The Practice of Unfolding

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<table rules="all" frame="box" cellpadding="7" border="1" style="width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style="width: 15%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;">90 min. design </td><td valign="top" style="width: 35%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;">8 hour design </td><td valign="top" style="width: 50%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;">5 half-day sessions </td></tr><tr><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 15%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 35%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;">The purpose is to briefly introduce participants to the Practice of Unfolding, to let them experience and discover it for themselves through activity, reflection, discussion.</td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 50%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;">The purpose is to briefly introduce participants to the Practice of Unfolding, to let them experience and discover it for themselves through activity, reflection, discussion.</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 15%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;">There is no 90 minute design for this practice like the Practice of Recognizing. This is because the Practice of Recognizing is an introductory session, and should precede all other practices. </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 35%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 50%; background-image: none; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;">CHECK-IN and REFLECTION (15 min.) <ul><li>Thank people for helping to set up</li><li>General check-in, asking questions about how their day or week has been, and if there are any insights or discoveries they've made about the previous practices.</li><li>What is the quality of time like in your work and your life? What kind of personality does it have?</li></ul>REFLECTION <ul><li>How has the definition of your personal or professional situation changed, if at all? </li></ul></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 15%;"> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 35%;"> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 50%;">PERFORMANCE (5 min.) <ul><li>Video (ACTION: POST VIDEO TO YOUTUBE OR ON PATHSCROSSING, AND PROVIDE LINK HERE)</li><li><a href="WikiEditor.im?doc=The-Practice-of-Unfolding-Performance-Script">Performance Script </a></li></ul></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" style="width: 15%;"> </td><td valign="top" style="width: 35%;">SET-UP (15 min.) <ul><li>If possible, draw attention to any comments about how the painting progressed to set-up the practice of unfolding.</li><li>Would would it be like to work on something and to consciously leave it alone for a few days or even longer, and what positive outcomes resulted?</li><li>Share a personal story about the above question. </li><li>Mark's story: Instead of working on a painting and that it had to be finished in one day, my paintings that I do today, take me at least a week or longer. I leave it alone and I wait. I don’t have to tweak it, and if I do, sometimes, most of the time, it doesn’t work. I know when I think I’m supposed to do something and I’m forcing it. </li><li>Consider what Jackson Pollock, one of the most influential artists of the abstract expressionism movement says, "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of get-acquainted period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through." Pollock looses himself in time, and in that experience he is allowing the painting to emerge.</li><li>The Practice of Unfolding is about time, about letting go and about trusting the process.</li><li>Most of the time, we do this as individuals, but when we are working on something together in a group, we have the chance to practice it as a collective, to attend to and observe others, as we make our contribution. </li><li>For you, this may mean that you won't know where your work is going to end up, what it's going to look, it's about waiting and seeing what happens.</li></ul></td><td valign="top" style="width: 50%;">SET-UP and DEMONSTRATION (20 min.) <ul><li>Today is about the practice of unfolding. </li><li>Now as far as painting, what you saw in the video, was a process that I found related to this practice of unfolding. </li><li>Would would it be like to work on something and to consciously leave it alone for a few days or even longer, and what positive outcomes resulted?</li><li>Share a personal story about the above question.</li><li>Mark's story: Instead of working on a painting and that it had to be finished in one day, my paintings that I do today, take me at least a week or longer. I leave it alone and I wait. I don’t have to tweak it, and if I do, sometimes, most of the time, it doesn’t work. I know when I think I’m supposed to do something and I’m forcing it. </li><li>Why is time, letting go, and trusting the process important?</li><ul><li>At work, if I think something needs to be on the agenda, and I’m pushing and forcing, I’ve found that sometimes that doesn’t work. So, there is this mindfulness we need to have. Am I acting out of my anxiousness, out of my fear, out of my cynicism, out of my need to perform, or am I acting because the time is right , that I can sense things are happening, this is the time that I need to say something.