Father’s Day approaches, and with it the need to recognise his role in my upbringing. Given the fact I write of my awkward relationship with my father in What’s Stopping You? I more than most need to pay my dues. Yet I’ll do so tangentially if I’m allowed – via a strong fatherly example I came across in my PR work.
At Moorgate, we have recently started working with a video production company based near us in Spitalfields. In fact, I met the CEO in the gym and we got chatting about the fact many of our clients are becoming keen on converting articles into videos. We’ve since kept his company gainfully employed. Our clients appreciate his professionalism – turning around projects on time, within budget and with flair and thought for the content.
From my dealings with this particular CEO, he’ll not mind me labelling him a High-AM – someone with high achievement motivation (as I write in What’s Stopping You?). He approaches meetings and projects expecting success, in fact is somewhat surprised when that’s not the outcome – although is certain that it will be, perhaps with a small adjustment (usually in the price!).
Yet there’s nothing in this man’s background suggesting the inevitability of this approach. He was brought up in a tough part of south London and mixed with childhood friends that became drug dealers and even violent criminals. He had to watch many of his peers adopt the swagger of youthful criminal success, as well as watch them later being arrested, banged up and, on several occasions murdered – putting my own rough-edged youth in exurban Essex somewhat into perspective. Yet he never strayed from the certainty of his route – despite being aware of the potential prejudices he faced as a black entrepreneur selling services to the privileged elite of the City.
As I have discussed previously, immigrants – and their children – are proportionally more likely to start businesses, making this unremarkable. Yet it would be doing him a disservice to assume this man’s cultural background fitted comfortably into the professional financial/City landscape I occupy and he was successfully selling into. Sure, I’d defend the City as a meritocratic place – far more so than other industries I’ve worked in such as media (despite its protestations). But he undoubtedly had to overcome preconceived ideas about him and his background in order to win over this particular audience. Certainly, I did as an Essex lad with a state-education. So it would have been doubly so for him. Yet, boy was he winning them over: with diligence, with service and with strong results.
Eventually, I could no longer resist my curiosity. I wanted to know his story. It was then he told me of his tough Peckham childhood and his determination to “get on”. Aware of the hurdles, he used them to his advantage – offering corporations the sharp eye for the cool look while offering good service and prompt attention.
“But I was lucky,” he concluded. “My father was a strict disciplinarian. He was very old fashioned and made sure I stayed on the straight and narrow.”
This got me thinking about my own dad – now sadly suffering from Alzheimer’s. As What’s Stopping You? explores I had a far from easy relationship with my father as a child – in fact his treatment of me is one of the root causes of my own insecurities (for which, as an adult, I now take full responsibility). Yet my video production CEO’s instant and unambiguous recognition of his father’s contribution to his undoubted success shamed me. With my book now published – and with my childhood traumas outlined as an example of the early-years development of adult insecurities – I need to acknowledge the positive influences of my father.
1) Academic drive. As stated previously, I was an academic disaster – leaving school at 15 with one O’ level (geography, taught by the school’s only enthusiastic teacher). But my father was a structural engineer and this acted as a powerful benchmark. I was certain I was capable of a university degree, which I achieved via nightschool A’ levels and hard graft. Only from this distance do I appreciate that my conviction was influenced by his example.
2) Bookish. My dad was always reading – mainly books on the Second World War. This made me very aware of the power of books and the world they opened up (although one mainly restricted to theatres of war between 1939-45 in our house). This may seem obvious to middle-class readers. Yet, believe me, I entered many Essex households in my childhood and youth that contained no other book bar the telephone directory.
3) History. In fact I exaggerate – dad loved all of history. And I too love history – being made aware of the fantastic perspective it offers. Whenever I hear arguments I consider ignorant or simply wrong-headed (from left, right and centre) it’s nearly always due to a total and utter ignorance of history. To know history is to understand the bus ride you take, the street you cross, the building you live and work in and even the person you buy your coffee from. What else gives you that perspective?
4) Work ethic. “No one owes you a living,” dad would often say – perhaps when I preferred the duvet to getting up and doing something constructive. He was by no means a disciplinarian – being far too busy working most evenings and half the weekend. But his example of hard work – and his “no pain, no gain” philosophising – had an undoubted impact.
5) London. Although, we lived in the boring exurbs beyond the city limits I’ve always loved London and consider myself a Londoner – eventually rejecting its only serious rival (New York) because I missed it so. My father was also a proud Londoner and instilled both my love – as well as my knowledge – of this great city.
6) West Ham. In fact, I’m not that grateful for this one. He was brought up off Green Street in Upton Park so I guess he had no choice. But his insistence that no son of his follow an alternative team – and that, once “chosen”, I could never change my football team (with even changing my gender allowable prior to this crime, in his view) – has provided me with miserable footballing fare for too long. I recently ordered my eldest son’s first replica kit for his sixth birthday. It was Arsenal (the boy’s choice after I steered him away from Chelsea or Tottenham). Sorry dad – but thanks for the other values.
