NEIL COWMEADOW - THE EXPERT GUITAR TEACHER IN TELFORD. GUITAR TEACHER AND AUTHOR. GUITAR LESSONS THAT WORK! DEDICATED TO TEACHING SINCE 1999 - ACCELERATED LEARNING TECHNIQUES: LEARN FASTER, PLAY BETTER, AND UNDERSTAND...

The Thursday Thesis  - 27/6/2019

Is classical Time Management missing the point?

The Thursday Thesis  - 20/6/2019

I have a voice in my head.

You have a voice in your head, too.

If you think you don’t, whose voice was it that just said “no I haven’t”?

We all have voices in our heads – not the schizophrenic’s auditory hallucination kind of voices – but the voices that haunt us and screw us up.

They’ve been around for so long that we usually accept them as permanent and just another part of us: they’re part of our identity, even though they are usually just repeating echoes of long-ago, distorted, corrupted and twisted by time.

Mine is the schoolteacher who told me that I’d never amount to anything, and the protective parental voices counselling me to not take risks and to find a nice, safe job. They lurk just below the level of my ear, slightly behind my right shoulder – the same place they’ve always been.

What’s yours like?

Maybe – like me – you’re still hearing the words of someone with authority and upon whom you depended for approval or love, all rolled together into the voice of your Inner Critic

And maybe you’ve been listening to them talk crap about you, too - maybe for decades - just like my own inner voices have been talking trash about me and giving me their ten cents’ worth for decades,  making me play it safe and doubt myself.

Well, they used to do that...

You see, a little while back, I got lucky. James, one of my mentors, showed me how to turn my own inner critic (a.k.a. my “Inner Bastard”) into my new Best Friend Forever.

As he guided me through the process, he asked “...the voice in your head is always in the same location when it speaks to you, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh...” I agreed.

He pressed on “...And it always has the same characteristics of tone, volume, cadence – and it usually says the same old words it has been using since...well since forever, doesn’t it?”

I think I nodded.

“It’s giving you the same message – like a tired old telephone answering machine that’s played the same worn-out tape for decades...” He said.

“Now we’re going to change the tape, but the voice will remain exactly the same: the same position, the same intonation, volume and cadence, but now it’s going to speak different words. It’s like we’re going to change the tape in the machine: use the voice – change the tap... use the voice – change the tape... use the voice – change the tape.”

I moved my hands through the actions of removing the imaginary cassette tape from the imaginary machine and inserting a brand-new, shiny imaginary cassette...then pressing “PLAY”...

Now my old schoolteacher was telling me “Neil, you’re an oddball – a creative guy, very bright and full of fun, and I am absolutely certain that no matter what obstacles you face, you’ll find at least three possible solutions that are positive for everyone involved, and usually an opportunity that nobody else has spotted, too.”

Thank you Mr Roberts! Why didn’t you say that forty bloody years ago?

Then my dear old mom and dad chimed in – but what they said to me on the tape is private and sacred.

The effect was immediate, and I was close to tears.

James had me repeat the tape-changing process and tweak what the voices on the tape said until it was exactly right, then to leave the machine turned on and ready to play the tape for me at any time.

This was some pretty weird stuff to take in, but I gotta tell you that it works: it works better than almost any self-talk intervention I’ve ever seen or read-up on.

Some self-talk modifiers suggest that we should draw Mickey Mouse ears on the voices and give them helium to make them squeaky voices; others suggest moving the voices further away or moving the mental volume and tone controls. They also work, but not for everyone and not always quickly or permanently; I suspect that this is inconsistent because we have changed the attributes of the voice and it loses its authoritative qualities – that’s actually the whole point of the exercise.
But here’s the thing: if you retain the attributes of the voice – instead of changing them - it retains its authority, credibility and power.

Now, when the voice speaks to you, it still has all the gravity, power and credibility it has always had, but now it is saying positive things to you.

What would you prefer your Inner Critic to say to you?

Change the tape, and notice the difference...

How cool is that?
 
© Neil Cowmeadow 2019
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Episode 155 - The Wisdom of Baldrick

The Thursday Thesis  - 13/6/2019

Baldrick: Wait a moment, My Lord! I have a cunning plan that cannot fail!
                                                          Blackadder “The Witchsmeller Pursuivant” 

Yep, even Blackadder’s sidekick – the downtrodden yet optimistic Baldrick – had a plan. And Baldrick’s plan was always very cunning – at least to Baldrick.

And it’s a funny thing, but growing up in Wolverhampton in the sixties and seventies, nobody mentioned plans for our lives: certainly not at school, and not at home either. At no point did anyone suggest that having a plan for your life would be a good thing, or that aiming high was to be desired and admired. Though, come to think of it, I probably wouldn’t have listened to them if they had: I was always a stroppy little sod.

