Be the Hero

One of my friends, Laura, has returned from her second trip this year on the old pilgrim’s way in Spain called the Camino. Laura initially was due to travel with her friends but work commitments meant she had to cancel, so she travelled alone. This was the first time since she got married that she ever needed to travel alone, other than to work related conferences or seminars. Therefore the experience of going abroad alone was not familiar or attractive. Although she did want to go, she was apprehensive about going solo. Anyway, she took her courage in her hands and booked tickets four days before the flight.

And that’s when she started to panic.

She was able to recall (vividly) every story she’d ever heard of a lone traveler who came to a gruesome end. In an effort to calm herself she started to tell her friends and family how she felt. But far from calming her they were able to provide even more terrifying stories, with definitive advice that she should not go!

Added to this (or because of this) she couldn’t sleep so that by the time she got on the plane in Dublin airport she was exhausted and on edge! On the flight things did get a bit better because she sat down beside a lovely couple and had a very interesting conversation. That is, until she told them what she was about to do and they had some more stories with bad endings! As the huge cabin door swung open Laura thought the best thing might be to remain on the plane. Of course she couldn’t, so she got out. Saying goodbye to the couple she set off with all her belongings for the next five days (including walking poles) on her back to find a place to wait for her bus. She found a little cafe and got a coffee and settled herself and as she was about to sip her coffee, her walking poles slipped to the ground with a loud crash. Embarrassed and annoyed at herself for being incompetent she bent down to pick them up. At the same moment someone else was reaching for the poles also, and as happens, smiles are exchanged and conversations start. “Are you doing the Camino?” “Yes, you too?” were the first words for days that brought calm. For the next four days the two walkers kept each other company. Although some of the walking was difficult it was made easier by company. Company that just turned up when it was needed.

Since that trip Laura has gone back again, alone again, and this time company was provided again. The difference this time was that she found that although she loved talking and listening to the many people she met she knew she didn’t need them to stay with her or to be there for her, she knew she could let them go or she could go and more company would be provided. In case this sounds a little selfish in the retelling please be assured when the story was told to me I heard only selflessness. The selflessness of allowing others to be themselves and to enjoy them being that and to not need to ‘steal’ their time for your own benefit so that you can feel better. Laura is planning to complete the Camino (all 890 kilometers of it) at her own pace and in her own lifetime! So she may indeed travel again when her schedule allows in the autumn. Alone or not she now knows what she needs will be provided.

Coincidentally (or should that be synchronistically?) Mike, a friend I’ve known since I was 20 called while I was writing this blog. I met Mike when he was my boss in a software company, his job was to turn me into a programmer! In the last 6 years he’s made a lot of changes. In 2002 he was a software development manager and now he’s got a psychology degree and works as a counsellor. This isn’t the normal progression of a career in software! It’s also not the way to go to have a normal progression of salary for a man with three teenage children.

In the aftermath of 9/11 Mike was made redundant. He paid off a loan with the lump sum cancelled his life insurance, pension and health insurance, took a part time job, and decided to pursue a career in something that had come to his attention by accident.

Now that’s a terrifying story!

I’m making it sound quick and easy by putting it into one sentence, but it took time and there were lots of scary moments. He says he didn’t have a lot of choice, there wasn’t enough money to pay for the luxury of insurance. “There was only enough for what was needed right now, not what we might need in the future.” Then he remembers he did have some choice. He could have gone back to a former employer in software and got a full time job but he didn’t. In software all he could look forward to was retiring, with this new career he was looking forward to every day for the rest of his life. Even though they had very little money and no ‘guarantee’ that they were protected from what might happen he knew that his (and his family’s) new quality of life was better than it had been. He recalls going for a walk one day after dinner with his wife and noticing the commuters coming out of the dart station looking weary and hungry, and he knew he was doing what was right for him.

And as time passed money came in from unlikely sources and they always had enough. The one near crisis for his teenagers was when they were going to have to sell the car, but in the end the car stayed and the crisis was averted! They now manage to run two cars - without the ‘BIG’ job.

