The art of juggling: the story begins

Are you one of the blessed people in life that can juggle?  It's always been totally beyond me, although I'd have to admit I've never been taught (why don't they make space for this at school?) and never tried in any serious way to learn - up to now...

Juggling practice has featured in most of my recent NLP training courses including the dyslexia coaching so it's gone high up on my list of things I want to master (or at the very least improve).  I'm going to see how I get on with Lessons from the Art of Juggling by Michael J Gelb and Tony Buzan.  Not only do they talk you through how to juggle in a real, practical sense, the book is also stuffed full of ideas about the ways we learn and the applications of the art of juggling for business, learning and life.

The book opens with a metaphor which gets extra brownie points from me (from Aristotle: "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor...").  Then it's straight into one of the crunch issues - our beliefs and assumptions about what we can and can't do, how those beliefs limit our potential and the way that we learn.  Now this is something I often pick up with clients but I also know that I'm quite attached to a deep rooted belief that "I can't juggle".  That being said it's part of the reason I'm keen to take on this learning challenge - a) I'd love to be proved wrong and b) it'll develop my skill in dispelling negative beliefs.

The first set of exercises starts in a good place - by challenging your preconceptions about what juggling is about (I can feel the belief start to crumble even now).  So we start by playing around with just one juggling ball with an emphasis on letting the ball drop.  Even I can do that!  It's a good place to start from: losing the fear of 'dropping the catch' plus an emphasis on fun, experimentation and early wins.

So far so good and I'm looking forward to moving forward to the two ball exercises (that's right - drop both of them!).  Will keep you posted on my progress...