Have you heard of Pan Am Airways?

In the late 1960’s & early 1970’s, Pan Am was the grand-daddy of all the American airlines.

But that all changed in the 1980s as rumours of Pan Am’s demise started to do the rounds.

Cue itchy passengers making less bookings with Pan Am, less revenue, and a spiral of decline until 1991 when Pan Am eventually went belly up.

It’s an interesting case study.  Especially as Pan Am’s collapse is often held up as an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In other words:

People weren’t bad-mouthing Pan Am because it was going under.

Instead, Pan Am was going under because people were bad-mouthing it.

Now, I’m not too concerned about the extent to which this is true.  I’ll let the business history buffs chew that one over.

The point I want to make is this:

Our thoughts work in exactly the same way.

We don’t have scary thoughts because of a scary situation.

Instead, a situation looks scary because we have scary thoughts.

It’s our thoughts which create our realities.  And when we see just how random and fleeting our thoughts are, and how our thoughts might not even be our thoughts in the first place (they probably aren’t), it starts to call into question so many of the techniques we use to get ourselves through whatever challenging situation we find ourselves in.

I’ll give you an example.

Right now, I’m running a series of Mindset Workshops for colleagues in my wider team at Lloyds Bank.

A few days after announcing the workshops, I was chatting away with a chirpy colleague when he made the following comment:

Tom, you’re putting yourself under a lot of pressure running these Mindset Workshops

I could see what he meant.

I’m running two sessions a week for ten weeks.  For each session, I’m creating content, presenting that content, facilitating a conversation, creating a space where people feel comfortable sharing, balancing the discussion between those in the room and those on Zoom, time-keeping, collecting feedback to inform future sessions and trying to make the sessions as impactful as possible.

On paper, it looks like a lot to take on.

Especially as there are very senior colleagues turning up to the workshops each week.

So it would be easy to see these workshops as pressured.

But what I know now is that I don’t have to take these “pressure thoughts” seriously.

When they bubble up inside me, I can let them go.  If I can't let them go, I don't need to pay attention to them.

And when I don’t breathe life into these “pressure thoughts”, the situation stops looking pressured. 

That’s just how it works.

Of course, this has taken a bit of getting used to.

I’m well practised at having a negative thought, latching on to that thought, starting to believe that thought and then trying to find coping mechanisms to deal with whatever situation my thoughts have created.

i.e. to deal with my own self-fulfilling prophecy.

For the Mindset Workshops this might’ve meant geeing myself up in the bathroom mirror, taking a few slow & deep breaths, scripting the workshops to within an inch of their lives, whispering positive affirmations to myself or striking a Superman pose before starting one of the sessions (straight from the Tony Robbins playbook).

It also would’ve meant a lot of thinking about the thoughts I had about the workshops.  Which would’ve left little headspace to think about anything else.

And you know what?  If the pressure was too much, it might’ve meant not running the workshops at all.  Which would’ve been a shame.

But thankfully none of this has come to pass.

And that’s because, to me, the workshops don’t look like they do to my colleague who made that comment. 

Now, I want to be clear:

I’m 100% not talking about positive thinking or reframing here.  If you're using tools like these it means you’ve already seen your situation in a less-than-positive light.

What I’m talking about is fundamentally different.

I’m talking about not seeing a scary situation in the first place. 

This removes the need for any tools or techniques.

It’s such a more relaxed, easy-going way of being at work and in the world.

And it also happens to be how the world works.

I kid you not.

If someone had told me this was possible 15 years ago it would’ve saved me countless sleepless nights and freed up so much time & energy.

In fact, I cringe when I think about all the books I’ve read, the various techniques I’ve used and the hours I’ve wasted trying to deal with worries & pressures which I now see only existed in my head.

Like a lot of things, I had to learn this one through the school of hard knocks.

But now I have, I’m dead set on helping other people see this too.

I’m thinking of putting together a small group coaching program where I get down to the nitty-gritty of this understanding, help people turn the dimmer-switch down on their own pressures, worries & stresses and live with more ease & calm.

This was always a big issue for me.  And I suspect I’m not the only one.

But I don’t know for sure.

So I’m trying to understand if there’s demand for a program like this.

If you're interested or curious, reply and let me know.

If there’s enough interest, I’ll set it up.

That’s all for today.

 - Tom