</li><li>When I practice unfolding at work, I am surprised to realize that it was a good thing I didn’t rush in or push too much.</li><li>Over time, this has helped me to know how to listen and when to act.</li><li>The same thing can happen when I am painting. When I disturb a painting out of my anxiousness, it usually never turns out.</li><li>When I practice unfolding in my painting, I am always surprised and inspired by the painting. That’s when I know it has worked. I’m inspired by what has happened.</li></ul><li>How does this practice of unfolding relate to the individual and collective virtuosity?</li><ul><li>The practice of unfolding is useful to the individual because it gives a different pace to your expertise, making it more discerning, and potentially more opportunitistic. When you wait, you can place your expertise in a different context. In many things, knowing what to do is important, knowing how is important, too, but knowing when before what and how, that requires a different type of knowledge and skill.</li></ul><ul><li>For collective virtuosity, the practice of unfolding asks you to listen others in a way that informs how you might respond in the future.</li></ul><li>When we take the practice of unfolding into our lives, we encounter the concept of emergence.</li><li>If we are conscious about unfolding, it can change the quality of what can emerge. But, this is a very uncomfortable process because usually we are expected to have the answers, to know where we are going to end up. When we unconsciously agree with having the answer or know when where we’re going, we also establish the ground rules of trust – about what we trust in ourselves, and what we trust in another. </li><li>When we bring a mindfulness of unfolding, and are willing to allow things to emerge, then the trust becomes less conditional. The trust asks more of us and the other person.</li><li>I think there is marked difference in the quality of the product, in the quality of our work, in the quality of our life, between those who are impulsive and are driven, everything filling up everyday, every minute, and those who have this flow to what happens next. And, I think that the practice of unfolding marks those individuals. They have developed some internal sensing that is so refined that you can’t tell if it is their internal sensing or if it’s their head, or their body. </li><li>The Practice of Unfolding </li><ul><li>Is about openness, about listening. And, this may be the hardest part and the most challenging, as you immerse yourself in this form. If I choose a color, because it’s my head, or am I choosing it because I really hear it. And, that’s going to be different for everybody.</li><li>Openness is about listening – about becoming more aware of the internal sensing, about trusting your intuition.</li><li>So, that’s an important part of today’s activities around the practice of unfolding, listening. </li><li>I have put it here this week, after the practice of suspending because you need suspend to practice unfolding. </li><li>It’s more than just trusting your intuition, it’s about begin patient and comfortable with ambiguity.</li><li>When we jump in and try to get closure, if it’s too soon, we could be disturbing something, derailing what could really happen</li><li>This idea of unfolding can feel very challenging. Even though you may want to wait and listen for when you should do something (this may be the voice of patience, openness, trust, or judgment, cynicism, or fear), there may be another voice that tells you, “you’ve go to do it now, to say it now.” (but it can also be the voice of anxiousness, control, perfectionism, narcissism, etc.)</li><li>This awareness is the first step in the practice of unfolding. It’s about becoming aware of this moment, discerning the voices and acting.</li><li>As you resolve this tension, it will become more effortless, eventually.</li><li>How do you resolve it?</li><li>Try it. Wait, instead of responding and see what happens.</li><li>Experiment with it.</li><li>Know when you are acting out of anxiousness, and when you are acting because you feel that the time is right.</li></ul><li>So today, you will create paintings, first as an individual, then as a collective.</li><li>This activity is about the process, not the result. It is about your awareness of yourself before, during, and in-between paintings. Please do not get attached to your painting, as "your" painting, because we will be doing a very bold, collective group exercise that asks you to not get too attached to "your" painting. You will still take one home, but you will not be the only artist of that painting.