Some of the best times for me are when I’m really “in the zone” with whatever I’m doing; things are snapping along smooth and fast and it feels like I could never put a foot wrong. BUT - I notice that it takes some smart managing to get through the “come-down”.

Do you notice anything like this?

One minute I’ll be really performing at my best.
For me the best metaphor for that feeling is like I’m part of a really cool high-wire trapeze act - lots of breathtaking, fast-paced, well co-ordinated, free-flowing activity. Somehow outside the normal flow of time, so that we have all the time we need to perform a split-second jump. In fact, I’m not doing anything like a high-wire act - in reality, I’ll be doing some coaching, chairing a meeting, reading a strategy paper; that kind of thing - but when I’m in the “zone” with it, it feels like that trapeze act.

But - the next minute I’ll be coming down with a jolt.
And I don’t just mean that the trivia of daily life and work interferes - you know, you’re stuck in traffic; or coming home to find the washing machine has bust or realising that somebody wants to talk about a completely minor off-agenda issue from last week’s board meeting.
No, it’s not just the trivia - I get this just whenever the “zone” moment ends.

It’s a giddy, nauseous sensation, like I jumped-off a merry-go-round  - in my mind I’m still moving, but the world isn’t.

I imagine this ‘come-down’ is what leads to things like George Best Syndrome - athletes, actors and rockstars who somehow seem to self-destruct because they just can’t handle the bits inbetween those dazzling performances.

What do you do to come down gracefully?
Please leave a comment if this is something you’ve experienced or have questions or insights into.

Some of the things that help me come down without such a jolt include:

- physical exercise - cycling home, just getting good and sweaty seems to really make a difference - probably to do with burning-off excess adrenaline

- music - especially stuff I can sing-along to or which gradually slows me down

- de-zoning - I imagine entering an airlock like on a submarine or spaceship. On one side of the airlock is my ‘zoned’ experience and on the other is the ‘normal’ space. Like in a real airlock, I’m forced to wait while the water is exchanged for air. As the water bubbles away I can gently come down.

What works for you?

What might have helped George Best come down slightly more healthily than all that booze?

[Click here for the part of my website that best covers being IN the zone]

Well, it’s proving an interesting experience having my attention focused on ‘confidence’ like this.

Today I had been thinking I might write something about death in the context of confidence.
You know, something along the lines of seeing as it’s true that none of us gets out of here alive there seems little point in wasting time being unconfident or even scared. If in the big scheme of things we’re all gonna die eventually, why not assume that whatever little activity you’re currently engaged in will succeed? I mean, how bad can it be if you get it wrong and it turns out you didn’t succeed? Worse than dying? - I don’t think so!

And then I’d planned to write a little about faith.
Remember ‘Pascal’s Wager’? The famous French mathematician had a late-life conversion to god and said that even if it was a really poor bet with terrible odds that God existed, the potential pay-off of eternity in heaven made it worthwhile being a believer - kind of like playing the Euro Lottery on a rollover, I guess.

Joking apart, faith that there is actually a bigger plan or scheme going on, call it what you will, can be a useful aid to confidence. Everytime I see those small yellow weeds growing up through cracks in the paving I think of this. There are powerful forces at work here - have faith it’ll turn out right. Or I look up at a clear, starry night sky and the sheer scale of everything comes wooshing home to me. The small mark I might make on the world if I succeed will have no more significance in such a limitless universe than if I fail hugely - so I can either have go anyway or just not bother; neither really matters in the scheme of things.

I said I HAD planned to write about those things - but as I sat down to start I had a sudden and debilitating loss of confidence.
Maybe it started because I’d been thinking about death and remembered the three or four times in my life when I genuinely did think there was a possibility I might die (icy roads, misjudged rock-pool diving, that kind of thing). Whatever the case, my gremlin took the opportunity to start running the show over here and did a good job of telling me that I don’t have anything useful to say; that nobody reads it anyway. Even now, my internal voice is saying: ”who the heck am I to be lecturing people on confidence anyway, what have I ever done? “You’re not really going to publish this rubbish are you?!”

