Mark the Coach

The flip side of “effort = success” is that if something didn’t take much effort, it must be wrong. I remember when I first started to learn calculus in maths. The teacher spent a great deal of time stressing to us first of all that CALCULUS IS VERY HARD. Then he got down to explaining it. It didn’t actually seem that difficult to me – and that was really confusing. Where’s the catch? I must have missed something. I didn’t get it. Three years later in university, I was doing an electronic engineering degree. Which depended heavily on guess what? Calculus. Sorry, no, it was THREE DIMENSIONAL calculus. My average exam mark at the end of the year was around 30% – nuff said, I think.

Years later I did a history degree at Edinburgh University. It was just the best fun, and I really loved writing my essays and finding out stuff. I’d thought about choosing a more vocational degree that fed me into a career, but I realised I’d probably just repeat what happened before. I decided to do a good job of what I wanted to do rather than a bad job of something sensible. Sure enough, not only did I finally succeed in getting a degree, I got a 2:1.

Sometimes, if something’s easy, it’s because you’re talented.

I’ve been locked out for a couple of days – blogger apparently thought I was spamming my own blog, or Father Of The Man is itself spam, or something. Don’t know how that works.

Anyway, apologies for the untoward interruption – normal service now resumed.

Here’s a little wisdom the great Oliver Postgate spoke on his Desert Island Discs appearance. Talking about his experience of school, he suggested that children – or perhaps people – are divided into sheep and goats; and that as a goat, he didn’t take too well to being told what to do. Fred’s clearly a goat – he likes to be the one giving the orders. The thing is, I’m not sure which I am.

Thinking about it, maybe I’m a bit of both. I love being a father, but I don’t like handing down the law. I love running my own business; but it would be very nice if I had someone to feed me a steady stream of clients. Someone to say “Here, coach these people,” so I could focus on the coaching.

Perhaps we’re all a bit of both. There’s a good inquiry for this week – where am I a sheep, and where am I a goat?

I heard a wonderful voice from the past today on Desert Island Discs – Oliver Postgate, the animator and voice behind Bagpuss and Noggin the Nog. Another example of how, for me, it’s sound and not smell that really activate my memory. Bagpuss seems to be what he’s most remembered for, but I was SUCH a fan of Noggin the Nog – check out this site for more about him and his world. Partly I suppose it was the flavour of viking sagas and mythology that it conveyed, coupled with his amazing voice – that combination just made for perfect storytelling. His is a voice of gentle peace and wisdom. In fact I’ve just realised that when I do a visualisation or something with a client, it’s his voice that I unconsciously emulate. Wow.

My fellow coach Annie Wigman recently started a fantastic discussion on a website for co-active coaches I frequent. The topic is essentially – if you get yourself a great life, what’s the impact on others? Should we feel guilty? What’s the moral implication of seeking to create a life that’s about you, that suits you, that is the way you want it?

In this discussion “you can’t have your cake and eat it” has been considered quite a bit. It strikes me that the idea that is SUCH a load of crap. The big fallacy here is that there’s a limited amount of joy available – if you get a bit more, someone has to get a bit less. Bollocks. If you’re happier, people around you are happier. You create joy for others through creating it for yourself. It’s like in the safety drill on planes – they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others. Why? Because until you do, you’re just another body gasping for breath.

There’s something I recently got very clear about – sharing makes me happy. Whatever that looks like – making dinner for friends, buying someone a drink, having a conversation letting people know about something great I’ve discovered. Think of anything you like doing – don’t you enjoy it more if you do it with someone else? You don’t need to be told to share – you love it. Look after yourself, and you can look after others. Stock up on joy (including joy in who you are), share it around, notice how your joy replenishes as you do this.

The trick is truly to know what gives you joy and happiness. Annie cites the dilemma of wanting nice clothes versus knowing that so many companies exploit sweat shop labour in the developing world to produce them cheaply. What’s clear is that what makes Annie happy is having nice clothes AND paying people properly for their labour.

Radio 4 had an interesting program today about Britain’s transition from a low crime society to having the highest crime rates in Europe. It covered the period from the end of World War II to the early 60s, and spoke of juvenile delinquency, Teddy Boys, and the rise of the celebrity villain. What struck me about this last was how socially accepted the well-dressed career criminal of the early 60s was, when only a generation before the same figure would have been reviled.

