Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Blog, Blog, Blog The Pressure To Blog

ok so a few days in to starting my blog and suddenly I can't think what to write today. The pressure! But hang on, there is no pressure, it is ok to miss a day, nobody will shoot me and the world will not stop.

And there you have it, suddenly I know what to write about. I genuinely wrote the above without knowing what to write but when that happens to me during the day, I just start doing whatever I was trying to do and suddenly intuition takes over. And it just happened again.

In a world in which we are all trying to be creative and let our freedom of expression flow, I think the pressure of trying to get it flowing can often be the biggest blocker. And as that flow stops, the pressure mounts, the flow dries up further, the pressure mounts and a nice viscous circle then ensues.

I think pressure is probably the biggest blocker to most things that we want to do in life. Somebody said to me today that I am always so calm even under extreme pressure. I joked that I may be on the outside but if you could see into my head they might think differently. It's true, it is often exceedingly difficult to let the pressure flow over you. But it is possible to 'Keep Calm and Carry On'.

Now the NLP world would coach you on visioning the end result like you have already done it, speaking to yourself only in words that move you towards your goal rather than away from failure and many other techniques. it works but it is not easy. What if there were a technique that allowed you to acknowledge the pressure and succeed in spite of it? A bit like the book 'Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway'.

I think there is a different way. Unlike the famous phrase, it is not necessary to 'keep calm', it is only necessary to 'carry on'.

Written like that, it seems a bit obvious, if you carry on, then of course you will get to wherever it is you are 'carrying on' to. So why don't we do this? Why do we stop and get stressed?

Well when we are stressed we start to think of failure. And that leads to more stress. A different approach may well be to carry on regardless and completely ignore those feelings of impending doom. But it's not so easy is it?

Try this....

First think of the most negative person you know. It is ok to imagine somebody and make them even more negative than they really are.

Now think of a time that you were in a nice positive mood and were trying to discuss a topic with them. They were so negative about it that you could see how crazy they were being and in fact they were so crazy, they made you laugh. Again, it is ok to make this up in your head.

Now think of them being like that for every issue in their or your life. So crazy in fact that every time they speak you think 'there they go again'. A bit like Victor Meldrew from the TV show 'One Foot In The Grave'.

Now make this image really clear in your mind so that you can remember it whenever you want to.

Now, the next time you realise you are stuck, stressed and beating yourself up, just step back from your thoughts and say to yourself 'there he goes again' and imagine yourself as the person you visualised earlier.

Laugh about it (you may get some weird looks) and then just get on with what you were doing without even considering what the outcome will be.

Because you have carried on, the stress subsides, the flow restarts and off you go. It really doesn't matter if what you have produced by carrying on is not much good, it will soon become good and the you can go back and fix or change it.

i know this sounds weird but it works for me.

Alternatively, I regularly say to people when I don't know how to do something that it's fine, I will do by the time I wake up in the morning. It takes the pressure of the moment away and normally I know before the morning. i have always known by the morning So, if you are really stuck, try that. I know it sounds crazy but it certainly works for me. All you need to do is be open minded enough to accept that it might work - you don't even need to think or know that it definitely will. Just go to sleep expecting to know the answer when you wake up.

Go on, give it a go!

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