The Head of Drama
Hi there and a very warm welcome to Season 5, Episode 54 of People Soup, it's Ross McIntosh here.
P Soupers - this week it's a cup a soup - where I reflect on my recent trip to Dublin and how sometimes my mind can be less than helpful and how quickly it can escalate an everyday issue.
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Transcript
The Head of Drama
[:[00:00:18] So let me set the scene. I was staying in a lovely hotel, Which I would thoroughly recommend, by the way. It was the Hyatt centric The Liberties in Dublin. Very handy for the Guinness Storehouse, where I was working for two days. So, on the morning of the first workshop, I got up early and went out for a quick walk before breakfast.
[:[00:00:40] I then went down for breakfast. Okay, as you ask, I had a ham and cheese omelette with some sourdough toast and a pot of decaffeinated coffee. I'm a boy who knows how to live. Incidentally, the night before once I'd arrived, I legged it to Sprout and Co.
[:[00:01:44] Our mission is to unlock workplace potential with expert perspectives from contextual behavioral science.
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[:[00:02:00] So, I'd finished my breakfast and was back in my room packing my rucksack. I went to open the safe to get my stuff. The safe was in a deep drawer, and the lid of the safe opened like a piano keyboard or a chest freezer. So hopefully you get the idea. I entered the code for the safe with confidence, and shockingly, dear listener, it flashed ERR.
[:[00:02:25] I was not too alarmed. So I carefully entered the number again, and it flashed ERR. Error again. So I began to feel a little panic rising. I could feel my mouth getting a bit dry and my mind beginning to race. So I thought, come on Macintosh, let's just enter that number once more.
[:[00:03:13] Now, the first three items might seem acceptable for a regular human being, but my notes and my notebook? Pea soupers, I kind of feel like I'd be lost without them. And also, you never know when there might be the first case of industrial espionage in the training and business psychology community. So let's go back to my mind.
[:[00:03:50] What was my mind saying? My mind was saying, I need to call reception or go down to reception to explain. What if there's a queue at reception? Should I go down there or call? What if the person who [00:04:00] can unlock the safe can't come straight away? I was frozen. I'll need to see if I can get the slides sent from a colleague to the client, and perhaps use one of their laptops.
[:[00:04:31] And I got well and truly tangled up in the stuff that my mind had generated. So what happened? I caught my mind in flight and just took a few deep breaths. During this pause, I used a technique which helps me to recognise what my mind is up to, because sometimes our minds generate such compelling content that is so captivating that we can get tangled up in it, and it can then influence our actions and what we do next and what we notice.
[:[00:05:16] And it had clearly escalated the malfunctioning safe to catastrophe in nanoseconds. So, instead of putting my shoes on to go down to reception, Now I'd managed to get off autopilot, breathe and pause, and call out my mind. I thought, let's just have another look at the safe. So I approached the safe and allowed myself to have a good look at the lid, really noticing what was in front of me.
[:[00:05:56] and at that moment, I realized that the safe was not [00:06:00] locked. It was in the closed position due to gravity, but not actually locked. So I could retrieve my notes on my laptop and arrive in good time to deliver the first workshop.
[:[00:06:29] Mine is the Head of Drama. By saying to myself, oh, there you are again, Head of Drama, I can then make a choice. A choice not to get tangled up in the dramatic consequences, but to decide what to do next that would serve me more effectively in the moment. In my case. That was actually noticing the details of the safe and the placement of the lid, allowing me to realize that it wasn't locked in the first place.
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[:[00:07:55] let's just enter that [00:08:00] number once more.
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