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Tag: workshop

  • Building Engagement Brick By Brick

    This past month has seen a lot of Lego building.  No, not at the weekends, not as de-stress therapy, but as an integral part of my working day.

    I was asked to run a series of workshops for a medium-sized organisation (around 75 staff) to boost employee engagement, and to provide an opportunity for everyone to examine and discuss the internal issues that were preventing them from delivering first class customer service.

    As this was an engineering company, with a high proportion of technically trained people, LEGO Serious Play ™ was an obvious choice of tools. 

    In case you haven’t come across it before, LSP is an amazingly efficient and practical facilitation technique that really works – at all levels.  LSP provides an intuitive shortcut that helps participants to quickly and fully engage their imaginations, and enables them to speak and share ideas with confidence, commitment and insight.  It is a truly effective way to explore issues in a radically different way, and it gives everyone an equal chance to participate and be heard.  And best of all – it’s great fun! 

    LSP practitioners talk about LEGO turning “lean-out” meetings – everyone leaning back in their chair, doodling, checking emails, looking at the clock – into “lean-in” meetings – everyone leaning forward, busily doing, talking, listening, actively engaged in the whole process.

    Which has been my experience too.  The response was brilliant, the level of engagement over the whole series of workshops was staggering, and the list of valuable suggestions for improvement runs over 10 sheets of flipchart paper!

    I predict a lot more LEGO in my future…..

    Is LEGO Serious Play™ what your next planning meeting needs?  See my LSP website page for more details.

  • Furnishished with Expectations

    I was thrilled and delighted earlier this year to be invited to run two Applied Improv workshops at UNESCO in Paris, as part of a series of development events for staff from the Culture Sector.  It’s great to know that more and more organisations are beginning to understand and appreciate the skills and learning that Improv can bring to the workplace.

    The workshops proved popular, people signed up, the day was set.  I carefully planned out a series of fun but structured games and exercises, to illuminate the valuable training platform Improv offers in this kind of corporate setting.  What could possibly go wrong?

    Then, on the day, I was taken into the room that had been booked…

    I gulped. “Ok”, I said, “No problem, can we just push the desks to the side?”  Absolutely no chance!  Apart from the permissions in septuplicate that would be needed, these beautiful, heavy, bespoke, each-one-a-work-of-art desks from the 50’s were actually fixed to the floor, unmovable because of all the microphones and headphone wires and simultaneous-translation paraphernalia bolted on to every one.

    I threw away my carefully structured workshop plan – time to improvise indeed!  I ended up doing quite a lot of circle-based exercises around the podium in the middle, small group work in the corners of the room, and a couple of sitting-down games with people actually perched on the desks (don’t tell the Conservators!).  I am pleased and relieved to report that the sessions were a success, and the participants reported finding them both fun and enlightening.  But it was a close call!

  • Another big, fat, useful, mistake…

    Recently I have been rolling out some customer care training for a national retail client. Rather than bring their staff into central venues, the company decided to hold the training in each branch, in the evening, after work (pizza provided!) As the branches are all different sizes, sessions are held with groups as large as about 20, and occasionally as small as 3.

    As part of the training, I run an exercise where I ask the participants to work in groups to come up with a whole load of ideas on a particular topic, write them down on Post-Its, and stick them up on flipchart sheets. The other day I was working in a very small branch, in a tiny room, with just 4 people. There was no space to hang flipchart paper, it didn’t seem worth putting them in groups of just 2, and so I didn’t bother with the Post-Its either. As the company was also suppying branded lined notepads to each person, I suggested they just write down their ideas individually in their notebooks. Another great mistake to add to my long, long list!

    It was only when all 4 partcipants started moodily chewing the ends of their pens, staring at me with sullen looks, and muttering that they couldn’t think of anything to write, that I realised what I had done. Standing by big sheets of paper, drawing on coloured Post-Its with fat marker pens, all feel like fun, like play, and encourages creative thought. Sitting alone with a book and a pen, and being watched while being instructed to write things down, feels like school, feels like work, feels like judgement, and immediately shuts down the creative flow in case we “get it wrong”.

    Well, on this occasion I was the one that “got it wrong”. I quickly asked them to close their books, and moved instead to a talking and sharing exercise in pairs, to release their flow again. I already know that all the best learning takes place when people are in a playful and open state. Now I have learnt that I must work to maintain that state at all times, even if it means taking apparently superflous and uneccesary steps.

