DOIN' WHAT COMES NATURALLY

PAUSE A MOMENT

FIND YOUR STRENGTH:

LESSONS LEARNED BY A SQUARE PEG IN A FEW ROUND HOLES

Good morning once more, and welcome now to Pause a Moment. I'm Barrie Barkla.

[You Bring Out the Best in Me – Dru Chen]

I recently reviewed a resumé for a colleague who was trying to expand on her career strategy. She has terrific experience. And yet, as I looked through her CV, I could see a problem with it: she had done so many good things in so many different fields it was hard to know what was distinctive about her.

[La Raya – Eric Serra]

There is something special about you; something you have come to add to the mix

You have a personal magic that could inspire and empower someone else...

What is it?

As I talked with my colleague, it became clear her resumé was the surface symptom of a deeper issue. In an attempt to be useful and adaptable she had said “yes” to too many good projects and opportunities. She had ended up feeling stressed, overworked and underutilized from being stretched too thinly over too many areas, some of which were superfluous to her. It is easy to see how good people end up in her situation:

[You Be the Rock – 19-Twenty]

Capable people are driven to achieve. Other people see they are capable and give them assignments. I'm sure you know the maxim - “Always delegate to a busy person if you want things done”. Capable people gain a reputation as the "go to" people. They become "good old [insert name] who is always there when you need him." There is lots right with this, unless or until......

YOUR POINT OF OPTIMUM CONTRIBUTION

Capable people end up doing lots of projects reasonably well, but become distracted from what would otherwise be their most effective point of contribution, which I define as where talent, passion and the market intersect – that place where:

• what the group you're working with gets what it needs most
• from your blend of talent and passion,
• in order to best service their clients.

When you spread yourself too thinly, both you and the and the group lose out. But, in most cases, it's up to you to make the choices –

• What am I best at?
• How can I best apply my talents and passions to the most effective ends in this situation?
• What is my working style?
• Which working environments best suit my style?

Everyone has his own strategies for working. Some people are not happy unless they’re Independent. Some people actually like working alone. Some even have great difficulty working closely with other people and can’t work well under a great deal of supervision. They have to run their own show. Anyone they cannot get along with, they may even eliminate from the territory they regard as “theirs”.

Yet others function best as part of a group. In stark contrast, they are uncomfortable alone. They are Dependent – they need to have someone near they can refer to, or rely on for some kind of support. Dependent operators fall into two sub-groups – I call the first group's strategy a Cooperative one. The second group manipulate their troupe from within – I call their strategies Controlling.

Co-operators want to share responsibility for any task they take on; they get their jollies from teamwork.

Controllers want to be the sole source of everything. They may leave the hard and detailed work to drones who'll do exactly what they're told, but they line up to cop all the trophies and plaudits when it's all over. Uppermost in a Controllers' style is an unbending need to make themselves indispensable, to be in charge, overtly or covertly, by fair means or foul, and for adulation. Controllers design their own monuments before they die. One of their favourite look-good sayings is – If you want something done properly, do it yourself.

Still others have an Inter-dependent strategy, which is somewhere in between the dependent and independent types. Interdependents prefer to work with other people while maintaining sole responsibility for a task. They are in charge but not alone; they involve others, not just as drones and gophers but as real innovators and contributors. An Interdependent manager surrounds himself with capable people and gives them their head, knowing that the end result will be so much more than just the sum of its parts.

[Getting to Know You – 101 Strings]

There is no particular merit or demerit inherent in any of these styles. In an appropriate setting, each will work. But in a mismatch setting, the results can be disastrous e.g. a Dependent Control Freak in a volunteer organisation is a disaster waiting to happen. The membership will be robbed of initiative, the opportunity to participate at a meaningful level, hence losing zeal and vision, and the zombies who remain on board will go down in a heap of malicious gossip, bickering and half-baked results while the leader keeps minting more medals for someone to pin on him/her.