Ideas that were being discussed included the demise of deference and the rise of the “individualist”. The seminal TV show Dixon of Dock Green also came up a lot – policeman Dixon representing community in the shape of the fatherly bobby on the beat, versus the selfish individualism of the hooligan and criminal elements. It seems this is a dilemma for our times – how do we juggle individualism and community?

Dixon’s message was that these criminal and delinquent outsiders sought to undermine society. Crime is equated with being individual. The trouble is, as their camel coats and snappy dressing showed, the villains had exactly the same aspirations as other members of society. Today’s bling culture is essentially exactly the same phenomenon. By the 60s crime had become simply a career option; by now, lifestyle choice is probably the expression we’d be more likely to use.

I reckon it would be smart to notice how similar the villains are to the rest of us. We all want to shop and be individuals, and criminals are just consumers by another means. This means is seen to be individual, successful and exciting, in all the ways we were ever taught to aspire to. Is it any wonder that criminals become heroes?

I’m liking this connecting with the neighbourhood thing.Yesterday I bumped into a guy from the local wine shop. He said “What’s new?” and instead of doing the usual politely dismissive “Oh you know, not much, how about you?” thing, we had a conversation. Ooer! I said a bit about what I mentioned the other day, particularly about what it used to be like when I lived in the country. Guess what? It turned out it was exactly the same for him. He mentioned how different the dynamic of city life is, and how it’s a bit of a culture shock coming to it from growing up in the country.

It seems strange to say, but I really don’t think I’ve looked at it like that before. I’ve done plenty of complaining about how people here and now aren’t like where and when I grew up, but in a funny way I guess I’ve overlooked two simple facts: firstly, I’m in a different time and place, and secondly, if I want to chat to everyone like I used to, it is actually allowed.

A friend was telling me today about an occasion when she was working with a class of special educational needs kids. They were making pictures with pieces of coloured paper, and one particular boy wasn’t really engaging with this. So he was told all he needed to do was try. His response was to make big straining grunty noises as he stuck down the bits of paper, and otherwise continue as he had been doing.

It struck me that most of us do what amounts to the same thing – trying, or appearing to try, and not getting anywhere. The trouble with telling our kids to try is that the effort itself becomes the goal, not the objective. Struggle and strain become equated with success. So when do kids suddenly unlearn this? Well, actually they don’t usually. When we get stuck, most of us automatically snap into the “must try harder” mode we learned at school and beat our heads harder and harder against it. If effort doesn’t produce success there’s a contradiction, and we get confused, frustrated, angry or panicky (I tend to favour confused and panicky myself). And then carry on doing more of the same.

Unfortunately the results tend to look like someone trying to rev their way out of being stuck in the mud, and just creating an ever deeper rut. So, what to do? Well, like the man said, stop digging. Or revving, or head-beating – whatever you keep doing that isn’t working. Until you do that, you stand no chance of coming up with an alternative solution. Stopping digging is very often soooo tough – the urge to try can be so overwhelming, even in the face of knowing what you’re doing is counterproductive.

Maybe remembering that “trying” is just making big straining grunty noises will help.

For many years I’ve had something of a tendency to hang around at the edge of things, and especially people. Naturally in my eyes it’s never actually been anything to do with me – other people are distant, modern culture cuts people off from each other, etc etc etc.

Then last night I was walking home from the bus stop, and as got near to my street, something occured to me. The people behind all those windows are my neighbours. They’re MINE. I’m THEIRS. I used to feel that when I still lived at home before my mum died. Just for a brief time, I lived as an adult in the neighbourhood where I grew up in the country. I went to the local pub, got drunk with people from all walks of local life, and stopped to chat with anyone and everyone I came across if I was out for a walk. I knew everyone, they knew me.

In short, I was part of a community. I’ve been missing that, and I suddenly noticed that it’s right here on my doorstep, absolutely literally. It looks different – I’m in a 21st century city now, not a 20th century village. But that doesn’t make a difference. I do. There’s no reason at all why I can’t stop and chat with people in my street or my pub like I used to – or if I don’t, there’s no reason to complain about society preventing me doing so.