When Laura wanted to go walking on the Camino, she began a journey, what she needed was provided and she did the things she needed to do to get there, even if that was scary.
Incidentally, one of the things that she hung onto in the four terrifying days before the flight was the encouragement she got from people who had travelled the Camino and also from the Camino Pilgrim’s Guide.

When Mike went to an information/interview day with a relationship counselling organisation as a favour to his wife, he found something he really wanted to do and he began a journey. When he was made redundant, he got an opportunity to make a choice and he did the things he needed to do to get where he wanted to go, even if he had to trust without a guarantee that he and his family would survive financially. And what he needed was provided. One of the things provided was his supportive and encouraging wife, June. Mike says “I couldn’t have done it without her.” And he didn’t have to.

Is there something you want to do? Would it be useful to trust that what you need will come (even if only “just in time”)? Do you want to start that journey today? Is there someone who has made this journey before? Are you willing to do what you need to do when you need to do it?

It’s a beautiful day outside as I write. It was for days like this that I waited to feel content. Seems strange now but its the truth for me.

At that time I didn’t know that I was getting up and checking the weather and then deciding how I would feel on a given day. I didn’t even know that I had a choice. If I did, why would I ever choose to feel less than content? (Funny enough sometimes I would choose to feel miserable.)

Of course I’m simplifying it by saying it was just the weather that I checked. There were lots of checks! What do you check? Just this morning a friend told me that he always felt down if the cash flow wasn’t good. So I guess he checked how much money he had and if it was enough (whatever that was on the day) he could choose to feel well otherwise he chose to feel down. At the time it struck me that his cash flow was more important to him than his state of mind. It was his priority and how he felt, had to be decided on afterwards. This is not unusual, lots of people do it, but is it useful?

Surely our state of mind is more important than money or the weather or the other stuff we can’t change? I can change my state of mind. I can choose the state I want for this moment. You can too. Consider a moment in time when the weather was fine and you were feeling content/calm/peaceful/glad/joyful (choose any), take a deep breath and enjoy. If you’ve chosen to follow those instructions then you’ve chosen your state of mind. Would you like to consider a time (real or imagined) when you had enough money and you’re feeling content/calm/peaceful/glad/joyful or whatever you like. Again, take a deep breath and enjoy.

When you do this every day some things become clear. For me - it wasn’t my circumstances that made me happy/sad/glad, so then it became possible to separate my circumstances from my state of mind.

Lets play around with that concept: On a really wet day, for a moment throw in happy; with nothing in your purse, for a moment throw in calm; your boss/mother/spouse is in front of you pointing out your faults, for a moment throw in peaceful. And for that moment it works. So maybe it could work for every moment. (Remember earlier I mentioned that sometimes I used to choose to feel miserable? Did you notice at any point during this play that you thought “but, I don’t want to feel calm when I’ve no money” or “I can’t feel peaceful when ….etc”, if you did then you’re choosing to feel not-calm, not-peaceful, so we understand each other?)

It’s simple isn’t it? Well it is, but its not easy! It’s not a quick fix, its a life’s work, but it is possible.

Do it soon, and start your life’s work.

Watched a movie called The Fastest Indian on DVD last week. It’s about a guy called Burt Munro from New Zealand who had a dream to set a land speed record on his Indian motorbike across the salt flats in Utah. It’s based on a true story and set in the 1960’s.
In his sixties himself, Burt had perfected his bike to run at speeds above 100 mph, so he worked his passage from New Zealand as cook aboard a ship on route to California. In the end the bike went even faster and the record Burt set is still unbroken over 40 years later.

Anthony Hopkins plays Burt, and really nicely introduces us to a friendly man, with his own ideas and a determination to follow his dream.

He reminds me of my daughter!