If you want to get the most out of yourself, get to know your style and strategies, and find the appropriate environment for your style. If you want to get the most out of those you supervise , colleagues, partner or your children, figure out their work strategies ---- the ways in which they are most effective. Sometimes you’ll find someone who is brilliant at what they do, but a pain in the neck to get along with. Maybe she always has to do things her way. Now she just might not be cut out to be an employee, or even a supervisor for that matter. Authority may go to her head. She may be the kind of person who has to run her own solo business, and sooner or later she probably will if – if you do not provide an avenue of expression. If you have a valuable employee like this, you should try to find a way to maximize his/her talents and give him/her as much autonomy as possible. If you make him conform to be part of a team, he’ll drive everyone crazy. But if you give him as much independence as possible, he can prove invaluable. That’s what the new concepts of leadership are all about.

You’ve heard of the Peter Principle, the idea that most people eventually launch themselves a notch or two past their optimum level of competence. One reason this happens is that most people have an inflated idea of their own level of ability; another is that employers, supervisors and co-ordinators are often insensitive to their employees’ work strategies and put them in mismatched jobs. They promote a worthy worker where they have a vacancy, rather than finding or creating a position that best suits that worker's talents, aptitudes and style. 

 

For example.....

There are people who work best in a cooperative setting. They thrive on a large amount of feedback and human interaction. Would you reward their good work by putting them in sole charge of some new autonomous venture? Not if you want to make use of their best talents. That doesn’t mean you have to keep a team person at the same level. But it does mean you should give promotions and new work experiences that utilise the person’s best talents, not throw him/her back onto their weakest ones.

Likewise, many people with interdependent strategies want to be part of a team, and can see how they fit into the big picture, but also need to do their own work alone. They need the proximity and feedback and interaction of others, but they have an inner urge to mentor, train and coach; and the overall vision to call the final strategies.

In any group structure there are jobs that nurture all three strategies – Co-operative, Independent and Interdependent. The key is to have the self-knowledge to know your style and find the position that has your name on it. If you then aspire to managing others, you need the acuity to know how people work best and then match them to a task they will thrive in. That way, everyone wins. Otherwise the Peter Principle applies and no-one wins.

Here’s an exercise you can do right now. It's purpose is for you to get some insight into your own metaprograms. It's a good idea to write your responses down so that you can stand in them for while....

• What do you want in a relationship (or house, or car, or career)?
• How do you know when you have been successful at something? What is your definition of success – it will be a feeling?
• Pick one area of your life – it doesn't matter which one, but preferably an area that occupies your attention right now. Relationship? Finances? Career? Social life? Personal growth? In that area, what is the relationship between what you are doing about it this month and what you predominantly did last month?
• How often does someone have to demonstrate something to you before you are convinced it’s true? What constitutes “proof” for you?
• Recall a favorite work experience. Why was it important to you? What makes it so memorable still?

Watch your inner self closely as you ask these questions. Which questions quietly perked your attention? Did your responses intrigue you, or were you easily distracted elsewhere? 

These are only a few of the questions you can ask to successfully elicit the metaprograms we’ve discussed. If you don’t get the information you need, rephrase the question – maybe to something like this....

Ask yourself: If I could do anything for 8 hours a day for the rest of my life, and money were no object, what would I do?

Am I excited to do what I'm presently doing every day? And if not, is it me, or something else?

[Doin' What Comes Naturally – 1999 Cast – 2:15]

One of the big blessings of living in a democracy is that we have an ability to pursue our own path, and the plausible possibility that anyone can pick him or herself up by the bootstraps and achieve great things. Of course, survival and success are inescapably connected to work, but we have the luxury of deciding how much fun the serious pursuit of our day-to-day work is going to be. Sometimes that comes as a tradeoff for higher pay, but spending half your waking hours doing something you love is often well worth trading higher remuneration for less pressure. I've been around a lot of people who claim to love what they do, but I seriously suspect that what they do is what they dislike least out of what they've tried. And working in radio I meet a lot of people who hang around the business because they haven't seriously worked through where their real talents lie.

Whatever may be the truth of that, I'm convinced that the people who are best at what they do tend to be the ones that love it the most. It's a “fit”, and everyone grows from the experience of being with that person.

The most important thing for me is to feel that every person I work with is excited to show up to work every day, that each is doing what he or she loves. I've worked in places where that is not the case, and it's a debilitating experience. The most amazing and depressing words I've ever heard is one of our presenters say “I don't have anything really special on the show today,” and he really meant it! And he proved to be right! What I'd much rather hear (and I'm humbled to overhear it occasionally!), is, "This is the best time I've ever had." For God's sake, if you're not lit up by what you're doing, how the hell do you expect others to catch fire???