Showing posts with label West Ham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Ham. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Thursday, December 2, 2010
My shocking memories, and their impact
The Kelsey Effect also works in reverse, it seems. I had tickets for West Ham Vs Manchester United on Tuesday. Yet it was snowing and I assumed we’d (i.e. West Ham) would lose to the mighty reds (unbeaten since April). So I didn’t go. West Ham won 4-0, although it goes without saying that, had I been at the match, we’d have lost 0-4.
There was a more serious reason for my absence, however. Snowy midweek football matches trigger memories of one of the worst incidents of my life. As a 13-year old on my way home from a very snowy football match our train pulled into a station with policemen, expecting trouble, lining the platform. As we waited, the snow blew into our carriage. I got up to shut the window, only to find a policeman pointing at me from the platform. Before I knew what was happening I’d been hauled from the train and beaten in the face by leather-gloved fists.
Bloodied and confused, and in utter terror, I was dragged to a corner of the station and interrogated. Perhaps at that point – through my tears and blood and my obvious shock and urine soaked trousers – it began to dawn on these burly cops that they’d pulled an innocent child from a train and beaten him up for no good reason. I could hear them discussing the train, now leaving the station, and the fact it was the last one of the night, which led to a bizarre sirens-wailing police-van chase down a snowy motorway to beat the same train to the next station.
As they put me back on the train one of the officers – pointing to my bloodied face – said: “If anyone asks, you did that falling down the stairs, OK.”
Only when I rejoined my friends – who were themselves still shocked from the incident – was I told that one of the officers had shouted “spit at a policeman would you,” as the first leathered-fist hit my face. I guess the snow, the boredom and the shutting window had confused him (although nothing excuses the violence).
Days went by with the only external evidence of the trauma being my fat lip – which I explained to my parents as the result of a crowd crush at the match (this was a decade before the Hillsborough disaster). Yet by the weekend the shock of the incident came flooding out – with me eventually breaking down in tears over Sunday lunch as I confessed the event to my parents.
And the incident has left permanent mental scars – something I have only realised since researching my book What’s Stopping You? It had a profound impact on my view of the world – ending my innocence and shocking my belief system. It shaped – and distorted – my perceptions for many years to come. My attitude towards authority changed. Even with teachers and my parents, I felt more marginalised and became less trusting, less interested in their view. I became more rebellious. More angry, even.
Sure this may have happened to me anyway – a lower middle-class teenager from the English exurbs in the rebellious late-70s could hardly escape the pervasive air of moral and economic decay. And, of course, I do not blame this event for the fear of failure I have experienced all my life (the tackling of which, forms the basis for What’s Stopping You?). Yet even here, unconscious feelings of victimisation – the “why me” aspect of my insecurities (even the half-joke Kelsey Effect with respect to luck) – can all come into play now I think of it.
But I write about the event, not to offer an excuse or seek sympathy, but as an example of memory triggering, and its consequences. The incident illustrates something important: the role of traumatic events in shaping our self beliefs.
In short, the event caused me to experience something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is not as exaggerated as it sounds, and I mean no disrespect to ex-servicemen that have had their lives turned upside down by PTSD. As Yale University’s Dennis Charney – one of the most respected authorities on PTSD – states, even minor incidents, perhaps of public humiliation, can have a major impact on our beliefs because the incident has made a far greater imprint on the brain.
In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman – citing Charney and others – describes the impact of such traumatic events on the brain. The amygdale – which Goleman describes as a key cluster of components in the limbic system dealing with emotions such as anxiety, distress and fear – signals other brain areas to strengthen their impression of the incident, creating a bigger imprint on the memory. For instance, despite a gap of over 30 years, I can still clearly remember the leading policeman’s face, including his moustache, as well as the smell and feel of his leathered glove.
This strengthening generates what Goleman describes as a new neural “setpoint” in the brain that can cause a lifelong resetting of the brain’s default (i.e. instant) responses to even tangentially-similar situations. In other words our inner beliefs regarding our expected outcomes from particular circumstances have been fundamentally altered.
Importantly, according to studies into PTSD, even brief or mild exposure to traumatic stress – especially when young – can permanently damage the hippocampus (a key part of the brain for the formation of memories) stopping normal new cell growth. And this can prevent us from ever evaluating information other than via this traumatised default setting. Goleman uses the example of a child once frightened by a dog developing a fear of that breed of dog and never naturally developing a calmer response (and potentially the opposite – with each fear incident adding to the fearful “setpoint”). Indeed, it can go further than this – with the child perhaps unknowingly developing a fear of particular footpaths where an encounter with a similar dog is no more than possible.
From such incidents, large and small, our belief system springs – a system that can be all but impossible to shift. Sure, we can work on our responses, once aware that our initial evaluations may be faulty (I spend some time on this in What’s Stopping You?). But a total rewiring is unlikely to ever happen – even through hypnosis of other techniques that, in reality, produce only a deeply-embedded and dangerously unworked form of denial.
