KAVANAGH BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY SERIES: INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE: Essay 3: A Gestalt ( a something of attractive importance) Has It’s Own Cycle: Living into the Surfer Wave Metaphor

A Gestalt urge, if acted on, has its own cycle. It’s like a wave. You follow the urge and see where it takes you. A glass of water will most likely quench your thirst. A nap will most likely leave you feeling refreshed. A walk in fresh air will also leave you feeling refreshed, and you might meet some interesting people on the way. It is a bit like surfing. At the end of the wave you either enjoy the satisfaction of completion, or catch a new wave, which might be a new idea or workaround to a challenge. You have relinquished that first wave. It’s now gone. You may have now caught a new wave, or not. You might go back to your awareness space and enjoy the satisfaction. Or, like the surfer, you might see another wave coming and ride it. It’s all good an you are the master of your own choice.

A Gestalt cycle, described simply, looks like this: awareness of the attractive urge, action, satisfaction and completion.  If you Google “Gestalt awareness cycle” you will find many diagrams, some of which are overly complex and are usually written for therapist, trainers or consultants. I suggest that you keep it simple to start with, and work from the home base of awareness. This is an experiment in applying applied Gestalt psychology to your life and work. Simple is elegant, and revealing. Follow the simplicity.  When a Gestalt comes along, like a new wave, you might choose to catch it and ride along. Then the wave completes, enjoy your satisfaction, and come back to your base point of the awareness space. Feel your breath coming into your nostrils and moving down toward your lungs. Enjoys this and the experience you have just had. Take a few moments and feel the breath move into your belly area. Relax. Enjoy.

Take-away from this essay: Jot down a little about your recent experiences in your Gestalt notebook. What attractive urges have you had recently? Which of them have you followed?  What happened? Once you took action, where did it lead you? What was the result? Keep it simple.

Surfer Wave Catcher Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp_3MgUbShk&feature=youtu.be

Please check out the Surfer Video link above and notice how the surfer catches waves.  Is there just one wave? How many times does a wave end? Does the surfer catch new waves as he completes one wave? How many times does the surfer come to an ending?  What did you notice?  

Copyright 2013: Dr. Earon Kavanagh. Readers can use and repost as long as they cite source.

KAVANAGH BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY SERIES: INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE: Essay 2: Capturing your Personal Gestalts: Developing your Awareness Space

I wrote in Essay 1 that much of our learning comes from contacting and working with the subtle inspirations that Gestalts provide us, and how important it is to keep our personal awareness space uncluttered. This supports the emergence and recognition of Gestalts, which are naturally occurring, and ensure our survival, growth, and movement toward health. In this essay I will write some more on building the self-awareness space so that when Gestalts come to visit you can receive them.

One of the best ways to build a self-culture of awareness is to keep a small gestalt journal. When a great urge or idea emerges, pull out that little notebook and write it down, no matter what you are doing. I knew of two composers that kept such journals. One was a celebrated Canadian songwriter by the name of Ian Thomas. Thomas had several hit records in Canada during the 1970’s and early 1980’s. In 1991, Thomas came to a workshop I attended on eliciting the structural components of expert behavior through behavioral modeling. The lead interviewer asked Thomas how he got his ideas for a song. Thomas replied that it often happened while driving his car, and that sometimes it would have a connection to a funny or ironic thought in his head. So when a lyric or melody, or both emerged, he was ready because he always kept a small voice recorder beside him in the car.  He would then pick up the recorder and record his words and melody before he lost it to something else.

That’s the challenge with Gestalts. They are sometimes out of our awareness. Or we are too pre-occupied. Or other thought enter and take centre stage. Gestalts come like waves on the beach. There are many and we don’t act on all of them. But there are important Gestalts, like big waves, that can change our lives. When we feel the urge to go to the bathroom we usually attend to that urge as quickly as we can. That’s because the body carries the urge. Developing Gestalt awareness is key to working with your own Gestalts. Another way to enhance this is to allow yourself to scan your body. You could start with paying attention to your gut area and notice what you become aware of. Coupled with that, you could notice how your breath comes into your lungs, and feel it moving against the inside of your nostrils, throat, and into the lungs. Lastly, notice how it presses against the gut organs as it fills the lungs. This last part is sometimes called abdominal or belly breathing, and it has a calming effect and is a support for developing emotional intelligence.

