Methinks me thinks too much....

A bright and early start for this week's submission. It is just a few minutes past eight on a pleasantly sunny morning on the rural outskirts of Kanchanaburi. I find myself sitting outside my room at the Morning Guest House sitting at an old wooden table and sipping a rather pleasant banana shake whilst listening to the sounds of what seems to be a huge variety of ornithological life going on around me. There are the ubiquitous cock's crowing, at least four or five of them, struggling with each other for dominance. One of the main weapons employed in this struggle seems to be just how loud and just how long they can keep crowing. This particular battle has been going on since the first sign of light in the Eastern skies. The smaller birds chirp merrily whilst a couple of much larger creatures are whooping in a very melodious manner from the tops of the palms. Various others add to this post-dawn chorus; listening out in this moment I can distinguish at least eight different types of calls. Like most of Thailand, once you escape the dominance of humanity, this place teems with life.

There seems to be but one other person apart from myself out and about at this hour of the morning. Generally speaking, Thailand is quite literally a sleepy place, maybe because of the constancy of the heat. Most of the shops and cafes in the local area will not open until sometime between ten and eleven in the morning. Even then one is likely to be faced with somewhat sleepy staff who would rather still be tucked up in their beds or hammocks than serving customers. The one person who is about is the old dear who runs this place. If one were to hazard a guess at her age it would be somewhere in the region of eighty. At full height one would estimate her to be around five feet tall but it is a long time since she stood that straight. She speaks not a word of English despite running this guest house for many years (she even gets a mention on tripadvisor.com) but, despite this, still manages to communicate very clearly through a mixture of gestures and smiles. In point of fact, that seems to be her dominant expression, she smiles a kindly smile constantly. One sees her happily working around the place from early in the morning until late at night busying herself with all manner of chores.

Having finished sweeping the paths she now stands at a table with a pestle and mortar beating the mixture in the bowl to an almost liquefied pulp. For a person of her advanced years her hands move very quickly, very skilfully. There is a steady and rhythmic sound to her movements, clearly practised for many a long year. She whips the mixture into a consistency without the need to think, collecting the various stray parts and adding them into the consistent paste that she is creating.

For me, it is always a joy to see such skills displayed. Often I find myself amazed at just how skilful people often are when they don't put their mind to it. By this I mean when they don't actually think consciously about what it is they are doing. If one takes one's times to observe day-to-day life as a flaneur should, one cannot help but see skilful displays of this type constantly.

I have a good friend of many years standing, let's call him Chris for want of a better name, who I used to share a love of golf with many years ago in the days when I used to enjoy that challenging game. Chris was, as the expression has it, a 'natural'. He would be chatting happily one second and turning around to hit the ball the next. Almost invariably in those days he would hit a decent shot, sometimes even a remarkably good one. Not for him all this business of pre-shot routines, half a dozen practice swings, settling into a stances and an almost pregnant pause whilst one awaits the moment to actually hit the ball, No, not for my friend. His whole routine consisted of walking up to the ball, looking at the target, and hitting it.

In later years Chris started to think about his golf. Some well intentioned soul told him that he swung the club back too low and deep. This was meant to help but, from that moment on, he started to think consciously about what he was doing. Unfortunately, Chris' conscious mind was nowhere near as good at swinging a club as his unconscious mind. He had learnt his golf as a child simply by watching good golfers play on the television and had modelled what he did quite unconsciously on such fine exemplars as Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and, his personal favourite, Severiano Ballesteros.

This method of copying a role model is the way that many children learn. The human brain even has special cells developed precisely for this purpose. Known as 'mirror neurons' they enable the child, and the adult who is sufficiently open, to simply observe, learn and replicate. Unfortunately, the way that we are taught to learn though rational, conscious-level analysis, tends to trample all over this very natural way of acquiring new skills.

