BLOG 257 - FREEDOM!!!!

“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.” Albert Camus  Nobel Prize winning author

Inversion rituals are in every society. They are the pressure cooker vent that every societies need for a chance for all good citizens to be BAD… just for a day.

Here in the UK we have a few favourites, April Fool’s Day, Pride, Halloween… you know the drill days where normal rules do not apply. You know the sort of things…where trusted newscasters can publicise reports of spaghetti trees, your Nan can dance with Queens and the well brought up kids can knock on doors and beg for sweeties!

We all need an opportunity to have our naughty side sanctified, and our inversion rituals give us just that.

I was doing a thing on inversion rituals today and it got me thinking about my favourite inversion ritual – Carnival.

Once a year, I get the opportunity to cross the river (big deal for a sauff lundiner like me),  wear something best suited to the Sambodromo  in Rio (okay… not so rare for me), and dance in the streets where the average home sells for £1,094,274. (Yep… even Jax wouldn’t necessarily find dancing on Richard Curtis’s doorstep whilst dressed as a human bluebird an every day of the week kind of thing.)

The Notting Hill Carnival means the world to me.

Yeah… it helps that my Dad had an awful lot to do with the origins of what is now Europe’s biggest street party, but even if that was not true -  I would love this inversion ritual more than any other anyway.

This is England.

We are uptight in ways that very few nations could ever imagine. We care about things no one else in the world could ever have enough free time to even recognise as issues let alone give the time of day to. We are the contents of a pressure cooker day in day out.

We don’t mean to be so uptight… but we are.

We worry about what everyone thinks about us.

We never do just what we want.

We restrict ourselves into teeny tiny restrictive moulds that no one ever asked us to get in. We can’t quite believe that if we just do what makes us happy and respect each other ‘s boundaries we’d all rub along fine. So instead we act out a manuscript of ‘how to be perfect’ which truly isn’t who we are…. And it does our heads in.

But then…. Along comes the summer bank holiday.

After months of  keeping a low profile, dressing conservatively, keeping the noise down  avoiding eye contact, smiling thinly and constantly saying “Please … after you sir”, when in fact we are in a big hurry…..  FREEDOM!!! Two days of just being the person we’d like to be if only we weren’t so goddam British!

One and a half million of us surge onto the streets covering a tiny four square mile area.

Like peafowl we display our iridescent plumage and excite and charm the eye as we bounce to the rhythm beaten from a thousand different drums and sound systems. Normally emotionally distance members of constabulary bump and grind with scantily clad maidens, heavily decorated floats pass in procession, some spraying glitter, or bubbles or even chocolate into the crowds. The aromas of fresh cooked food floods the air as delicacies normally consumed on a Caribbean beach are roasted in kettle drums and sold for extortionate profit.  And the Red Stripe lager flows.

The government loves it as it contributes some £93 million to the UK economy. But more than that,  the inversion element is just damn good for us all. It’s letting the steam out the pressure cooker.

Never underestimate the power of inversion. Normally we get a two prong dilemma regarding any desire. The first is to act on impulse. The second is to repress.  Society is structured to make us repress, to avoid embarrassment, to be safe, to not take risks.  But along come the high days and holidays and we invoke inversion… we can finally act on impulse  - be who we would be if we were not boxed up so tightly from all the rules.

I’m not saying the rules are bad…. We need rules, we need structure – we as a species have shown time and time again that without them we pretty much descend into chaos. However having those special days where licence is given to violate everyday cultural norms, to let our hair down… well they do us a whole heap of good.

Impulse leads to some wild fantasy but often some brave choices, and some rugged truths .

And yeah… when dressed from head to toe in shimmering blue net with only feathers to cover your modesty, you definitely are immersed in a wild fantasy in which a big brave choice was made. And as for rugged truths…. You don’t get much closer to one than when your float as it turns the corner of Ladbroke Grove and someone hollers at you:

“BABY..... YOUR BUM SURE LOOKS BIG IN THAT!!!!”

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BLOG 256 - Shiny Happy People

“One evening an old Cherokee spoke to his grandson

He said, ‘Inside us all is a

 battle raging between two wolves.

One wolf is Evil.

It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed,

arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride,

superiority, and ego.

The other is Good.

It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.’

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, 

‘Which wolf wins?’ 
The old Cherokee simply replied,
 ‘The one you feed.”