The trick with working with your own Gestalts is to create a calm space within yourself, rather than a space of thought-induced inner conflict. In the early 1970’s I spent almost four years living in an ashram and following specific practices. All practices revolved around building self-awareness and taming the mind. So mindfulness, or meditation, was practiced in everything we did, from sitting meditation, to eating and cooking, to communal gatherings and also in work and service. There are many ways and traditions of practicing mindfulness. Suffice it to say, that if one is creating a calm awareness space, s/he is tapping in to mindfulness. More importantly, s/he is also creating a Gestalt wave-catching awareness.

Takeaway from this essay: Get a small notebook journal and begin to record the Gestalts that you experience. Don’t worry about recording all of them. Just start to notice them and record whatever you want to. Also note if any Gestalts moved you to action. Did the action happen in the here and now as the Gestalt emerged? Or perhaps you stored it for later… This essay emerged today at 5:45 a.m., as I got out of bed and struggled in the dark to make my coffee. :-) 

Copyright 2013: Dr. Earon Kavanagh. Readers can use and repost as long as they cite source.

KAVANAGH BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY SERIES: INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE: Essay 1: The Importance of “Gestalts” in Performance and Success Psychology

“Gestalt” is a German word, from Gestalt psychology, which was founded at the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology. Simply defined, a Gestalt is a something of attractive importance, an urge that emerges from what we could call the field of our unconscious mind and lived experience; the Gestalt then comes into our immediate awareness. It is experienced in the ‘here and now’, and usually important or attractive enough to act on. A Gestalt has more energy, and different from an urge that says “I have to” or “I should”.

Simple examples of Gestalts are the urge for a nap, or a glass of water, or a cup of tea that ‘hits the spot’, or an urge to visit the bathroom. Sometimes a Gestalt emerges as a great idea. In 1966 Richard Branson had an idea to launch Student magazine with sales of advertising; he is now a a multi-billionaire. One result of fulfilling this something of attractive importance is satisfaction, energy, learning, and increased confidence. In the case of a good nap, there is usually increased energy, dreams, and perhaps some insight. Acting on an important urge is known in applied Gestalt psychology as “making contact”. There are other ways of making contact but this article is about contact through awareness and action. A Gestalt, if we act on it, leads us somewhere, and provides us with a result and some learning. Action and realization do something for us. Achievement cultivates a personal psychology of further achievement and adventure. When we act from inspiration and don’t get the result we want, or are frustrated by what we encounter, we often make creative adjustments to our strategy. Even when I give up from frustration, and back away from my project, a new idea to improve the process later emerges into my awareness space.

Example of a creative adjustment: I become aware of an emerging urge for a grilled cheese sandwich. I open the refrigerator, and discover there is no more cheese. I experience frustration, but an other idea emerges into my awareness space. Rather than go to the store, I decide to make a chicken stir-fry, something I have never done before. The stir-fry tastes pretty good, and I am pleased. My wife thinks it’s a great meal and praises my cooking. My creative adjustment satisfied my hunger, and I also discovered how to make a decent stir-fry. Even better, my wife is impressed with my cooking. Life just got a lot better for our relationship as well. Sweet. In another example of a creative adjustment, in 1969 Richard Branson opened up a mail-order business called Virgin to help fund his Student magazine. He made enough money to expand and opened his first record shop, Virgin Records, which I visited in 1971.

Take-away from this essay: much of our learning comes from contacting and working with the subtle inspirations that Gestalts provide us. When we encounter challenges in realizing a Gestalt, we will make creative adjustments, and we will have new discoveries and experiences. Gestalts are naturally occurring, and ensure our survival, growth, and constant movement toward health. It's also important to keep our personal awareness space uncluttered, but that's another article. 
Copyright 2013: Dr. Earon Kavanagh. Readers can use and repost as long as they cite source.