    The only useful response after making a mistake is – notice it, put it right, don’t do it again. I did, I did, and I certainly won’t!

  • Nothing to fear but fear itself….

    Last week saw the first ever [permalink href=”1614″]”Fear of Flying”[/permalink] course, and what an inspiration it was!

    I had advertised it as a “Presenting for the Terrified” course.  I am approached countless times by people who want to tell me how much they dread having to speak in public, how they wake up sweating at the thought, and of their experiences of shaking, mumbling, blanking, and feeling as if they are going to faint.  But the vast majority of these people, when I offer them a place on a course, rapidly find a plethora of excuses not to attend “right now”.

    But here were a group of people, willing not only to acknowledge that presenting was a huge issue for them, but actually prepared to take the next step and face their demons – not to mention risking the trip into central Birmingham in the aftermath of a night of riots! I was not particularly surprised that all of them were women. In my experience women are much more willing than men to admit to fears, which of course is the first step to overcoming them.

    If you have read the [permalink href=”89″]Presenting With Passion[/permalink] section of my website, you will know that I truly believe that we are all excellent communicators, but that this natural ability is blocked and hindered by anxiety and performance-fear when we stand up to speak in public.  This was the first opportunity I had had to dedicate a whole day in the training room specifically to examine that fear in great detail, and experimenting with ways to reduce it.

    Together we tried many of the tools I have gathered over the years, not least those I acquired ten years ago as (probably) the most petrified skydiving student in the world!  We practiced various breathing exercises, meditation and visualisation techniques, and also some NLP based reframing and anchoring systems.  We also turned the spotlight on fear itself and dared it to do its worst!

    By the end of the day, every participant had surprised and amazed themselves by standing up and speaking boldly, passionately, and more importantly convincingly to the assembled room with few visible signs of nerves.  Of course, you don’t overcome all fear in a day, and you don’t become a world-class orator overnight, but each person in that room had taken a huge and admirable step towards becoming a brilliant Presenter with Passion.

    Ladies – and you know who you are – I salute you!

  • Set your phone to ‘stun’

    Right up to the moment it all went wrong, I had been feeling pretty pleased with myself. Because it had been a really tough brief, yet it all seemed to be going so well. I had been asked to create an experiential workshop on customer care, and deliver it, solo, as a participatory session for 140 delegate from my local PCT! I had serious doubts at first as to the value of this, but after chatting to the commissioner we had agreed that despite the actual opportunities for real learning being very limited, it was worth doing because just the exposure to that kind of training experience would be a positive for the client group. So I agreed to do it, and checked a couple of technical details, the most important being that it was a large conference space, with room around the sides and at the back to get everyone out of their chairs and on their feet.

    I thought long and carefully about how to best structure the session, and came up with some sitting-and-standing-in-place icebreakers, followed by a demonstration role-play exercise using two pre-selected volunteers, and then getting all 140 participants on their feet and divided into groups of three, so they could try the exercise themselves, taking it in turns to be customer, service person and facilitator. It all went surprisingly well, people threw themselves into the exercise, and the room was buzzing. I had introduced my preferred method of getting silence from a large noisy group – a tip I learnt many years ago when working with adolescents and children. Trying to shout over a noisy room to get attention doesn’t work, and ends up wrecking your voice to boot. So instead tell them “when I need to talk to you, I am going to walk into the middle of the room, raise my arm and wait. If you see me with my arm raised, please stop talking, and wait with me.” This works a treat – once the first few people see you, silence ripples out in waves, and participants even start shushing each other. So simple, so effective.

    Anyway, everything was going swimmingly, so I started the second half of the session, involving some telephone technique. Once again I used two volunteers to demonstrate, and once again I broke the room into groups of three to give it a try. And then I made what I thought was an innocent suggestion. I said “I find this exercise works best if you stand back to back, so you can’t see each other, just as if you were on the phone. Oh, and it tends to feel more natural if you have an actual phone in your hand. So dig out your mobile phone, and use it as a prop.” BIG mistake! Everyone pulled out their mobiles – and promptly started noticing all the missed calls, texts and emails. Whoops! Focus lost, concentration gone, experiential learning on hold, everyday work rolling in to swamp the moment! We were about to drown in bleeps and keyboard taps.