So is it any wonder that, once the sky turned snowy, my enthusiasm for the match disappeared? Of course there’s also the fact that, now in my 40s, I’ve done my time freezing my nuts off at a football match, whatever the potential for a historic win! Yet the memory was, indeed, triggered – hence me writing about it now.
There was a more serious reason for my absence, however. Snowy midweek football matches trigger memories of one of the worst incidents of my life. As a 13-year old on my way home from a very snowy football match our train pulled into a station with policemen, expecting trouble, lining the platform. As we waited, the snow blew into our carriage. I got up to shut the window, only to find a policeman pointing at me from the platform. Before I knew what was happening I’d been hauled from the train and beaten in the face by leather-gloved fists.
Bloodied and confused, and in utter terror, I was dragged to a corner of the station and interrogated. Perhaps at that point – through my tears and blood and my obvious shock and urine soaked trousers – it began to dawn on these burly cops that they’d pulled an innocent child from a train and beaten him up for no good reason. I could hear them discussing the train, now leaving the station, and the fact it was the last one of the night, which led to a bizarre sirens-wailing police-van chase down a snowy motorway to beat the same train to the next station.
As they put me back on the train one of the officers – pointing to my bloodied face – said: “If anyone asks, you did that falling down the stairs, OK.”
Only when I rejoined my friends – who were themselves still shocked from the incident – was I told that one of the officers had shouted “spit at a policeman would you,” as the first leathered-fist hit my face. I guess the snow, the boredom and the shutting window had confused him (although nothing excuses the violence).
Days went by with the only external evidence of the trauma being my fat lip – which I explained to my parents as the result of a crowd crush at the match (this was a decade before the Hillsborough disaster). Yet by the weekend the shock of the incident came flooding out – with me eventually breaking down in tears over Sunday lunch as I confessed the event to my parents.
And the incident has left permanent mental scars – something I have only realised since researching my book What’s Stopping You? It had a profound impact on my view of the world – ending my innocence and shocking my belief system. It shaped – and distorted – my perceptions for many years to come. My attitude towards authority changed. Even with teachers and my parents, I felt more marginalised and became less trusting, less interested in their view. I became more rebellious. More angry, even.
Sure this may have happened to me anyway – a lower middle-class teenager from the English exurbs in the rebellious late-70s could hardly escape the pervasive air of moral and economic decay. And, of course, I do not blame this event for the fear of failure I have experienced all my life (the tackling of which, forms the basis for What’s Stopping You?). Yet even here, unconscious feelings of victimisation – the “why me” aspect of my insecurities (even the half-joke Kelsey Effect with respect to luck) – can all come into play now I think of it.
But I write about the event, not to offer an excuse or seek sympathy, but as an example of memory triggering, and its consequences. The incident illustrates something important: the role of traumatic events in shaping our self beliefs.
In short, the event caused me to experience something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is not as exaggerated as it sounds, and I mean no disrespect to ex-servicemen that have had their lives turned upside down by PTSD. As Yale University’s Dennis Charney – one of the most respected authorities on PTSD – states, even minor incidents, perhaps of public humiliation, can have a major impact on our beliefs because the incident has made a far greater imprint on the brain.
In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman – citing Charney and others – describes the impact of such traumatic events on the brain. The amygdale – which Goleman describes as a key cluster of components in the limbic system dealing with emotions such as anxiety, distress and fear – signals other brain areas to strengthen their impression of the incident, creating a bigger imprint on the memory. For instance, despite a gap of over 30 years, I can still clearly remember the leading policeman’s face, including his moustache, as well as the smell and feel of his leathered glove.
This strengthening generates what Goleman describes as a new neural “setpoint” in the brain that can cause a lifelong resetting of the brain’s default (i.e. instant) responses to even tangentially-similar situations. In other words our inner beliefs regarding our expected outcomes from particular circumstances have been fundamentally altered.
Importantly, according to studies into PTSD, even brief or mild exposure to traumatic stress – especially when young – can permanently damage the hippocampus (a key part of the brain for the formation of memories) stopping normal new cell growth. And this can prevent us from ever evaluating information other than via this traumatised default setting. Goleman uses the example of a child once frightened by a dog developing a fear of that breed of dog and never naturally developing a calmer response (and potentially the opposite – with each fear incident adding to the fearful “setpoint”). Indeed, it can go further than this – with the child perhaps unknowingly developing a fear of particular footpaths where an encounter with a similar dog is no more than possible.
From such incidents, large and small, our belief system springs – a system that can be all but impossible to shift. Sure, we can work on our responses, once aware that our initial evaluations may be faulty (I spend some time on this in What’s Stopping You?). But a total rewiring is unlikely to ever happen – even through hypnosis of other techniques that, in reality, produce only a deeply-embedded and dangerously unworked form of denial.
So is it any wonder that, once the sky turned snowy, my enthusiasm for the match disappeared? Of course there’s also the fact that, now in my 40s, I’ve done my time freezing my nuts off at a football match, whatever the potential for a historic win! Yet the memory was, indeed, triggered – hence me writing about it now.
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