And so, this morning at least, it comes down to a choice:
(1) Do I choose to feel terribly unconfident and write it anyway; not really knowing if I’ll fail to say what I wanted?

Or (2) do I choose to feel terribly unconfident and NOT write it; failing to say anything?

Acceptance doesn’t mean you have to like something, just that it’s happening, that’s how it is right now.

You have the ability to choose to accept that something is the way it is – and then move on.

Acceptance is a source of confidence in that it can lead to positive, creative action, rather than being stuck in simmering resentment or contrition or self-pity.

I realise also as I’m writing this that a lot of confidence also comes from acceptance of self – from being clear about who we are and giving ourselves full-permission to be OK about that. I reckon that’s worth a separate entry, so for now I’ll carry on with Acceptance of What Is – in the sense of ‘external’ situations or events or people.

My friend Jon had something very cool to say about Acceptance. I’m not quite going to remember it exactly, but he said something like:

“Great Opposition will stop them building an ugly office block on that patch of wasteland you’ve always hated; Acceptance of what is allows you to move on and campaign to get a new hospital built there.”

A lot of the most confident people I’ve worked with have this ability. They see how things are at present, but don’t get stuck there. In fact, they seem to give very little or no energy at all to “what is”. Instead they move very quickly to the possibility of what there might be instead.
In terms of the energy that you might experience, Opposition to “what is” leads to resentment, revenge and excitement – but is often rather short-lived. In contrast, the energy of Acceptance can be particularly joyful, because it leads to ambition, growth and change.

Both are useful, but perhaps Acceptance can allow us to experience our true personal gift to the world over a much longer period of time than Opposition.

[click here for View on Confidence 4]

Continuing this ad-hoc series of views, I want to say something about Opposition and Acceptance and their place in having realistic, consistent confidence.

I’ll start with Opposition, since this is a great source of energy for me personally but a tricky one, because of the ‘type’ of confidence that emerges from it. In Opposition, I’m talking about the determination not to be beaten; about not putting-up with stuff, not tolerating; of proving those people wrong who say “it can’t be done”. Opposition has a fiery, consuming sort of energy.

From Opposition comes the confidence of Bruce Willis’ character in the Die Hard movies – he meets the bad guys head-on and however hard they hit him, up he gets again – he just doesn’t know how to be beaten!

To have more Opposition in your life and work, here’s some things to try:

Make a list of what you’re currently tolerating or putting-up with despite yourself, in your life, work or the world in general. You may feel sad, empty or ‘nothing’ at this – let that pass and look for the frustration or anger behind it.

Imagine that what you’re tolerating or putting-up with was actually being done to your loved-ones - your child, your partner – would you put-up with it then? How would you feel if that were the case?

Remember some of the times in your life and work when you were knocked down – and dragged yourself up again. Where did your ability to get up come from?

Now a caveat about Opposition. I genuinely believe that there is not enough of it around; too many people tolerate too much. If you are one of the 75% of people who don’t have enough Opposition – try getting some more before you read on.

However, if you know Opposition well (perhaps you even disagreed with the previous paragraph?) then it might help you even further to take a look at tomorrow’s blog entry on Acceptance.

Please leave a comment below and/or
[click here for View on Confidence 3]

Over the next few days or so I’m going to post some early rough-cut views on where confidence comes from. I’m sure there’s more and different ways of looking at it – please leave comments and let us know your own thoughts and experience around confidence.

Confidence - View 1: Letting-Go Whilst Hanging-On

There’s a Zen Buddhist story about a monk who dedicates his life to finding enlightenment. After decades of fruitless meditation, study and withdrawal he finally decides to leave the monastery. He’s sad to be leaving after all these years and knows that he’ll miss the structure and direction that the monastery has brought to his life and work. At the same time, he’s excited by what might lie outside; perhaps the search for enlightenment was not meant for him and something else might prove a worthwhile use of his remaining years.