</li><li>Demonstration</li><ul><li>Take on blank canvas</li><li>Draw on it with charcoal</li><li>Then use the squeeze bottles, paint with a variety of colors </li></ul><li>Some important guidelines:</li><ul><li>When we use the sticks, be careful about how you stir and move the paint, and how you take them in and out of the buckets, and where they get placed. </li><li>We’ve been very careful to seal the edges of the tarp so that paint does not seap in between to the carpet. </li><li>So, make sure paper towels are around you and that you are watching what happens on the canvas and the plastic, to catch moving paint. </li></ul><ul><li>In a moment, we’re going to ask you take newspaper and set it around and under the edges of your canvases so that it absorbs some of the water. </li><li>When you use the water-based paints, be sensitve about the volume that you put on your canvas. Because we have a special truck that we’ll ask you to move them in to, so that they have the time it takes to dry. So, the amount of paint that is on the canvases is going to shift as you walk out the door, which is the process of unfolding.</li></ul></ul></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" style="width: 15%;"> </td><td valign="top" style="width: 35%;">INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY (15 min.) <ul><li>To help you practice, you'll continue the similar process you just did: let go of what you worked on, be pulled by another's canvas, build on what's there, observe and listen to self, and observe others, and breathe, see if you can let the painting emerge, the collective painting. </li><li>For more ideas, see entire design for the Practice of Unfolding.</li><li>Explain these directions:</li><ul><li>Continue the painting process.</li><li>Walk around, be pulled by another's painting. Build on that one.</li><li>If you're not pulled by another's, you can wait, or start a new canvas and add it to the collective grid.</li><li>But, most importantly, pay attention to the other's paintings, too, use their actions to hear what to do. </li></ul></ul></td><td valign="top" style="width: 50%;">INDIVIDUAL EXERCISE (1 hr.) <ul><li>Painting Process </li><ul><li>Okay, your turn.</li><li>If you need to, refill the squeeze bottles</li><li>So, lets do the first few steps. Draw on your canvas with charcoal, then use the squeeze bottles.</li><li>After 20 minutes or so, interrupt with the next demonstration.</li><li>Optional: Take photos of individuals during the process, in case you would like to make them available to participants to see how their painting changed over time. </li></ul><li>Reminder:</li><ul><li>Listen, wait, respond, observe yourself, listen, wait, respond</li></ul><li>Demonstration</li><ul><ul><li>Make sure there is enough newspaper at the end closest to you</li><li>Pour white paint along the edge farthest away, just enough to pull and squeegee over the rest of the painting</li><li>Take a squeege and demonstrate two techniques: when you pull lightly, and when you press down harder and pull</li><li>Drag the paint almost to the edge or pull it off</li><li>Then, use the bottles of water and pigment by either pouring lightly, spraying, dripping, etc. Be careful with this phase, so that you don't have too much water on the painting, because you will need to lift and move the painting to store later. So, the more water in the painting, the more fluid it will be for moving. </li></ul><li>Painting Process</li><ul><li>Okay, as part of the practice of unfolding activity, I'd like to ask you to move to the painting to your right</li><li>Now, I'd like to ask you to do what I just demonstrated</li><li>I know you're not working on your painting right now, so this is your first opportunity to practice letting go. </li><li>Take a deep breath, stay open, listen, wait and respond.</li><li>After about 20 minutes, interrupt again, and ask participants to return to their painting, and to continue working on it now, using any of the same techniques, or any others that they invent to finish this phase of the painting.</li><li>Please remember also what I said earlier, about getting too attached. This is only another step in the process, in the practice of unfolding.</li><li>Reminder:</li><ul><li>Listen, wait, respond, observe yourself, listen, wait, respond </li></ul><li>After about 20 - 30 minutes, when you feel participants have worked enough on their paintings that they could almost appear as if they were complete, then interrupt them again.</li><li>Optional: Take photos during their painting process.</li></ul></ul></ul>DISCUSSION Ask participants to comment on what they think the practice of unfolding is. From these comments, build on their comments with any of the ideas below in order to reinforce the relationship between time, letting go, and trusting the process. <ul><li>About the many different personalities of time:</li><ul><li>Panchang astrology is the daily interpretation of Vedic astrology, an ancient Indian system based on the Vedic which dates back to 3000 B.C.. In Panchang there are eleven distinct qualities of time: Tender, Light, Fixed, Swift, Fierce, Dreadful, Mixed, Supportive, Challenging, Increasing and Decreasing. These distinctions give time a different personality. Tender has a gentle mood; Light has a frivolous touch; Swift is fast paced; Fixed feels steady and solid; while Fierce brings focus, energy and direction; Dreadful brings a chaotic tendency and Mixed comprises a blend of influences. The two major influences Supportive or Challenging blend with the seven natures and create a further depth of influence. Increasing or Decreasing time correspond to the phases of the moon and symbolize it’s influence on the creation or reduction of momentum in action. </li></ul><li>James Gleick author of Chaos and Faster says “We know something's happening, and we're beginning to sense what it is. We're speeding up; our technology is speeding up; our arts and entertainment and the pace of invention and change -- it's all speeding up. And we care. If we don't understand time, we become its victims.”