Ice Skating on Positivity

Sydney's gone.

I have closed my school, put my dreams to bed and turned instead to face the mounting challenges of Japan. (Another blog for that.) Me, the eternal optimist, experiences defeat. There is no rosy face to it - I lost. My learning is in the admission - don't try to cheer me up.

I had been ice skating on positivity, but there lurked death-freezing danger as reality created cracks across my veil of thin ice. Can you see me, joyously skating across the lake of my hallucinations? There I am, laughing and shouting then suddenly: GONE. Where is he? Oh, I think he fell into a hole…

It was my wake up call. I still imagined I was 26, but without a million dollars to back me up. BodyChance in Sydney needed money, resources and most of all - teachers. Who was going to staff my studio? In my own article of DIRECTION, I pointed out that a school can not thrive in the absence of a thriving practise. Actually, it was that article for DIRECTION that first triggered my doubt: I was not able to implement what I had in Japan - the very source of our success. I was trying to create a school without first building a public business of teaching.

Those who know me well understand that more than a school in Sydney has fallen apart. My words read lighter than the heart that conveys them.

Yet I am still like those self-righting toys with the sand base at the bottom - I have rocks at my base in the form of belief, who hold me to my task in life and I turn again to building an extraordinary business around the discoveries of F. Matthias Alexander. Albeit just Japan. Good lord - isn't that big enough?!

So there is a rosy face I guess: the learning of defeat. Now I know: if I want to start a studio in another country, I need a lot of available time, a lot of money, many skilled BodyChance teachers, a lot of support and a well thought out plan of constructive action. This time, I had none of the above. It looks so obvious now - why couldn't I see it then?

Madness - but that is what happens when you ice-skate on positivity alone.