EnormousYes

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What would you love to do now?

This is not goodbye

By: Odette Beris
06-11-2011
Change

Silence, so they say, is golden. I’m not sure that’s always true but sometimes a little quiet from time to time is possibly a good thing. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself since the EnormousYes blog has become markedly less prolific of late.

As its principle writer, I have been somewhat indisposed you might say. Having elected to go back to university full-time for a year my mind is now filling up with essays to be written and journal papers to be read. All of this is very exciting and challenging but with this new preoccupation come inevitable demands. Put bluntly, time has become more limited. And so it seems the EnormousYes blog has come to something of a grinding halt or simply a temporary hiatus.

I don’t think this is an altogether bad thing. I wanted to write a series of blogs that explored things I have found interesting and inspiring as a psychologist and as a person. I hope I have been true to that goal. I didn’t want to simply write about career issues as though they occur in a narrow box labelled ‘work’. Afterall, what we do for work, for money and out of interest imbues our life with meaning; it provides us with a narrative about who we are and what we want.

I hope to return to the EnormousYes blog when I have more time to give it but in the meantime, thanks for reading.

‘Silence is better than unmeaning words.’
Pythagoras

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Time is a relative thing…

By: Odette Beris
18-09-2011
Time

Lately, I’ve been curious about relativity, the idea that time is not an absolute but instead is inextricably linked to our frame of reference (see website on Einstein’s Special Relativity). Psychologically speaking, if feels right. After all isn’t much of our experience of reality fundamentally based on our unique perspective? For this to be mirrored in the physical world makes some kind of sense perhaps.

Although relativity is often associated with Einstein, it seems that it was Galileo who discussed the principle of relative motion. In his paradigm, a stationary observer will see things differently from an individual in motion. Galileo suggested that motion is a ‘subjective’ element in the laws of nature (Sachs, 2005). The frame of reference is the key.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity built on Galileo’s principle of relativity but presents a new understanding of time (Sachs, 2005). Previously, scientists had thought time to be absolute but Michelson’s experiments for instance showed that the speed of light did not change but remained constant. Einstein’s theory differed from Galileo’s principle of relativity in that he considered time to be relative to the frame of reference as opposed to an absolute.

To illustrate the point; if someone went off travelling round the moon in a rocket close to the speed of light, their individual experience of time would remain consistent. However, Einstein’s theory predicts that when their frame of reference is changed, that is, when they arrive back home, less time would have appeared to have passed for them compared to those who stayed on Earth. (see wikipedia entry for more on this).

Ultimately, it’s quite radical to think about time as a flexible idea rather than an unchanging constant. Perhaps the laws of physics show us a deeper truth about our existence; that our frame of reference literally shapes our reality. From a psychological perspective, I wonder if our experience of time is, in a sense, a subjective idea depending on our mood or what we are doing. Perhaps we carry our own version of time with us wherever we go.

References:
Sachs, M. (2005) Motion in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Comparisons with Classical Views.
Journal of Multibody Dynamics 219, 125

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment

Bibliography:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/universe/questions_and_ideas/special_relativity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity

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The simple pleasures

By: Odette Beris
04-09-2011
Positive Psychology, Simple pleasures

“Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.”
Voltaire

It’s strange the things that trigger our memory. I was watching a film set in Paris the other night and it reminded me of a conversation I had many years ago with a French lady, when I was just 17.

Her philosophy was refreshing; she considered that much of the enjoyment in life could be found in simple pleasures – a delicious meal, the sun in the morning. In particular, I remember her talking about the sheer pleasure of rinsing her hands, the warmth of the water, how it felt against her skin. Much of what else she said has, alas, been forgotten with my teenage self, but her exquisite description of the pleasure of washing her hands left an indelible impression.

Looking back, I think this woman instinctively knew what positive psychology had yet to articulate – appreciating the richness and sensuality of life can tangibly enhance our experience of living. It can alter our mood and expand our outlook. A walk in the park in the autumn sun, the bitter taste of rich dark coffee in the morning, laughing with friends – this is the stuff of life that opens our minds and in a sense, makes us lighter.

Barbara Fredrickson’s research on positivity (2009) offers empirical support for this view. She suggests that positive emotions are literally good for us enabling us to extend and develop our social and psychological resources. Interestingly, her research findings suggest that for every negative emotion we need at least 3 positive ones in order to flourish. A tipping point of 3:1. And in a way this makes sense to me as most of us have a tendency to overweight the negative perhaps not paying enough attention to the good things.