    I very quickly used my “arm up in the air” method to gain attention, skipped the rest of the exercise, and got them back in their chairs for the next part of the session, so no great damage done. But it just goes to show, you can never quite think through all the consequences of apparently simple instructions. And it’s a mistake I shall definitely not be making again.

  • Dude, where’s my delegates…..?

    The undisputed highlight of a training course this week was the moment when half the delegates disappeared!  Far from worrying that something had gone wrong, I knew in that instant that everything was fabulously on track.

    Research, not to mention all my personal experience, re-affirms that the best learning takes place when students are in an open, curious and lively state, more concerned with discovery than with “getting it right”.   It is not only children who learn through play – adults will always learn better in a spirit of adventure and play than from any amount of rote learning, flipcharts, and slow death by PowerPoint.  So I always work very hard on using games and experiential exercises to create a fun but safe training-room environment, in which learners feel they can try things out, challenge themselves and me, and generally adopt a playful but focussed attitude on the material at hand and their fellow-learners.

    The disappearance happened on the second day of a 3-day course I have been running for Heart of Birmingham PCT.  As part of setting up an exercise, I asked half the class of 32 participants to briefly leave the room, while I gave instructions to the other half.  “Don’t go far,” I said, “It’ll only take a minute or two.  And no listening!” I added, with a smile.  So 16 people got up and stepped out of the training room into the corridor, and I spent a minute or so briefing the remaining half. “OK, come on back!” I yelled. Silence. No response.  I walked over to the door, opened it, and looked out.  The corridor was empty. They’d snuck off!  “Oh dear,” I said loudly in my best Pantomime voice “They’ve all gone.  I think they’ve run away. Whatever shall I do now?”.  I could hear muffled giggles coming from an alcove just up the corridor.  “I can heeeeaaar you!  Come out, come out wherever you are” I chanted like a 10-year old.  And in a wave of laughter they all came tumbling out of their hiding place, delighted with their own prank.  They filed gleefully back into the training room, the whole class laughed some more, and then we carried on with the exercise.

    For me, that fact that 16 people who had only met the day before now felt comfortable enough as a group to play a harmless practical joke on their instructor, and hide themselves like delighted children, meant that we had definitely achieved the right level of shared playful openness.  Now the real learning could begin.

  • Getting the geography right

    I am currently delivering some training for Heart of Birmingham Teaching Primary Care Trust, as part of an excellent project to improve public health.  The idea is to recruit people who are active in the community – youth workers, religious leaders, voluntary group co-ordinators, ESOL teachers and the like – and get them to help promote particular important health campaigns locally.

    The hotel venue for this week’s training couldn’t have been more helpful and friendly – but as the day wore on, I realised there was a real problem with the geography of the room.  Attendees were sitting round the back half of large cabaret-style tables, all facing forward to see the screen where the various speakers were projecting presentations on their health topics.  The projector was positioned on a huge table some distance from the screen, that effectively cut the room in half.  This was fine as long as everyone was simply looking at presentations.  But as we all know, you can only do that for so long before your brain goes as numb as your bum.

    As soon as the floor was opened up for conversation, the problems surfaced.  People at the back couldn’t hear questions asked by those on the front tables, and frequently couldn’t hear the answers either as presenters forget to direct their responses to the whole room.  Inevitably people instead starting chatting in small groups at their own tables, increasing the noise level in the room and making the whole problem worse.  Even though they were actually discussing the topics in hand, the energy, focus and cohesion in the room became fractured and dissipated.  Trying to initiate any kind of group activity was even worse, and required lots of moving of chairs and large heavy tables to enable people to see each other, and then moving everything back for the next speaker.

    I have learned (or more accurately, re-learned) my lesson, and before the next session the geography of the room will be radically altered.  The round tables will be gone, replaced by oblong tables pushed back against the wall, where they can be used for group writing work when needed.  The huge projector table will be replaced with a much smaller trolley on wheels that can be rolled out of the way when not in use.  Everyone will simply be on chairs, that can be quickly and easily stacked away, or rearranged into any configuration, including the all-important discussion circle.  In order to make this happen, everyone will need to be given a folder or clipboard so that they can take notes on their lap, but this is a very small outlay to ensure that the room geography fits the needs of the training, and not the other way round.