 

I'm not saying anything loads of great thinkers haven't already said. But sometimes it's important to remind ourselves why we're doing what we're doing, and to take inventory of our dreams.

Are you and your dreams still within sight of each other?

[Are You a Dreamer? – Tim Freedman]

HEALING -- A NEW-OLD GOAL FOR LIVING

PAUSE A MOMENT

HEALING

Good morning, and welcome to Pause a Moment. I'm Barrie Barkla. Tonight I want to share some thoughts and “got-its” with you about something we all long for – Healing.....

[Open Your Eyes – Snow Patrol – 5:38]

Sinclair Lewis – said something in “Arrowsmith” that lit the blue touch paper under my rocket. He wrote - “God give me unclouded eyes and freedom from haste. God give me quiet and relentless anger against all pretense and all pretentious work and all work left slack and unfinished. God give me a restlessness whereby I may neither sleep nor accept praise till my observed results equal my calculated results or in pious glee I discover and assault my error. God give me strength not to trust to God!”

These words thrill me still. I am grateful that my parents taught me the principles of hard work, dedication and impeccability, at least by precept, from the day I was first aware. These words contain what I need. The hero of Arrowsmith was a doctor and the doctor was a hero. At moments he was almost a god, bringing healing to skeptical mortals. Arrowsmith spoke words that were were sparks hammered hot from the anvil of his dedication. I embraced his dedication to his life, and I determined to go forth like him – somehow.

[Soft Heartbeat]

While I was going through this, I didn’t mention the book to my father. As far as Daddy was concerned, if it wasn't on the school syllabus it was a frivolous waste of time. He told me sternly and often about the burdens and responsibilities of work. He didn't think to mention it might be enjoyable, but then my father didn't pack a lot of joy into the open gladstone bag he carried to work every day with the yellow metal Thermos poking out of the top, nor did he bring any more home at night. And when he retired, he died. Hmmm! 

Gotta be more to it than that, surely.

One way and another, I've spent a lot of my life in hospital Emergency Rooms. And I confess to a weird liking for ER documentaries on TV. But it seems to me, especially after 12 hours waiting to be seen for a heart attack, on an ambulance stretcher in an Adelaide private hospital, // that medicine is turning out to have too little to do with healing and making people whole and happy. It has to do instead with doing the paperwork and tests and treatments, with little or no probing into our lives, pronouncing a few of us, the presumably unlucky ones who don't make it, as “expirations”. 

Having nothing else to do while just lying there, I vividly remember the girl in desperate agony from her botched self- abortion; she's probably emotionally no better off now, even if she isn’t bleeding anymore. The drunk from the parklands across the way, reeling around the ER, out of his senses, oblivious to the streaming gash across his forehead. I'd seen him, or many like him, before when I was driving ambulances in Broome. He probably still comes in every fortnight, not long after he's collected his pension and spent it in the bottle shop on West Terrace. Then there was the grey-faced lawyer clutching at his chest, certain that at that very moment he was dying. Truth is, he had been dying for years but hadn't taken any notice – this was his wake-up call. I wonder if he paid much notice? Then there was the angry young woman with the barbiturate overdose— she was a respectable addict who was probably trying to get someone to notice she'd lost her footing in a turbulent set of rapids and was going under. 

I didn’t get to know any of their names. They were being referred to, and treated, as “the abortion”, “the overdose”, “the laceration”, and “the heart attack”. They were the sum total of my Australia that day.

In a way, it's beginning to seem normal. Certainly the pollies and senior public servants don't see anything wrong with it as they do their daily rounds of spinning their way out of the indefensible. Never mind, their turn will come one day. The veterans of ER have grown used to it long since. And you've allowed yourself to get used to it, too.

Well, I refuse to get used to it. The boy in me still burns to do better, and to require “betterness” of others. I've been to hospital in Thailand, a so-called "third-world country", and I'd far rather be ill there than here. We don't require enough of the people we elect and charge to look after those who cannot fend for themselves. It's too easy for us to mix with the nurses at their station, sloughing off our anger and fatigue with jokes and coffee in between ambulances. When an ambulance does drive up, the scene changes in an instant, almost to hysteria. Then we move! We live our lives in fits and starts of emergency in between bouts of collective torpor and amnesia. It's not the system's fault; it's ours - yours and mine.

