce commodity.
In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron counsels people seeking creative renewal to take a weekly "artist's date" with yourself – go and do something of your own choosing, by yourself, out of your usual rituals.
Those sorts of activities can help top up your creative well, so you can pull inspiration out of it when you need to. Different experiences beyond the quotidian usually help trigger things for me.
Travelling is also, for me, another time when bits of writing seem constantly to beg being put onto the page.
The current renovation regimen, with the associated fact of not living in my own house in the process, has drawn me away from my usual practice of daily writing. Or possibly, given me a tangible excuse for not writing daily.
Keeping a journal has so often, for me, brought with it unexpected insights and ideas. It has brought out things which would not have emerged if I hadn't been in front of a page needing to be filled, one way or the other with something, anything, before I could declare the day's journaling complete.
So it may also be that I simply haven't noticed things which might otherwise have brought inspiration, because I have not dedicated time to reflect or allow incubation of ideas.
As Belinda Thomson has noted in her recent blog post on Getting Past PR, there are times when you have to: "Just write". ("The day I lost my voice")
In that vein, I am doing something different – posting 2 articles at once. The second one (The girl in the white Corolla) is one of the few bits of random inspiration that has struck me recently.
In the meantime, I had better take my own advice – do something different, and do something the same.
A pretty girl in a plain white Corolla looked across at me, as we were stopped at a red light, and lip-synched "Love your car." And something else I couldn't quite make out: "I have one too", or "You're sexy too". The latter is admittedly unlikely. I mouthed back "Thank you" and then got all shy, hoping the lights would change. A 1999 MGF VVC, with the rare rear spoiler, has apparently still got it.
It's interesting to see what one little incident throw up, if you take a moment to notice that things are being triggered. Three things came up for me, in the next few moments.
Random inspiration
I'm not sure what made the incident stand out (beyond vanity), except that a few moments earlier I had heard a song on the radio, from an Aussie troubadour whose name I wish I could remember, called "Mario Milano's Monaro". I was perhaps just struck by the simple narrative of the song and the unexpected pleasure of the girl in the Corolla encounter.
Sentences started lining themselves up in my head, like some kind of prose poem. I can't recapture that poetry now, or perhaps I just thought it was poetic at the time. Something I hadn't appreciated, but can see now, is that inspiration can be an enjoyable experience in itself, rather than just the precursor to some sort of concrete output.
Patina
There's something re-assuring to me about the look of well-worn leather, or the dull gloss of a frequently used though aging spanner. I flatter such things as having "patina", although there is another way of looking at it, to which my wife subscribes, called "shabby".
I was mildly peeved by the comment from the guy who recently serviced the MGF, that it was "a nice tidy daily driver". Hang on – I know there are a few very minor dints and scratches. The alloy gear knob is mildly pitted and the convertible top is scuffed.
But every time I climb in and drive it, it just seems to fit; envelops me in an aura of comfort and familiarity in a world of throw-aways and rapid obsolescence. I love genuine patina, and even a bit of genuine shabby.
Simpatico
A bloke who was in the midst of an affair with a mid-sixties VW kombi (the one with the long sunroof and the flip-up split windscreens) once told me, possibly in self-defence, that there was a concept called simpatico: the reciprocal bond that can exist between a man and an inanimate object.
I'm pretty sure that he restricted the definition to men, although I wouldn't want to preclude the possibility of there being a female version of simpatico.
The MGF is a colour called Nightfire Red, no doubt some inspiration of the marketing department. I've always called it, and by extension the car, "Frankly Scarlett". I reckon I am entitled to misquote Mr Gable for lyrical effect.
Scarlett makes me smile each time I hear the snick-snick of the gearbox when I change from 3rd to 4th. I hardly ever notice the symphony of rattles and shakes.
I caught myself saying out loud: "Hey, I missed you" when I picked it up from the Park'n'Fly a few weeks ago.
