double Dutch (also double dutch)(noun) A jump-rope game played with two long jump ropes swung in opposite

directions so that they cross rhythmically : [as adv. ] three girls jumped double Dutch, the white cords whirring like an electric fan. Among my many interests and passions, producing music is one of my favorites. So me weeks ago I was in the studio (that means the living room of my apartment of co urse), working on tracks with some friends. At one point one of the mcs stood up to do a take of his verse. Headphones on he looked at his Blackberry ready to sp it his rhyme, and when the right moment came, he leaned into the microphone, ope ned his mouth, thrust his hand out, and then- nothing! He had missed it! He had missed his cue. All that came out of his mouth was, uhh-aaarrgh! Damnnnn! It wasnt a second before one of the guys said, man you jumped in there, and right back outlike you were doing double Dutch! Everyone laughed because that is exactl y what it had looked like: he was in rocking to the music, just like when the litt le girls jump double Dutch, getting in sync with the rhythm, prepping to jump in , and then just pulled back. Okay, I said, the phrase has been coined! Any time any one jumps to the mic and freezes, theyve done a double Dutch! What was interesting to me though is that not twenty seconds before, when the mic wasnt on, he had go ne through the entire verse perfectly! Of course being a student of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) I immediately go t to thinking, Why? What was the difference between when it went perfectly and wh en it didnt? What was the sequence, in thoughts and actions, that made the differen ce between success and failure? Finally this question then lead to the more important question of, how does this apply to Life? Okay, some of you are thinking this has nothing to do with Life! S tay with me on this though, it will soon make sense. You see the metaphor, doing a double Dutch works as a metaphor for life too. Think about it, how many times have each of us pulled a double Dutch in terms of going for it in our lives? How many times have we thought about it, got set and then, nothing! We freeze, or flub, or worse never even launch? I would bet that if we think about it honestly each one of us has double dutched, and may still be doing so in various areas of our lives. Well whats going on here? Why is it that sometimes we perform so well, oftentimes when we think no one else is watching, and then the moment its official or we have an audience, we go clumsy? Well there are a couple of factors: 1) fear of pain (i.e. getting hit by the rope/life), 2) becoming self-conscious, 3) too much prepa ration. If we go back to the metaphor itself we can find some useful clues. You see huma n beings will often grudgingly do what they dont enjoy, but more times than not, they will NOT do what they are scared of. The anticipation of pain, from jumping into those whirling ropes (the real or the metaphorical) and getting whacked, s tops many of us from even jumping in. But many times we give fear a far too much p ower in our lives dont we; in reality fear is more of an indicator, than a thing. Fear is a message to us, and what it is saying is usually that we are either no t prepared enough or not informed enough, and this is why we are feeling fright. Get more information, get more preparation, and the fear begins to shrink. Its a lso helpful to ask ourselves, Whats the worst that could happen; is getting whacke d by the ropes really going to be that bad? Well sometimes honestly, it probably ca n hurt, but for the most part it seems the anticipation of pain (that is fear) i s far worse than any actual pain when that happens. Think about the little girls jumping rope for a moment, weve all seen this many t