Oh look, I can fire up on emergency action, too, and thanks to Lifeline I know I'm good at it. But at the same time I'm also a stranger to people. Who were these suffering souls I spoke with anonymously for an hour or more every night? Was my life connected with theirs by pure chance, or is there some point to it? Do I really make a difference, or am I alone in the cubicle just playing with myself? Does it matter that I really care?  Or do I get only the same brownie points as those just pretending to?

CURE OR HEALING? I'm not about mere cures. If a cure happens -- good! But it seems to be that humanity at large is determined to suffer, and woe betide anyone who gets in the way. Besides, there are so many charlatans out there peddling cures to everything from cancer to chillblains. I am deeply suspicious of all of them.

I am about healing people and making them whole. The ones who've had enough; the ones who finally realise there is no payoff any more in suffering. I have had a great deal more time to think about that, and I have some skill in doing something about it. But I'm not going to chase you down. My Dad used to call “Come and get it” at tea time. You have to come if you want to get it. Got it?

Medicine, for example, began as more than either science or art; it was spiritual wisdom. Hippocrates, who still walks with every physician, really was an angelic doctor. He claimed descent directly from Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing. In his own lifetime he was revered. He did not just sew up wounds; he stitched up his patient’s immortality. We do not know much about the methods of Hippocrates, but we have some of his words. Fragments remaining of his teaching included such statements as this: 

“Even though a patient may be aware that his condition is perilous, he may yet recover because he has faith in the goodness of his physician.” 

In taking the Hippocratic Oath itself, every doctor swears to this: “I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.” Hmmm.

Since we know very little about the practice of the art Hippocrates was master of, his noble words do not appear to have much connection to reality anymore. The medicine appears to have been stripped of ideals, in favour of a practical zeal for zapping the diseases and repairing the bodies, and tranquillising the troubled minds of sick people. The best doctors I have met in every field are scientists of great integrity and skill. Their goal in life is to track down the cause of disease with precise objectivity and then, they hope, to wipe it out. I can state without even pausing to think about it that no doctor of my acquaintance has ever alluded to his “pure and holy art.” After graduation day, I wonder if they forget it in the rush to reduce the crowd in the waiting room and meet their quota of billings for the day....

The ancients, for their part, appeared to have little in the way of a scientific foundation for their medicine, but , by God, they got a good grasp on the nature of Man. Their first principle was that health requires a balance within the body. As a piece of received truth, this easily rolls off the tongue, but its implications have been carried far from the ancient world. Today we speak of the body’s “homeostatic mechanisms”, and we pursue biochemical research to discover such things as “how the autonomic nervous system mediates the secretions of the endocrine glands”. And we spend the budget equivalents of small countries on synthetic drugs that ape what our bodies used to do naturally. But we are still talking about balance within the body, and we still find it absolutely vital to preserve it. And what about balance in the mind and spirit? In those realms we seem embroiled in a state of war between un-balanced Good and Bad.

The ancients also believed that man’s inner nature mirrors nature as we observe it around us. Cosmos, or the universe, comprised two fundamental and related realms, the Inner and Outer. Balancing their forces made it possible for life to continue in harmony. Inner and Outer ran on parallel tracks, so to speak, and throwing either one into imbalance spelled disaster for both. I've seen nothing since to disprove that.

The ancient healers thought they understood the universal basis of life, and they desired to live from its source. Their precepts for health may sound simple-minded to us now because they are not based on reliable information about the body. The Greeks had either bad data about physiology, or no data at all. It is therefore hard to credit their view of medicine. Accurate information seems, after all, so much more real and credible than wisdom.

Hippocrates knew nothing about so elementary a fact as the circulation of the blood. He thought of blood as a pure vehicle for the elements of creation—earth, air, fire, and water—and he held that the purest blood must reside nearest the heart, the seat of the purest affections. He and his contemporaries argued whether consciousness could be located in the brain or the bloodstream. Choosing one or the other put you into entirely different camps of Greek medicine. 

