Plenty to do

It is the days between Christmas and New Year and most people in the Kingdom of Sweden have their rights and their liberties to be free from common work, which easily could be seen in the Stockholm shopping districts. There are sales everywhere and I have reasons to believe that shopping wins over sex; shopping is something more than pleasure and joy for the moment; it is the old hunting instinct awakened; the hunter catches a rich booty, brings it home, shows it to the world – “Look what I´ve found!” – receiving the applause, and the joy is still there.

There must be something wrong with me. I am a lousy shopper. I prefer to stick around close to home or to my office, thinking, talking – and writing. I like to write and I am happy to state that I have got an invitation from two of my friends, the Publisher and the Chief Editor: they want to produce a book out of my articles written for the Swedish fine magazine Meetings International. And during these days between all big holidays I now and then sit in front of my computer, writing my stories about the Human Beings and about things going on in their minds and in their souls during their meetings with each other. What a challenge! I hope I will make it.

Already over

And this is the day after Christmas day, and it is already over. Afterwards means an increased time awareness. The start led to a peak, and then…a descent…and now it is over. It is like life. When I was young I made the usual mistakes: I was so very focused towards the future so I nearly missed all the things going on around me. I almost missed the important parts of myself – within the context of there and then.

I am not young anymore. Life is probably not over, but the peak is behind me. And I have become more time aware, meaning also that I have become more situational aware. I know that I am what I am in this very moment and at this very place. I know also that I am nothing more than a cog, a small cog, in a very big moving wheel. I have nothing against it. I am not dreaming any dreams any longer of me being something exceptional. I am much more interested in finding some other people being exceptional.

I am grateful for lots and lots of experiences behind me – and around me just now. I feel a lot of love to several people that I do like, and my hate towards those who have betrayed me has … no, not disappeared, but become diminished.

A Christmas poem – in Swedish

I wrote these lines the day before Xmas Eve. In Swedish. (Too difficult for me to make it in English – so please forgive me.)

Och räven försökte raska över isen

men i kalla vattnet han försvann,

och lilla goa, rara, skära grisen

som styckad julemat till sist man fann.

 

Och medan män´skobarnen hade fekke

och skojsade och mumsade och tänkte ingenting

var midvinternatten utan något snöigt täcke

ej någonstans en enda snöig flingeling.

 

Små tomtar plötsligt tyst ur vrårna tippetappar.

”Så roligt,” rop´te folket, ”kom fram – kom ända hit!”

Men tomtefolket kom ej med några goa klappar,

de skrek med pipig röst: ”Allt detta är ju skit!

 

Vår jord ni alla snabbt föröder,

ni  roar er mest och tänker för kort!

För från öst till väst, från norr till söder

blir det antingen regn eller bara för torrt!

 

Så nu vill vi ha en julklapp av er allihop.

Ge oss tillbaka den friska naturen!

Gör någonting – nu! Sätt äntligen stopp

för otyglad köplust och frossarkulturen!”

 

Så skreko de, vände om och försvann

och män´skorna satt tysta och glana´.

De varken ord eller visor för tillfället fann,

nöjde sig bara att ut i mörkret spana.

 

Så rop´te någon: ”Nu tar vi en nubbe till,

för nu ska vi inte vår glädje förstöra.

Tomtjäklarna får säga vad dom vill,

Men på dom behöver ingen höra!

 

En kväll som denna ska vi självklart ha kul,

vi struntar i hur det går med Jorden.

Det är ju för tusan äntligen jul

och då ju Herran dessutom snart vorden.

 

I vilket fall ska jag äta å´ dricka – jag tänker bli fet!

Det där andra får Herran nog greja.

Jag tänker inte rädda nån jäkla planet

och mer om detta tänker jag inte säga!”

 

Då rann den sista glaciären i världshavet ut,

och stjärnorna gnistra´ och glimma´.

Och nu var snart det roliga slut,

Och män´skobarnen hade upplevt sin sista timma.

 

Sen blev det lugnt och tyst igen,

och tomtarna dansa´ och hurra´.

Och solen den lyste på himmelen

och Jorden fortsatte snurra.

The shouting generation

Went to Stockholm city today. All other Swedes and a lot of tourists had thought of doing the same thing. Crowded! Why were everybody there? Didn´t they have to do some work somewhere else? Are all people unemployed or what?

Yes, I know it is Christmas in a few days, but this Thursday is just an ordinary Thursday. Anyhow…I fled the scene and took the tube southwest. Crowded also on the tube despite it was prior to the rush hour. I could not find any free seat so I was standing with some five, six youngsters around me. They all knew each other and talked without any interruptions and without listening particularly carefully to each other. Talked and talked….they more or less shouted, voices both high and strong, as if they were trying to communicate with someone some 15 meters away. I looked surprised at them, and I thought that this is an expression of the young, shouting generation. They are trained to override each other to become heard by themselves. They have grown up in daycare centers together with some 30 other kids, they are used to stay for hours at discos and pubs, where the music is on max volume, and I thought that these representatives will probably become deaf when they have reached my age. Should I do something about it? Would you like to do something about it? Is it up to me to do anyhting? Is it up to you? Or is it up to nobody? What do you think?

If you have any comments to me, click on comments and write something.