</li><ul><li>At work, time takes on a persona represented by the clock on the wall during a meeting, the time on my cell phone when I’m waiting to dial-in to a call, calendars marked with appointments and meetings.</li><li>We have learned to rush through the day, to keep our heads barely above the surface. It is a pattern that can make us unconscious to time, to act with the illusion that time can be controlled. </li><li>I used to live by this private mantra of doing things as quickly, and as effectively as possible. Nobody told me to be that way, or that was the way to get ahead, it just happened, it was an unconscious choice that had me relentlessly looking for ways to cheat time, to make something that could last two hours take only 30 minutes, always, always thinking and working in ways to see if I could get more done in smaller and smaller amounts of time. Nobody taught me about the need to go faster, nobody asked me, I just did. </li><li>If we give time too much power, albeit unconscious, it can be debilitating, cutting us off, detouring our energy from what is happening.</li><li>In a Harvard professor’s study of people’s diaries at work, people often thought they were most creative when they were working under severe deadline pressure. But their conclusions showed just the opposite: People were the least creative when they were fighting the clock. In fact, we found a kind of time-pressure hangover -- when people were working under great pressure, their creativity went down not only on that day but the next two days as well. Time pressure stifles creativity because people can't deeply engage with the problem. (Six myths about creativity: (Breen, Bill, “The 6 Myths Of Creativity,” Fast Company, Issue 89, December 2004, Page 75))</li><li>“Our imagination is the most important faculty we possess. It can be our greatest resources or our most formidable adversary. It is through our imagination that we discern possibilities and options. Yet imagination is no mere blank slate on which we simply inscribe our will. Rather, imagination is the deepest voice of the soul and can be heard clearly only through cultivation and careful attention. A relationship with our imagination is a relationship with our deepest self.” (Pat B. Allen, Art is a Way of Knowing, p. 2)</li></ul><li>About letting go and trusting the process: </li><ul><li>Against this backdrop, consider what Jackson Pollock, one of the most influential artists of the abstract expressionism movement says, "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of get-acquainted period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through." Pollock looses himself in time, and in that experience he is allowing the painting to emerge.</li><li>See the notes at the bottom of this page about the "trusting mindset." </li></ul><li>Being conscious of time, letting go, and trusting the process in the Practice of Unfolding is like stepping in to a river, to be open to what flows, to trust, and to be patient with not ourselves, and inevitably with others.</li><ul><li>When we become more conscious of time, we allow for an opening, a way of being patient with things. This openness allows for something else to happen, something unexpected, something emergent. It’s when we open the doors to what’s possible, to our imagination.</li></ul></ul></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 15%;"> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 35%;"> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 50%;">GROUP EXERCISE (45 min.) <ul><li>Now, let's explore what it might be like to experience this in a group.</li><li>Ask individuals to move their canvases to the outside of the room</li><li>Put four canvases together in the center of the room</li><li>Invite participants to please create a painting together, using the same processes</li><li>And again, please: listen, wait, respond, observe, listen, wait, respond</li><li>The important ground rule during this exercise, is that no one is allowed to talk, except when someone feels it is the right time, they can ask the group: "are we done?" If there is consensus, the process ends. If you wait and someone is still moved to do something, then you continue until someone asks again.</li><li>When that painting appears as if the four canvases are "relatively" complete, tell the story called "Maybe," a Taoist story:</li><li>There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.</li><li>"Maybe," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.</li><li>"Maybe," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "Maybe," answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe," said the farmer.</li><li>Then, ask participants to place their individual canvas anywhere around these four in a grid (4x5, 2x4, etc.), and to continue the process.</li><li>The same groundrule applies, you are finished when there is consensus to someone's question, "Are we done yet?"</li></ul> </td></tr><tr><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 15%;"> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 35%;">REFLECTION and DISCUSSION (15 min.) <ul><li>In your notebooks:</li><ul><li>What was different in your painting experience as an individual compared to being in the group?