  • Fun but far from Frivolous

    I’ve just got back from a 3-day conference in Amsterdam of the Applied Improvisation Network.  A gathering of about 200 people from all over the world, who use Improv not just for entertainment, but to bring about social, personal, political or organisational change.

    Now, if you’ve read my [permalink href=”34″]page on Applied Improvisation[/permalink], you will understand that training in theatre Improv promotes and nurtures a number of very pleasing characteristics in people, including openness to others’ ideas, a willingness to try anything, a sense of adventure with little concern for failure, and above all a truly playful outlook and a huge capacity for fun.  And now I’ve discovered what that means when you multiply it by 200!

    This was my first AIN conference, and I wasn’t too sure what to expect.  So imagine my delight to arrive at the opening plenary session at 10.00am on day one, straight from my overnight ferry and train, to be greeted by a keyboard player entertaining the delegates with popular Dutch tunes.  The locals were singing along gleefully and unselfconsciously in their native tongue, and all the non-Dutch-speakers were just as lustily singing along too, in whatever language or gibberish they could muster!

    This sense of play and fun pervaded the entire conference.  Between each speaker that first morning, the same musician improvised ditties of praise and thanks for their contributions.  We played bingo between presentations, and prizes were duly distributed.  A little later on we were asked to clear our chairs to the side of the hall, and the pianist decided to play a little polka to help us along – within a few bars a 10-minute impromptu barn-dance was under way.  For the next three days I laughed, danced, sang, told and heard stories, and played along with all the other Improv-trained delegates.  This was the most fun I have ever had at a conference in my entire life, bar none. 

    But be clear – this was no frivolous or silly waste of time.  We had all spent good money to get there, some travelling in from the other side of the world.  There were attendees there who work at high-to-stratospheric levels in Business, in Government, in Education, in Health and in Social Welfare.  The topics under discussion were serious and far-ranging, and included social exclusion and cohesion, business productivity and leadership, economic growth and sustainability, workplace assertiveness and bullying, organisational and social change, neuroscience, and much more beside.   

    It is vital we don’t confuse fun with frivolity – in many ways the opposite is true.   By definition, active members of the Applied Improvisation Network understand at a profound level that learning is at its best when people are having fun.  That collaborative ideas are more likely to emerge when people are being playful.  That a roomful of supportive, playful people will learn quicker, retain more, solve problems faster, teamwork better and network more productively.  And now I have seen it with my own eyes, and experienced it viscerally.

    That is why I am redoubling my commitment to ensure that every one of my training and facilitation interventions will be fun, lively and permeated with the joyous spirit of Applied Improvisation.

  • Whistling in the Light

    [permalink href=”35″]Box of Frogs[/permalink] has been meeting for 6 months now. There are around a dozen regular attenders, and about another 20 or 30 who drop in occasionally. We’ve been talking for a while now about performing in public. Because it’s one thing to amuse ourselves, it’s another to stand up in front of a real audience and see if what you do has any genuine entertainment value. So I approached a local venue who has a cabaret night once a month, and got us a 20 minute slot in early September.

    Last night we held tryouts. The difference between a normal workshop evening and last night, was the whistle. Instead of being in the role of workshop leader/facilitator who is focussed on giving encouragement, gentle feedback and positive support, I played the brutal Ringmaster who callously blew the whistle every time anyone hesitated, stumbled or was just boring.

    The result was fascinating -people loved it! Trying to survive the whistle was not the agonising experience we thought it might be – it was fun! Being whistled off was not only painless but usually quite joyful, as it was quite clear to everyone that it was a) justified, b) an act of mercy for someone who is failing out there, and c) just plain funny. Watching someone giving it their best shot, failing cheerfully and spectacularly, and, crucially, not being upset by the failure but instead embracing it geefully, is a delight to behold.

    Everyone agreed that not only was the evening great fun, but also a brilliant learning experience to get such direct, instant feedback on what works and what doesn’t. I shall definitely start to include “whistle” sessions in all my regular Impro workshops.

    As ever, there is a lesson for everday life here. How often, at work, at home, are we given such instant, direct, impartial feedback on what we do? Are there ways that such feedback be given so that instead of feeling like a criticism of the person, it is a genuine objective response to that particular moment of action or performance? And how can we create environments in which we feel so safe, where we are so comfortable with the possibility of failure, so personally unattached to the outcome, that we are gladly willing to give it our best shot, and be delighted when we are “whistled off” because of the great learning and fun it has provided?

