Michele: The theme of pausing keeps coming up; slowing things down.
Pixie: Yes, it’s important.
Michele: Pausing must be crucial to staying in the adult ego state. Rushing must be associated with regression or neurosis.
I was just thinking when I play really good tennis players that they always look like they are going slower than me. If I could slow down I would get better.
Pixie: John says that Larry Bird saw the plays on the basketball court in slow motion.
Michele: Yes, it's a paradox because you must be fast to play tennis, yet the better players look like they are going in slow motion between points. Sometimes during the point.
Pixie: I try to slow things down on the soccer field so I can stay calm and control the ball; not do anything dumb on purpose. :)
It's like the Bionic Woman.
Michele: Right.
Pixie: Slow motion means fast.
Michele: It gives off this calm vibe which is intimidating. They calmly beat me and I quickly lose.
Pixie: While being supervised, I coached someone who talked 100 miles a minute; rattled off things. She felt scattered and frantic. Without knowing it, I slowed way down and picked one thing out of ten to repeat. It was grounding for her.
At the end of the session, the supervisor commented on the subtlety of that coaching technique. The student said that it threw her off for a moment which is what I wanted to do - just shift the rhythm a little so she had a chance to slow down and think clearly.
Michele: I’ve noticed when you are in coaching mode that you go very slow which has a good effect on me; not slow with the ideas but slow like a hypnotist.
Pixie: Let’s take an example from Bootcamp of how you were attacked and slowed things down.
Michele: At Bootcamp I get attacked all the time, and there have been hundreds of Bootcamps, so I get a lot of practice. Once I was at an engineering company and one of the senior people was grouchy about the whole Bootcamp thing.
There is a moment when we start each day and I ask if there are any questions. He started on a rant about how “this is all pointless and wrong.”
Pixie: What did you do?
Michele: I paused when he was done. I looked at him, smiled, and said, “Ok, will you just pretend this works for now, and at the end of the week if it doesn’t work, you can throw it all out?”
Pixie: What was his response?
Michele: It was something dramatic. He must have relaxed or been surprised because I remember members of his team coming up to me and just being amazed that I made this person speechless. I guess it was unusual.
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