imes. The sequence goes something like this, they: a) see what they want to do j ump into this twirling blender of ropes, b) they gather information, that is ass ess the speed of the ropes, c) they begin to sync up with the rhythm and speed o f the rope, so that their entry will be on point, d) they launch that is jump in to the ropes, and e) once in, they keep it basic until they are certain of their speed and footing, and then they e) make it funky! Doing all kinds of tricks an d spins. So when we find ourselves double dutching anywhere in our lives maybe we can start by analyzing our actions against this recipe. So the sequence might go like thi s: a) we have decided we want to do X, b) we have gathered sufficient informatio n to perform the task, and minimize fear, c) we get in rhythm with the task (in life this might mean getting involved somewhere where what you are seeking is be ing done), d) you jump in, e) make sure youve got your basics down pat, e) innova te and create, in other words make it funky! Now notice that the sequence more or less has to go this way, each step building upon the last. You wouldnt jump into the ropes doing a triple summersault or something because that would most likely be too difficult an entry. First you get in, then you get comfortable, and then you start showing what youve got. If you are double dutching anywhere in your li fe, go through this checklist and see where you might have missed a step. So lets get back to the second factor, which as we said above is becoming self-co nscious. This factor may be even sneakier than the first. See we all know when w e are experiencing fear, but self-consciousness however, is a little more diffic ult to get a grasp of. Self consciousness means exactly what the words say, bec oming conscious of your self and we can do this sometimes without even noticing the shift in our attention. So instead of being focused on the task at hand, we become focused on our performance, and this leads to a failure to launch or a po or execution. Why? Well its simple, when you are focused on the task, the message , the thing, whatever it is, you are getting in sync and becoming in tune with i t. You have begun to enter the flow of things, or to put it more Zen like, you h ave become one with it. In this state you are allowing the moment to dictate you r actions, and are simply being natural and responsive, on autopilot so to speak , thought is not really a part of it. It is a very internal thing, matching one self to the rhythm of the moment, but if you go external, that is become conscio us of your Self, suddenly theres a stumble or an error. Simply put, we cant be two places at once. The moment we become self-conscious we are externalizing our perspective, quite literally as if we had jumped out of o urselves and were someone else watching us from the outside. This leads to failu re in two ways, either we break our concentration by trying to assess at the sam e time that we are trying to execute, or worse we begin to suffer self deprecati ng thoughts, and begin to worry what we look like, how we are doing, are we dumb for trying this etc. So whats the solution? Stay internal! Stay with the task an d with being in the task, assessments can and should come later. If you focus on your execution of the task, and trying to do each aspect well, you will have ve ry little mental space for critiquing your self at the same time. Stay in the mo ment, as they say. Its not about you, its about the doing! Lastly then is the third factor, too much preparation. This may seem a contradic tion since I have said above that preparation is a key component of succeeding, but its not really. You see there is such a thing as too much preparation, where we have taken care of all the steps but we are still waiting to jump. In some ci rcles this is referred to as the paralysis of analysis. Again back to the metaphor , the times we have seen people jumping double Dutch, almost inevitably there ha s been someone that steps up, seems to be ready, is about to launch and doesnt. T hey just keep rocking to the rhythm of the ropes but never jump in. Clearly this has to do with the factors already discussed (fear, self consciousness) but its may be because they are waiting for the perfect moment, the moment when they thi nk the ropes are just right to make their entry perfect. In this instance they h

ave allowed so much thought to go into it that they in effect cant stop thinking, and they are still analyzing when to go. Unfortunately in life, there are few perfect moments. If we analyze everything to death, there will always be something that seems not quite right yet, not quite ready. In fact many times if we spend too much time in the thinking/planning pha se we have given ourselves too much to think about and those thoughts intrude on our taking action, or we slip into fooling ourselves that thinking about the th ing, analyzing it, is the same as doing it. Now as should be obvious, since Ive a lready said above that information gathering is an integral part of the sequence , that I am not advocating taking on serious matters without study and thought, but there comes a time when all the study that could be done, has been done, and it is time to just jump in. As valuable as analysis is there comes a point when data reaches its limits, and further progress can only come by doing. You can le arn all the steps and fundamentals of virtually anything from books, videos, cla sses how to ride a bike, swim, play basketball, find a mate etc., but at some po int one simply has to jump get on that bike, get in the water, take that shot, m ake that call, or start that conversation. So if you have done al the steps mentioned above, and still arent taking action, and you have deduced that it might be too much thinking (analysis paralysis) hol ding you back, what to do? Think differently! In other words instead of thinking of the task in the same way, as something to be studied, and strategized etc., now its time to put your imagination to work. You see at the analysis stage we ar e dealing with the how, the methods, and we can get stuck there, whats needed now is think about the outcome itself. So if you are in this position a useful exer cise to do, at least twice a day for a few days is to use your imagination to pi cture, feel and hear what it will be like to have this outcome in your life now. How sweet will it be to actually have that skill, that thing, that result, that person, in your life? This process will directionalize your thoughts, and move you from the procedural to the experiential, as well as inspire action by attrac tion. Do this a number of times, even over a number of days, with real intensity , and you will find your drive to actually go for the goal increasing tremendous ly. So if you, like most of us, find that you are doing a double Dutch in some area of your life, its okay. No need to get down on yourself or overly serious, just rem ember this article and start to take the steps, after all, it is just a jump rop e game, right? Donovan Whylie Director of Educational Programming Foundations For Life www.foundationsforlifelearning.org