A Change in Perspective Can Be The Answer

TURNING JAPANESE

I’ve been having a bit of a think recently. It’s been quite confusing at times – all these things I’ve been thinking about. Confusing until I had that ‘ah!’ moment; you know the one. That’s the one where everything slots into place very suddenly, like when you’re watching one of those formation thingies, just before it’s completed or from the original angle they make no sense at all; then in a nano second there it is, and you wonder how you could have not seen it all the while.

It reminded me of a time when I was sitting in a pub with a bunch of PhD doctor types, one of whom was Japanese – that he was Japanese (and presumably still is) is not all together relevant, he was a thoroughly impressive chap, at least 6ft 4 if he was an inch! Anyway, he made a puzzle with some matchsticks, it was a fish shape and we had to change the direction it swam in by moving only two of the matches. Whether it was the copious amount of alcohol we’d consumed, (there the Japanese are also impressive!), or that we were all just not thinking laterally – and let’s face it within a group of five academics and one technician someone should have been able to sort this one out – we just couldn’t see it.

The call of nature saved face! I had to go to the toilet, having consumed several pints it was urgently required. The point is that on my way back to the table I looked down at the puzzle and BAM! There it was, the answer so obvious, how could it be there, just there staring me in the face, such a simple thing, and I could not see it?

Until I changed my position, until I looked at it from a different perspective I could have been sitting there all night and still been stymied because my Japanese doctor friend was being very inscrutable and refused to reveal the solution. He had given us the puzzle to solve and would leave us locked in a battle with this inanimate thing until we ourselves found the answer.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about life and NLP and Mr Erickson (our hero). Like my Japanese friend, a head and shoulders above his peers, he sees from a different perspective, and shows us that by simply altering the way we look at a situation, allows us to change that situation, by using very little interference we can change the direction in which we or our clients are swimming.

Can you hear it? Can you hear the ‘Ah, yes?’ It’s so simple – isn’t it?


Leslie Currie, July 2006