This post is part of a digital book club of summer camp directors and recreation professionals reading Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin. To see all the posts in the series go to our linchpin start page. You are welcome to join in at any time.
Week 6: April 5th – 11th
The Resistance – part 2
Pages 123-149
In discussing the resistance, Seth Godin connects how an individual’s anxiety contributes to the resistance. One of the ideas I agreed with was his advice on how to stop the spiral of anxiety.
“ The best time to stop the spiral is the very first moment. Taking action at the start, calling it out, recognizing the cycle — this is your first and best chance. Embrace the itch from the start, but don’t scratch it. To do otherwise is to lose all perspective. You can’t make a useful map when you’re busy exaggerating the downside of every option.” Page 139
One of my jobs during the school year is teaching middle school students how to stop the spiral of anxiety. It has proven to become useful at camp working with both staff and campers. For many people, recognizing that what they are experiencing is anxiety is the first task. Learning self-assessment and self-reflection is step one. If you stop reading right now and take a minute to reflect think, “How are you really feeling? What is contributing to that feeling? Do you want to choose a different way?” Once people learn to their internal temperature then they can learn to apply some skills to stop the anxiety spiral.
In the groups I run, we talk a lot about how thoughts affect your feelings, which affect your actions or behavior. Step one is understanding the feeling of being anxious and what physical feelings and emotional feelings are like. As the students learn to understand their thoughts, they can start to reduce their anxiety by challenging those thoughts and gathering evidence as to whether they have a basis in reality. It’s not simply enough just to identify anxious thoughts. You have to also to identify an alternative positive or coping thought. Positive thoughts help a person feel less anxious and contribute to an internal dialogue reduces anxiety. It is a life skill that can be learned but, without practice, is difficult to put into action when it is most needed.
Of course there are some children and adults with anxiety at levels that are beyond what can be managed without medication and/or more intensive care. Seth Godin is of course not talking about anxiety as a mental disorder, but anxiety as part of the resistance preventing you from doing your best work.
What does worry and anxiety look like for you? When does it come into play? Does it look like procrastination or contribute to it?
Do you have kids at camp that are anxious? What do you do that helps them?
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Tags: anxiety·Linchpin·seth godin
This post is part of a digital book club of summer camp directors and recreation professionals reading Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin. To see all the posts in the series go to our linchpin start page. You are welcome to join in at any time.
Week 5: March 29th – April 4th
The Resistance – part 1 Pages 101-123
Camp is Like Saturday Night Live: Shipping is Built In
In listening to this section of Linchpin, I was struck by the statement “Artist Ship.” Seth Godin spent a number of pages talking about artists, writers, creators, project managers, etc. and the challenges they face when completing projects that involve a large number of people, deadlines, and ship dates. He said Saturday Night Live is a show that has shipping built-in; it is going live regardless of who still wants to make changes to an episode. That may be very different from what you a have experienced with redesigning your website or your summer camp brochure. How many of you have had those dates pushed back because of last minute changes or too many cooks in the kitchen? Camp is like Saturday Night Live: shipping is built-in and not shipping is not an option. Kids are coming whether you’re ready or not.
What is the Lizard Brain Keeping You From Doing?
A second theme in this section was the introduction to the lizard brain as the source of the resistance and the opposing Daemon or the genius inside each of us. Seth Godin described our work as letting your genius do its thing while keeping the lizard brain out of the way. It forced me to consider what my lizard brain keeps me from doing at camp.
When I think of the tasks I avoid most at camp, they often revolve around mediating staff relationship issues. I don’t tend to procrastinate on supervision issues that are related to safety, timeliness, or policy infractions. Those I may even jump in too quickly. Those are easy since infractions are fairly straightforward. What bogs me down is relationship issues. You know . . . when two key administration staff are not getting along because of a communication conflict. I just want people to do their job and solve their own problems. As we all know, not dealing immediately with negative staff relationship issues can be the most damaging to your camp and its culture. That is when my lizard brain kicks in and tells me that if I don’t get involved the issue may resolve itself. Perhaps it is also the fear of getting involved in being unable to solve the problem sense the wildcards are the people involved. Relationships are messy and growth involves pruning. Knowing that, I’m very aware of the resistance and use it as a reminder to take swift action rather than to procrastinate. It has taken me years to build up those skills action oriented and yet I still don’t execute as quickly 100% of the time.
What is your lizard brain and the resistance keeping you from doing? Is there something you are currently avoiding? Confess here and let us help you overcome the resistance.
“The road to comfort is crowded and rarely gets you there. Discomfort brings engagement and change.” Seth Godin
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Tags: Linchpin·seth godin·staff
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