Alexander didn’t invent the concept of Constructive Conscious Guidance.

Siddhārtha beat him to that by twenty-five hundred years.

Sorry old man, but psycho-physical unity, debauched kinaesthesia, inhibition, direction and the power of habit were already well-worked concepts before Jesus first appeared on the planet.

Not new. Nor original.

I once wrecked the brake system of my Toyota Corolla.

I did it by backing out of our drive with my handbrake on.

"Stupid car" I thought "Why is it playing up today?"

Of course, it wasn't THE CAR that was stupid, it was ME. I was trying to drive the car backwards with the handbrake on! Ever since then I have used this expression in my teaching:

People push themselves against their own handbrake.

It fascinates me how I avoid deeply thinking through doing difficult things.

Another name for that is "Conscious, Constructive Guidance" from You-Know-Who.

I first noticed this years ago during the frustrating years of not having a Japanese accountant who spoke English. For several YEARS (!) it irked me that I could not communicate with the accountant I had - but looking at the maze of incomprehensible Japanese websites, I despaired of being able to find anyone.

Then one day I just decided: fix this thing.

What do you think this is:

MSIIT-CCCOFTI-UOSAA-UCIL

It looks like one of those odious passwords that Microsoft loves to throw at you.

But it isn't.

Is it Latin?

Sanctus Msiit Cccoti Uotsaa Ucil?

No, but first let me thank you for continuing to read. AND being a reader of my blog.

When I was considering doing this daily emailed blog - oh yes, it took 6 months of DeepThinking to commit! - I tried to find my deepest purpose: the clear mission.

My daughter Angelica was relieved to finally get her driver’s license.

It had been a long time coming, with some bad luck along the way. Last month she finally passed.

However, her bad luck was to continue…

Once she got her license, she already had a car to drive. It was a vehicle passed down through the family, but quite old. She lives in Mullumbimby, which proudly claims it is “The Biggest Little Town in Australia” on a big sign you see when you come to the turnoff.

Years ago, an American neighbour of mine expressed mild interest in Alexander's discovery –because of her migraines. One day, she asked if it could help her, and got close to agreeing to have a trial lesson…

Then suddenly she blurted out a startling question:

“It’s not going to change my personality, is it?”

And I immediately thought ‘yes’

and re-wrote a little Shakespeare in my head:

Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the hands of change;

That this great deed shall flow around the earth

Ikigai (生きがい) is a Japanese word derived from ikiru (生きる) which means “to live”. It is usually translated as “reason to live” although in common everyday usage “gai” is often heard as “I like this.”

Therefore it can literally mean: “living like”.

In a country which averages more than 70 suicides a day, have a “living like” in your heart becomes pretty important. In Okinawa, where Japanese live well into their 100s, ikigai has been adopted as an everyday concept that prolongs life.

But is it only Japan that needs this?

Recently I was staring at my Mac’s screen, listening to a distressed man wonder if he had got it all wrong for the last 10 months. He had joined ATSuccess Pro to discover how he could share the work with an aged community living in close proximity to his home.

It took a while for me to recognize the fact that this man was himself in his 80’s!

Viktor E. Frankl - in his seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning - tells the story of a well-known composer and librettist whose death illustrated a mechanism of hope. One day the man gushed to Viktor that he had dreamt he would be free of the Nazi concentration camp. “When?” asked Frankl. “On March 30th, 1945” whispered back his friend.

He died on March 31st.

Cause? The death of hope in Frankl’s estimation. The loss of his hope triggered a deadly weakening of his immune system, and the man ultimately fell to the ravages of typhus.

Jann and I were on Skype call together.

Jann has almost finished a year deep-diving into the ATSuccess makeover for teachers who join our community. I was asking her how her experience now compared with the period of her post-graduate teacher training in 2010.

Back then, she said…

‘’I literally had to break down my concept of who I was and what I was, and start again. And I am feeling that same thing now. It’s like I am falling apart, I don’t know which way to go. I know what, but I don’t know how to get there.”