Zen and The Art of Less Effort
Recently 20/20 wrote on the Science of Excellence list about NLPers, therapy junkies, and persuasion being into micromanagement. This reminded me of a time when a young couple, both of them good friends of mine, just moved in together for the first time. It wasn’t all that surprising though since they’d been a couple for at least four or five years at that point.
They were both casual smokers back then. Both were in college. He was a musician and they both liked to go to parties. No big deal. So one Saturday morning after they moved in, they asked me to come to breakfast. They never carried cigarettes, but would smoke if one was offered. Only that particular morning he produced an expensive looking pack of English cigarettes and gave them to her.
Her eyes lit up and she smiled from ear to ear. And then she suddenly said…
“There is nothing like a good cup of coffee and a delicious cigarette in the morning. Just sitting in the morning sun, listening to the birds, and letting your thoughts go free. I sure do love to smoke a good cigarette!”
He looked confused and asked her, “Hmmm..I didn’t think you were into smoking so much. Just once every so often for fun.”
She didn’t look at him, but continued to speak about cigarettes, “Cigarettes are really terrible. They blacken your lungs, shorten your life span. They stink and taste awful. In fact, I hate smoking!”
At that point I had no idea what to make of these two, but I just watched both of them in silence. I wondered if this was the end of the beginning.
Now he said, “You know, those cigarettes were kind of expensive and I thought it would just be fun to smoke them after a nice breakfast is all. One minute you’re loving it and suddenly you hate them?”
And she leaned over, kissed him on the cheek and replied, “I have a choice about which opinion I want to hold–and that depends upon whether we have cigarettes or not.”
People’s stories evolve. Not all situations fit in a box. Use whatever works at the time. You’re the expert where you are. I want you to go ahead and think of a situation that you or someone else has to work through. Is it similar to anything else you’ve experienced? If so, how did you get through it? Write it out and read it back to yourself. It can be a few simple paragraphs. And begin to let your story evolve. Perhaps it was you or a friend, or maybe a bear in the woods?
Before psychology, before NLP, before books and CD’s we had shamans telling stories…don’t try too hard.
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