Emotions as motion - really? A few years ago when running an event at Athena Herd Foundation somebody asked me “how horses react to human emotion?” My flippant response in the moment was, “well they move". But that was exactly the point. On reflection this has got me thinking. So, […]
Mindful Musings (Blog)
46 posts
The Clever Hans phenomenon At the beginning of the 20th Century the world has consumed by the capabilities of a horse called Clever Hans. Clever Hans and his owner Wilhelm von Osten created a great stir in the popular entertainment of time. According to von Osten, Hans was a very […]
I find that this topic has come up a lot in recent facilitator training at Athena Herd Foundation. When we are observing the world around us how often do we perceive it as it is? More often we see it within a framework that is superimposed by our minds. I […]
The world can be overwhelming. Period! Each of us has a can only take so much pressure or stimulation. We each have a mental “glass-ceiling”. This limit was recognised over 100 years ago by US psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodgson. Their model followed a classic bell curve. In […]
“Ask yourself if you are happy and you cease to be so.” So said the nineteenth century philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill. Give it a go! As soon as we go to look for it, it proves illusive. Even if we were in some moment of real joy. How […]
I wanted to reflect a little on the human willingness to sub-contract; and I am not just talking at work! Let’s start with a definition: think of guru in context as a collective metaphor for our those “experts” to whom we love to proffer the title wise. Those that we […]
Standing up for no one I was standing in the middle of a fight. In fact I had walked into it. I was a 55 year old man, the young Male assailants were unknown to me. Suddenly I was scared, I was lost. I had no point of reference. I […]
When we learn to watch our mind, we see just how much distraction it offers us. It is like we are forever open to stumbling from the path as when we walk on unsafe ground. Loud noises, assertive others, physical sensation, bright shiny objects; the list is without end. Each […]
I wanted to call this item “lost in translation" but in gestation it shifted to “the practice of misunderstanding”. It sort of wrote itself. How often do the best intended messages somehow not get the response expected? Or our killer stories fail to hit their mark. Or our passions just […]
So what is choosing EI all about? I have often written about how Mindfulness lies at the heart of my work, well at the heart of the heart is Emotional Intelligence (EI). There is a great quote from Victor Frankl which outlines the intrinsic benefit within EI, “in between the […]