Alex's story
Physical Intelligence is a bit like advanced driving! It takes simple awareness and a list of simple checks to ensure that you get to where you want to go, and enjoy the journey! Below is Alex’s story. It begins the same way, but with the application of Physical Intelligence Alex makes some alternative choices and the story has a very different outcome.
The Scene
Alex woke up one morning and took a deep breath. He had slept well, and felt positive about the day ahead. It was an important one for which he and his colleagues in sales had been preparing for over a month. Alex was leading the presentation for the bid. Everything was ready, they had come up with some great ideas and felt that they had it in the bag. Alex picked up his blackberry and opened the new mail. Bad news…. The client could see them for 10 minutes only – not the allocated half hour as originally planned. Alex swore!,At the same time his shoulders shifted subtly forwards and his stomach contracted. The back of his neck shortened, his chin jutted out in front of him and his spine sagged slightly. His breathing became faster and more shallow. ….
Scenario 1
………When it came to tying his tie that morning he couldn’t get it right. His knees were locked…his thoughts were ‘no, they can’t do this. He was furious’. He grumbled briefly to his wife and left the house in a rush. Walking to the station his eyeline was down, shoulders hunched, he tripped off the kerb once then stubbed his toe and swore. He dropped his season ticket into a puddle, and walked into a woman coming around the corner with a buggy. On the train platform he stood with his shoulders tense, and a knot in his stomach. He was beginning to get the familiar neck pain that inevitably led to a headache by the end of the day. At work the team were in early, busily preparing. The office was buzzing with energy. As Alex walked in, five people’s heads turned, five people sensed the tension and saw the body language, five people’s shoulders/necks subtly tensed, five people’s posture changed ever so slightly, five people’s breathing became more shallow. There was tension in the air. They made the bid as best they could that morning and everyone performed well under the circumstances. However later that day they heard they had lost the deal.
Scenario 2...
Alex recognised the signs, and slowed his breathing right down, he did a quick internal scan of his body and found his knees were locked, his jaw was clenched, and his shoulders were tense. He felt like he had been punched, his spine sagged and momentarily he felt like pulling his team out of the whole thing. This had really caught him off guard. Alex breathed again and sat up a bit taller, rolled his shoulders back, and lengthened his spine. He relaxed the areas of tension and grounded himself. With this action came a subtle change of mood, whatever this meant, he felt he would be able to handle it, and all was not lost.
He took another couple of breaths and loosened his neck, easing the tension. He relaxed his jaw and felt his feet on the ground underneath him. All that tension was not going to help him. He quickly updated his wife on what had happened, she gave him a hug as he left the house. As Alex walked to the station he concentrated on walking with ease, seeing things around him, and relaxing as much as he could as he strode along. From experience he knew that getting uptight about this, however annoying it was, wouldn’t help in the slightest. Looking at people and things around gave him a bit of a break from worrying.
As he stepped into the train, an idea came to him about how to salvage the day. They could choose the strongest presenter amongst them to sumarise the in depth market research in the presentation, and save 15 minutes that way – after that there was only 5 minutes to pull out. He was keen to get into the office to see what the team thought about this. When he got to the office he smiled as he walked in, and asked the team to join him in the conference room in five minutes. Without tension he presented the situation to the team as not ideal, but certainly with some creative thinking and quick reorientation, not a disaster. He talked about his idea, and asked for others.
Within 20 minutes they had a plan, within the hour they had re-worked the slides, Rachel, who had good voice projection and physical presence was quickly elected to summarise the section on research and statistics – giving just the key findings rather than the 10 minutes of background they had planned. The sales pitch was successful.