 

This seems now like a ridiculously primitive disagreement, but the ancient physicians collectively held on to some invaluable assumptions that no one's debating. They assumed that man and the entire world were endowed with life, intelligence, and a soul. Since they believed that every bit of the living world contributed to human well-being for better or worse, the ancients built their centres of medicine at sites of great beauty and sanctity. A hospital was very much like a temple. Patients came for inner, as well as outer restoration, and their physicians found the fresh air and sunlight to be highly beneficial for both. In his counsel to doctors, Hippocrates wrote one great dictum: “Nature is the curer of sickness.” His famed center of medicine on the island of Kos was reputed to contain six thousand medicinal plants, but he knew stronger remedies than any of them: “Leave your drugs in the pot at the pharmacy if you cannot cure the patient with food.”

Nowdays our hospitals are being removed from garden settings into glossy, glassy factory complexes, built on poisoned railway yards next the busiest of traffic intersections in the whole CBD. And hospital food ranks down there with airline food as standard fare for comedy!! Our sports fans get a better deal than the sick!! And the wealthy get to live in garden-apartment piles where the hospitals once stood. Unless, of course, you're both sick and really rich, in which case you can afford to go to private clinics which are often located in really beautiful and specially endowed places, and they look like – you guessed it – temples.

Hippocrates' complete trust in Nature is dismissed as quaintly radical now. But if he turned out to be right, wouldn’t we all feel nothing less than immense embarrassment? The ancients proposed that nature, meaning our own inner nature, had sufficient means to keep us completely healthy. Their ideal was a state of health that harboured no thoughts of sickness at all. (I am reminded of the old custom in India whereby a physician was paid only if everyone in his village was well.) In other words, health was like freedom. A free life did not confine itself to boundaries, theories, turf wars and precautions. A free life is lived spontaneously, taking its nourishment from air, sun, food, and philosophy, and the more spontaneous it is, the stronger it stands.

Nothing in our medical system yet comes close to this sort of inspiration. In exchange for ideal health, we accept a view that is more practical and (so we say) more rational. Our science attempts to understand the body one piece at a time, in terms of cells, tissues, and organs. It protects our health the same way, one disease at a time.

But the rational system has wandered so far from its source that it is turning in on itself. If we believe the marketers, we can't even be a responsible parent unless we buy and shovel down our throats half the local pharmacy every week. We are losing the family GP in favour of battery “super clinics”. Confidence in doctors is becoming rare; we're even suing them when we get to hang on to our favourite illness. The incredible expense and complexity of the present system is testament to a technological blowout. Our growing resistance to formerly life-saving drugs indicates we might just have missed something along the way from Kos to here.

What is less well known, because doctors do not discuss it very openly, is the futility of practicing medicine without a basic healing ideal. What kind of holistic rubbish would my present GP find in these two lines:

Rejoice at your inner powers, for they are your connection to wholeness and holiness in you,

Rejoice at seeing the light of day, for seeing makes truth and beauty possible.

They happen to come from Hippocrates, and as long as they still have some meaning to a practitioner somewhere, medicine can be saved from becoming totally soulless.

But it would seem that both economic rationalism and dis-ease are getting the upper hand. Economics and technology have not delivered on their promises. Economics has too much to do with fiscal showcasing. The rational methods, the machines, the controls and concepts of treatment seem to have too little to do with life and too much to do with postponing death in the name of “saving life”. 

Practicing medicine as we do now makes a doctor’s life as nerve-racking as a soldier’s. It consists of an endless struggle to conquer disease, and to keep at this, a doctor must deny to himself that disease ultimately wins. The essence of healing life begins when we get that there ain't no cure for death. But these are not the kinds of thoughts you permit yourself, are they? But doctors do face up to them from time to time, and wonder what their work is for.

Success in any system, however, depends on everyone believing in the system. I used to be much more into believing than I am now. My beliefs have been changing and waning very fast, and now I am part of what my GP might call “the holistic menace”. When someone says someone I know has cancer, I now ask “What's eating her?” I am amazed at how long it took me to discover something that is almost absurdly simple: a healer must trust in Nature and be happy and whole in himself. From there, he can change the world.

[We Can Change the World – Anne Kirkpatrick & Slim Dusty (A) – 4:30]

 I can change the world. And if I can, so can you. Every thought you buy into, every feeling you nurture, every move you make, every action you take – matters. I've spoken of it before; it's called the Butterfly Effect --

In 1963, Edward Lorenz presented a hypothesis to the New York Academy of Science. His theory, stated simply, was that:

A butterfly could flap its wings and set molecules of air in wave motion, which would move other molecules of air, in turn moving more molecules of air—eventually capable of starting a hurricane on the other side of the planet.