Excerpt from Hungry Like the Wolf Cherokee Tales

Joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe and love. These emotions are some of the key components of positivity. There is overwhelming evidence on the power of positive thoughts and feelings. These are the emotions that make human interaction flourish.

Positivity has been the key buzz word for success for the last 60 years .

People are wild about positivity and are almost afraid to look at solutions to negativity – because to do so is to acknowledge that there is a flip side .Often when I think of wild positivity I see in my mind Monty Python’s Life of Brian… all those crucified martyrs up on their crosses jolly as you like doing the can-can and singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Wild positivity is about changing the meaning of situations  - so despite the fact that being crucified meant they could expect to die imminently from suffocation, loss of body fluids , multiple organ failure and exposure… it was a case of ' best not look on the grim side, let's see this crucifixion as our last hurrah! SMILE EVERYBODY!!!!'

But that is NOT real positivity. Looking on the bright side is NOT positivity. Being positive isn’t the same as being in denial.

Being positive is feeling good about where you are because it keeps generating those positive emotions. We are simple beasts us humans… keep feeding the feel good factor and we become winners.

Unsurprisingly this has lead to using positivity to drive fabulous results in people management. Getting the people stuff right is a huge deal to businesses.

Gone are the days when human resources was seen as fluffy stuff   - positivity in staff is now seen as the biggest contributor to a happy bottom line. Positive staff generate more profit   - and in these recessionary times… Positivity is big business.

But where to start?

So many companies talk about positivity and try real hard… but find the left hand ends up undoing what the right hand is doing by monitoring all positive procedures but cancelling  out all positive findings if one  act of negativity is found.

How often do we hear H.R peeps cry despondently:

“Oh dear all that good work cancelled out by that one little blip”

And that is where they are going wrong. The measure is not made by giving power to errors . Acknowledge them yes… but you have to decide if you wish to be penal or corrective. If your end goal is to punish any mistakes – then issue penalties for errors. But if you just wish have everyone on the same page…use errors as a training indicator.

What anyone does wrong is never the measure of who they are or what they are capable of. Measuring how many things a person does wrong is not positivity.

Celebrating successes in exclusion to  errors isn’t the measure of all  a person can be either. Being in denial of mistakes is not positive.

It’s about measuring where someone is, accepting that measure but always be moving forwards with ways to improve.

I was very impressed by a television station in the West of the United Kingdom who have designed their own positivity test for staff.

They run the same test every two weeks, designed to reflect how the whole organisation is feeling in a snapshot 24hrs.

The rationale being that a one off measure could never represent an employee’s positivity more generally, due to life’s ever changing circumstance.

So using a scale from 0-4  each member of staff from cleaner to C.E.O fill out a survey on the company intranet.

·         What is the most amused, fun-loving, or silly you felt?

·         What is the most angry, irritated, or annoyed you felt?

·         What is the most ashamed, humiliated, or disgraced you felt?

·         What is the most awe, wonder, or amazement you felt?

·         What is the most contemptuous, scornful, or disdainful you felt?

·         What is the most disgust, distaste, or revulsion you felt?

·         What is the most embarrassed, self-conscious, or blushing you felt?

·         What is the most grateful, appreciative, or thankful you felt?

·         What is the most guilty, repentant, or blameworthy you felt?

·         What is the most hate, distrust, or suspicion you felt?

·         What is the most hopeful, optimistic, or encouraged you felt?

·         What is the most inspired, uplifted, or elevated you felt?

·         What is the most interested, alert, or curious you felt?

·         What is the most joyful, glad, or happy you felt?

·         What is the most love, closeness, or trust you felt?

·         What is the most proud, confident, or self-assured you felt?

·         What is the most sad, downhearted, or unhappy you felt?

·         What is the most scared, fearful, or afraid you felt?

·         What is the most serene, content, or peaceful you felt?

·         What is the most stressed, nervous, or overwhelmed you felt?

The company publishes the results every 12 weeks by department.  It is a hotly contested thing to be the department with the highest positivity score. Knowing that positivity is generated by the way that people are made to feel… has led to this station reading some rather enviable reward’s.

The station has recently appeared on the Top 100 Best Places to work in the UK and has a Top Three position in the Best Media Employers in the UK. Incidentally…. All these happy bunnies are making the company money .As local television watches advertising revenue fall 14% year on year, the staff of this particular company are so invested in their employer that they came up with some innovations on retransmission and other revenue streams that have added some 15% to the bottom line. Now that’s a wildly positive result in anyone’s language!!!