I attend sessions and courses run by my mentor David McDermott. He ran a four day course last weekend on the Glen of the Downs in Co. Wicklow - beautiful. It is always an amazing experience for me to be there. And afterwards, as the days pass there’s an even more amazing experience as thoughts and awarenesses come to me. David joined by Frieda McGoldrick teach by giving us the experience and showing us the big picture first. Only then do they point out all the little bits and pieces and we get to put those bits and pieces into our own jigsaw puzzle. For me this is a very different way to learn and I sometimes struggle and fight with it. But when my picture starts to emerge it is both magnificent and solid.

What’s emerging for me at the moment is the connection between the movies, The Fastest Indian and The Shadow of the Moon and the concept of dealing with problems. In the past when there was something bothering me I thought about it, figured out what I had done wrong, figured out what that meant about me and about others and about life, asked myself over and over “Why did I do …?’, wrote about it, talked to others about it and in general felt terrible about it. I had been doing this for years and had ‘perfected’ my problem-based strategy!

Then I learned a possibility-based strategy. This is where you start at your best and you deal with everything from that place. It’s the basis for the Mythoself Process. So, I learned how to use that nearly three years ago, and I am learning to understand it slowly, since then.

Today another piece of my jigsaw fell into place.

When I saw In the Shadow of the Moon (see Recent Posts) it had a very strong impact on me. As in the training courses the details of this impact slowly unfold.

When President John F Kennedy predicted that the USA would land a man on the moon and return him safely within the decade he set up a goal for his country and particularly for the men and women who worked in the space program.

The Apollo artifacts in a museum in Cape Canaveral are very flimsy. The pod they parachute down to earth in looks like its made of tin foil. The processing ability of the computers is no more powerful than a calculator (just a little heavier!).

Yet they did it.

While I watched The Fastest Indian I was unaware of the link forming, emerging in my mind.
Burt Munro had a dream to set a land speed record with his Indian motorbike. When manufactured, this motorbike’s maximum speed was about 50 miles per hour. He worked on it for hours every day, making new parts out of scraps of metal smelted in a pot in the run down shed where he lived. He used his neighbour’s carving knife to make his ordinary tyres, high speed tyres.

Yet he did it.

Now funny enough both stories are set in the 1960’s, but that’s not the link.

When the astronauts and space craft builders were starting to create something that would go to the moon their efforts kept exploding. Lots and lots of problems. I’m not sure but I’m guessing they didn’t spend a lot of time criticising themselves for getting it wrong AGAIN. If they had spent the time going over and over what they did wrong they may never have got to the moon. Their timeframe was set, they had to do the job within 9 years.

They looked for another way to make it work.

Burt had many many problems - the biggest - he didn’t have enough money to go to America, was solved by his friends. But when he got to Utah he realised that he could not enter the trials - he hadn’t registered. He didn’t beat himself up and use his energy asking “Why am I so stupid?”. His timeframe was set, the event would be over in 3 days.

He looked for another way.

They kept the dream in sight and looked for ways around the problems. All the time assuming they would make it to the moon or to the line drawn across the salt flats in Utah.

Stop wasting your life beating yourself up for doing something ‘wrong’. Stop asking yourself “Why am I so stupid?”. Use the ‘wrong’ way as feedback to find another way, “that didn’t work, what else could I try or how could I do this another way?”. Use the energy saved to keep the dream in view.

By the way, it’s not the dream that’s all that important, they come and go. It’s just really really useful because in that direction lies your bliss. But that’s another story, or movie…….

We went to see Juno last week.
It’s a story about a 16 year-old girl, Juno, who gets pregnant, and her journey through the pregnancy and birth and beyond. What’s different about this version of an old story is the comedy, “Yeah, I’m a legend. You know, they call me the cautionary whale.”

It begins with Juno drinking a quart of Sunny D in preparation for her 3rd pregnancy test of the day. All the tests were performed on site in the ‘restroom’ of a grocery shop, with a lot of input from the shopkeeper. “You better pay for that pee-stick when you’re done with it. Don’t think it’s yours just because you marked it with your urine!”

Juno is different. She doesn’t fit the norm and neither does the boy she picks to ‘experiment’ with. “As far as boyfriends go, Paulie Bleeker is totally boss. He is the cheese to my macaroni.”