He picks up his small bundle of possessions and prepares to leave.

As you might know, Zen Buddhist monasteries are often built around a central stone courtyard. For the past five years, it has been the old monk’s job to sweep the courtyard each morning with a birch-twig broom. Overnight a strong wind has blown a great many leaves into the courtyard and so, out of respect and love for the monastery and his fellows, the old monk leaves his bundle by the main gate and returns to the courtyard to sweep it one last time.

It just so happens that this morning the Buddha has decided to take on the form of a small stone, and is sitting covered by leaves in that very courtyard. As the old monk sweeps up the leaves, the broom catches the stone and flicks it against an earthenware pot in the corner of the yard. In striking the pot, the Buddha-stone makes the most exquisite “plock”.

On hearing this sound, the old monk instantly understands how all things are inter-connected and becomes enlightened. Laughing with joy, he picks up his bundle and steps out through the gate.

As well as illustrating the Zen principal of how enlightenment arises instantly from perfect understanding of the smallest thing or event, for me this story also makes some very important points about where confidence comes from.

We may or may not achieve what we set out to do in our lives and work - and many factors outside our control will influence our success. So I think that our confidence therefore must come from something else. Two things come to mind:

Just when it seems that things are hopeless, go back and sweep the yard one more time – not because this time it might work, but just because the yard needs sweeping. Keeping on doing it just because it needs doing; for me, that’s confidence.

And let go of what we thought we were trying to achieve. Let go of that and do what needs doing out of love and respect for doing it. Sweep the yard one more time not out of grim determination to achieve something, but just because, in a life well-lived, all work is done with love and respect; for me, that’s confidence.

Please leave a comment below and/or
[Click here for View on Confidence 2]

Not may people know that I designed and built my current website myself.

[Click here for the site]

It’s a slightly crazy thing to contemplate doing, but I just got so fed-up with having to compromise on either aesthetics or functionality or fiddle-ability with the professionals I’d used previously that it seemed easier just to do it myself!

Today I finally learnt how to use Server-Side Includes, a neat way of making the site pages easier to edit and keep control over the navigation links. And I’m so pleased with myself, I couldn’t resist writing about it. Took about 90 minutes to go from concept to launching the site re-write, so not even a total waste of time.

SSIs mean that you can change one file (e.g. add a button, change some text, change a font or color), upload that one file to your server and every page of your entire website is instantly up-to-date (assuming that the SSI code is present on every page).

[Click here for a useful link if you want to have a go too]

Here’s a copy of some recent correspondence in an email group I belong to. I’ve removed names to protect the innocent. Published it here because I thought it might be useful to a few people - and I don’t often get to coach on the bitty stuff like this these days.

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Dear XXXXX,

I’ve been using “RAFT” for years now - started it to be more efficient with paper before we had PCs and then adapted it for email in the 90’s.
Not sure where it came from, but you might want to try a google on it.

Put simply, aim to minimise the number of times each email gets your attention - one or two times should be sufficient for pretty much everything.

And you’re only allowed to use the following choices for dealing with each message:

R = Read, and/or
A = Action, and/or
F = File, and/or
T = Trash

Note there’s no “I’ll leave that sitting in my inbox for a few days” option.

A good folder structure helps, as does a contact-management system like ACT! (http://www.act.com)

Now I just need to press send and delete your original message!

Hope that helps,

Best regards,

Nick
============
Nick Robinson
0845 838 0863
http://www.nickrobinson.org

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—–Original Message—–
From: XXXXXXXX
Sent: 14/11/2006 13:39
To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Subject: [europe-private] Email management

Hello to you all !

I have a very uninteresting but “life saving” concern I want to ask you for help:

Anybody knows a great book, press article, guru, web site or loose paper that teaches how to deal efficiently with (what seems) loads of emails daily ?

I welcome your suggestions and send you warm regards

XXXXXXXXXXXX

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