Lorenz and his ideas were literally laughed out of the conference. What he had proposed was ridiculous. It was preposterous. But it was fascinating! Therefore, because of the idea’s charm and intrigue, the so-called “butterfly effect” became a staple of science fiction, remaining for decades a combination of myth and legend spread mainly by comic books and bad movies.

So imagine the scientific community’s shock and surprise when, more than thirty years after the possibility was introduced, quantum physics professors working from colleges and universities worldwide came to the conclusion that the butterfly effect was authentic, accurate, and viable.

Soon after, it was accorded the status of a “law.” Now known as The Law of Sensitive Dependence Upon Initial Conditions. In Baz-speak, that means “If you spit in the wind, expect a tidal wave of booger back.”

Now I'm no butterfly – more like a daggy old moth. But the stories I tell have the power to provide hope and direction for your lives, and sometimes also help in leading others to their own life of permanent purpose! Imagine what could happen in your life, your relationships, or your businesses if we were able to put away our self doubts and fears, and MAKE JUST ONE MOVE that could dramatically affect how we, and others, live today.

I don't care how retarded, how slow, or how handicapped you think you are, you can make one move. I just made another one, and I'm watching the waves ripple around the world.

Come on. What have you got to lose? Make a wave. Make a difference.

[Wave – Slava Grigoryan, Jane Rutter, David Jones]

THE PUSH IS ON........

PAUSE A MOMENT

THE PUSH IS ON

[The Rising of Jih – Life of Nungen]

The eagle gently coaxed her offspring toward the edge of the nest. Her heart quivered with conflicting emotions as she felt her chicks' resistance to her persistent nudging.

She thought,"Why does the thrill of soaring have to begin with the fear of falling?" This ageless question was still unanswered for her.
As in the tradition of the species, her nest was located high upon the shelf of a sheer rock face. Below there was nothing but air to support the wings of each child.
"Is it possible that this time it will not work?" she thought. Despite her fears the eagle knew it was time. Her parental mission was all but complete.
There remained one final task...the push. The eagle drew courage from an innate wisdom. Until her children discovered their wings, there was no point to being an eaglet. Until they learned how to fly and experience for themselves the power of soaring in thermal updrafts, they would fail to understand the privilege it was to have been born an eagle. The Push was the greatest gift she had to offer. It was her supreme act of love.
And so, one by one, she pushed her chicks and...

THEY FLEW.

[Looking For Space – John Denver]

 

In any environment (national, family, social, religious) where much is expected from individuals, the best rise to meet the challenge and make everything brighter. The rest, when pushed to, at least get up and wash behind their ears and comb their hair, albeit resentfully.

In environments where little is expected of individuals, the best see a better way and go toward that. The rest complain and leave the work to someone else – anyone else; they don't care, as long as they don't have to lift a finger. One of many devastating images in Stanley Kubrick's explosive film, “A Clockwork Orange” is of the anti-hero, Alex, lounging back in his publicly funded hospital suite, being spoonfed by a politician. All he has to do is remember to open his mouth, in demand.

[Theme from “A Clockwork Orange” – Walter Carlos]

Supportive encouragement can come in many forms, sometimes the polar opposite of what we expect. Sometimes it is a comforting arm around your shoulders; sometimes it is a swift kick up the backside. Sometimes it is the courageous, honest, harsh words of a friend, a loved one, or an enemy - that help us make a course correction away from self-defeating and limiting behavior. Such words were spoken to me one morning in a corridor in Channel Nine in Perth. But first, a little background.......

As a young person I was very ambitious, but for all the wrong reasons. I was impatient, fueled by an intense desire to succeed, not out of the simple desire for success, but to remove a gigantic chip off my shoulder. I had to prove to my father that he was wrong about me. I wasn't a lazy good-for-nothing. I deserved better than to be used as kicking and punching practice for him and any twerp who felt like having a go. 

