DON'T FENCE ME IN

PAUSE A MOMENT

FENCES

[Chicken Run – Harry Gregson-Williams]

In my days as a cinema projectionist I saw the movie Chicken Run quite a few times. Just beneath the surface of its simple look, clever animation and slick story line lie a number of wonderfully sly messages told through the eyes of a bunch of the Aardman Studios' Claymation chickens trying to break out of their wire-encaged world to escape their fate at the chopping block. Their freedom leader, a feisty little hen named Ginger, comments profoundly in one scene: "the fences are all in your mind." She reminds her fellow chickens (and us), that a bigger obstacle than the physical fences they're surrounded by are the mental fences that hold them captive.

It's been a good reminder for me on those occasions since when I have to deal with my own mental fences... especially those created by self-doubt, uncertainty, fear. Can you relate to that? Where have you fenced yourself in mentally in recent days or weeks? Perhaps your mental fence is Procrastination, a deadening habit that keeps you immobilised and depressed. Maybe yours, like mine, is related to self-doubt, and the on-going internal noise it produces that keeps you stuck in a case of the “I can'ts”. Perhaps yours is the belief that you don't deserve success, so you sabotage yourself to avoid having to find out and go responsible for how powerful you could be. Perhaps you're corralled by Complacency, that smugly certain feeling of quiet self-satisfaction and self-gratification that keeps at bay lurking feelings of doubt, uncertainty and fear of change. Some of the fences we've erected have been designed to keep bogeymen out: we find out, too late, that our citadel is keeping us captivated.

There are a million variations of the "fences" theme, but the result is still the same: like the chickens in the movie, we stay grounded and stuck in our cage.

One of the key questions you might try standing in for a while is: "How do I limit myself, and how can I stop doing that?" These limitations are never external. They always live inside us. The antidote to being trapped by our mental fences is to create a compelling enough vision that, like Ginger and her flock of chicken friends, we're willing to resort to amazing measures to break out. 

We've all locked ourselves inside a penitentiary of cells, and left the keys on the outside. The first step to busting out is to realise that there IS an outside. 

The second step is to find something we really want that's only available on the outside.

I guess now is a good time to trot out again one of my favourite mysti riddles  --

A goose has been raised in a glass jar. Until now, it has been content, but suddenly it has become too big for the jar. In its distress we you are faced with a dilemma: how do you get the goose out, without damaging either the goose or the jar?

Answer: [click you fingers and say] "The goose is out."

The goose was never trapped in the first place -- you were mistaken about that.

 There's a goldmine of wisdom wrapped in that frustrsting little riddle. But, for now, let's move on......

There is a formula for dissolving static inertia:

VISION + CONSISTENT ACTION = PROGRESS

I challenge you to take some bold, even outrageous steps to break free of your mental fences. A plan that does not seem audacious to you is not a plan at all (Oscar Wilde).

 

[Don't Wait Too Long – The Idea of North]

If procrastination is your Achilles' Heel, declare today a "freedom day" and take action on something daunting or distasteful you've been putting off: anything from cleaning your office to making phone calls or responding to emails you've avoided. Procrastination debilitates your spirit more devastatingly than a thorn in your foot.

On my to-do list each day there is often a task or two that I would dearly like to put off. If there isn't the day usually supplies me with one. These are the tasks I used to keep putting to the bottom of the pile, in favour of easier or more delectable things. I call them my “Frogs” – those slimy, unpalatable things that make me gag at the thought of swallowing them live. I have disciplined my self to begin each day with at least one frog. 

First, eat the frog. Once that is out of the way, you'll feel better and address the rest of the day's work with lightness and renewed vigour. Then tomorrow, eat the next one, and so on until they're all eaten. It works! It feels so great to get it done, and I feel the weight lift with each one ticked off the list! Then I can reward myself with the more pleasant tasks, and I finish each day with a very real sense of accomplishment, and none of the nagging pall of an unpleasant challenge carried over for yet another day, and my Inner Critic nagging me to "get it done!"

If your chicken-wire fence is self-doubt, firstly sit down and make a list of possible negative beliefs you might have that could imprison your confidence. Then write out everything you value and why it's important to you. Then challenge yourself to eliminate, or at least scale down on anything that doesn't absolutely reflect your most dearly held values. Or add something that is a profound statement of who you want to be.

If you're paralysed by the condition of mind we call uncertainty and not-knowing, you have a bit of mind-changing to do. 

 

[I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself – Tina Arena]

The first step is to make your uncertainty OK. 

Make Uncertainty OK??? Am I out of my mind??

Yes. Your mind, like mine -- hopelessly addicted to Certainty – is going to hate making Uncertainty OK. Get out of your mind for a few moments and watch it carry on like a spoiled brat. It will hiss and squirm, and do everything it can to distract you. But be persistent. Drop your resistance to not being certain. What is it you fear? Embarrassment? Shame? Feeling like a failure? What the hell! Don't be in such a hurry to feel certain. There's nothing creative or transforming in Certainty; it might feel snug, but Certainty keeps you stuck. Look at that for a moment now. Certainty keeps you stuck!

Uncertainty, on the other hand, opens possibilities. Use the opportunity to do something you've never done before – get comfortable with uncertainty. Learn to welcome it like a creative friend. There's freedom and aliveness through that escape hatch. Creative uncertainty takes you outside the fences where new potential awaits. It's our reluctance to be Uncertain that keeps us fenced in.

• Be aware that, in Uncertainty you are susceptible to looking for a saviour. One of those (and there are always plenty just waiting for you to roll up) will disempower you and keep you fenced in – different-looking fence, maybe, but a fence nevertheless.
• As your First Act of Responsibility, look at your Uncertainty, and choose it, on your say-so (not mine, or anyone else's). Go responsible for your choosings, and their consequences. Surrender to uncertainty. Allow it. In your new-found freedom, the uncertainty will pass quickly into history and transform into excitement.
• As your Second Act of Responsibility, choose a course of action – any course, it really doesn't matter which one; you'll get to where you're going anyway. Choose any course that moves you off the spot you've taken root on, and follow it -- as far as it goes.

Your mental fences can only keep you stuck as long as you believe, and invest yourself into them. They can only contain you as long as you kowtow to them and fail to take actions consistent with a vision that lies beyond the boundary lines. 

Go ahead, take the action you've avoided all your life, and leap into a future filled with possibilities. It will help if you remember that the fences are all in your mind! And you are not your mind. You have a mind, but it’s not who you are (except when you go out to lunch and allow it to take over).

[Don't Fence Me In – Janet Seidel Trio (A) – 2:16]