I loved her Dad - there’s a scene where he and Juno’s step-mum are alone together having just been told by Juno that she’s pregnant. They’re in shock and the step-mum says something like “Did you see that coming when she said she had something to tell us?” and the Dad says “Yeah, but I was hoping she was expelled, or into hard drugs.”.
Please don’t tell my offspring but I’ve had thoughts like these. Where the one thing you feared was true became the worst possible outcome and you choose a “better” option. But if sanity had been around on that day there’s no way you’d ever, ever want that “better” option.

It’s a love story. A geeky looking boy, Paulie, in the light of Juno’s love becomes a really lovely guy who, although he wears awful running shorts, steps up to supports Juno when she needs him. “Juno: I think I’m, like, in love with you. Paulie: You mean as friends? Juno: No, I mean, like, for real. ‘Cause you’re, like, the coolest person I’ve ever met, and you don’t even have to try, you know… Paulie: I try really hard, actually. ”

This is a movie with a message for all those who have teenage daughters - they’ll be fine. And, for all those who have teenage sons - they’ll be fine. And for all those who are teenagers - you are fine. And for all those who were teenagers - it turned out fine, didn’t it?

Talking to a friend last weekend as we walked in beautiful sunshine along a path called the Cliff Walk helped me see this. My friend and her husband had spent many sleepless nights wondering what they were going to do for their teenage daughter who was failing to succeed. And guess what? Now ten years later all is fine! It didn’t take ten years for it to be fine, but maybe it takes a long time before we look back. She’s successful in a way that the parents could not have foreseen.

Sometimes sleep is all you can do, because sleepless nights help no one!

Sometimes we get involved in the business of our ‘children’ when all they need is an interested observer with lots of money and an ability to listen.

In the recent past as an adult I have begun to do the things that were too fearful to consider at the normal age. For instance, 2 years ago I learned to swim. Now, we’re not talking about the graceful art of gliding through the water. This was learning to be comfortable in water and move through that water anyway I could, except walking. I learned at my own pace, I pacing myself for about 10 years. I had got to the point of holding the bar and putting my face in the water. Letting go of that bar was impossible. If I let go of that bar then I would be lost, like Alice down the rabbit hole. I was holding tight to past experiences in water.

Like the time I went to swimming lessons in the next town and as a good girl put my face in the water when the instructor told me, but somehow the message to hold my breath never got through and I took in water. Then on school tour where I felt so comfortable with my friends that I jumped into the pool with them and couldn’t stop choking up water. And again when my children were small and we went to a water park and I decided it was time to be brave and risk the big slide. Halfway down I decided this wasn’t such a good idea and if there had been a way I would have jumped over the side rather than go into the water. There was no way, it ended with choking on water again.

But something about the water kept calling me back.

I was in the middle of swimming lessons again when I did my first Mythoself workshop. There’s an exercise on the last day about doing something you want to do in the next three months. My choice was swimming. Within three months I was floating with my hands off the bar and my feet off the ground, I had sourced a one-to-one swimming teacher and I had started my learning with purpose. And something I didn’t expect - I loved the water. When I was floating and eventually doing a crawl I felt like I was flying.

Now I’ve taken up singing lessons.

As an adult I don’t even consider that someone will be pushing me to keep going because they think it’s important. Or that someone will be disappointed if I give up. I go at it at my own pace. At my own pace something else comes to play, and I play with that. The joy of the task at hand is lovely. If for a moment I think of the future of my singing all I think about is singing with friends or the hoover!

Getting a good leaving cert, or distinction in music exams, or a championship medal are types of success, but there are many more, which one will you be thinking about in your last moments?
Sometimes our kids mistake our interest in getting the best for them as the goal they must achieve, as the one way they must go, as the only option to be in this world.
Sometimes we mistake our experience as the truth, the only truth, the only way. Sometimes the truth is invisible to us and only visible to those who are involved and have to step up to meet it.

