Managing the Mammal in You

Sonja Higgo, one of my star students - and her Self an experienced teacher of many years - just emailed me this note…

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What I have noticed recently is that I benefit and enjoy doing the task I intended to do rather than procrastinating once again. As I experienced relief and joy about such a simple decision I found it really easy to change.

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It was timely for me, as procrastination recently haunts my days.

I get up, make a list, and do very little of it. DAMN!

How do you manage the mammal in you?

It's a new frame for an old question, one that is the linchpin of all successful endeavour. One of my methods comes from a learning in a workshop in Washington, D.C., several decades ago. And I've started to use it again, to good effect…

It has to do with listening to "my voice" which was born at this workshop…

WHAT IS MY VOICE?

This workshop was like none other. It was full of therapists, psychologists, long-time AT teachers – they had come to witness a new kind of Alexander work, that I had just invented the week before in New York. I have written about this in my ThinkingBody history download essay, but the short of it is this: I was using the Change Compass and FM's story to help people sort out their own stuff.

Now, we're talking about people who had been "sorting out their own stuff" for decades; people who were highly trained; people who were already helping others.

Who was I to be their guide?

And yet, guide I was. Or rather 'my voice' guided me, to guide them.

I didn't have a plan. I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't following any formula.

Instead, I was intensely focused ON THEM: listening to their every gesture, tone and word, and waiting for a question or comment to appear in my mind. I see it in my trainees all the time - when they practise teaching, they know what to do next. But they don't do it. They don't follow their 'voice'.

When they do, it works out. When they don't, it doesn't. Simple.

I have almost NO recollection of that workshop, and yet it went tremendously well. I came to see, that when I trusted that voice, the work went well. When I questioned that voice, or refused to follow the simple instructions, my group slowly unravelled.

Now I've started practising to live that way. It's a quiet voice, hard to hear…

Instead of THEM, I now intensively focus on ME.

That's why my lists don't always get done.

If the voice says "take a bath" and it's the middle of the day - I take a bath. If the voice says "sleep" and I just got up, ate breakfast and think I am ready to start working, I sleep.

So is it procrastination, or is it something else?

I've yet to read any neuroscience that can confirm or deny the reality of this silent internal guide, but my spiritual mentor Byron Katie is very big on it.

"Just follow the simple instructions" is her mantra.

My guess is, that is what Sonja is doing. She is following the simple instructions. The alternative is to question, wonder, second guess, do something different etc.

NO, don't do that. Instead…

Just do it. If the voice says so, do it.

What does your 'voice' say about learning more?

ThinkingBody Online