We both love that long drive home from the airport, with the daggy 60's playlist on the iPod that goes for hours. Scarlett never complains about my rendition of 24 Hours from Tulsa, and it actually sounds in tune to both of us at 3,100 revs. That's part of the reciprocal nature of simpatico.
If ever I'm going to be seriously challenged by the central notion of impermanence, of all things rising and passing away, it will be when I can no longer half-slide, half-fall into that patina-covered leather bucket.
But anyway, I wonder what the Corolla girl actually said as I pulled away from the traffic lights blushing.
PS – If you haven't heard of Mario Milano, or his famous wrestler's finishing move the "Atomic Drop", then either you are under 50 or your dad has never bored you by recounting Mario's battles with Killer Kowalski and Skull Murphy. You could start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Milano
She's a wonderful woman, my wife. I started a conversation with her that I should have started 18 months ago (well, I'm a bloke, okay?). She said: "Yes, I've been thinking about that," and suggested 3 options to resolve the issue.
Suddenly, a potential problem was no longer a piece of unfinished business.
I have had another piece of business going on, which I didn't even realise was unfinished. I was playing around with an article ostensibly about clever budget ways to get from the airport to the hotel, without spending big bucks on a taxi.
A client had managed to book me into a (modest) hotel on completely the wrong side of the CBD from both the airport bus terminal and the job the next morning. I found a free shuttle bus that went to even that hotel, patting myself on the back for having done so.
As I was writing, it sort of emerged that the piece was not a helpful travel-tip blog at all, but a lament for lost status. Life used to be like this:
I swear, when I first saw George Clooney in Up in the Air, I thought it was about me, right down to the slip-on shoes to get through security faster, and definitely the same status obsession.
Those were the days, I was telling myself too often, sitting on some shuttle bus or other and trying to feel virtuous about it.
The kind of clients I work for now I wouldn't consider putting to that kind of expense, and I am certainly too much of a tight-arse to pay for it myself. I'm hanging on by a thread to some residual frequent flyer status, but even that is going to evaporate in a couple of months.
But I think I may finally be close to getting over the trappings of status, and finishing that piece of business.
Brigitte and I just did an overseas trip where we had no lounge access and check-in 3 hours ahead. Buying a drink at the airport bar. Finding the cheapest airport transfers and being pleased with ourselves for having done so. And hey, it was okay.
I guess the issue about unfinished business is recognising that it is actually unfinished. For me, that means usually means picking up the signals – little things that keep recurring like thinking or talking, with mild regret rather than fondness, about the good old days. Someone I don't really want to talk to, or something I am reticent to talk about.
I have someone who has unfinished business with me, and it will probably always be that way. I have finished it on my side, and unilateral finishing can be a challenge, but sometimes it's all that may be possible.
But gee, that champagne in the no-riff-raff lounge was nice. Even though I am getting close to qualifying as riff-raff myself.
I normally subscribe to the same theory about workshop sessions as the British Army SAS does for its clandestine missions: "Proper planning and preparation prevent piss-poor performance". Last week I did a job where we just winged it – but only as a considered decision. And we came out the other end in reasonable shape.
Why would I take a punt like that? The important factors were:
I have to say it felt uncomfortable to turn up a blank page of flipchart, and say: "Okay, here's the agenda." The first thing we put down on the page was the finishing time. Then we agreed in very explicit terms on the purpose of the session – particularly important in this context – and co-created the rest of the agenda.
What worked in the session?
One thing I am not sure really worked: when the CEO said, about the timeframe we ended up facing, "... and David will keep us to time," and I threw a small, but considered, strategic wobbly about everyone need to take personal responsibility about time.
Before taking on facilitation on the run, there are a couple of things I would suggest:
At the end of the session, I had a mild whinge about having had less time than originally scheduled for the session. Someone said: "How much better do you think the outcome would have been if we had that extra hour?" After a very brief reflection, I had to admit frankly that we would have had no less effective an outcome if we had spent that extra bit of time.
Sometimes, you really can achieve more with less.
