older, they told me that I should take exams to prove how good I was.
That's when my love of art stopped.
I was told how to paint and draw in a certain way; the correct way. I was shown other art and told that that was how it should be and what it should look like.
Soon afterwards, I stopped painting and drawing altogether.
I had fallen out of love.
A few years ago, around the time of the new Millennium, I discovered eBay. At the time, we were redecorating our home and wanted to hang some art on the walls. I used eBay to find some reasonably priced work. As I looked through the material on offer, I struck on an idea. I was going to produce some art and try to sell it on the site. I went out and purchased some acrylic paints, some rectangular canvasses and an easel. My first attempt was a canvas painted in gradient tones of purple with a thin bright lilac line across the middle of the canvas. I called it “Purple Horizon” and stuck it up on the site for auction. To my amazement, it made over £100. It was simple.
I loved painting it and a few other canvasses that went on to sell too. I hadn't painted for over ten years and it had taken me until my thirties to get over the feeling that my work could only be worthy if it was judged to be of value by someone else. I also found my self-confidence, partly I guess because it was just a bit of fun, to pick up a brush and lose myself in painting.
The idea that everything we do must be of value to others becomes quite a major theme in the way we lead our lives.
I work with a few professional athletes; one, a cricketer, came to see me when his career had begun to stall. As a youngster he had been tipped for the very top; he had huge natural talent and flair but as he headed into what should have been his prime something happened and he hit a worrying streak of underachievement. He didn't lack passion or commitment but something wasn't working, which made the situation even more worrying. He sought counsel wherever he could. He would studiously listen to coaches, advisers and colleagues, desperately searching for the answer.
We met at his lowest point; unsure if his contract would be renewed or even whether he would be able to continue his career in professional sport. We didn't do anything complicated during our work together. For most of the time, we talked; about him, his aspirations, his love of the game and his feelings as a young successful player compared to now. He had an absolute desire not only to succeed for himself but he had developed an, at times, suffocating desire to succeed for others. He had started to overthink everything about his life; constantly looking through the lens of what others would expect of him, what they wanted him to do, how they expected him to behave.
Now this can be complex for most people. However, when your job is to hit a ball being hurled at you at nearly one hundred miles an hour, even a split second of self-doubt or second guessing can put you in harm's way. You might not just mess up, but end up getting seriously hurt in the process.
Taking it back to basics
Overthinking is a real problem.
We talked about a number of things, taking much of his thinking back to basics. I remember him telling me how much he loved the smell of the fresh cut grass, of playing on a warm summer's day and even the sound of the birds in the trees and the smell of the equipment; leather and wood.
So instead of walking on to the field of play, trying to juggle everyone's advice and expectations in his head, he started noticing those simple things. He started to focus on himself and trust his own instincts again, which in turn allowed him to be more objective in his reflections and more able to absorb advice into his own sense of what would work for him.
He relaxed and started to trust his own instincts again; he began to reconnect with his own talent.
The impact has been profound; he didn't just earn a new contract, he is now in the prime form of his career and is well on his way to fulfilling that youthful potential.
Our success or our own perception of success becomes so dominant in our thoughts. Yet, do we ever stand back to think about where those perceptions come from? How often do we reflect on whether they really are ours?
Success = happiness?
I have an older relative who was born in a different time and place. She was a gifted musician and performer who had dreams of acting and singing as a career. Her parents, who like most parents were desperate to see her make a success of her life, were concerned about her ambitions, partly because for a young, middle class woman, this simply wasn't the done thing. Her parents wanted to see her married to a successful young man with prospects, so that they could build a successful and therefore happy life together.
She was raised well and deferred to their better judgement. She married young and settled down to have a family. She always had a piano and would often play; she even wrote the music for the first dance at her wedding.
But life didn't really work out as planned for her. She had two children and has gone on to have a happy life with her second husband, but always gets quite emotional when she thinks about what could have been.
Her joy comes in seeing her own children plough their own furrows; she has always passionately protected their right to define their own success and has always been there for them when they failed. That takes huge courage as a parent.
Thank you, mum!
Failure and the fear of failure is not a new theme of discussion but it cannot be ignored. As young children, failure isn't a bad thing, it's just a thing. We fall over, we get up. We make a mess, we tidy up. We mispronounce a word or a phrase, we laugh and we try again.
There's failure and then there's FAILURE!
When we are very young and we make a mistake, people laugh at us, we laugh, and it's fun. We are relaxed, there is no stigma; so we listen and learn, rethink a strategy and go again.
As we grow a little and start school we still have a go, jumping at opportunities to try stuff out, to engage and to answer questions.
A little later on we are rewarded for getting things right and sometimes punished for getting things wrong. For the school test champions comes the glory; certificates, stickers and jobs of responsibility in the classroom; and those parent consultation evenings when the ticks in your exercise books are held up as examples of just how hard you are working.
The smart among us work out the game pretty quickly. We have to be “right” because right is the currency of the clever. Getting things wrong, however; now that's not good and must be avoided at all costs.
As we continue to grow, we engage less and less at school in things we don't feel confident of mastering. We hide in the shadows during the lessons and sessions we don't fully understand and we let the Olympian question answerers take the medals of glory. That becomes OK too, because at least we didn't try and fail.
Then, at last, we are through it: school, the constant questions and anxiety related to the possibility of daily humiliation; but the scars remain. They won't heal fast. For many, they never heal at all.
So then we are at work,