  • Yah Boo Politics

    Presenting with Passion – Elected Members, Coventry City Council

    This was a first – I was asked to work with Elected Members of the council. I have often worked with employees and officers of Local Authorities, but Coventry have had the great idea of offering personal development courses to it’s elected Councillors.

    This was a cross-party group of attendees, and I’m pleased to report that politics never once reared it’s head, everyone worked well together, and it was impossible to tell who was from which side of the benches.

    However, what for me was the most interesting moment came right at the end, during feedback. One Councillor said that what he had learnt that day would be most useful outside of the council chamber, addressing community groups, public forums and the like. Inside the chamber, he said, it doesn’t matter how clear, passionate or engaging you are – you will still be shouted down by the opposition. “It’s just yah-boo” he insisted, and his colleagues all agreed. How sad. Yet I hold out for the hope that passionate and well delivered speeches might just break through the barriers of doctrine and engage with the hearts and minds even of our political opponents.

  • What Exactly Do You Mean When You Ask Me To ‘Just Be Myself’?

     A recent event has reminded me of the importance of clearly setting up the framework within which I operate.

    I was invited run a taster session by the Organisational Development department of a university, for a group of participants who were by and large postgraduate members of the lecturing staff.  Early in the session it became clear to me that I was facing a large amount of resistance, something that has never before happened to me on a Presenting with Passion workshop.  I stopped what we were doing, and invited discussion to discover what the problem was.

    It turns out that this particular group had very specific expectations of what they would be getting.  They felt that they are placed in a unique situation with very particular problems – that of a lecturer faced with a large student body – and that they have special issues entirely related to their material and their audience.

    “We sometimes have to lecture to up to 300 students. They walk in and out, they don’t listen, they play with their mobile phones.” 

    They were disappointed that I was not going to hand them a written checklist of dos and don’ts specifically to guide them in how to manage this problem of a large disinterested student audience and technical content.

    Given this background of expectation, I am not surprised that they were dissatisfied with what I offered. My entire focus is on the inner state of the presenter, the quality of the relationship between presenter, material and audience, and the emotional journey that ensues.  Experience has taught me that this is the vital area – once this is understood and improved, everything else falls into place, irrespective of the material and the audience makeup. 

    This group of academics understandably had a very different perspective. They could not perceive how my approach could address their particular problems as they saw them, and unsurprisingly they were much more comfortable theorising and analysing possible techniques than getting up and trying them (“what exactly do you mean when you ask me to ‘just be myself’?”).

    Since that day, I work hard at the beginning of each session to understand the expectations of the group, and then to state absolutely clearly the assumptions that underlie my presentation skills training:-

    • that we are all naturally good communicators
    • that we all already know how to package and present information
    • that in non-stress situations with friends and family we are more than capable of engaging listeners and holding their attention but that these well-developed skills are distorted and suppressed by the stress of standing in front of a group for a formal presentation
    • that this stress and anxiety is a state that is generated internally, by our reaction to the perceived “threat” of an audience. It causes us to lose our natural presence and self
    • that this response is in fact independent of the audience and the material we have to deliver. However, it is very much influenced by our perception and our framing of the audience and the material we have to deliver
    • that the best way to improve performance in presentation is to discover how those stresses manifest to block our natural style, and to find ways for releasing ourselves from those blocks
    • that it is entirely possible to transform the energy of anxiety into a more productive energy that feeds into engagement with the audience
    • that if a presenter focuses all their energy into engaging with their audience, and taking them on an emotional journey, all other aspects of the presentation (voice, eyes, posture, projection, etc.) take perfect care of themselves.

    What I have discovered is that there is a major advantage of being very clear about my assumptions and my area of work. Not only does it pre-empt confusion about, and consequential resistance to, my style of intervention, but it also means that participants have now made a powerful and positive choice to work on their own fears and blocks.

  • Bad News

    Presenting With Passion course at TRW Cooper Standard Automotive

    At the end of the session, somebody asks me “This is all very well, but we only dealt with upbeat topics.  What if I have to deliver bad news, such as redundancies?”

