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Coin Toss Clarity

16 April 2017

It must be tough being a bull, always carrying about some literal horns of a dilemma. Even worse, if you’re of a bovine persuasion, is that you can’t take advantage of a nifty little way to solve a problem. Perhaps you can find a helpful human, or similar biped, equipped with opposable thumbs, to help you out.

We all bump into difficult choices and these can really bend our head, as our thinking twists and turns. We often think we are thinking, when in fact we are mixing a small amount of cognitive processing with a large slice of more subconscious feeling and somatic response.

Our Somatic Child (which is a term from Transactional Analysis) is the little child that ‘lives’ in the Child Ego State and this tiny person carries with them a memory of felt sense, often retained from the love and contact from our early childhood. I should add that in TA terms we can think can and feel from all sorts of places, and we need to account for the fact that a TA model is a model and although models are a useful peg to hang our intellectual hat on, we are all complex and multi-layered individuals.

The point is that we can think we know ourselves, but often forget that memories and feelings are tucked deep inside, sometimes just out of our awareness. When we ‘think’ in order to solve a problem we often access these feelings to help us form our decisions.

If a problem is evenly balanced, or has the potential to take us in two very different directions, we can struggle to find clarity. Hardly surprising really, when we stop to consider the billions of cells between our ears, all firing off at once and doing their best to align memories and feelings with facts and patterns of thinking. It must be jolly hard work being a brain!

Often the best solutions are the simple ones and we have an option before us, that will have the bull of despair shaking his horns of confusion with annoyance. If only he had a) thumbs and b) a coin he could resolve his dilemma.

When we’re stuck we can take a coin in our hand, sit with someone and explain our issue to them. Having someone to share with increases the pressure on us and means we are less likely to cheat the outcome. Then we have to clearly state what the two options and outcomes are and which side of the coin will give us which confirmed choice.

Flip the coin!

Do it just the once. No ‘best of three’ or making out your hand slipped and you need to do a ‘proper flip’. This is a one-shot deal.

As the coin spins in the air we are likely to experience a moment of clarity and will hope the coin lands on a particular side . If it does, all well and good. If it doesn’t and we find ourselves staring gloomily at the wrong outcome, then great – we now know what our heart’s desire really is.

So, next time you are stuck, find a friend, pull out a coin and flip it. One flip. That’s all we might need to gain clarity.

Next week: Prosecco And Profiteroles