An art lesson on acceptance

At an art workshop I did recently, the facilitator said something that got me thinking about our ideas of right and wrong, criticism, and acceptance. She challenged us to draw something that was in front of us, without rubbing any lines out. She suggested that we just accept all the lines we had drawn, without judgement.

She pointed out that if we draw a line 5 times in slightly different positions, one of them is likely to be where we want it to be. However, if we rub each of them out before we “try again to get it right”, we will lose the line we wanted as well as the ones we didn’t want. If, instead, we leave all the lines in and continue, at the end we can look at the whole effect, and we will have a whole range of lines to choose from.

All we need to do then is strengthen the line we choose. I discovered that doesn’t actually matter if we leave the “wrong” lines in, because our eye is so clever that it naturally creates shapes that make sense out of a set of lines on a page. And in fact, the most powerful art is often the most abstract or the least “accurate”, because then we find our own meaning in it.

I wonder where we are rubbing things in our lives because they don’t seem “right”, and how many opportunities we lose in the process?

Podcast: The Power of Seeing Things in a New Way

Here is my first podcast! It is about the importance of thinking about things in a different way. And I have been busy changing my thinking about my ability to make podcasts: it is actually surprisingly easy!

http://lightningprocessbristol.com/episode-5/

Client voices

Here are some of our clients who put their experiences of the Lightning Process on video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcUvR5UyuFw

What our Lightning Process clients said

We held a Lightning Process Bristol Team celebration event in January 2016, and asked our clients to write down their experiences of before and after the Lightning Process. Here are some of their comments:

A better way to learn

When learning something new, a simple change can make a big difference.

Try focussing on getting better rather than being good at it.

When we focus on being good at something we tend to notice our failure (“that’s not good enough yet”). This creates anxiety, which immediately reduces our ability to think clearly and to learn. So we are actually more likely to make mistakes. We also tend to struggle on alone, because we are comparing ourselves to others (usually people far more experienced than us) and feeling a failure, rather than seeing other people’s experience as a resource, and asking for help.

When we focus instead on getting better, we can recognise that when you learn something you WILL make mistakes (which baby ever learned to walk the first time it tried?). So when we do make mistakes, we see them as part of learning (useful feedback, instead of failure). Also, in thinking about getting better, we compare ourselves to ourselves previously, and so focus on our improvements and successes. As a result, we stay calm, focussed and motivated. We continue to be able to think clearly, and so we tend to learn more quickly.

So when you start something new, whether it is a new job, a leisure activity, study, or other goal, tell yourself, “I know I am not going to be good at this immediately, and that’s ok.” And as you go along, notice your small changes and improvements, praise yourself for them, ask for help where you need it, and keep your focus on getting better at your goal.

The power of changing your language

This is a great little article about the power of swapping just two words in your speech or thoughts:

changing BUT for AND
and replacing HAVE TO with WANT TO 

Read about the effects this can have here:

http://www.businessinsider.in/A-Stanford-professor-says-eliminating-2-phrases-from-your-vocabulary-can-make-you-more-successful/articleshow/50883012.cms?from=mdr

A client's video and blog of his life after the Lightning Process

Take a look at this video, made by a client who did the Lightning Process course one and a half years ago. 

He has also written a blog all about his experiences at the time and everything that he has been able to do since:

http://www.lerinse.co.uk/advice/lightning-process/