Who is the most confident person you know?
I avoid making friends with genuinely confident people because they are often blind to their own faults but dialled in to other people’s. Most of the managers in the companies I have worked in have been amongst the most ‘confident’ people in the organisation and in many cases I think it’s a surface confidence. When it goes beyond that it becomes a problem because they actually believe in the myth of their own brilliance. One manager in particular used to come to our centre and proceeded to deliver a word salad that meant very little in real terms but allowed him to look like he was actually earning his huge board level salary. He contributed nothing to our teaching but the other senior managers fawned over him. That’s a lot to do with the fact that the senior managers have to say how good each other are in order to keep up appearances.
In so many cases, confidence tips over into arrogance and affects so many people around them. You only have to look at 99% of our politicians in the UK and the rest of the world to see the problems that confidence leads to. A clear understanding of your limits and an acknowledgement of your weaknesses is absolutely essential. As soon as I meet any genuinely confident people I avoid them like the plague because I will have nothing in common with them and I want to keep it like that.
What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
70s and 80s kids from the UK may recognise the song I am referencing in the title! The reason I have become an advocate of meditation is that it slowly but surely resets your mind. Initially you may not even think it is working but it’s a process that requires you to continue putting in the effort even if you feel that is the case. I tried it three or four years ago, decided it wasn’t having any effect and gave up. Nearly two years ago I made myself focus by paying for one year of Calm and I kept at it. After a few months I realised that as well as being more relaxed I was able to develop a better approach to setbacks and prospective problems. The pessimism didn’t disappear but it was increasingly outweighed by my, not optimism exactly, but my realism. You don’t suddenly think everything will be OK but you do think that more things will be. You also learn to develop a more balanced approach to the difficult thoughts and events.
I can only encourage you to try it out, because it’s worked for me. I know this doesn’t mean it will work for you, but I have gone from a highly negative mindset to a much more positive one. It’s not a panacea and I do visit the Slough of Despond occasionally but it is a place I visit much less.
By the way the title references Record Breakers, specifically the title song!
What activities do you lose yourself in?
There are a few activities that really relax me, and they have one thing in common. They are activities that are carried out quietly but which require me to think about what I am doing. Let’s start with reading. Nothing takes me away from daily life like a good book. If I enjoy a book I can read for anything from 20 minutes as a kind of mind cleanser to hours on end. When I was commuting to London I never noticed the journey go past until I got to Rochester and sometimes not even then if the book was good enough. Jigsaws are another engrossing activity that will often take an entire afternoon out of a weekend and sometimes two. You are constantly concentrating but unlike concentrating on work it is utterly relaxing. That being said, I always loved marking essays for the same reason. Yes, I was one of those weird teachers who felt that marking was a very pleasurable part of the job. I can occasionally lose myself in a film or TV show but I am trying to find non screen activity where possible and I am definitely doing well with that. Obviously, if I am writing a full length blog post it can use up two hours very easily, but that is productive activity so I can use it to relax and feel like I am doing something worthwhile.
I mentioned in a previous post that I am not very good at making myself do something that I see as self indulgent, but I am getting better. As long as I can see an end product or I feel like I am learning something I am happy to sit down and let the world drift away.
What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?
I have posted at Christmas with reviews of the films and TV shows I love from the festive season. Of those, Love Actually, which I have watched every year since 2004, is my most viewed film and The Good Life episode It’s Silly but It’s Fun is my most watched comedy episode. In terms of cartoons I have seen both The Snowman and the 1971 version of A Christmas Carol over a dozen times. Other Christmas films I have seen over and over again include at least 4 films of A Christmas Carol with the George C Scott version being the best and the 1970 Scrooge The Musical being the most fun.
What about outside the festive season? Well, I am a big Richard Curtis fan and have definitely seen Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill more than five times each. They hit the spot every time and I love the soundtrack of both films. I have almost certainly seen The Sound of Music five times but not for a long time. I am not really a James Bond fan, but I have seen The Spy Who Loved Me a number of times because it has always been my favourite. For me it has the best theme song ever and it’s just great fun. I saw it three times at the cinema watching it twice back to back, back in the days when you bought a ticket and could stay in the screen for as long as you liked. The only film I watched more than 5 times in the cinema was the original Star Wars in 1977, which I sat down to watch on the big screen 6 times. Surprisingly, however, I have only watched it once since then, when my youngest son rented it from a video store back in 2004 when we were in Australia, but I have it on DVD so perhaps I should sit down and give it another go.
Full TV series don’t get numerous rewatches because I just don’t have the time or the inclination. That being said, I am currently watching some children’s TV classics and I will definitely have seen the episodes of Bagpuss and Camberwick Green more than 5 times each. So, it’s not unknown for me to watch TV shows more than once, but at the moment I can’t imagine sitting through a whole run of a programme more than twice. I will be rewatching some TV shows and blogging about them very soon so watch this space!
Are you superstitious?
Initially, I said to myself, ‘Of course not’. Superstition is something I grew out of ages ago. When I thought about it, however, that isn’t true. My superstition is beneath the surface and comes out in actions, words and decisions often without me realising. A good example is the phrase in the title, which is part of our common experience growing up in the UK. I read somewhere that the derivation of the phrase comes from both Pre-Christian and Christian religions. Pagans believed that trees had powerful spirits who could intercede on your behalf so the idea of touching wood was that if you connected to the spirit directly it may listen to your request. Christians, as they commonly did, took the tradition and gave it a more gospel based focus by saying that the wood they were referring to was the true cross of Jesus. Of course, like the bones of popes and saints the pieces of the ‘true cross’ were anything but. However, if I am aware that I am trusting to luck, I still have the automatic response of ‘touch wood’ straight after.
As anyone who has read my blog over the last few months and years will know, I am obsessed with Christmas, a time of the year riven with superstition. For example, you must make sure you take all of your decorations down by Twelfth Night. It’s connected, again, to religious ideas. Twelfth Night coincided with the end of Candlemas, the final day of the section of the liturgical calendar encompassing Advent and Christmas. Taking the decorations down was initially done to show that you were ready for Epiphany which market the start of the next phase. After all, you couldn’t be focused on important matters if you still had your Christmas decorations in place. Even in our modern world, it is a useful end point at the time of the year when people are returning to work in the UK. It says that the fun is over and it’s time to focus on earning money!
Finally I will look at things happening in threes. Even at my most resistant to superstition I held to this idea. Apparently it’s rooted in our brain’s tendency to look at things in groups of three. When we are speaking to an audience or writing for an audience we try to increase the effectiveness of what we are trying to say by putting ideas together in groups of three. My latest set of posts about the A to Z of Classic Children’s TV (a fascinating set of articles you really should check out 🤔😂) include reflections on three episodes of the shows chosen, with the exception of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe which I split into three articles! We notice things good and bad which happen in threes and if two fortunate or, more commonly, unfortunate events are detected by our brains we immediately start looking for the third.
So, all these and many others are hard wired into us by tradition, upbringing and the way our brains work. Whether we try to avoid them or not, they are part of us. Now, I am off to walk under a ladder! 🤣🤣😉😉
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 