Flourishing people. Flourishing business. The person who came up with the idea of keeping the staff feeling positive about their workplace must be a hero in that station I should imagine!

I wonder if he had a Cherokee grandfather who taught him that all he had to do….

Was feed the right wolf.

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BLOG 255 - My Monster

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you" 

Friedrich Nietzsche

Last year I was freelancing for a company. The company was great. Everything a start up should be, fresh, funky, hopeful, innovative, pushing the boundaries, creating something awesome.

But my contact there… well he was a monster.

And to make things worse….He was a monster who hated me.

No matter what I did… he rubbished it. Then in early this year we had an almighty blow out…. Well he did.  He went for it with such force I had no ability to defend. He attacked the core of my being with such relish it was outstanding. I was paralysed in the moment. I couldn't understand how anyone could be so cruel, so unfair and how anyone could enjoy attacking someone who posed them no threat and wished them no ill. At the time it was the worse thing that had ever happened to me, my sense of self was rocked and I even contemplated suicide.

Well, time has moved on… I don’t work for that company anymore.

But sometimes on the train I see him.

I usually make myself small and discreet and believe me when he disembarks – the breath I let out contains the relief of nations.

I often talk about this man to my friends.  I am a processor by nature and for me to let things go, I really do need to understand why they happened. If for no other reason than to protect myself from them ever happening again. There have been days when I am as stuck in the moment as I was on that cold dark night when the attack took place. I process it over and over again, looking for a reason, anything really, just so I may get some closure on what truly was the worst experience of my life.

But then something odd happened.

I was on the train, making myself small and discreet…. And I over heard him talking to someone.

He didn't sound like the big bad wolf at all. He sounded like a person. A person who was a little overwhelmed by life not quite working out the way he hoped, but hopeful that one day it would .

This got me thinking.

Being unable to deal with someone causes us to dislike them. And it is so easy to cast the object of our dislike as a monster.

We say to ourselves:

“I AM NOT YOU”

“I AM NOTHING LIKE YOU”

And as comforting as that may be…

It’s a lie.

We all at core are the same.

Our differences are superficial.

We all, each and every one of us carry the same capacity for good and evil.

When we… as I did with this man… my personal monster… continually look for differences between us; we hold ourselves fast in the ‘unable to deal’.

We have to let that go.

I now know that when I remembered the night of that mans vitriol I looked outside of humanity for a reason why anyone could act as he did.

We all think that our secret pain our secret joy makes us unique.  We all think this make us better than the people we cannot deal with, with people we dislike, the people who have hurt us.

But really, as the conversation I overheard revealed: we are all the same.

We all want to be happy.

We all want to be safe.

We all want to be valued.

And by knowing that, maybe we all know that deep down inside… there are no monsters.

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BLOG 254 - Fence Sitting

“The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.” 

Pauline Phillips Aka author of the Dear Abby column/radio show

Pauline Phillips is not a name that most people utter when they talk of mantras for living but maybe they should for she was a wise wise woman. 

Pauline wrote under the pen name Abigail Van Buren and her advice columns were published in era when newspaper readers valued straight talking advice on just about anything. She wrote the syndicated columns for almost 50 years and died in March this year, 13 years after her retirement. One of her key pieces of advice always resonated with me… that the best way to judge someone is by their actions where there is no benefit to them and also their behaviour towards the helpless.

I think it resonated most because of my upbringing. I think when you grow up a child of an émigré you have a stage right position to the inner workings of the character with outwardly acceptable people. And being treated well when I could do my benefactors no good or when I was vulnerable was somewhat a bit of an alien concept most of the time.

My Dad taught me the progress of destiny – that destiny is something we all make ourselves and the very last stage before destiny is character. I quote:

“Our thoughts become our words.

 Our words become our actions.

 Our actions become our habits

 Our habits become our character

…and our character becomes our destiny.”

And that’s the thing… those thoughts that spill from our mouths and fuel our actions…. Are they creating the right destiny for us?

Yesterday I had the occasion to have a front row seat to a colleague’s character.

She had the opportunity to just do the right thing.

I watched her process it. In the end she sat on a fence – deferring the choice that was hers to make.

It made me think. We all like to think that we would instinctively do the right thing but do we?

Do we do the right thing when it is really hard?

Or when it is not convenient?

Or when no one is looking?

Or do we just do the right thing because we really have to?

If my Dad was asked he’d say we do the right thing because that is who we are.