</li><li>What did you notice in the moments when you were listening, as you were paying attention to the others' paintings?</li><li>How did you know when you were finished as an individual?</li><li>Did you ever hesitate and not do anything, but just wait and listen?</li></ul></ul>DISCUSSION <ul><li>Ask for any comments or thoughts from the group.</li><li>Use any of these quotes to open or close the discussion:</li><ul><li>Maybe, a Taoist story. There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically."Maybe," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "Maybe," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "Maybe," answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe," said the farmer.</li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>The learning that occurs when I let go of my attachment to how things should be, how things are going to be, when things should happen, or where we are going to be when this is all over is learning to let go of my attachment to what my limited brain can conceive and to open to new and greater possibilities. The learning requires that I let go of judgment that this event, outcome, or person is good or bad. Events, outcomes, or people are not good or bad: they just are. When we learn to accept each event, outcome, or person as exactly what is supposed to be in this moment for us to get to where we want to be, we are able to be in a place of continuous learning of the heart –to be in our spiritual practice as a way of living and being. (Kay Gilley, Leading From the Heart, p. 82) </li><li>“I always thought any big changes I made in my life would be carefully thought out – every option analyzed, every angle considered, the pros and cons weighed up before I reached a rational decision. When it happened, though – when I became what I am today – there was no warning. I made the decision that changed my career in a split second, without any conscious thought at all. At least that’s how it seemed at the time.” (Notes:Tracy Chevalier, “Diary of a Split Second,” Oprah, November 2001, p. 57)</li><li>Is it possible to live in a world without any wrongs, that everything whatever is happening is all part of the unfolding</li></ul></ul></td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 50%;">REFLECTION, DISCUSSION, CLOSING, EVALUATION and CLEAN-UP (45 min.) <ul><li>Imagine that you are the art critic looking at the paintings you have done. What would you say about how this work reflects what you know about the artist? </li><li>What, if anything, has shifted about the role of time? </li><li>In what new ways do you see yourself dancing with time so that it adds value to your experiences, rather than causing stress or anxiety?</li><li>Read the statements made by the other art critics’ (fellow peers) and write a short paragraph about all the audiences </li></ul>DISCUSSION<ul><li>What was different in your painting experience as an individual compared to being in the group?</li><li>What did you notice in the moments when you were listening?</li><li>How would you compare listening to yourself and listening to others?</li><li>How did you know when you were finished as an individual?</li><li>When did you hesitate and not do anything?</li></ul>EVALUATION<ul><li>Participants complete evaluations</li></ul>CLOSING Choose from these useful quotes and story vignettes to summarize and close <ul><li>The learning that occurs when I let go of my attachment to how things should be, how things are going to be, when things should happen, or where we are going to be when this is all over is learning to let go of my attachment to what my limited brain can conceive and to open to new and greater possibilities. The learning requires that I let go of judgment that this event, outcome, or person is good or bad. Events, outcomes, or people are not good or bad: they just are. When we learn to accept each event, outcome, or person as exactly what is supposed to be in this moment for us to get to where we want to be, we are able to be in a place of continuous learning of the heart –to be in our spiritual practice as a way of living and being. (Kay Gilley, Leading From the Heart, p. 82) </li><li>“I always thought any big changes I made in my life would be carefully thought out – every option analyzed, every angle considered, the pros and cons weighed up before I reached a rational decision. When it happened, though – when I became what I am today – there was no warning. I made the decision that changed my career in a split second, without any conscious thought at all. At least that’s how it seemed at the time.” (Notes:Tracy Chevalier, “Diary of a Split Second,” Oprah, November 2001, p. 57)</li><li>Let’s try an experiment. Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents the object which you are grasping. Hold it tightly, clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your grip, you will lose what you are clinging onto. That’s why you hold on. But there’s another possibility. You can let go and yet keep hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still yours, even with all this space around it. (Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan book of Living and dying, pp. 34-35)</li></ul>PACKAGE PAINTINGS, STORE, AND CLEAN-UP Next week, we'll open the boxes and look at the paintings. Chances are that they might not be entirely dry, so please wear clothese that you can get paint on, especially shoes that you can change in to when you re-enter the building.