Lucky's AQ project

As I've had a few days 'off' :) from this project, I'm going to extend the three-week period for this stage slightly and give myself until the week after next.

I've been in a procrastination slump for the past few days, and it's just occurred to me that all the dimensions of AQ come into play when trying to get yourself out of a slump. Control and Ownership are obvious, but Reach and Endurance are just as important. I can improve my Reach score by not expecting procrastination in one area of my life to spill over into all the others, and I can improve my Endurance score by not expecting a slump like this to last for days or to remain my default state forever. If I look at a procrastination attack as localised and fleeting I can get over it much faster.

I can't end this post without mentioning the disaster in Haiti... this is a situation where nobody can be accused of 'catastrophising', because it truly is a catastrophe. But what stands out for me is that the world as a whole has shown phenomenally high Ownership. EVERYONE wants to do something to help, including people you wouldn't expect. It's as if the world has collectively decided that this is all our responsibility.

Definitely getting a higher AQ! Two instances of prolonged, cold, partly-my-silly-fault transport fail today, which would normally have reduced me to a self-loathing gibbering wreck, and I dealt with both calmly and cheerfully. I'm really pleased because I'm not staying constantly aware of AQ, at all, but it seems to be sinking in somehow!

Over the past few days, I've also had the odd feeling that my HP was getting kind of jealous of the huge amount of effort I've been putting into constant-AQ-awareness, vs. the very small amount of effort I put into constant-God-awareness. So I'm attempting to redress that balance. :)

Also! In the animated film 'Anastasia', Rasputin has a weirdly low AQ for such a powerful character. It's very high in some ways (he's absolutely determined to kill the heroine and he's not going to let a little thing like being DEAD HIMSELF stand in his way!) but very low in others (he throws a massive fit of hysterics and quite literally goes to pieces each time he fails. Low Control!)

Actually, 'hysterics when thwarted' seem to be a common villain trait... it's like a way of telegraphing that under all the impressive scariness, this character is weak and childish and will ultimately lose to the higher-AQ hero. Heroes when thwarted are more apt to say something noble and soldier on, though the sidekick may have hysterics as a low-AQ foil to the hero.

I'm still dissatisfied with how aware I am of AQ, so I'm going to ramp up my attempts to keep it in mind.

* Mention it daily in my prayers

* Do affirmation when cycling

* Already put a note saying 'AQ' in two places that I see very often - will add a third at work tomorrow.

Interesting observation today - confidence and high self-esteem don't always equal high AQ. Just watched the film 'Beverley Hills Chihuahua' in which the heroine is an incredibly spoiled dog! She starts the film overconfident and arrogant but with a very low AQ because she's never really faced adversity. Then when things do go wrong, she scores high on Endurance because she expects to be rescued any minute, but terribly low on Ownership because... she expects to be rescued. From everything. It doesn't occur to her that she could or should solve her own problems. During the course of the film she learns to do so and goes home a high-AQ chihuahua :)

I was pleased with myself this morning for showing high(er than usual) AQ when faced with a baking mishap (I also chose to write 'mishap' rather than 'disaster' there - trying to be high-AQ in my choice of words.) I would normally have either folded into a heap of misery and not got everything done, or tried to fix the problem when I knew there wasn't time, and not got everything done. As it was I actually managed to go 'oh well' and keep going.

I think PA boosts our AQ in two main ways:

Control: Seeing other people, who face similar challenges, ticking items off their tasklists makes us feel that we can do it, too.

Ownership: Being accountable, knowing that other people are reading/chatting and care if we get things done, encourages us to take more responsibility for our actions :)

Next :) since I don't have a lot of AQ-thoughts from my own life to share today, and I feel like doing something fun, I'm going to AQ-analyse a few minutes of the anime 'Utena'. Liveblogging starts... NOW!

The opening theme is partly about being brave in adversity ('Even if the two of us are ever torn apart... take my revolution') and shows a lot of inspirational heroic fighting imagery. Interestingly, both the main girls are presented as high-AQ here even though one of them comes across as painfully low-AQ for much of the series.

!!! The very beginning of the series, a little 'fairytale' which sets up everything to come, is specifically, explicitly about being brave in adversity. A prince appears to a grieving princess and says, 'Little one who bears up alone under such deep sorrow, never lose that strength and nobility, even when you grow up.' And then the whole rest of the show is about her quest to live up to that. In her own eccentric way. By trying to become a prince herself. :)

It's certainly true that a high-AQ person can hand out *incredibly* powerful encouragement, almost hand you a piece of their AQ.

I wish it wasn't called AQ, may have to rename it.

Then after the 'fairytale' opener, the first thing we see is our heroine (Utena) displaying super-confident high-AQ body language, showing Control and Ownership to a hysterically funny extent when told off by a teacher for wearing boys' uniform, and then beating all the boys at basketball. It's basically a 'See my high AQ!' montage.

We then see her explaining that she's not doing this because she wants to be a boy. She wants to be 'a noble prince who saves princesses'. In other words, she wants to save people the way the prince saved her when he handed her a piece of his AQ. We then immediately see Anthy, the girl Utena will spend the entire series trying to protect, save, and above all hand a piece of her AQ. 'Take my revolution', see?

Dude. Dude. Dude. Incoherent now!

I don't feel I've been aware enough of AQ in general or using my affirmation enough.  I'll stick a couple of refs to it in my tasklist for tomorrow.

Definitely was aware of my own low 'Reach' today when I caught myself thinking 'x is going to CHEW ME UP financially', but managed to show 'Control' and calm myself down. After calming down, the previously huge problem seemed insignificant, even though nothing had changed. Very interesting!

Wondering about the AQ of a friend who is very competent but moans a lot. I worked out that she has low Reach and Endurance (problems are 'a nightmare' and 'never-ending') but very high Ownership (if other people leave their mess all over the place, she'll moan, but she'll also clean it, without fail) and quite high Control ('You just have to get on with it, don't you!')