It Can Pay To Be Soft

Once again I find myself starting this blog with an apology to all of you who take the time to read it and the apology is for the delay in updating it, but here goes. Once again I have been very busy doing conflict resolution courses in the NHS amongst other things. I am on a break from my counselling at Coventry University as it is still the Easter holidays. I have started to do some counselling work for the psychiatric unit at a local hospital which involves working with the families of people who have lost someone through suicide and all I can say is that this is the equivalent of animal day but in counselling. It is very distressing and very hard work, my hat goes of to any one working in this area and my heart goes out to everyone who has ever been touched by such loss.

At the moment we have two master classes up and running with another about to start. One class has in fact just finished. Today was their final session in which they all had to give a talk or demonstrate a technique and they were all excellent. I hate endings as I really bond with the people on the class and it is a privilege to watch them grow and to share in their journeys. They were all nervous about this last session and two even dropped out which is not unusual but those that completed the course loved it and the general opinion was that they had all grown in confidence and want to do the level two course starting in September.

Yesterday we had a class which were on their third session once again a great group of people and a privilege to teach. One of the areas that came up over the two days was about being soft and relaxed in the face of aggression. This is really hard to do but has great benefits. Far more power is generated in a technique that is relaxed rather than tense. It is often beneficial as taught in allot of martial arts to deflect a persons attack and use their own force against them. This is also true in life, I had an instance this week where someone was very under hand in a business sense and tried to step on my toes. Some of my Friends gave me advice like "give him a slap" but I decided to stand back (which was hard) and see what happened. In this instance other people could see what he was doing and stepped in on my behalf which in this situation was ok. As it turned out the guy made himself look really bad and made me look good. My good friend Geoff Thompson always told me that competition was good. His reasoning being that the competition will either force you to up your game or make you look good. In this case both points were true for me so a big thanks to my under hand friend.

I remember hearing a story about Mother Theresa in which she was asked to march against war and she said no but if you have a march for peace I will be there. Sometimes we need to be careful with our energy if I had responded in an aggressive way to the guy who was doing the dirty on me I would have just been giving him energy but by ignoring him I gave him nothing. I gained by not wasting my energy and he gained nothing. So the moral of this story is be very careful what you put or focus your energy on because like I have said before it will grow. Don't let other peoples negative energy drag you down because they will if you let them but you do have a choice as to whether you let them or not. Sometimes we need to rise above other peoples negative expectations of us!
Until next time take care, warmest Regards
Tony