You are linked

We were talking about personality traits. He was convinced that he was of a special kind, quite inhibited in his actions, afraid of creating conflicts, afraid of taking initiatives. I said that I did not share that point of view about personality. I did not see him as the special one that all by himself had those kinds of drawbacks. I said that he was linked to other important persons around him, and that he had learned to play his part of the game by making and taking that kind of special role on the scene. I said that he had chosen his path in life, figuring out that this was the best path to follow – not primarily for himself, but for the others, and for their paths. And here he made his mistakes. Those paths of the others are not always to the best for anyone, not even for those who made them up. Following as a follower could sometimes look as this is the very best adaptive way to go on, but it is not always so. Taking initiatives by taking the lead – sometimes – could of course break the rules and could of course cause conflicts, but those conflicts could lead to constructive new roads for all involved. And the man I talked to nodded. He is a manager and a head of a special unit with some more or less problematic employees… He is linked to them in the same manner as you are linked to other people around…

And the real truth is…?

Within the field of psychotherapy we often talk about resistance as a phenomenon. The client shows often different signs of resistance towards “the moments of truth”. People do not always want to know. We prefer quite often to illuminate our own life story, covering the not so very nice parts, enlarging those ones that are more glorifying.

The same goes on in life outside the psychotherapy room. I meet over and over again people that want to keep quiet about important life events. Life is to a certain extent a cover up story. If I don’t tell you the truth you assist my needs by not telling me the truth. And on this theatrical scene we make an unspeakable agreement: let us just play that we are friends and that we all like each other, and let us put all dirty things behind the doors or beneath the ground.

But all those things buried down there or behind will influence your life anyway and one day you will go mad, or start some pervert actions, or…so my advice is that you´d better try to find out as much as possible before it is too late.  

And these lines of mine were of course written due to some events close and of importance to me.

Busy, busy…

Having finished an assessment of a candidate, who have applied to a position as a top manager in a municipal community. Not so very easy case, but who says that we, Human beings, are easy to understand? Man is complex.

A SAS Chief Pilot called – wanted me to investigate a problem case in the fleet. Of course I will do that. On the run…

…to Friskis&Svettis, the major aerobic association in Sweden. I am an old man, but I am still active as an aerobic instructor, base level. So, I have to pack my trunk and hurry up. I will soon stand there, in the middle of the circle of people, music pounding…here we go…

Last Thursday…

…became quite an interesting day. An old client of mine, a Head for a local municipal administration, called. He asked me if I could carry out a personality assessment check of a candidate, who had applied to an advanced management position. Yes, of course. We discussed some details regarding the specific requirements and made up all practical things. I like these kind of missions. I am an investigator. Later on same day my wife (my close colleague) and I attended a meeting at the Head Office of one of the world’s largest shipping companies. We discussed thorougly the psychological selection process of Sea Officers. This special company puts a lot of demands on quality – in every detail. I am glad they do that. Quality means a very good awareness of the importance of comfort – and safety. It was a very good Thursday.

On psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is a concept that works like a headline for lots of very different methods and techniques, which have in common that they are regarded as tools for human changes (behaviour, attitudes, thinking habits…such things). I happen to live in a culture, where people have learnt to think of psychotherapy as something that you will get almost for free if you suffer from anything that hurts your mind or your soul. “Do you want to get some psychotherapy?” asks the doctor and the patient that does not know anything about psychotherapy replies: “Would that be good for me?”, and the doctor nods and says “Yes, I think so.” And then he is telling his patient that he will refer him to a psychotherapist in order to become cured.  And the patient sits back in his second class compartment and starts the journey to the psychotherapist, who has ambitions to help anyone, no matter on what grounds they have been brought to him.

That is not a very good start for psychotherapy. It would have been much better if the doctor would have enlightened the patient about what psychotherapy is all about, telling him that it is a sort of psychic training, and that it is of importance that, first of all, the patient makes his (or her) own decision if he (or she) really wants to train, investing quite a lot of energy, time and space for deep, analytical talks with a psychotherapist. The psychotherapist is, or should be, something like a personal trainer, engaging the patient to find his (or her) own answers to his (her) own questions, assisting only when so is really needed, acting like a guide in a very dense forest: “try this way”, or “if you change your perspective to this one you could look at the problem from a new angle”, such things.

The patient is not, or should not be, a passenger on the psychotherapy train. He (or she) should be the enginedriver, the one in charge of his own “train”, being guided only by the psychotherapist, who is carefully supervising what is going on. The patient ought to be his own doctor, getting hints of values from his talking partner, the psychotherapist. You have to work to get cured. Psychotherapy is like a mental work-out station. Then it could be very efficient.

Simultaneous capacity

It happens that people ask me how to train to reach a better simultaneous capacity. It is not an easy question, nor is it an easy task. Simultaneous capacity is a complex concept, engaging a lot of different human talents. Here are some of them:

1. Perceptual skills. The capacity of getting well informed of what you see, hear, smell, taste and feel, during a short time.

2. Information processing. How you transform your perceptions to a higher mental level, which requires good memory functions, resources for making abstractions out of concrete details, creating a list of priorities: which one can wait, which one must come first (decision-making based upon a good enough judgement).

3. Physical exercise involving motor coordination. Your brain is probably able to assist all your movements in a fascinating way, but this is always trainable to an even better standard.

How to do it? How to get trained? Well, this is your first task: Create at least three different exercises that will train all the aspects described above. If you will succeed you have already started your training in quite an efficient way.