An Original Plan to Defeat Anxiety, Part 2

Hello. I am Dr. John Dacey, coming to you with my weekly podcast, “New Solutions to the Anxiety Epidemic. This time, I’m going to be talking again about the second step of my COPE strategy, originality. I remind you that this step of the model calls for you to be as creative as you can in organizing a series of tactics, designed just for your own personality. I promised that I would help you to become more original, and this is the second time I have tried to keep that word. To begin with, it is wise to assess your own creative abilities. Regardless of whether you are one of the most original people you know, or are not very high at all in that trait, everyone can move up. Everyone can get better at being creative. It will be very much to your benefit if you design your own imaginative plan for becoming less anxious. You will need to get some benchmark of your overall ability. This is hard to do, not only because creativity is somewhat ephemeral, but also because it is difficult for us to be objective about how gifted we are. Nevertheless, we have make a try. To begin this venture, fill out what I call a “personal shield.” This is like a family crest, or coat of arms, except it doesn’t exist. You wil have to design it yourself. Imagine, if you will, a shield that has been divided into five sections. The crest has a line down the middle, and two horizontal lines dividing the shield into thirds. Furthermore, you need to know that the vertical line is not extended into the bottom section. Therefore, there are five sections. You can see a picture of the shield in the transcript (blog) that accompanies this podcast. Or you can just make a list of the five traits I am asking you to put in each box. The five traits are: What you consider your greatest strength. Your worst weakness. Your greatest personal achievement. Your worst screw-up. Your most hoped-for lifetime achievement. The most imaginative thing to do would be to draw symbols of your answers, as you would see on such an escutcheon. However, if you like, you could just answer the questions.       Your Personal Crest -- Creativity 1 Best Strength 2 Worst Weakness 3 Greatest Personal 4 Worst Screw-up Achievement 5 Hoped for Lifetime Achievement Personal Shield:  _____________________________________________     Give careful thought to filling in your shield, as it will be the foundation for step 2 of your COPE strategy. Okay, it’s time to move on in your quest for original thinking, by writing a haiku. And what is the definition of a haiku? It is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterized by these qualities: The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru). This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji ("cutting word") between them, a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation, and colors the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related. Traditional haikus consist of 17 on , in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on, respectively. Although haiku are often stated to have 17 syllables, this is incorrect, as syllables and on are not quite the same. Fortunately, however, it is not necessary for you to understand the difference. Here is a haiku poem I composed some years ago: Hidden deep inside, My soul, gleaming like diamonds. My whole truth lies there. Do you like it? Oh, well, you can’t please everyone. And now, to further your understanding of original thinking, I offer you the “two-string test.” Your goal is to find a way to solve this unusual problem. Imagine a large room at least 30 feet square and 10 feet high. Attached to the ceiling are 2 strings, each of them 9 feet long. The strings are 14 feet apart, each of them 7 feet from the center of the ceiling. Your job is to discover how to tie the two strings together. As you would easily recognize if you were to look at the drawing of the problem in today’s transcript of this podcast (p. 5), the two strings are too far apart for you to reach them both at the same time. Somehow, you need to get hold of one of the strings while holding the other, so you can tie them together. That’s it! There is one item available for your use in finding the solution—a wooden mousetrap. Mouse traps are only about four inches long so they are not long enough so that you could use one to reach the second string, no matter how tall you are. When you think of how you can tie the strings together, please tell your solution to a friend before you look at the answer [or write it in the space below].   Were you able to figure out the answer? The mousetrap may be used to solve the problem:  it can easily be attached to one of the strings as a weight, then swung away from the problem solver. The other string is grasped, and then the first string caught as it swings back. Now they may be tied together readily. Many people are unable to reach this solution because they cannot imagine mousetraps being used for something other than their usual purpose. That’s called “functional fixity”: the function of each entity in the person’s world is fixed in their minds, so that they cannot think of any other use for that object. Here's an example of what we mean: a graduate student in my psychology class studied the problem and said, “I’ve got it!  The answer is with the mousetrap. You catch a bunch of mice until you get one that isn’t seriously hurt. You make a pet of it, then train it to be a ‘trapeze’ mouse. It will then jump up on one of the strings and swing back and forth until it is able to swing over to you while you are holding the other string!” This is a good example of what we mean by functional fixity: this student believed that a mousetrap could only be used to capture mice. His solution could conceivably work, but it is much more complicated than simply using the trap as a weight. Is this another example? One young nun in my class attempted to solve the problem. She decided that the mousetrap was really not necessary. Lifting the apron of her religious habit (the long formal dress nuns used to wear), she seized the over-sized rosary beads hanging from her belt. She swung them over her head while holding one of the strings. The beads caught onto the other string and, beaming with self-satisfaction, the sister pulled the string caught by the rosary beads, and tied the strings together while those watching applauded!  Although this is an imaginative method for solving the problem if you happen to be a nun, it wouldn’t work for most of us. It is not, however, an example of functional fixity. She used her rosary beads for a purpose quite different from what they had originally been attended. In that sense, she was probably more creative than the young man in the previous example. Let me wind up this episode with an example of original thinking provided to us by   astronaut Chris Cassidy. With the coronavirus in mind, a reporter asked him how he dealt with the extreme isolation of being encapsulated on the International Space Station. His response: “If everybody just kind of lounges around and doesn't get up until 11:00, and nobody's brushing their hair or their teeth, not only do you look crappy and you feel crappy, but you just get in that funk. So sticking to a Monday-through-Friday routine is probably the most basic thing . . .” Pretty good idea, right? You will need more than a couple of very good ideas like this one to settle your anxious mind, and it will be best if they all come from you. Talk to you next week.