The truth was that I was a confirmed “Nobody”, desperately looking for a way to be a “Somebody”. I wasn't afraid of hard work; on the contrary, I would do anything moral and legal to get rich and famous, and the quicker, the better. I wanted to show every bastard who'd ever bashed, taunted and teased me and made my school-age life a living hell that I was worth something!! I just hadn't worked out what I was worthy of.

By my mid-twenties my drive had propelled me to achieve my first great ambition – to be a successful television producer and director. By my mid-thirties I had graduated through NIDA with every available acting award under my arm, slogged my way up the ranks in two years with the Melbourne Theatre Company, and was in my third year with the second-highest rating television drama on Australian TV. There was nowhere in Australia I could walk down the street and not be recognised and mobbed – clear evidence that I had arrived; I had joined the ranks of those who've "made it." Big deal! 

Then came that memorable morning in the corridor of Channel Nine in Perth. Laurie Kiernan, the blunt and brillliant head of Swan Television bailed me up, fixed me with a penetrating gaze and said “Mr. Barkla, how come you're not doing better than you are?” The question came out of the blue, but I had a ready, well-rehearsed answer listing all the circumstances and people who were holding me back. He listened patiently until I ran out of steam, pursed his lips and nodded - “That's a mighty impressive list, Mr. Barkla. Only one thing wrong with it. Your name isn't on it.”.............

I'd show him! Keeping Channel Nine as a client, I went into my own marketing and events organising business. Despite being very good at what we did, the business failed when my  partner skipped town. All on my own I pulled it out of the financial hole it had fallen into, paid off every creditor, then sold it. I was back!! Then the sky fell in. In all this time I failed to notice that my marriage of 18 years had disintegrated. When she left, I disintegrated. Besides having nothing, I felt I was nothing, and from where I stood at the time, that was the worst possible realisation. It felt like being dead and unable to lie down. The downhill slide was slow, steady and painful. My father and every other bully who'd ever taken a cheap shot at me were right! Convinced that I had blown life irrevocably, I saw no promise for the future whatsoever. I hadn't just hit the bottom, I had gone right on past bedrock straight to hell. Even banging my head against the walls didn't remove the greater pain of failure.

Yet, ironically, it was that disaster that rescued me.

One morning I came to the breakfast table nursing a king-sized hangover—not exactly a time when one is expecting a revelation! However, my receptiveness was of no concern to the friend I had stayed with that night. She knew it was time for me to confront the truth, and she shouldered the responsibility for The Push. [I was about to get my first taste of the difference between a do-gooder and an empowering mentor. Sometimes it's necessary to either get out of the way, or actually push someone in the direction they're already going – it's their journey after all. Who are you to interfere? A complete breakdown is often the best precursor to a breakthrough.]

Quietly, slowly and succinctly, my friend uttered words that will indelibly be imprinted on my mind: "Barrie, you have become so ordinary."

Ordinary?? Ordinary!!! The words cut me to the quick, seared my fuzzy brain and haunted me for the rest of the week. At my core I had long believed that there was no such thing as an ordinary human being, and if there was, it certainly wasn't me! I was special! 

But on my way out of the kitchen I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. What I saw staring back at me made “ordinary” look desirable. "What have you been doing?" I asked my reflection. "Two years ago you were on top of the world and now you've hit the pits. What happened? I've tried to do everything I've been taught. I've always tried to do the right thing. Where did I go so wrong?"

Insight and learning comes only when we are open and ready. My friend's words had left me a vulnerable yet willing student. But she followed it up with action. She got me to ring a guy called Colin Hayes to apply for one of his live-in workshops (Inward Adventure) which was due to start that weekend. He asked me two questions – “Are you ready to try anything new that will get you out of the pit you're in? Are you willing to surrender to the process?” I said “Yes” to both, and meant it with all my heart. 

Then something else occurred to me – had life been unfair to me? No question about that. But so what? Had it not been unfair to millions of others? Had many of them not faced far worse circumstances? Had they accepted defeat?

My reaction for years had been to not only be a victim, but to remain a victim. On the surface, I was a success – a celebrity on an enviable acting career. But away from the public, I was just as much a victim as I had ever been. In playing a victim I was, unconcsiously, paying my parents back for all the mistakes I was sure they'd made in bringing me up. Or so I thought. See what a failure I am? That's your failure! See how wrong I am? That's how right I am!