</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 15%;"> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 35%;">GO TO THE <a href="/The-Practice-of-Embodying.html">PRACTICE OF EMBODYING</a> </td><td valign="top" rowspan="1" style="width: 50%;">GO TO THE <a href="/The-Practice-of-Embodying.html">PRACTICE OF EMBODYING</a> </td></tr></tbody></table> <h2>Notes:</h2>John Eliot, Ph.D., Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More, p. 5- I have found that the top players in every field think differently when all the marbles are on the line. Great performers focus on what they are doing, and nothing else. When Tiger Woods or Muhammad Ali cannot seem to make a false move, when Warren buffet or Bill Gates is in the middle of a deal, when Yitzhak Perlaman or Al Pacino blows the critics away with a performance, they are not thinking about their technique, what their teachers told them, what their attorneys or accountants advised. They are able to engage in a task so completely that there is no room left for self-criticism, judgment, or doubt; to stay loose and supremely, even irrationally, self-confident; to just step up and do what they’re good at, concentrating only on the simplest nature of their performance. Superstars perform so naturally and so instinctively that they seem to be able to enter a pressure-packed situation that would terrify or freeze most people as if nothing matters. They let it happen, let it go. They couldn’t care less about the results. (p. 5) Journalists and fans tend to take such responses as displays of arrogance or coyness, or as rehearsed sound bites. But the neurobiology of high performance actually confirms Klammer’s answer: What he was thinking at a cognitive level was truly “nothing.” To be sure, great performers are well-trained, experienced, smart, and, in some cases, divinely talented. But the way their brains work during a performance is a lot more like a squirrel’s than like Einstein’s. Like squirrels, the best in every business do what they have learned to do without questioning their abilities – they flat out trust their sills, which is why we call this high-performance state of mind the “trusting Mindset.” Routine access to the Trusting Mindset is what separates great performers from the rest of the pack. (p. 6) To perform exceptionally—whether it’s hitting a golf ball pure, closing a critical deal, pulling off a big sale, moving an audience with a violin concerto, or even transplanting a heart—requires you to be in that same state of mind, empty of all doubt, without any thought about the mechanics of what you’re doing. You cannot pull up all those years of education, training, and experience in your memory as you perform –that’s the “Training” Mindset. In the Trusting Mindset, you have to let all that expertise be there instinctively. Our ability is maximized when we let our skills do the work, not our heads. As professional golfers like to say, you have to trust your swing. You just have to toss the keys – pure Trusting Mindset. (p. 7) The Neurobiology of High Performance You can break down the Training and Trusting Mindset into an almost bipolar set of descriptors. Take a look at the following chart: The Training Mindset The Trusting Mindset Active Mind Empty Mind Judgmental Accepting Analytical Instinctive Scientific Artistic Wanting It Now Patient Calculating Reacting Effortful Playful Critical Quiet Intentional Rhythmic Controlling Letting It happen These contrasting qualities of thinking, which produce different performances, also depend on a different neurobiology—as different, in fact, as you and a squirrel running across a telephone wire. When you stand fifty feet in the air at the top of a telephone pole and look at the infinitesimally thin wire you’re trying to cross, a million thoughts are likely to race through your head: I’ll never make it; it’s too far; it’s too high; the wire’s too small, to unsteady; I can’t balance on this thing; I’ll kill myself; this is crazy; it has nothing to do with “real courage”; and so on. The squirrel, on the other hand, just scurries across the wire without thinking. Of course, that’s because squirrels cannot think. Their sensory system receives sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and touches. Their brains are able to process this information, act accordingly, and execute skillful patterns of behavior. The human brain can do all of this, but it can also complicate mattes: We can evaluate the sensory information and the situation, analyzing all the angles, and then intentionally train ourselves to improve our performance – all qualities of the Training Mindset. This ability to reason, evaluate, and make rational calculations is what separates us from other animals, and surely such rationally is a blessing in life – except when you are performing under pressure. Then you want to put aside the Training Mindset and respond to the stimuli bombarding you as much like a squirrel as is humanly possible. Squirrels are natural masters of the Trusting Mindset. (p. 8) I want to