I have a patterned reaction to someone stepping on the back of my flip flop. It makes me bonkers. I’m much better at my response now than I have been in the past. My son also has a potent reaction when he is wearing socks and steps in something wet. You can hear his Grrrrrr for miles. I recently heard him responding to wet socks and remembered a tidbit I got from The Grasshopper in December 2006:

“You don’t need to drown to get your feet wet.”

Then it immediately occurred to me that the corollary is just as useful:

“You don’t need to get your feet wet to drown.”

And then a year or so later I read this quote from Byron Katie:

“Am I drowning in water that doesn’t exist?”

The three musings have drowning in common. My sense is that they are somehow related. One suggests starting slowly on the learning curve until you have mastered each step. This prevents you from getting in over your head. The second suggests jumping into to something without proper respect for the undertaking.

Reminds me of a story . . . I think the evilest person on earth is the first person who convinced a local client to do his own radio commercial. They fed the guy’s ego with enough BS about how great it would sound just to get him to buy advertising. Then, of course, they put his kids in the commercial with him. It was worse than stepping on the back of my flip flop. I remember this one instance where the store owner came in and thought it would be a breeze to do his own commercial. He had a business that catered to women but he couldn’t say that word. He said the singular form of the word, “woman” when he meant the plural version “women,” and he sounded like a foghorn. He said, “You guys have the easiest job. Anybody can do this.” I recorded him doing a 30 second commercial for over an hour and he made mistake after mistake. Finally, he read one from start to finish and wanted to hear the finished product. He was horrified at how unprofessional it sounded. He went on a tirade about how awful and uneducated he sounded and how embarrassed he would be if this commercial went on the air. He talked about cancelling his advertising schedule which had the salesperson turn ashen. I then began to coach him. The first lesson was that you go “swimmin’ with women.” It took a while but he finally got that piece. Then I sat right across from him and had him say a sentence at a time to me as though he was telling me a story. I recorded each sentence individually and edited it all together and had him communicating like he did in real life. I played the final product and his original complete take for him and he was amazed at the difference. The best part of the session was when he left. He said, “I guess this is harder than it looks.”

The third quote suggests that your drowning is self inflicted. The floodwaters are in your head.

When you respond to the thought machine in your head with more thoughts, you are adding to the illusionary deluge. You are drowning in your own thoughts. The life preserver is presence. Become aware that you are letting the mental faucet drip and drip until you have “real water.” This recognition of the repetitive thought process while it is going on turns off the tap.

So what’s the message here?

1. Break something down into manageable pieces.
2. Have respect for something that you are currently unable to do.
3. Have the presence to know that berating yourself will only make the drying out process take longer.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301