Fortunately during that first Inward Adventure I got the ludicrousness of my resentments. Fortunately I was also aware enough, and smart enough to recognise that my behavior of blaming, excuse-making and finger pointing was getting me nowhere. Within a week the guidepost to a positive future flashed like a neon sign—Personal Responsibility. It was a road that I knew would not be easy, but upon which I was ready to embark without the slightest hesitation.

Since I got my shit together, I have qualified and practised as a counselor with Lifeline, written several books, produced films and been a guest speaker and tutor at conferences. Now I get to share my stuff with you on radio. There has been no greater learning for me, than this -- within the events and circumstances of our present lives lies the wisdom upon which to build our futures. All we need do is find it. And it is closer than the nose on our face.

My life has taught me that mistakes don't matter, failure doesn't matter. What matters is that we continue to move forward and grow from our experiences. Hal Prince, the famous Broadway producer said: "Anyone who hasn't had a failure is a novice." Someone else said "Beware the unwounded healer".

I haven't seen my friend in many a year. But her words spoken with candour, yet great love, are my ongoing encouragement to settle for nothing less than the extraordinary.

My way of being extraordinary is to keep nothing for myself. Everything I have ever gained from this life is available to be paid forward to anyone who is ready and willing to grow up. And this is where, with the aid of music, my favourite tools of encouragement get airplay – Words....

[Words – Darren Hayes]

Our Words Are seeds planted in other people's Lives.

What we say is important. Our vocabulary should be well stocked with words of gratitude and dreams. So that there is never any doubt in anyone's mind about your integrity, your values, and where you're coming from, be known as someone who means what you say, says what you mean, and speaks purposefully and creatively.

Recently I saw a sign under a mounted trout. It read, "If I had kept my mouth shut I wouldn't be here." How true! Don't jump into trouble mouth first. You choose your words: you choose the consequences.

Let me pose this question for you: Starting today what could happen if you changed the words you say and the thoughts and feelings you harbour about your biggest problem, and your biggest opportunity?

[Sweet Words – Peter Skellern]

"Our words create our worlds," says Dean Sikes. Your words have the power to start fires, or quench passion.

Don't be like the man who joined a monastery in which the monks were allowed to speak only two words every seven years. After the first seven years had passed, the new initiate met with the abbot, who asked him, "Well, what are your two words?"

"Food's bad," replied the man, who then went back to his silence.

Seven years later the clergyman asked, "What are your two words now?"

"Bed's hard," the man responded.

Seven years later - twenty-one years after his initial entry into the monastery - the man met with the abbot for the third and final time. "And what are your two words this time?" the abbot asked.

"I quit."

"Well, I'm not surprised," the cleric answered disgustedly. "All you've done since you got here is complain!"

Don't be like that man; don't be known as a person whose only words and attitudes are ones of complaint (that includes andger and resentment, by the way). If you're a member of the "negative grapevine," resign.

Contrary to what you may have heard, talk is not cheap. Talk is powerful! Your words are your wand. Whatever you wave around, comes around.

Do you really think your words won't come back on you? I have a Ruthless Rule of Reality that reminds me “You cannot sink half a ship.” Noah's Ark taught me, if nothing else, that all the water in the world will not sink a ship until at least some of it starts getting inside. All the troubles in the world cannot sink you unless you jump in up to your scuppers and start taking them on board. Then you're no use to anyone, least of all yourself.

[The Sweetest Sounds – Billy May]

Stay on the bank and throw lifelines of encouragement. Choose words that soothe, caress, inspire, empower, provoke, instil, abate, exhort, further, support, promote, motivate, actuate, incite, induce, influence, stimulate, seduce, attract, allure, or stir... Use active verbs that DO something rather than adjectives that flatter, obfuscate, deceive or destroy.

Here's a question for you: 

At the end of each day, do you welcome your words back?

The Push is on. Sometimes we all lose our way and forget our highest purpose, our grandest dream.

Make sure your intentions are creative, not destructive. When the time comes, as Shakespeare says in the Scottish play, "Screw your Courage and Audacity to the sticking place, and you'll not fail". Do what must be done. Make sure the person you're engaging with will fly solo when you're done. Do what ever it takes to encourage those you love to re-member, leap into space and become what they were born to be.

[The Sweetest Sounds – Janet Seidel]

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]