Ok, maybe learning to swim did take me a long time, but I had the time…… What’s the hurry?

My husband and I go to the movies every Monday night. Its our date-night! We flip-flop between art-house and Hollywood. By art house I mean going to a small theatre ten minutes from our house, where we can have a glass of wine before the movie but nothing during it. Also, there’s no choice, we see the movie that’s on this week or we go home (or we go to Hollywood). Hollywood means we can have wine, soft drinks, sweets, tacos or popcorn, before during or even after the movie and we get a choice of about eight movies. The art-house movies are varied and different and could be from almost any country in the world and in any language (plus English subtitles). The Hollywood movies are, generally, from The USA, the UK or sometimes Ireland.

Last Monday night we choose art-house. The movie was called In the Shadow of the Moon. It was a collection of interviews (well, face to camera, with no interviewer, whatever that’s called?) with the surviving astronauts from the Apollo missions of the 60’s and 70’s, and also a huge amount of video footage from that time.

Last year our family had the opportunity to visit Cape Canaveral in Florida and I was really enthralled by the exhibition of the Apollo artifacts. There was just something about that time and about their efforts to follow a dream with only the equivalent computer processing power of a calculator!

In the movie the men told of their experiences on the space program. The interviews were shot really close-up, making it possible to see all the lines and shadows of their faces. In the beginning I found this distracting, then a funny thing started to happen. As the movie progressed there were times when the screen was split down the middle showing on one half an astronaut telling about some work he did as part of the mission while the other half showed him as a young man doing that work, full of seriousness, energy and life. That’s when I became aware of a more complete picture of an old man and the faces became beautiful to me.

There was one man who was my favourite - Mike Collins. He was a member of the Apollo 11 team, the one that landed on the moon. While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got to do the walk Mike Collins circled the moon and picked them up to go home. I got the impression that he was the joker of the group and nothing had changed in the intervening 40 years - he’s still very funny. He talked about not wanting to make a mistake (screw-up), especially in front of “three billion people”.

Mike said at one point that he was on the dark side of the moon and on the other side was Neil and Buzz and the earth with all it’s inhabitants. On his side there was only him and yet he didn’t feel alone, he felt part of everything. That was something that came up a few times - being a part of something bigger. Mike and Neil and Buzz did a tour of the world after their moon tour and Mike said people saw their success as the world’s success also. In different counties they told him “We did it!”, and they meant the human race did it, we made it to the moon.

Working with people one of the questions I ask them is “What are you like at your best?”. Some people know straight away and others take a little longer, but when they find their answer and talk about the experience, the effect it has on them is profound. The effect they have on me is also profound, its why I love my work.
If you get a chance go see this movie. Listen to the men talk about their experiences, see their eyes light up and the years fall away when they relive that time. Then think about what you are like when you’re at your best. It may help to think about an activity you love doing, remember the last time you did that activity. It can be as simple as walking the dog, driving the car or maybe you went to the moon! It’s not the activity that’s important it’s how you are when you experience it. Experience it again, in your mind, now. Let go and fly back there. When you can do this you are connecting with you - the you without all the other stuff attached. By other stuff I mean your daily life, family, work, bills, problems……. The funny thing is that from here its easier to deal with the other stuff, because it’s not part of you, it’s just stuff.

The thing I didn’t realise was President John F Kennedy made a speech in 1961 telling the American nation that he wanted to land a man on the moon and bring him home safely before the decade was out. At the time of his speech all the rockets being tested were exploding. This did not prevent the men in this movie from joining the program and putting their lives on the line for a dream. Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969, within the time limit set by a man who was by then dead. Somehow having a goal and a time frame allowed them to go beyond what they thought possible.

In 1969 when I was 8 and my Mum insisted that I watch the news to see a man stand on the moon, I wasn’t interested. So she told me it was important because no one had ever done that before and you never know the moon might just fall down! That got me watching and I’m glad now that I was one of the three billion people around the world who heard Neil Armstrong say “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.

What are YOU like at your best?