CLOSING THE KNOWING-DOING GAP
“Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realise, just as I did, that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”
Morpheus – The Matrix
The philosopher John Gray contends that our society is driven by a myth of progress, namely that science will ultimately free us from doubt by creating objective truths. He argues that this faith is essentially unscientific, a quasi-religious belief that omits the human needs that science serves. It neglects that whilst scientific knowledge continues to accrue with every generation, our?psychological self-knowledge?does not. Each generation must learn for itself values, ethics and self-knowledge. These?craft skills?can only be gained through experience and inner reflection. In this way, the propensity for the knowing-doing gap grows with each increment in what we come to understand about the world.
Dan Lewindon knows a lot about well-being. As a highly trained sports scientist, he’s spent his career working with the world’s best rugby, tennis and football athletes. His success relies on world-class technical knowledge and experience and the empathy and self-awareness necessary to manage people in extraordinarily high-pressure conditions. For five years, we’ve worked together on developing his mindset and closing the knowing-doing gap in his emotional responses. As a seeker, Dan constantly reads, talks to experts in diverse fields and has an overflowing cupboard of journals filled with new ideas and strategies.
In our conversations, unsurprisingly, there’s always a lot to talk about, as the stakes in elite sports are so high. Dan was committed to evolving his emotional self-knowledge as he felt it represented the greatest opportunity for growth. ‘In virtually every situation where I felt disappointed that I hadn’t made the right decision or a relationship wasn’t going well, it seemed that my emotions were the biggest causal factor, and I didn’t really understand why.’ As he started to analyse situations with his team, managers and athletes through the frame of feeling, thinking and seeing, new possibilities opened up quickly.
‘The first assumption I busted was that I needed to suppress my emotions so they didn’t get in the way of being rational and clear-headed. Of course, that rarely works, and now it’s incredible how long I continued trying that approach.’
In working through the inevitable conflicts that arise in the pursuit of excellence, we explored ways Dan could see the origins of his physical feelings and how sleep, exercise and nutrition influenced his mindset. ‘This enabled me to be kinder to myself, lowering my defensiveness when I wasn’t fuelled. In turn, that meant I was more positive to others even when things became difficult.’
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This awareness increase helped Dan recognise that most of the outcomes that undermined his motivation were when his sense of self-worth was at stake. ‘There’s an intense emotional landscape where managers, coaches, parents, agents and a community of sports professionals are all trying to influence the athlete, sometimes in mid-play. The likelihood of being triggered in those situations is huge, so it helped me to see it happening, helicopter up, and adopt a?'how can we all win?'?frame to lower my sense of threat.
‘One of the most powerful shifts this has brought about in my mindset has been to recognise when situations become you vs me and where my value is wrapped up in having the right answers. It’s led to a shift in accountability because when you’re feeling threatened and you don’t tune into why you let responsibility slip through your fingers. Now, when this happens, I try to flip my instinctive response on its head immediately, even though my emotions are saying no. I acknowledge that I’m feeling defensive or angry, and then I send myself some love. That helps me to become open and curious and ask, ‘what’s going on?’ and ‘what do I look like to someone else?’ Each time I do this, it’s building more capacity to move faster out of the emotional response and gain the mental space to think my way forward rather than fight the feelings.’
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