It’s the CanFitPro weekend here in Toronto so I’ve been attending a few lectures to keep my personal training certification up to date. After leaving one of the sessions yesterday morning I happened to walk past a lecture room where Paul Chek had just finished up and was answering questions.
I’ve read some of Paul’s work before and respect his point of view about a lot of things so I figured I would go in an listen. I prefer to listen to guys like Paul answer question because I think his off the script stuff is going to be more interesting. Well, I wasn’t disappointed.
He was addressing a question about fear and feelings of low self worth. His answer was a breath of fresh air. He told the questioner to accept that there were feelings and that the feelings were coming from a place of love. Next he alluded to the feelings revealing some information that is important but not necessarily worth addressing in the moment.
He said “with things like that I like to play the counting by three game where you count by threes as quickly as possible”. If you find yourself able to do it, then the thoughts do not require immediate action given that you are able to complete a trivial task instead saving your life (I’m paraphrasing here). If you can’t count by threes then you probably need to action quickly because there is something serious going on.
I think this is important. Paul didn’t discount the feelings as he has accepted that feelings do reveal important information or alert us to the fact that something important is happening in our immediate environment; so it is important. But if we are able to shift focus onto something else, then there is a very good chance that there is no immediate threat and therefore a more logical approach may be what is needed to address the situation.