Fostering Mood in Training and Practice

You know, once a person stated that to learn you really had to have “fun.” When I questioned that lack of seriousness toward training and practice as it applied to a very serious subject, self-defense, I still thought that having fun would cause that person to lose or freeze when serious violence was encountered. 

Today, I realize I was talking about apples and oranges. To have fun is about creating a mood or mildly elated state called “bypomania” creates an optimal state for creativity and promote fluidity and imaginative diversity of thought. When you learn that agitation undermines our ability to think cohesively you start to understand just how important mood is to learning. 

When you learn that, “Laughing, like elation, seems to help people think for broadly and associate more freely,” you begin to see the benefit of having “fun” regardless of the seriousness of the discipline and/or topic. When you learn that the effects of the mood you are in effect how you think, you get the picture “having fun with it” becomes important. 

If you promote an atmosphere that results in higher states of anxiety you are fostering an environment and mood that will eventually cause that person to fail in training and in that discipline when applied in real life. 

EI states, “Being in a foul mood biases memory in a negative direction, making us more likely to contract into a fearful, overly cautions decision. Emotions out of control impede the intellect.” It says to me that to allow the monkey emotional train to run the tracks puts us into bad situations when we encounter cross traffic along the way. 

To foster a mood in people that best suits learning and to foster out of the box thinking should strive to put students into a mood-state that has balance. In other words taking the training seriously but with humor to achieve “bypomania.” :-)

In other words, “have fun, train hard and have fun.” There are times to take things serious but in learning and fostering the best learning environment possible make sure you and your students “have fun.”

Note: the flood training (stress and adrenal dumps, etc.) is another topic on training and practice but I suspect in between those sessions that trigger you monkey and adrenal stuff there is a healthy amount of “fun.” 

Hey, I finally get it!