Reality Radio Podcast #6: Closing the Gap between Thought and Action and Risk-taking Poetry

Partnerships that Drive Performance with the Stress Doc ™ and the Communications Strategist

What keeps people stagnant?  Why don’t people take action on things they know they should do? Discover reasons for this, and learn how you can influence others to action!  Feel free to listen live or download it later. http://tobtr.com/s/8311289.

Guest Call-In: 646-564-9624

This week’s show was broadcast live on Wed, Feb 17, instead of the usual Tues time (8:30-9:30 pm), due to the snow and ice stranding our engineer in upstate New York.

Show Synopsis

1.  Opening Theme.  The show focused on the commonplace phenomenon of not acting on knowledge when, by all intents and appearances, it would be advantageous to do so.  Emily, our Communications Strategist, has coached numerous clients who ardently, if not obsessively, pursue the “why” questions…without turning information and ideas into action.

Emily and Mark engaged in some “back and forth” on this issue from their respective professional role frames – as coach and therapist.  Ultimately, both concluded that the gap can be bridged when an individual goes beyond mere knowledge (the head) and really sits, with, embraces, and explores the underlying emotions (the heart…and the head, especially as it relates to powerful emotional memories).  Can you let go, grieve...and grow with the flow?

2.  Who’s on the Couch?  This week it was Emily’s turn.  She shared a reluctance to do independent walking.  While on the surface seemingly obvious – Emily is blind – as she shared more about her experience as a blind woman, walking alone, how people react – with or without words – the complexity of the experience and the complexity of Emily’s cognitive-affective processing of the experience, emerged.  The interview makes for a fascinating piece of “Reality Radio” ™.

New Developments

We have decided to do some experimentation with the show format.  We will trim the time to thirty minutes, hoping this adds to our intensity and punch.  And we anticipate that with this new timeframe, there will be some content-structure changes but without compromising the show’s personal-transparent-adventurous vision and interactive, if not combative, energy!

And, we also see this restructuring step as groundwork for moving into a new medium:  Partnerships that Drive Performance as a half-hour video program to be aired on YouTube.  So stay tuned…more insightful and practical, risk-taking and FUN ideas ahead!

Emily, Communication Strategist

Mark, The Stress Doc

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And speaking of risk-taking, the interview with Emily was so engaging, I didn’t have time to read my customary Resiliency Poetry or sing a “Shrink Rap” ™.  So without further ado…

Five Stages of Courageous Resilience & Creative Risk-taking

How do you cultivate

Risk & Resilience?

With ”coeur”-rage and a savvy “tete”:  **

Fling a wide, alert-anxious net

Focus search radar to spotlight intense

Explore shadow and substance

“Five Stages” the conduit…

Less a gamble; more fierce mindset

“Design Disorder”…sans regret!

**  “coeur”  and “tete” – French for heart and head respectively

1.  First an Agenda…Then into the Arena

It grabs your mind, heart, and gut

You’re alive yet still wary –

Just “Constructive Discontent”

Or a brain bolt heaven sent?

Finally, out of your rut

Wrestling with the contrary

Hones the range of intent

While still being hell-bent…

On a stage all too pregnant!

2.  Aware-ily Jump In Over Your Head

Take the plunge; eyes wild and wide

Quickly glean skills and resources

For the challenge of losing (it)

Excites laser learning (also wit)…

And surprise! – a dopamine ride

Craving pleasure and dark forces:

Are you in flight or still fighting?

To avert stage fright freezing

Get a back rub…prevent muscles tightening

Relax in the tub…keep the brain juice flowing!

3.  Strive to Survive the High Dive

Facing Your Intimate FOE:

Oh no…”Fear of Exposure” –

That gap between ambition

And “b.s.” – a burnout situation

Means cutting edge tension:

Do you have the nerve

To deeply observe?

Can you dance fast and slow

As you take time to grow?

So “Strive High, Embrace Failure” –

Yin/Yang paradox potion:

Repetition with reflection…still

Beware Icarus ** perspiration!

**  Icarus – in Greek mythology, son of renowned craftsman, Daedalus; Icarus lost his life daring to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax designed by his father

4.  Thrive On “Thrustration”…Incubate to Illuminate

Your ideas just won’t unite

Still, don’t fight the big muddle

Slowly harness frustration…

Build a platform for “thrustration”:  **

Volcanic dreams in the night

A lava light for your puzzle…

Now drift with meditation

Join in collaboration, then

An “incubation vacation”:

Let go…retreat…hatch new creation!

**  “Thrustration” – a term coined by family therapist, Dr. Richard Rabkin; I defined it as being torn between thrusting ahead with direct action and frustration as you cannot, quite yet, put together those key puzzle pieces

5.  Design for Error and Evaluation, Coming Out and Opportunity

Pursue three-fold pathways:

Trial, error, and appraisal

Not a fixed or “my way” goal

More “b.s.” – be safe! control.
Break down the expected maze

Set some hollowed truths ablaze…

From the ashes…mythic renewal:

Mandala ** vision of the soul

Spirit voice from a black hole

Are you ready?…Let’s “Rock and Roll!

**  Mandala – Sanskrit for “magic circle”; a meditative tool/artistic structure often displaying geometric – concentric and symmetric – patterning; for the pioneering psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, a collective unconscious symbol of psychological wholeness or “individuation”; email for more information

Closing

On this “R and R” journey

Not “a means to an end”

Nor a quest “one and done”…

Battles seem lost ere you’ve begun.

Red-hot electric memory

Lurking around every bend…

Dark images eclipse your sun

Still…there’s a chance for madhouse fun:

Will you resist that urge to run?

© Mark Gorkin  2015; edited 2016

Shrink Rap ™ Productions

Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a nationally acclaimed speaker, writer, and "Psychohumorist" ™, is a former psychotherapist and Stress & Violence Prevention Consultant for the U.S. Postal Service.  Mark is a Trauma Debriefing and Critical Incident Consultant for variety of organizations, including the national post-earthquake, Nepali Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative. He has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for US Army Senior Officers and Sergeants. The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Resiliency Rap ™.  His latest, soon to be published book, Fierce Longing…Fiery Loss:  Relearning to Let Go, Laugh, and Love.  Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR).  Email stressdoc@aol.com for more info.