Is your head buried in the sand?

I'm following an emerging theme of my blogs and am continuing to look at common phrases we use. I'm exploring their meaning, the impact saying and even thinking them has on our actions, and how we can make changes to get the success we want in life.

Last week I covered the saying 'no pain no gain', earlier this week 'burning bridges'. Today its 'burying our head in the sand.'

On face value the phrase is about seeing and doing nothing and ignoring what ever is going on. In the hope, I assume, that when our head is out of the sand the situation will somehow have changed. However as my video blog last week reminded us if we keep doing the same thing we'll keep getting the same response. (NB: Due to a laughter filled start you may want to turn the sound down a little first.)

So I wondered what the landscaping your success process would have to say on the matter. It uses nature as metaphors for success and when 'burying our head in the sand' I'd suggest we're using nature as a metaphor for the opposite!

Whilst its a phrase often used by others to describe someone else I'm going to assume its also a phrase we use about ourselves. Which allows us to explore the landscape we're describing. After all using that term means the landscape (head in sand) represents how we're thinking about the situation. Which in turn impacts how we react to it and the opportunities for action we can either see or not see.

"Head in sand" to me suggests a desert. Which means when I pull my head out of the sand all I'm going to do is see more and more sand. Nothing but sand that stretches on to the horizon and  uncomfortable heat! I can see why it's a situation we can't see the opportunities for action that exist within it.
 

Now its time to play around with the internal picture we have and see what happens:

• Head could be in a sand pit surrounded by children laughing and playing creative games - so how about joining in with them for a while and noticing what solutions appear.
• Head could be in sand adjacent to an oasis and all you need to do is walk to it and take a cool long drink of water and sit in the shade for a while.
• Or like me in the picture you could be on the local beach and just need to walk away - NOW!

I know this might all sound weird but its no weirder than what we're doing when we describe ourselves as "burying our head in the sand". It's not a reality but is impacting how we're thinking and therefore behaving. The exploration here is simply providing the brain with a few more options to consider. One of which might open the connection within your brain to the solution to the current situation. After all we do know what to do we're just allowing fear to feed the resistance to not knowing.

Other options include: 

• Taking the sunglasses, hat and all the protection from the sun off and realising they've been distorting the situation and you're already in a flourishing rainforest (or landscape that makes sense to you).
• Getting out the iPhone and calling international rescue and being flown to another landscape.
• Taking your head out of the sand and realising you're surrounded by other explorers and you have all the necessary equipment and experts to get out of there.
• Waking from a dream realising you've already got all the resources you need in the current situation and that was simply a nightmare and it's time to start living a different dream in reality.

Next time you think you might be burying your head in the sand remember - its all plain sailing from here.

Alison Smith

Landscaping your success and inspiring change inside and out

Are you getting enough perspective?

Here's a link to it on YouTube if that doesn't work

Whilst Einstein's theory of relativity may have something to say on this blog, after listening to In Our Time last night on radio 4 on the subject, I'm none the wiser. Other than to say perspective is relative to what you know, where you're standing and when you're doing it.

There's many different ways of getting perspective on a situation. There's also different ways of reminding ourselves of what happens when we don't have sufficient perspective.

The above clip from Father Ted uses humour to make the point. Landscaping Your Success uses metaphor. Either way, they're both a great reminder that we can only make sense of what we're seeing when it's in relation to everything that is around it, and when it's in relation to things that are known.

For example, the answer to how far away is the rock in the picture from my house in Burntisland and, therefore, how long will it take me to walk there and how long will I have to do that safely, are very difficult to determine from this picture from the window at home. There's another picture of the rock from the beach in my blog from earlier in the week.

You might be able to establish some of the answers when there are people, or horses as in this photo, standing next to it when the tide is out - as it's only then I realise it's bigger than it looks.

Perspective also comes from being able to see the rock in context, as shown from the top of the hill at the back of Burntisland in this picture (as mentioned in yesterday's blog when we walked up it to get perspective on a situation using the Landscaping Your Success process):

Or from different angles and at different times of the tide. 

Or, following yesterday's blog, perhaps using maps is the only way to get a better understanding - at least that provides an accurate scale.

It's only after all this information is known and compared and analysed that the answer to "how far away is the rock?" is: further away, bigger, taller and wider than I first thought. Only then that I can accurately determine how to deal with the situation. Which in this case involved walking there an hour before low tide as demonstrated by this video blog I recorded once I got there on having the right tools for the job.

How can you get more perspective on a challenge in your life?

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Inspiring change inside and out by Landscaping Your Success

PS: I think perhaps those who designed this poster should perhaps read the blog too and understand what perspective would look like for 'best days out'. I know the pictures show Burntisland to be a great place but I worry for the rest of Scotland if the best day out would be had from coming here! Then that's just from my perspective - kidlets might enjoy the fair and the beach.

I don't want to burn my bridges

"I don't want to burn my bridges" a client said in a coaching session. They were resisting taking their business to the next level and the coaching session's aim was to identify the reason for the resistance and if possible to let it go. This comment was made as we explored the reason for the resistance.

The language we use provides so much more information about what's going on inside. Exploring the meaning of the language, therefore, will then help us make shifts within. Which in turn allows us to take different actions on the outside. After all, if it was easy we'd have taken the necessary action by now and never have any problems. Something is stopping us from doing what we say we want to do. Since no other person is stopping us from making a different choice the only culprit is ourself and our mind. And the language we use is one way we have of understanding what is really going on in our mind.

Here's how the Landscaping Your Success process worked in this situation and, perhaps the best way of explaining it, helped the mind see the error in it's logic. 

Talk of burning bridges led to a discussion about building bridges and crossing bridges. Which led to a realisation that the situation felt like that depicted below:

Except there was no leaping required just a bridge that they were afraid would burn. As they envisaged crossing from the side they were on to the side they wanted to be, the bridge kept getting longer. No wonder if felt like a relentless and fruitless exercise. I can't envisage what it must have been like to be on the bridge expecting it to burn any minute! Feeling like the situation was like this certainly explained much of their behaviour they'd explained was taking place. 

After checking that the other side of the gap was where they wanted to be, we explored the different ways of getting over the gap. At the time we were standing at the top of a hill behind Burntisland looking across the Forth river to Edinburgh so we used that gap as the metaphor for the current situation. We could see the Forth rail and road bridges as potential options. In addition to building another bridge (and they're even doing that at the moment) other options to get to the other side included: sailing, swimming, canoeing, jet skiing, hovercrafting, submarine (which isn't as unlikely as it seems here), lilo, paragliding, plane and zip wire.     

As we explored each of these it became apparent that the zip wire was the preferred route as "it's quick and I don't have an option to change my mind." So we spent some time there on the top of the hill envisaging safely taking a zip wire across to Edinburgh and noticing how if felt once they got there.

As we walked back down the hill later on my client seemed much less worried about burning bridges and was starting to identify strategies of how to take their business to the next level. From the language used I'd suggest the resistance had been reduced or even released.

For those used to talking through problems this process may seem very alien. One reason it works is because we don't get caught up with the content of the problem. We don't allow "she said this, then he said that and then you'll never guess what happened next" to get in the way of observing what's really going on. To see the patterns and metaphors that explain the underling situation and also provide potential solutions and options available.

If you're metaphorically burning, building or crossing bridges today you may just want to think about what that really means. 

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach
Inspiring change inside and out by Landscaping Your Success

Picture Source: Uploaded by user via Alison on Pinterest