As the seventies ended and the decade tipped over into the eighties the story was still the same: plans for your life were not talked about: they were not what you did. I do distinctly remember being told that if I were foolish or arrogant enough to dare to make a plan, I could expect Fate to thwart and frustrate me at every step.

It seemed that Life Plans were for dreamers and delusional oddballs; the know-alls and nutjobs. And there was something comedic about these people with plans, too – as though they were dreaming a little too hard...

Now I understand that if we don’t have a plan for how our lives should be, we’ll end up working for someone else who does have a plan for us and whose plans probably won’t be much to our benefit: I just wish I’d found that out forty years ago!

You don’t have to look far to see people making plans – invariably the wrong plans. It’s commonplace to spend a very long time planning one’s wedding or annual holiday – but it’s much less common to really plan a life for oneself, based upon what might be a fun way to spend the next seventy or so years.

Doesn’t that strike you as odd – or is it just me?

If you have a plan, then there’s a chance of things going the way you want them to. Without a plan we are unlikely to end up with what we want.

Like a beautiful ship without a map or compass, we can sail and drift for years – sometimes for a lifetime – even though the rudder is working and the sails are full of wind, but without a course to steer by, even the best ships wreck and run aground on unknown shores.

In the military it’s often said that “no plan survives contact with the enemy” and  it’s true. The armed forces are masters of planning, and the phrase “planned with military precision” has become synonymous with effective and efficient operations. Here’s the thing, though: the army knows that its plans will not survive contact with the enemy, but it still invests time and effort into making plans to ensure that the desired operational outcome is achieved with minimal losses – after all, what kind of army goes off to war with the idea that they’ll maybe go and “...wander around – probably in that country over there - and maybe do some fighting...”?

It would be ridiculous for an army to act in that way, and it would be ridiculous for anyone to act in that way, too.  

For an army many lives may depend upon the operational plan: for us as individuals, we are entirely dependent on our plan, or – more often than not – no plan whatsoever.

We march forth into each new day, becoming too focused in the day-to-day business of daily life to pause and look a little further down the road, survey hazards and scout for opportunities, and to make plans for their evasion or exploitation. Lost in the fast-paced busy-ness of everyday life, crisis of the moment and our immediate needs, we forget to plan what happens after today’s crisis has passed.

So I think it’s a great idea to take time off, once a year, and get away from work for a day or three. Isolate yourself from anything that could distract you from figuring out how you’d like to spend the next ten, twenty or more years and deciding what your life might be after those years have passed.

Write it all down and review your plan – in depth, every month; refer to your plan on Monday morning and notice how things are progressing or not progressing; then identify the short-term activities which will move you closer to your desired outcome.

It’s not rocket science, but a plan is usually the thought-foundation upon which everything else is built.

You see, making a plan is just like creating a blueprint for your life. There will be changes and amendments, re-thinks and re-drafts along the way, it will never be completely right, and it will never be perfect, because no plan ever is - but even a fairly good plan has a better chance of success than having no plan at all.
 
© Neil Cowmeadow 2019
Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me.
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The Thursday Thesis  - 6/6/2019

"Ah Yes... She was beautiful, and I was blind"

A long time ago, I loved as only the young and reckless can love.

I can still remember what it was like, even now.

But....

And there's always a but, isn't there?

I was lucky to connect the dots between a couple of chance remarks made by friends.

I’d been deceived.

Lied to.

I crumpled, moped and blubbered like - well - the most  crumpled, moping blubbery thing you can imagine.

Eventually an old mate asked me “What’s Good About This?”

He reckoned I'd been lucky; that I'd had a near miss and I was lucky to not waste my precious time on her.

Lucky - because the truth of the situation bubbled to the surface – the truth always does; it’s a bugger for that.

Lucky - because the insistent gut-feeling that had plagued me for months solidified into an undeniable knot of certainty.

Lucky - because I’d no longer waste my precious life where I had no value.

That’s what was good about it – instead of waiting for the right moment, waiting for something to change, I changed.

My hours and days would cease to bleed away, hoping against hope for a miracle.

Blinded and deceived, I had lost any sense of my real worth.

I wasn't the first – and I won’t be the last – man to be deceived.

I still remind myself to pay attention to the gut-feeling that warns and growls out “Danger!”

I remind myself that the way someone does one thing is the way they do everything: their values and belief are shown in all that they do.

I’ll remind myself that thoughts become actions, actions become habits, habits become personalities, and personalities define the life.

And most of the time, a liar will always lie, a thief will always thieve.

And an optimist will continue their unstoppable march, undaunted.

I am now officially an optimist, and I still march on.

That’s what was good about being dumped.