There is a lot going on in the world at the moment, whether we like it or not much of it directly affects us and lets be honest, most of us already had a tonne of stuff already on our plates and in our minds without Covid-19 appearing and making everything exponentially more difficult.
Our brains are amazing things, the ability to reason, to store, to filter, to process, nature's very own super computer. But this is the thing, they aren't computers. Computers rely on software which in turn relies on inputs to tell the computer what to do, providing instructions, rules and parameters, best of all, they come with OFF buttons, our brains and our cognitive processes do not.
Many of us have hobbies or past-times which we undertake as a form of release or escape from the constant, thinking, processing, worrying etc - we would often hear how a friend or colleague would "go to the gym to let off steam" or maybe it was go fishing or play golf - whatever it was that gave us that temporary escape and release from the constant processing of information and made us feel better about things. I say "was" because with restrictions of movements during the pandemic, many of us have lost this escape route and that, for many people, has lead to the loss of the "sleep" function in our brains that said hobbies allow us to press for temporary respite.
The consequences of this vary and this post isn't intended to go into the potential mental health aspects of current lockdown restrictions, this post intends to focus on one specific element of our thought processes and one strategy which I was reminded of when I bumped into a former student in the supermarket (note - I say bumped, obviously there was no bump as we maintained a 2m distance).
Said student, when she eventually recognised me through my cap and face mask disguise, told me how she was thankful for Orange Penguins. The concept of the orange penguin is something we used to teach students at our martial arts school, particularly those who when sparring, would frequently be a fraction of a second off the pace, they knew what they wanted to do but they just weren't fast enough to do it. Sparring is a great tool in martial arts and boxing training, its as close as you get to an actual fight, conducted in a controlled way with "some" of the intensity taken out given it is a training exercise after all. For your brain, sparring is a shock. Your brain has to take in a multitude of stimuli (no problem with this, it does it all the time) but this time its under pressure, its processing all these stimuli whilst simultaneously recognising and calculating risk, your fight or flight response is screaming at it, your body is placing demands on it to move your limbs quickly and your asking it to make a plan based on the stimuli in front of you, past events in your memory bank, get this plan to your body whilst also coming up with plan b and c based on what might happen.
Now your brain is amazing, but this is a lot to take in and this is why some students (the one in my supermarket example was one of them) would get so frustrated because "I knew he was going to do that but I just couldn't react quick enough" or "I knew what I wanted to do, but I got there too late to do it".
In keeping with the theme of the Service Delivery Ninja and the martial arts example in this post, take a look at the clip in the YouTube link below from the film The Last Samurai - in particular listen the advice given to Mr Cruise after being given a bit of a hiding.
"Too Many Mind" - In other words, trying to process too much information and process it to get the answer you want/need, ultimately slowing you down.
Enter the Orange Penguin.
Have you ever actually seen an orange penguin? Of course not, they don't exist - but here lies the beauty of the orange penguin. As it doesn't exist, you have never seen one, as you have never seen one your brain has no reference image to recall from the long term memory to present it to you, so what does it do..........it creates an image for you, based on refence images of penguins (the black and white kind) and the colour orange - it mashes these two knowns together to give you an image of an orange penguin.
Are you struggling to read this because you're thinking about what an orange penguin looks like? Good, because that's the effect the orange penguin should have. It takes effort for your brain to put this image together, a significant amount of effort because you KNOW it doesn't exist, its unnatural so it takes a fair bit of processing power to show you an image of an orange penguin in your mind. That's processing power that's suddenly not being used to focus on the many other things you have been asking your brain to do for you (like read this blog).
Myself and other coaches would deploy the orange penguin particularly when sparring students were a step off the pace, constantly being hit and seemingly unable to dodge or counter fast enough. Like the YouTube clip we went for "no mind" - stop thinking about all these things, all these stimuli and let all of the training and muscle memory just do - they way we achieved this was to tell our students, whilst sparring to think only about an orange penguin. Now I want to be clear, this wasn't a - sit in the corner for a few minutes and meditate quietly thinking about an orange penguin - this is an IN ACTION thought, i.e. whilst sparring with your opponent, focus on thinking about an orange penguin - your brain will focus on presenting you with this unnatural image and not on all the other stimuli allowing your body, your reflexes, the autonomous part of your brain to just DO what you have been trained to do. Stimulus to response as opposed to stimulus think think think response.
In truth, before my encounter with my former student, I had forgotten about Mr Orange Penguin but like many others at the moment, I often find myself thinking and worrying about many things, especially if the weather prevents the chance of a walk outside, the couch and window can become my enemy as I think and then overthink the many tasks still to be done, what the future holds, various problems to be tackled - lots of thinking, not much doing - like I said above, all this processing slows you down, but a minute or two of focusing on an orange penguin in my minds eye, diverts the attention and thought processing away from all of these things whilst I try to get this image of a happy penguin in an orange tuxedo right.
Now, if the aim is to get a little respite from thinking about too many things and losing focus - the above should do the job. But I find outside of sporting or "in action" settings, the real trick to using the orange penguin lies in what you have the orange penguin do in your mind. Try this...
if you find yourself thinking or worrying about multiple things, not sure what to do first, next, the consequences of the wrong order, pros and cons of each etc - think about the orange penguin as above and then mentally ask your penguin what's next, watch your penguin undertake the task or tasks you've been thinking about in your mind, all the time focusing on keeping that sharp image of the orange penguin at the forefront, focus less on the detail of what he or she is doing. I find that using the orange penguin in this way, keeping my brain focused on presenting me with that unnatural image allows another part of my brain some respite, enough respite to organise my thoughts and rationalise them which manifests in my bright orange penguin showing me what's next, I've recently visualised my penguin putting the washing on, then tackling the blown light bulb, then feeding the cat, then going to the shop in a nice logical order which I just couldn't seem to get to as I was too busy sat thinking about my to do list amongst various other things.
This form of visualisation can be difficult due to the unnatural image your asking your mind to create but that's kind of the point so don't be too disheartened if you can't conjure up a perfect bright orange penguin at the first attempt, - the very fact your trying to do it will have the effect you're looking to achieve in "distracting your brain" and in time, with practice it'll work and if your finding the penguin hard to nail, that's fine - pink elephants also work as do blue sheep - all have been used to help previous students with "too many mind" to great success.
Try it out, let us know how you get on and hope it helps.
NOTE: If you've made it this far in the post (a Thank you, b. Well Done) you're probably wondering why there is a lack of pictures of orange penguins to advertise the blog post. This is deliberate as by giving you a picture of a bright orange penguin, we're giving you a mental refence point which your brain will store and present it to you when you ask for it, without using too much processing power - therefore defeating the object, so no pretty orange penguin pictures in this post :)
The Service Delivery Ninja
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