The psychologist Milton Erickson was a transformative figure in therapy, using stories as ways to motivate, change, or de-hypnotize us from hurtful and limiting patterns of behavior. When I was teaching, I used his and other stories to make a point and engage students when their attention drifted, or when they needed something real but approachable to appear in the classroom.
One example of a story I always loved was how Erickson taught an athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. This version was told by Sidney Rosen in his book My Voice Will Go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson.
A high school athlete named in the book as Donald Lawrence had been practicing to set a national high school record for throwing a shot put. But after a year, he could only put the shot 58 feet, way short of the record.
His father brought him in to see Erickson, who at their first meeting helped Donald go into a trance and feel his muscles one by one. On the next visit, after repeating the trance for muscle awareness, Erickson asked Donald if he knew a mile used to be four minutes long. The record had stood for many years until Roger Bannister broke the record. Erickson asked, “Do you know how?”
Bannister had realized you could win a ski jump by a tenth of a second or a race. Since a four-minute mile was 240 seconds, all he had to do to set a new record was run a mile in 239.9 seconds, or 239.5. One-tenth or one-half a second faster.
“You have already thrown the shot fifty-eight feet…Do you know the difference between fifty-eight feet and fifty-eight feet and one-sixteenth of an inch?” Donald said no. Erickson slowly enlarged the possibility of what Donald could do in his mind until 2 weeks later Donald set the high-school record. He went on to set more records until four years later he brought home the Olympic gold.
Erickson, says Rosen, used obvious truths to plant suggestions for personal growth. He told Donald, “You’re four years older now. It would be all right if you take the gold medal.” The first was true; the second could be true. By juxtaposing them, Erickson made the unrealized realizable, the unknown known. He demonstrated the control Donald had when he moved step by step and eliminated the anxiety that can erupt from the past. Donald was left with each moment being the first and only moment to focus on. And then he, or the real person ‘Donald’ represents, won the gold.
Likewise, each of us can be freed from many of our fears and limitations by maintaining awareness or focusing mindfully on the present, or on how small steps or details, individual moments bring us to what we can accomplish. We de-construct our expectations, our old thoughts of what we can or can’t do and create for ourselves new possibilities. And in the process, we grow to appreciate our lives more deeply.
When we feel fear, for example, instead of focusing on the whole construct of the fear⎼ which includes stories we tell ourselves, memories, sensations, as well as feelings of withdrawal, hiding, or threat ⎼ we can focus on the feel of our hands resting on our lap, or the feel of our shoulders expanding as we breathe in and settling down as we breathe out.
In the gym, an hour can seem impossibly long when we first set out to ride a stationary bike. But maybe thirty minutes seems easy, so we focus on that. And at thirty minutes, we tell ourselves, we have already done thirty, what would one more minute be? And another?
Or we want to write a story. We have a vague idea of how to do it. Maybe we have a title or the name of a character, or an ending. We write that. Or as Ernest Hemingway told himself as he started his first novel, “Write one true sentence.” Follow the truth. Follow what we feel⎼ or simply write one true word or one sentence that we hear in our mind. And then another.
When we actually hear the voices in our mind or feel what we feel now, in the situation we are in, and we listen closely to who others are, we can speak from the truth of ourselves. We hear the echoes of what we say and do, and we discern better what might become true. And then we can come together with others and turn the best of what might be into the reality of what is.
In the classic collection by Paul Reps called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings, there is a story of a well-known wrestler from the Meiji Era of Japan (which began in 1868 AD) called O-nami, which means Great Waves. O-nami was undefeated in private competitions, but in public he was so shy he lost every time. He went to a Zen teacher for help, who told him go to the temple at night and meditate on his name. “Imagine you are those waves sweeping everything before you.”
And O-nami did just that. He sat all night. At first, he just thought about his name. But then he began to feel the power of water, of waves, the waves growing bigger and bigger until they swept everything before him. He could feel the ocean ebbing and flowing. By the time morning arrived, the temple, the surroundings, himself⎼ everything became the ebb and flow of the sea.
And in his next bout, and every one after that, no one could defeat him.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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