On a practical level, there are things we can actively do to redress this imbalance of overweighting the negative. We can be more mindful, noticing what’s around us, focusing on the here and now. There’s also a useful little exercise called ’3-Good-Things’ designed to direct attention and focus awareness on the positive (Seligman, 2011). As the name suggests, it entails writing down on a daily basis 3 good things that happened each day for a week accompanied by a brief note as to why they were good.

Reflecting and writing about what has brought you pleasure each day becomes habitual. I now do it all the time. Somehow I think I manage to squeeze some extra pleasure out of the event by simply remembering.

To become aware of the good things in life is to begin to appreciate them.

References:
Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity. NY: Crown Publishers.
Seligman, M., (2011). Flourish, Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

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In-between

By: Odette Beris
19-08-2011
liminality, transitions

Summer is fading fast. The pink roses outside my house are wilting. The leaves haven’t yet changed colour but the coolness of autumn is palpable. Late summer at the edge of autumn. A time of transition; neither one thing nor another but somewhere in-between. And I must admit, I find the idea of in-between-ness a fascinating one, not least because it seems to be intertwined with the notion of liminality.

According to the dictionary definition, liminality derives from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. It was first referred to in the literature by the French anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep in his book ‘Les Rites de Passage’ where he associated liminality with rites of passage and transitions (King, 2006).

I think it’s particularly interesting that Van Gennep called the ‘inbetween’ phase in his rites of passage marge, because although marge was translated as ‘transition’, it actually means border or edge in French (King 2006). The process of crossing a psychological or physical threshold from one state to another might well be linked to being on the edge or border of a new landscape.

Consequently, transitions are not without risk. The fear that we might lose our sense of self and belonging as we move from one place to another may be a real threat. Does the transitional (liminal) phase inevitably lead to a period of uncertainty and chaos as we become something else?

Personally, I believe transitions can present themselves as opportunity for positive growth as well as a time of potential chaos and uncertainty. In an existential sense, I wonder whether we are always living ‘in-between’ in one way or another, it’s just that we don’t see it at the time perhaps.

As the summer fades, my old life will soon be receeding with the season. In the autumn I’m making changes of my own; going back to university and moving house. At this moment though, I’m enjoying the freedom of these in-between days. Reminds me of a Cure song.

References:
King, Julie (2006) Personal and social transition and the concept of enforced
liminality for Indigenous Australians with adult acquired physical disability. In
Proceedings Social Change in the 21st Century Conference 2006, Queensland
University of Technology.

Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago, 1960.

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Inspirational People: Musician & Recording Engineer Del Palmer

By: Odette Beris
14-07-2011
Careers, Del Palmer, Inspirational People

I’m delighted to welcome Del Palmer, musician and recording engineer as this month’s featured guest.

Del Palmer is a man of many talents. He’s a recording and mixing engineer, bass player and recording artist. Last year, Del released his solo album Gift which is a beautifully crafted, eclectic piece of work, imbued with jazz and rock influences. 2007 saw the release of Leap of Faith, Del’s 1st solo album which is a very melodic collection of songs – my personal favourite is Man Out of Time, such a magical track. In addition, he has released an EP called Outtees and Alternatives which is well worth checking out.

Del is also well known for his musical association with Kate Bush both as a musician and recording engineer. He played in the original KT Bush Band back in 1977 and has worked with Kate Bush both as a musician and then as an engineer on many of her albums. For instance, Del was credited as the recording and mixing engineer on Kate Bush’s ‘Aerial’ as well as recording engineer on her ‘Sensual World’ album.

As is the tradition in these Inspirational People blogs, I asked Del Palmer one question:

What is the best piece of career/life advice you’ve ever received?

This is what he said:

‘So, The best and most fitting piece of advice I ever had was, in fact the running joke amongst musicians when I started..
It was.. Never give up your day job..It was always said amongst musicians as a joke and young musicians back then always thought of themselves as bullet proof and destined for the “Big Time”.. I know I did.. However I always saw it as meaning have another string to your bow… Keep an alternative up your sleeve.. I have been fortunate to have had music as my life’s work but I always have an alternative handy..
Just in case…’

Del’s advice of having an alternative career or ‘string to your bow’ strikes a chord for many reasons. Earning a living in music can be a precarious business (and indeed within the arts generally) so having a back-up plan can be a pragmatic move. Being resourceful by lining up a fall-back option doesn’t have to mean one is any less dedicated to pursuing a goal; it just may mean you have other avenues available should the need arise.

Besides, as we develop, our career interests sometimes subtly shift and evolve. Being open to alternatives can work in our favour to allow us to think about our career options more flexibly and strategically. You just never know what’s around the corner…

Sincere thanks to Del Palmer for his insightful contribution and also, for his kindness.

*Photograph used with kind permission.