A quick demonstration may be in order at this point. As children we learnt to talk and walk and all manner of other useful skills that we do not need to think about at all, we simply do them. Now, for the sake of interest, try getting up and walking slowly across the room thinking about how you put one foot in front of the other, the way you transfer your weight, the way you move your ankle joint, which part of the foot you take-off from, which part you land on, how much you flex your knees, and so on. Something that was perfectly simple suddenly becomes horrendously complicated. A skill that was entirely natural to you suddenly becomes stiff and awkward. In sports, and in many other areas of life, this interference in a naturally learnt process is known as paralysis by analysis, and for good reason. With a little analysis we can turn even the simplest of skills into something horrendously complex.

Imagine, if you will, trying to learn a new skill; we can use table tennis as an example. How many books would you have to read on the subject, how much analysis would be necessary, to be as effective in learning the skill as half an hour hitting balls back and forth on the table?

In recent years several of the more ground-breaking sports coaches have realised the limitations of trying to learn or perform actions by logical analysis. This may well have started with W. Timothy Gallwey back in the 1970's when he wrote 'The Inner Game of Tennis'. He took several poor players who had been trying to learn the game for years and, in a matter of a few weeks, turned them into far, far better players who did not need to think (well, not consciously at least) in order to display their skill. He developed a methodology whereby the conscious mind of the player would be focussed on some simple aspect, say the sound of the strings contacting the ball or watching its seam in flight, whilst simply allowing the part of the mind that learns these things well to work it out for itself. The purpose of focussing the conscious mind by such means was simply to get it out of the way and thus allow those innate learning abilities that we all have to do their work.

Another coach who has taken up this theme in recent years is the American Garrett Kramer. In 2012 he penned another paradigm shifting work that he aptly named 'Stillpower'. He chose this title as a counterbalance to the ubiquitous idea of willpower; the notion that we must try hard to achieve results. Willpower has its uses, indeed it is a fine quality to possess in many areas of life. Unfortunately, the learning and displaying of skills requiring co-ordination is not usually one of them. Instead of helping in such areas it more often hinders – often in these situations the harder we try the worse we get.

This point was beautifully illustrated in the Tom Cruise film 'The Last Samurai'. Generally speaking, I am not really a Tom Cruise fan, but I have to admit that he has made a few really excellent movies. 'The Last Samurai' is one such. There is a scene in which he tries and tries to master the art of Japanese style swordplay but is continually defeated in practice. No matter how hard he tries the result seems to be the same. Then a young Japanese boy points out the root of the problem:

The Japanese, often through the medium of Zen Buddhism, have long been aware of this problem. There is an expression oft quoted in this regard: 'Zen mind, beginner's mind'. This means a mind purified of too many thoughts, of too much analysis and experience, a mind free to perceive clearly, not having to filter events and things through what it thinks it knows.

The game of golf perhaps yields the most obvious examples of situations where over-thinking can block a player's natural abilities. Unlike many other games where the flow of the action can carry a player through, golf offers ample opportunity between shots to have a good, long and often destructive think. 
In 1970 the amiable Doug Sanders was faced with a three foot putt on the 18th at Saint Andrews to win The Championship. After looking at the line of the putt from several angles he stood over the ball... and stood...and stood. Even the BBC commentator of the time, the venerable Henry Longhurst, could not help himself and exclaimed 'for heaven's sake, hit it man!' He did, eventually, and he missed.

Nineteen years later, at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, an even shorter putt was missed by the unfortunately named Scott Hoch. Unfortunate because the pronunciation of Hoch rhymes perfectly with the word 'choke'. Ever since the otherwise talented and successful PGA golfer has gone by the the nickname of 'Hoch the choke!'

Back at the guest house my octogenarian hostess still effortlessly beats away at another bowl of grains and seeds, smiling benignly as she does so. She seems blissfully unaware that at her age this is supposed to be hard work. If someone had pointed this out to her she may by now be huffing and puffing (it is around 30C here at the moment). Happily ignorant of her supposed limitations though, she continues contently in her self-appointed tasks.

To finish on a simple, but hopefully clear note. I think this by now rather wordy essay can be best summed up in just three short words from Nike, the winged Greek goddess of victory:

 Just do it!