Pick Up The Cup

Try this…

If there’s a cup somewhere near you.

Pick it up.

Now put it down.

Take a breath.

Let your shoulders drop.

Pick it up again, using only the effort the job actually needs.

Paula Jones did that to me in the middle of our recording, and I got goosebumps from a cup.

I have spent several years on an aikido mat learning the same lesson, yet, at times, I still find it hard to trust the idea that the less force you apply, the more effective you become.

Paula calls it softness, though it’s not the soft-focus, wellness-poster kind, but something with structure that you practise.

She came to it sideways. Twenty years working in human development, and then she bought a horse called Fergus, thinking she was learning to ride.

“My horse gave me such a reflection of myself, how fearful I was. I saw how reactive I was, how unpresent, despite all the training that I’d done.”

That is a hard thing to say out loud, and she says it early in our conversation.

The thing I love about horses is that they don’t read your CV and they don’t respond to the story you tell about yourself. They meet what is actually in the room, which is what makes them such uncomfortable and useful mirrors.

What follows is the part I keep returning to. Paula describes a herd that spooks at a noise, runs, works out the danger has passed, and then simply puts its head down and goes back to grazing.

We human beings don’t do that. We hold on to the tension, build a story around it, and run that story for hours, days, sometimes years.

Even when the event lasted only seconds, holding on to the story is what exhausts us.

We also get into the problem I run into constantly in coaching.

Someone has a genuine experience of change, goes back to their organisation, and the organisation quietly digests them.

Paula’s answer isn’t motivation or willpower. It’s simply structure and practice.

Change the system, do the reps, six weeks of them (at least), until softness stops being an idea you agree with and becomes how you close a stubborn door.

“I am far more effective in life when I stop for a moment, take a pause, when I soften into myself. It’s the most powerful thing I can do. And it takes nothing.”

I believe her. I still find it one of the harder things to actually do.

Listen to the full episode by clicking on the button below.

Paula Jones is co-founder, with Ellen Coomber, of The Softness Revolution, where she works with leaders, founders and creatives who have reached the ceiling of what force can build. Her path runs through more than twenty years in coaching and human development, an academic background in language and behaviour, years in Japan studying budo, and a long apprenticeship with horses, including ongoing study with the horseman Mark Rashid. She is co-writing a book, The Power of Softness.

The Softness Revolution — softnessrevolution.com

The Power of Softness, book and six-week programme — thepowerofsoftness.com

Instagram — instagram.com/softnessrevolution

If you listen to one part, make it the cup. It takes ten seconds, and you will feel the argument before you can explain it.

Then a question to carry into your week: where are you using far more effort than the moment actually requires?

In Memoriam

Talking to Paula reminded me of the horses that were a part of my life for almost 12 years. Penny (Black) & Jester (Tan) became my teachers when I met my wife Tina. I became a surrogate Dad to Jester, and he taught me the ways of a horse.

My conversation with Paula reminded me of the joy they brought us and how much they are missed.