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Celebrating Inspirational Women: Dr. Susan Blackmore

By: Odette Beris
06-07-2011
Dr. Susan Blackmore, Inspirational Women

Life is wonderfully random sometimes. I was in a coffee shop in the city a few weeks back and struck up a conversation with a woman sitting next to me. Somehow, we started talking about consciousness (don’t ask me how) and she recommended Susan Blackmore’s short book on consciousness ‘Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction‘ . I’m glad she did; it’s a very stimulating and interesting read which certainly challenged my assumptions on the topic.

Dr Susan Blackmore is a freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster. She studied psychology and physiology at Oxford University and has a PhD in parapyschology. She is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth. Her research interests include work on memes, meditation and consciousness – she no longer works on the paranormal.

Dr. Blackmore has written many books including The Meme Machine (1999)and recently, Zen and the Art of Consciousness (2011). In addition to her writing, she has also presented at conferences and on radio and television. I recommend watching her ted talk on a new kind of meme which is very engaging.

Inspired by her work, I invited Dr Blackmore to be this week’s featured guest. As is the format for these blogs, I asked her one question:

What is the best piece of career/life advice you’ve ever received?

She responded as follows:

“You can’t do everything”. This was one of my Mum’s favourite sayings. As a child I found her terribly annoying and bossy and difficult, and I’m sure she thought the same of me. I was always in trouble. So I tended to ignore her advice in all its forms. Nonetheless, half a century later, and especially now that she is dead, I remember those words “You can’t do everything”. “Everything” is now so much more than she could ever have dreamed of: our world is just so much more complex and we all have opportunities way beyond anything she could have imagined, let alone aspired to. Even so the old advice applies just the same, or even more so.
When I get yet another invitation to give a lecture, write an article, attend a conference, contribute to a book or whatever it may be, and I can’t fit them all in or choose which to do; or when I think I could visit somewhere I’ve never been, or learn kayaking, or go sailing or walk on Dartmoor (all clamouring to be done from where I live in south Devon), or I worry how useless I am and imagine I should do more charitable work or help other people more …or…. I just say to myself “You can’t do everything” and it is strangely comforting. Whoever we are and whichever time we have lived in there is always far more that could be done than one person can ever do. So I get on with whatever seems most appropriate at the time and thank her for the reminder.

This advice serves as a useful reminder I think, to be selective about what we choose to pursue at any given moment. Since we can’t be everywhere at once, it’s strangely helpful to remember that we simply can’t do it all, however much we may want to pursue many different options at the same time. Going down one road may mean, necessarily, that you can’t walk another.

So choose well and remember ‘you can’t do everything‘.

Many thanks to Dr. Susan Blackmore for her participation in this blog.

*Photo used with kind permission

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Inspirational People: Matthew Syed, table-tennis champion & author

By: Odette Beris
16-06-2011
Bounce, Matthew Syed, Purposeful Practice

Today’s Inspirational Person is Matthew Syed, a man who has achieved outstanding success in sports and journalism. For a start, Matthew became the British number one table tennis player by the time he was twenty-four years old which is, by any one’s standards, a fantastic achievement. He has won the Commonwealth table tennis championships three times and competed for Britain in the Olympic games. He is also an award-winning sports journalist and author.

How has he achieved such extraordinary success? In his book Bounce, Matthew Syed explores this very question, identifying the factors contributing to his own success and that of others.

Matthew suggests that talent alone is not the only predictor of success and that continued ‘purposeful practice’, where the goal is to stretch one’s capability, is what is crucial.

He also acknowledges some of the other more random factors that facilitate success. For instance, he talks about the fact that it was sheer good fortune that his parents had a full-size tennis table in the garage and that he managed to clock up many hours of practice with his brother which enabled him to reach his potential later on.

As well as looking at success, there is a section in the book on choking and how to overcome it, which is particularly fascinating. Apparently, choking can occur in performers when they over-focus and the brain switches from the implicit to the explicit monitoring system. The effect is that this switch can temporarily turn the expert into a novice.

Overall, Bounce is a good read, not least because it makes you realise that achievement is possible with the right attitude and extensive, high quality practice.

So on with the question! As the featured Inspirational Person I asked Matthew:

What is the one best piece of career/life advice you’ve ever received?

He responded:

‘The best advice was: “never think that your abilities are fixed. All abilities can be fundamentally and powerfully transformed with the right kind of practice”. Or words to that effect. It was my first table tennis teacher, Peter Charters, who said that…’

The idea that we can change our abilities and transform our performance with the right kind of practice is an exciting even radical thought. As Matthew Syed observed, Mozart didn’t get there on talent alone. He put in the hours.

Many thanks to Matthew Syed for his participation in this blog series.

