Motivation .... and inequality

The Waistcoated Wonder in action.

I regularly receive a bulletin from The Guardian, often containing some interesting articles on a variety of topics. One such this week was on the outlook and ethos of the present England football team, about to play Belgium for third and fourth places in the World Cup. I am not normally interested in any sport including football, the nearest thing to a national religion the U.K. has. BUT I have been impressed with the opinions expressed about Gareth Southgate, the England manager, and with his quoted remarks. He doesn’t sound like the hyper-masculine, conventional manager with crude opinions and language and the unspoken assumption that He is The Boss, second only to God. Southgate is emotionally intelligent, modest, reflective, empathic, thoughtful, restrained. I might be writing about a psychologist, a doctor, a professor not a football manager!

Pippa Grange, Head of People and

Team Development England Football Team

Because of this discovery, I clicked on an article on the England team and its psychologist, Pippa Grange, who has worked closely with Southgate and team members. Her message for the England team can be summed up in a few, brief points:

Don’t fear failure. Be courageous in aiming for what you want, overcoming the fear of failure.

Positive thinking is not helpful alone. Focus positively on the steps needed to achieve your desired outcome.

Try different approaches for different people in your target group.

Kindness, listening and empathy can be very effective. Use praise to motivate others.

Wisdom in a few sentences. [I may send this to Trump!] Coincidentally the first two points above sum up the approach which I have learned over many years, works for me in problem-solving. My posture is mysteriously failing; clearly the cause comes under the heading of Old Age but improvement, or at least, delay in deterioration, must be sought. My chief strategy at the moment is to import a personal trainer once a week, unaffordable though the clear hope is that weekly exercise, alone under the instruction of a trained instructor will help my problem. I am optimistic and realistically positive, she writes as she sits, round-shouldered, at the computer! After two sessions, I sense a slight possibility of improvement!! If it works, as I feel sure it will, it must be afforded!

To the Urb-Egg cafe in the garden of the Poortersloge [part of the Triennale] on Wednesday afternoon, to meet five local women who want to join the Thursday evening chat group at the Amsterdam but
cannot as there is really no room. Joined by one husband and his male friend, we enjoyed a thoroughly convivial afternoon at a scrubbed table beneath the shade of a large tree in the midst of a number of similar tables and groups.

Poortersloge. Urb-Egg Café

to the left of picture.

I was struck, as I looked around the makeshift café, by the many sociable opportunities in pleasant surroundings available to a wide portion of society. The quality of life for many is so good while millions of others, refugees, the Poor, illegal immigrants struggle against injustice and ignorance and yes, poverty. I read in The New Statesman this week that Britain has the widest gap between the very rich and the rest than in any other large European country. Society in the UK is the most unequal it has been since shortly after the First World War. And there are many studies to show that countries achieve more, produce more and become more successful and contented societies, when income inequality is narrow. Danny Dorling [in the N.S.] writes that, in Britain, we live in a time of peak inequality with dire consequences for mental and physical health.

He suggests that all the signs now are pointing to a time of great change approaching in Britain and introduces the irony that greater equality helps the rich as well as the poor, pointing to the fact that wealthy people in more equitable societies like Germany and Scandinavia live longer and happier lives than their British counterparts.