    I replied “The fact is, the challenge is identical.  The task is still to take your audience on an emotional journey.  In theory you could have delivered your message by email, by letter, even by text.    The fact that you understood instinctively that this was an incredibly insensitive thing to do means that you realise that you have brought people together so you can address their feelings as well as passing on the information.  So the key question is still “what do you want your audience to feel?”  Anger at the board?  Cared for by their managers?  Sorry for their colleagues?  There is an emotional reason why you called them together into the room, and that is what you must tap in to.  Let them know how you feel, and they will know how to feel themselves.”

  • Breakthrough

    Presenting with Passion course.

    The participants are 14 young people from all around the world, on their Graduate Training programme. Working with a multinational group is interesting. Half the group do not have English as their first language, although all have an acceptable level as English is the working language of the business. I have to remember to speak more slowly and clearly than my usual rather excited gabble. When we play the “2-object story” game, and someone calls out “smoking”, I am the last person in the room to realise this is not the smelly activity, but the word in several European languages for gents formal attire!

    Great to see a few breakthroughs. Most notably a young lad of Oriental origin who confessed to a loathing of speaking in public, and great anxiety at the thought of it. His presentation exercises are at first dull and lifeless, as he hides himself behind a screen of fear. He makes little audience contact, his focus is mostly internal as he tries to remember what he is saying next. I encourage him to look into the eyes of each audience member, but to no avail. His eye contact is a superficial sweep – he is still preoccupied with himself. His piece is a story about a failure of communication in a design process, that cost the company a lot of money. I ask him what is for me always the key question – “what do you want the audience to feel?” He says anger and frustration. I ask him to let us see the anger and frustration he himself feels. Transformation! His next attempt starts quietly and again hesitant, but gradually a stream a frustration starts flowing from him. He stands straighter, he looks directly as us, we are swept along with the emotion of his story. It’s like a whole new person has appeared before us. Afterwards, everyone congratulates him, and a glimmer of understanding appears in his eyes. When I ask him how he feels now, a slight smile passes his lips. “Good”, he says.

  • Fear and Demons

    Presenting with Passion  – Telford and Wrekin District Council

    The first part of a Presenting With Passion day usually consists of a series of games and exercises around fluidity and ease of speech.   I do this for fun and energy, and also to give people the confidence that they actually can speak without preparation and notes.  One or two of the games I play in this section require people to respond very quickly.  The game will go faster and faster until people cannot keep up, which enables them to “fail” at a simple task, and to realise that “failure” can be fun, and doesn’t actually matter.  This is tremendously liberating, and leads to enhanced bravery later in the day.

    Occasionally, it goes differently.  Some people become very anxious by the “failure”, and put further pressure on themselves to “succeed”.  This in turn increases their anxiety, until their mind goes blank and they “fail” repeatedly.  This leads to some very useful and revealing discussion around the assumptions we make about what is expected of us, the kinds of pressure we put on ourselves to “be perfect”, and the paradoxical negative results of that self-imposed pressure.  I then give players explicit permission to “fail” as spectacularly as they can, at which point the standard of play invariably improves.

    During a training day at Telford and Wrekin council, one participant became increasingly upset during this game, and despite encouragement to relax, to not care about the result, to just go with the flow, she became more and more blocked, and finally announced she couldn’t participate any more and left the room pretty much in tears.  I am pleased to say that she made the brave choice soon after to return and continue, and actually excelled and made great strides in the later parts of the day.

    However, what surprised me was what she wrote on her First Level evaluation form at the end of the day.  Alongside the more positive comments, she wrote that she could have done with “less pushing and a bit more care during the first hour”.  Which means my gentle suggestions of, “don’t worry about the outcome”, “allow yourself to get it wrong”, “we don’t care what comes out of your mouth” etc.,  all intended to reduce the anxiety and pressure so that she could participate more easily, had somehow been interpreted as “pushing and lack of care”. 

    This is a really useful reminder to me how much we externalise the internal demons that block us.  Speaking in public is a stressful and fear-producing activity.  But like all stress and fear, it is caused not by external events, but by our beliefs about those events.  A tiger does not make us afraid.  Our fear depends on whether we believe it is safely contained behind bars, or is free to represent a direct threat to us. And yet we prefer to simply say “the tiger made me scared”, and deny any responsibility.  In a similar fashion, people often project their fears about making presentations on their audience, their material, their situation, their status.  It is much easier than acknowledging that our anxiety is self-created and can therefore, with the right tools, be self-defeated.