On Being Wrong

Every so often a theme emerges and is repeated in conversations with pupils and clients. Of late it has been around the question of being wrong. It is something that happens to everybody and not just once either. What is important is not so much the fact of being wrong, but our attitude and the attitude of those around us. That is not say that the consequences of any particular act are not important, they are - affecting our attitude and the attitudes of those around us. Our attitude here, as in so much of life, tends to be habitual, the result of choices, sometimes long forgotten, that reach far into the future, helping or condemning us, depending on, how we feel about, how we react to, how we see ourselves, when we get it wrong.
Two basic attitudes to being wrong have emerged during these conversations. There are those who do not want to be wrong, who do not want to fail, who always want to be right and those that accept that they will get it wrong, at least some of the time and use that as an opportunity for learning, for getting better at what they want to do, or for reconstruing their path and finding a new way. The former attitude if held to, always seems to lead to stagnation, to a failure to learn, stifling creativity and new growth, in the search of a vanishing certainty, that has become a mirage, leading not to water but to a desert.
Changing such attitudes is sometimes easy, sometimes not, sometimes requiring a great deal of insight and reconstruction for experimentation to become a way of life. Intelligent experimentation is what marked Alexander's discovery, after he realised that he must be doing something wrong in using his voice and therefore be causing the vocal problems that were effecting his career. You can read about this in the first chapter of his third book 'The Use of The Self.' This account fits perfectly with how George Kelly saw people as 'personal scientists', and is a paradigmatic example of how to work on problems. It is a great way to look at teaching and learning the Alexander Technique. It is also a great way to look at therapy and relationships. What makes it a great way here, is that it treats people as equals, with lives to live, seeing difficulties and challenges as natural parts of life, to be faced, overcome, in a world of uncertainties. Facing the unknown, as I blogged last week, is a stance cultivated in Alexander Lessons. It is a necessity for the personal scientist, wishing to chart a course to the future. It requires an ability to look at oneself calmly and accept where necessary that 'I was wrong,' before finding and committing again to a future hope. The alternative is a future, that is ever constricting, reliant on a past failures, with hope becoming more elusive. It is only by acceptance, that hope might reveal itself as an ever present possibility of the future.