IF Dear Abbey was still alive… she’d say what she always said:

We do the right thing…. Because it is right.

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BLOG 253 -Tell you where Waldo is!

"British people can appear repressed in expressing emotions. Not very good at  anything like that." Emily Blunt  - Actress

Ever noticed that some friends just disappear and you find yourself wondering “What ever happened to……………..?”

Well, it’s no mystery. I’ll tell you what happened:

You pissed them off – They were too polite to tell you.

There you go. Mystery solved.

If you are lucky, when someone is upset with us, they'll shout, stomp off, roll their eyes, refuse to speak to us or complain to everyone else…. Word gets to us. We know.

But really despite being in a culture where it's easy to fire off a snippy email or text, most of us have a hard time honestly expressing anger face to face… we kid ourselves that we aren't upset and subconsciously fume—until one day we just depart abruptly and cannot be traced .

This is not a particularly healthy way to approach our relationships– but really how stupid does someone have to be to not realise that they are no longer bathing in the sun of your admiration and are entering the deep freeze?

I hate conflict and try hard to avoid getting into that situation with others. As a result, I sometimes wait way too long to tell someone that I am upset. But people upset me… it’s par for the course. But it is not natural to me to face off with folk…. It takes an age.

By the time I do, of course….I am furious. Apparently I am so great at concealing my rage (by clamming up about the subject that enrages me) that folks actually don’t even know I am a time bomb about to explode. It all comes as a bit of a surprise.

This is the HUGE problem with holding back rage: Once you do finally show you are angry, you may just explode.

And here is the science part: When you have the steaming hump, your brain gets a wash of chemicals, including adrenaline and testosterone (not the most reasonable of chemicals). Unfortunately, this state can continue for hours – or in my case days, weeks, months… oh hell YEARS!!!!

This is NOT good . 

Once, I exploded after concealing my rage for far too long (it was months!!). To be fair it wasn't just the British disease of repressed emotions; the person who I was annoyed at blocked any chance for me to have a conversation  about it. She responded to my first attempt to express my opinion on the matter by saying I made her feel like she was being manipulated into doing something she didn't wish to do. So as she’d made me powerless to say how much I objected to her actions, she did as she pleased with no further word on the subject from me… but I was STEAMING inside.

To keep a lid on it, the deep freeze was my only way of dealing with her. (No chit chat, short factual answers, minimal opportunities opening up to spend time with her.. you know the sort of thing) I reckoned she notice the change in my demeanour and enquire… but no. Never under estimate the ego of the self-obsessed and permanently righteous: she figured outside forces were responsible (the weather) and bought me a lovely little book on Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD)!!!!

Nice book but that was really just more fuel for the bonfire. The only thing that was making me SAD…. Was the way she had treated our friendship cavalierly then muted my voice so I couldn't express it without being cast as manipulative!!!!

I was sooooooooooo Angry!!!!

In the end ….. kaboom!!!

To all appearances it seemed to be over the littlest thing….

But it wasn't…. it was over a mountain of things

It was over the fact that she wanted to do something that was bad for us

It was over the fact she removed my right of veto by saying my opinion, my feelings on the matter were just a manipulation

It was over the fact that once condemned to silence she actually thought I no longer had those opinions or feelings

It was over the fact that her every act of kindness from that point on felt like a further slice to my larynx

It was over that ruddy self help book

And yes it was also over the smallest littlest thing. (A hair clip I recall!!!)

But the blast area was messy beyond belief.

I was a proper volcano blowing its stack.

There is an argument that sometimes the best thing someone can do if they genuinely are too polite to telling you that they are at the end of their rope with the way you have treated them…

…is to leave you. Honestly, if someone knows enough about someone to call them friend and doesn't notice the friends wounds… it’s probably the clearest sign that it’s time for them to move on.

No one likes to lose a friend and no one like the complete lack of closure that comes when someone chooses to fade out of their lives. But honestly they are doing you a favour…  if the dialogue between you was so stunted that the person simply couldn't tell you what an ass you had been… It’s over anyway. And hey… a tactical withdrawal HAS to be better than the huge big out of control explosion.

So next time… when you look at those photos of yesteryear… and you look at the face of someone who used to be real, real close ….but then one day just seemed to vanish…

You need fret no more about them being on a missing persons list. If it's closure you need as to why they disappeared, well JaxWorld would like to help you:

It wasn't them… it was YOU.

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