A brief instructional monologue by Mary Wanless using the simple action of folding arms the opposite way as a metaphor for learning new physical coordination and breaking habits. She guides listeners through trying the alternate arm-fold, highlights the initial awkwardness (‘weirdness’) of changing habitual actions, and encourages embracing that discomfort as necessary for progress off a plateau.
What I want you to do is to fold your arms. That's all easy enough. And now this is a metaphor for learning any new coordination. Unfold your arms and fold them the other way. Now, I've done this many times and I now find this very easy, but it's not easy for a lot of people. If you haven't done this before, you could be there going, oh, wait a minute, go to the normal way. Usually people fold their arms so one set of fingers are showing, like mine there, and the other set of fingers are buried under the elbow. Not everybody does that. Some people fold their arms like this, but most people bury one set of fingers and the other set of fingers is showing. So I'm hoping I can make this a little bit easier for you. If I suggest you get the things that are buried to show and the things that are showing to be buried. Did that work? Have you made it? Or are you still kind of. Whoa between the two? See if you can just sit for a few moments with your arms folded in the new way. And normally I've got a room full of people doing this, or sometimes a very big audience doing this, and I'll say to them, so, what's it like doing this new way? And the answer normally is, it's a bit weird. And it will feel weird. And anytime you change a habit, it will feel weird. And weirdness is the name of the game. In fact, weird is my favourite word. People say I'm weird. I think I'm really not that weird at all, but people think I'm weird weird. But folding your arms like this for the first time is definitely an experience of weird. You want to make friends with weird. Weird is definitely your friends. Because if you're always doing what you always did stuck on that platter, there won't be any weird, there'll only be sameness. And the only way you're going to find your way off your plateau is by finding a new weird feeling.