help you find your inner squirrel. Consider that moment in a physical examination when the doctor taps your knee with his reflex hammer and your foot kicks straight-out, reflexively (i.e., without a thought). It’s called a “myotatic” or “flexor reflex,” and the neurobiology goes like this: The blow of the hammer compresses a sensory nerve in the knee, altering its chemical structure, which, in a chain reaction, sends an electrical signal along the nerve up to the lumbar section of the spinal cord. This ascending nerve connects to a parallel descending motor nerve that dispatches the electrical signal down to the muscle group that causes the leg to extend. If you’re sitting on the examination table and the doctor taps your knee without warning, your foot will actually kick out even before your brain gets the signal that the doctor is armed with a hammer. Neuroscientists call this chemical-electrical response “closed loop information processing.” (p.9) The classic flexor reflex is a human response that is far less complex than the neurobiology of a squirrel scurrying across a telephone wire. There are actually four types of closed loop processes: <ul><li>Monosynaptic Reflexes (the flexor reflex), which are the shortest and quickest, involving the fewest neurons.</li><li>Multisynaptic Reflexes, organized through spinal cord interneurons (e.g., responding to stepping on a piece of glass accidentally, or picking up a scalding cup of coffee)</li><li>Brainstem Regulatory Functions such as controlling the heart and lungs)</li><li>Patterned Intentional Behavior, organized in the thalamus (the same kind of processing the squirrel is using)</li></ul>With each progressively more complicated function, more neurons and more neural junctions are involved. Of the human body’s roughly 100 billion nerve cells, the flexor reflex needs only two to function properly. Higher level closed processes, such as those at the brain stem or thalamus, might use a couple hundred thousand. The cerebral cortex, however –home of conscious thought, judgment, reason, and calculation –needs billions of nerves to do its thing. Information processing that occurs on that level, the Training Mindset, is called “open loop”—open, literally, to interpretation. Once the cerebral cortex gets involved, the transfer from incoming sensory data to outgoing action is influenced by any number of brain areas adding input, thus slowing down the system, impeding behavior efficiency, and increasing the chance of error. (p. 9-10) The squirrel essentially has no cerebral cortex. But the animal does have a thalamus, a bunch of clusters of neurons in the brain, or ganglia, called pattern generators. These produce programmed activity in response to stimuli. It’s the highest level closed loop processing available to the brain. (p. 10) We humans can assure a similar kind of closed processing by taking our cerebral cortex out of the game, as it were, and allowing ourselves to react to sensory stimuli with motor responses we have already stored. (p. 10) Unless you are distracted by external sensations or your inner critic, conscious thought will convert these to open loop operations. Once the cerebral cortex is activated, the system begins to look a lot like a California freeway at rush hour (particularly like intersections referred to as “spaghetti junctions”) –millions of neurons releasing multiple kinds of neurotransmitters into hundreds of sympathetic junctions all at the same time and converging at the same pattern generator (or worse, simultaneously at conflicting pattern generators). It is up to the brain to figure out where all the signals should go. When the cerebral cortex gets very active –all that reasoning and evaluating that goes with the Training Mindset—the brain’s pattern generators get overloaded and thus the system gets bogged down, producing less efficient, less successful action, with a greater number of mistakes. In short, you don’t perform you’re “A game.” (p. 11) When the job is on the line, great thinkers resist the urgent o be smart, cautious, or scientific. They manage to keep their cerebral cortex off the playing field or out of the boardroom. For them, performance is simply “child’s play,” which suggests a useful definition of the superstar’s edge. (p. 13) In fact, business people have to switch into the trusting mode more often and more quickly than athletes or even tightrope artists. (p. 18) How do great performers in every field switch on the trusting mode at will? Some do it intuitively, and that is why we call them “natural talents.” Others, however, have learned to trust their abilities and their experience by gradually spending more and more time at work in the Trusting Mindset. You can learn it, too, but you have to be willing to be uncomfortable at first. If you’re skilled at using your Training Mindset, just letting yourself trust will feel quite foreign. (p. 18) To join the ranks of overachievers will require you to make some perhaps uncomfortable and often misunderstood choices about how you think when you’re performing. You must, for example, start putting more pressure on yourself rather than less. (p. 18) <h2>Other Resources:</h2>In Praise of Slowness, by Carl Honore http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1087

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