* Bounce: The myth of talent and the power of practice by Matthew Syed (Fourth Estate)

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Celebrating Inspirational Women: Professor Jo Shapcott, Poet

By: Odette Beris
13-06-2011
Inspirational Women, Jo Shapcott, Poetry

Continuing with the Celebrating Inspirational Women blog series, I am delighted to introduce poet Jo Shapcott as this month’s featured guest.

Jo Shapcott is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London and an award-winning poet. She was educated at University College Dublin, Oxford University and Harvard and is President of the Poetry Society.

Jo has published various collections of poetry including Her Book, Poems 1988-1998 which is a selection of poems taken from 3 earlier works; Electroplating the Baby, Phrase Book and My Life Asleep. She has also won many prizes including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection and the Forward Poetry Prize. Most recently, she was awarded the prestigious Costa Book of the Year Award for her latest book of poems Of Mutability.

Of Mutability is a collection of finely crafted poems about the ephemeral nature of change, reflected in both the natural world as well as the human body itself. The title poem ‘Of Mutability’ is particularly beautiful, moving from reflections on the body through to meditations on the natural world. It concludes with the elegant line: ‘Don’t trouble, though, to head anywhere but the sky’. Wonderful stuff.

As is the format with these ‘Inspirational People’ blogs, I asked Jo:

“What is the one best piece of advice in your career/life you’ve ever received?”

This is what she said:

‘The best advice for poets I’ve ever heard of is from the Irish folk singer Liam Clancy to Bob Dylan: ‘Remember Bob, no fear, no envy, no meanness.’ If those particular chips are on your shoulder they will certainly creep into your art, not to mention what they’ll do to your soul. The best advice directly to me was from the teacher who told us this: ‘There is nothing that is not interesting.’ The startling implication was that even (or perhaps, especially) boring and difficult and painful experience is enlightening – right up to the end. It was an idea that was hard for us to ‘get’ as teenagers – ‘but what about dead people, Miss, and war?’ – but also hard to forget. It’s expanded in my imagination at every stage as I’ve grown older.’

I love the advice about no fear, envy or meanness. To feel unencumbered by negative emotions sounds like a freeing idea. Jo’s second piece of advice ‘there is nothing that is not interesting‘ is also valuable I think. To be open to new areas not only satisfies our inner curiosity but broadens our knowledge. As she suggests, experiences that seem boring or challenging can sometimes extend our sense of self and in doing so, transform our universe.

Thanks to Professor Jo Shapcott for her insightful words and her participation in this blog.

*Of Mutability (2010) by Jo Shapcott is published by Faber & Faber

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The pull of ideas

By: Odette Beris
08-06-2011
ideas

I was reading about Newton’s work on gravity today and wondering, slightly tenuously perhaps, about the connection between the gravitational pull of ideas and our individual lives.

If, as Newton showed, the mass and distance of an object defines it’s gravitational force, (such that the bigger the mass the greater the force, the greater the distance the weaker the force), does this then apply to our own mental universe?

In other words, do big ideas (mass) that are close to us (distance) exert their own gravitational pull, much like the gravitational force between the sun and its planets? Afterall, we’re inevitably influenced by everything that’s around us such as language, society, politics, work & career, family, friends, education etc. The extent of their influence may depend on how close we are to an idea and how big we perceive that idea to be. And perhaps these ideas interact with each other in our own mindspace.

Maybe our micro-universe might look a bit like the model below (feel free to drag around an idea)…

Just a random thought in this metaverse.


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Don’t mind the gap

By: Odette Beris
05-06-2011
Disappointment, Expectation

For most of us, disappointment is what happens when an anticipated outcome falls short of our expectations. We expected to get that promotion or win that commission, only to find that in the end, it didn’t materialise.

So we may come to associate disappointment with unfulfilled desires. A set of mismatched expectations and outcomes, the absence of something longed for.

Of course, disappointment can affect each of us in different ways, evoking a variety of behavioural and emotional consequences. At times, we may feel powerless to effect future outcomes saying to ourselves ‘what’s the point in doing anything when I never seem to get what I want?’ Or we may become increasingly risk-averse, minimising the risk of future disappointments but in doing so, potentially restricting potential opportunities.

Yet I wonder whether disappointment is nothing more, or less, than a gap between expectations and the reality of an outcome? If we reframe disappointment as a sort of expectation gap; the gap between our expectation of the outcome and the outcome itself, then we might be less affected by its negative effects.

Instead we could see the expectation gap as a nudge to seek feedback, adjust our efforts and realign our goals or strategy based on experience. By having a more realistic expectation of events we may also inadvertently raise our threshold of disappointment and in doing so, narrow the gap.

Keep striving. Keep testing.
Don’t mind the gap.

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