Archive for October, 2009
I’ve recently had reason and opportunity to think about the concept of sympathy. The feeling of sympathy, that is, for somebody who is unwell or unhappy or in difficult circumstances.
It’s quite normal or natural or understandable to feel sadness or even unhappiness for somebody who is going through a difficult time. And, if this person is very close to us or is a relative, to almost feel as if we should not be happy because they are not…
But a question to consider is: even though feeling this way may be normal or natural is it appropriate?
Feeling unhappy for people
Much of our sympathising, including imagining or associating into the feelings of the unhappy or the unwell person, occurs automatically i.e it occurs outside of our conscious awareness.
So we experience it as “a feeling”. And because it’s “a feeling” we consider it very valid, real and powerful. We don’t question it nor think about it. We don’t analyse it. It’s just how we are and, after all, it’s how anybody would feel in our situation, isn’t it? Read the rest of this entry »
When a pole vaulter or high jumper is competing the bar over which they are jumping is raised each time they successfully clear it. Until, eventually, they cannot clear it. The bar has been raised to the limit of their current skill/ability.
They accept this as an indication of where their current limit lies – and as a challenge to further develop their ability.
In everyday life
Many of us operate a similar pattern in our everyday lives but, un-intentionally, use this in a manner which continually keeps us in a state of low self-esteem. Read the rest of this entry »
This months Pegasus NLP Newsletter arose out of observing the differing approaches and styles of different NLP Core Skills groups when doing the Spiders Web challenge on the Low Ropes course – and afterwards reviewing their experience with them.
The Spiders Web challenge is web a made of light rope and is about 2 m square. The challenge is to get a group 6-9 people through the web without touching the ropes and only allowing one person to go through each hole.
This means that the activity does requires a degree of careful planning.
And most groups, at this stage, tend to polarise into two camps: the let’s plan this carefully and the let’s just get on with it! groups – something which, when they are later using NLP to review and learn from their Ropes’ experiences, produces some hilarity and lots of personal insights!
The newsletter explores how neither approach is the absolute right one – but that the let’s just do it approach tends to produce (1) more failures and therefore (2) more successes and definitely (3) more learning and experience.
This Pegasus NLP Newsletter article is online here: http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/nlp_newsletter_current.htm
