THE MAN WHO FELT INAPPROPRIATE

Fred, as I’ll call him, had an almost constant knot in his stomach, a tightness that never quite went away.

The stomach knot was worse on some days than on others. It was particularly bad on the day Fred first focused effectively.

The day had begun badly. He had had an argument with his boss.

Fred was an interesting man who had a job as a sales executive in a manufacturing company. The company wasn't doing as well as it had at one time. Fred believed he could fix that by reorganizing the sales force, and he had drawn up a detailed plan for doing so. This made Fred feel more creative on his job. The plan in­volved a fairly drastic change in the company's general selling philosophy, and this proposed change had pulled Fred into the argument with his boss.

The emotional residue of the argument settled in Fred's stomach and stayed there all day. After work that evening, he tried all those familiar approaches that don't work.

He tried lecturing himself: "Get hold of yourself! You let little things upset you too much. Rise above it, Stay cool!"

When the self-lecture was over Fred's stomach was still in a knot.

He tried reliving the argument, going round and round with it: "When he said this, I should have said that." Of course, this only increased his emotional ten­sion.

He tried the trick of pretending the problem didn't exist. "Nothing really happened at all," he told himself. "My boss knew my views long before this, and I knew his. The argument didn't change anything. It just got things out into the open, and that ought to make me feel good, not bad. Sure! I feel good.'"

But his stomach didn't believe it. It was still in a knot.

He tried analysis. "He's an old-timer, wedded to old ways of doing things, scared of change. That's his hang-up. My hang-up is that I'm basically scared of older men in authority. ..."

His stomach didn't relax after that approach either. An analysis of a personal problem might be true. But it is different from going inside to feel directly how it is.

When all of Fred's attempts to make himself feel better failed, he went to a bar and had a couple of drinks. But this made him feel only a trifle better. He could still feel the same knot in his stomach, only the pain was slightly muffled because of the alcohol in his system.

Later that night, when the alcohol had worn off, he tried focusing. He had learned it from me a few weeks earlier but, so far, had been unable to do it well. Now he sat down on the edge of his bed and found himself able to do it.

This is what he reported:

"I made myself shut up inside, turned off (or at least turned down) all the lecturing and intellectualizing and other noises that had been thundering in my skull. I let my attention go down, not just to the argument with my boss but to get a feeling of all the thousands of details that surround it, all my concerns about my job and my future and what I am doing with my life."

This large, vague feeling is what I call a felt sense. Then he sought the core of the felt sense. He stayed with the vague discomfort. "I asked myself what was the worst of it? Where did it hurt the most?

"I tried to grasp the quality of that. It was so strange I couldn't make it speak to me. It was a feeling of something being out of place. It was the kind of feeling you might get from seeing a picture hanging crooked on the wall, or a book placed upside-down in a book­case, something not quite right.

"I waited for words and got 'out of place' and 'off,' but when I checked to see if they were right, they weren't -- not quite. I felt very close, I had that tip-of-my-tongue feeling, the feeling I get watching a quiz show, and I know I know the answer but I can't quite bring it up.

"I never got that far with focusing before. I never had that feeling without knowing -- the felt sense that you talk about all the time. This time I knew I had it.

"Then I got it, got my word. It was inappropriate!

"That was my word. And I did feel my knot, my tight place inside coming loose. And right away, I knew."

He had not needed to make a separate movement of asking. The body shift and release came along with the word.

Inappropriate: that was the word -- as his body felt it -- that described all his actions in his job: his elabo­rate plans for reorganizing the sales force, his arguing with his boss, everything. All were inappropriate, for this job wasn't what he really wanted to do with his life.

He had long thought he was past all his youthful dreams, thought he had "grown up" and become prac­tical with maturity. But now, in that body shift, that feeling of a knot loosening inside, he knew something that came along with that one word "inappropriate." He knew it all in one instant flood.

What he knew was this:

"The reason I got so upset about the reorganization plan was that I was hoping for the plan to fix my life. And of course, that made me act stupid. What my life needs is much too big for that plan to fix. I didn't know that and it sure made me a difficult person to be with, on the job. It's like I was reacting with this enormous emotional intensity which doesn't fit the plan. My intensity was inappropriate to the plan, and I was acting inappropriately on the job".

"Of course, I sort of knew that I wanted the plan because then I could feel creative about my job. But I didn't know I was letting that plan be my whole life, the part of it I didn't manage to live out. No wonder I couldn't stay cool about it."

Fred hadn't known what he had invested in the plan, but his body knew. And all he needed to do was "ask" it.

Fred could never have figured this out analytically, partly because he thought he already knew his own an­swers. If someone had asked him to think it through, he might have answered that the plan made him feel like the creative person he wanted to be. And with this simple and true answer he would have prevented himself from com­ing into direct touch with the actual way the problem was in his body. Also, Fred could not have figured this out analytically because his mind had been occupied with thoughts about details and people on the job.

Fred tells this focusing story only as far as that evening when the tightness in his stomach released. It is necessary to observe, as with Fay, that Fred had not yet fully resolved his problem in practical terms. But he would be detached now, on his unwanted job, relaxed about the reorganization plan. He would cer­tainly continue to champion his plan because it was good, but he would be able to listen to other people's objections and would be at ease in combining then-ideas with his.

This relieved his immediate tension on the job. The body shift had produced other changes as well. Some­thing had come free in him about changing his life. He puts it this way:

"I could see that the job never could satisfy me even if my plan or any number of plans got accepted, but I felt better. I should have been discouraged. I certainly can't change my life just like that. It isn't as if I hadn't thought about that before. But some way, this element in me which needs something else got more re­leased, too. It was right there in me, some appetite for living. I don't need to force it into a straitjacket any­more. I don't know why, but it's there inside me, a lit­tle excited thing, saying, We're going to change! And I have no idea how, yet. If I were purely objective, I'd be discouraged."

Of course, to change his life took practical steps, not only focusing. And it took more focusing to meet fears and other obstacles inside, as well as practical steps out­side. Fred didn't know at first what inner and outer changes would come to him to make. But since that time a whole new life has opened to him. As it turns out, he has been able to pursue his new interests with­out changing his job.

But that happened to be Fred's further development. Perhaps another person would have changed jobs. Still another might have found relief simply in not need­ing the reorganization plan to work out exactly as written. Focusing usually leads to deeper levels, but sometimes they are at peace and need no further change. In Fred's case, a new life direction began.

Previously, if he had been asked to apply a descrip­tive label to the job, he would have called it "this desperately important job that ties my stomach in knots." Now he could call it "this job that is only a small part of me."

Same job. Same man, but a man with an entirely new outlook on his goals in life, most immediately his job.

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