The Goldilocks Conundrum: Just Right
Just Right
I often think of Goldilocks and her infamous particularity during lessons.
Scenes go something like this…
Question: “What are you doing?”
Answer: “I’m trying to not go too far back or too far forward.”
or, “I’m trying to not to be tense, but not too relaxed.”
or, “I don’t want it to sound too bright or too dark.”
You get the idea, I imagine. Not this and not that. This porridge is too hot, this one’s too cold…
Like Goldi, we are looking for JUST RIGHT.
The not-this and not-that strategies have something key in common — they all contain information only about what is not desired.
But the pivotal, necessary (and oft un-asked) question is:
What do you actually want? What would qualify as just right? Specific detail about what is desired is needed. For example:
- I want a balanced state of uprightness that is energized and comfortable.
- I want a vocal quality that is dimensional and flexible, with a great deal of resonance.
- I want my backflips to appear spontaneous and agile, with an unexpected beginning and a clean, sharp ending.
- I want my porridge to be exactly 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then, why we want that. That gives us flexibility around our wishes so that we can true up our ideas with objective reality.
We must re-define what we are aiming for. “Just-right” is not a fixed state or product- it’s a process. It’s an action that creates the likely circumstances for a range of desired outcomes.
We cannot just create a state of being, or quality out of thin air-
we need a plan.
We coordinate to do something. In order to avoid the undesirable, we must have an active YES plan to enact. Developing an effective, reliable plan requires specific information about what we want, about how we move and think, and about the activity itself. Then we can do the plan, and find out how we might need to adjust and update the plan as we get closer to what we want.
Some helpful questions to ask:
What do I want? What am I doing to get what I want?
How’s that going? What other information or tools might I need?
What other strategies might I try?
What’s my criteria for deciding whether something works? What information would help me establish that?
Information about what we don’t want is useful information. It’s just not the whole story.