Battery or free-range thinking?

ex-batts have bald necks from reaching over bars to their food troughs

Eggatha tries her wings out for the first time

Trinity, bonding with the chickens

There’s great excitement in the Bradford household at the moment, as we’ve recently taken on four new members of the family by the names of Cluck, Eggatha, Bobob and Staggerpole (some rather adventurous names there – that’s what you get when there’s a six-year-old input!) and they’re ex-battery chickens.

 

In the normal run of things, battery chickens are kept in small cages where they each have a space around the size of a piece of A4 paper. They don’t see daylight and are unable to carry out natural behaviours such as dustbathing, nesting or roosting.  It’s a pretty miserable existence and it ends after a year, when they are unceremoniously slaughtered as they are not considered such effective egg-laying machines.

 

That is, unless they are lucky enough to have been rescued by the Battery Hen Welfare Trust (www.bhwt.org.uk), who agree with some battery farmers to liberate some from each cull having found suitable ‘adopters’ for them.  And so it was that one damp Saturday morning we were waiting, along with many others, with great anticipation to be called round to the greenhouse to collect our liberated chucks.

 

Well the sight of 250 bewildered battery chickens who had seen the light of day and been able to move around for the first time that morning was incredible.  Four were selected for us and loaded into our car and we drove home like first-time parents bringing the baby home from the hospital.  Emika and Trinity were fascinated by the beaks that kept appearing through the hole in the box and the little confused noises the chickens were making.  They were even more confused when we introduced them to their coop, where they have more space than they’d ever seen before in their short lives!  They huddled together for the first 24 hours, hardly moving at all.  We had to pick them up and put them in the henhouse at night because they’d never used their legs and wings before and they were too weak to get up the ladder.  They were featherbare, particularly around their wings, tails and necks, and generally looked in a very sorry state.

 

Two weeks on and the change is enormous.  They have all started growing their feathers back and they’ve learned to dustbathe, sunbathe (on the rare occasions there’s been any to bathe in!), explore the garden, dig for and eat worms and other insects, flap their wings and ‘fly’ up to the henhouse (and away from us when we’re trying to round them back up!).  Two of them have learned to use the nest box to lay in and they’ve laid an average of three eggs a day between them.  They have distinctly different personalities – Cluck and Bobob rule the roost and are the brains of the outfit, while Eggatha storms the door and tries to escape into the garden whenever we go into the coop.  Staggerpole tends to keep herself to herself and is less adventurous, although rather affectionate with us.

 

That’s the change in two weeks.  In a month or so, we’re reliably informed, they will have grown back all their feathers and will look and behave like ‘proper’ chickens, doing the instinctive things that they should have been able to do all of their lives.  They already have a thirst for more freedom – getting visibly frustrated at us when we don’t let them out into the garden – when two weeks ago they didn’t know what to do with all the space. 

 

It’s led me to wonder about the potential for change in all of us.  When put into a new situation, our capacity for adaptation is phenomenal.  You just have to watch programmes such as ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!’ to see how the initial discomfort at being in a new circumstance quickly disappears and that contestants talk later about how liberating the change was.  Having completed that abseil I thought I’d never do (see previous post), there’s a change in my thinking – a subtle shift in my perception of what I ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ do, which also has been liberating.

 

Liberty then, and liberation.  Not only from the physical confines of battery cages (or ‘gilded cages’ made from the trappings of luxury and fame), but the limiting beliefs, fears and messages of those around us and those we’ve created in our own minds.  Our chickens lives have changed enormously in just two weeks since their liberation from the battery cage to the (relative!) freedom of our back garden.  How much can our lives change when we liberate ourselves from battery thinking?  What beliefs or fears have you made your cage out of?  What needs to change for you to go free-range thinking?

 

Want help liberating yourself from battery thinking?  Email me (info@straightforwardcoaching.com) and we’ll arrange an exploratory chat.

 

Want help liberating a chicken? Go to www.bhwt.org.uk. Good luck!

Onwards and upwards? I went backwards and down!!

Picture the scene – it’s Christmas day in the Highlands of Scotland and we’re staying in a stone cottage with a roaring fire, kids playing happily with the toys Santa brought them.  My husband hands me a present – it’s an upmarket-looking embossed silver envelope.  Surely this has to contain a voucher for some luxury or other – a spa day perhaps, or a ticket to somewhere exotic?  He watches me, smiling, as I open it and read…

…it was a voucher for an abseiling experience. AN ABSEILING EXPERIENCE!!!! Had the man gone utterly mad?! Perhaps he had me mixed up with some other wife he’s been keeping secret?  Had there been some terrible admin mistake somewhere?  All goodwill and warm fuzzy Christmassy feelings went from the room in an instant.  I went completely white and momentarily feigned completely unconvincing delight (whilst tears of fear pooled in my eyes) before fleeing.

The ferocity of my rising panic and anger amazed me.  It’s true that I had lots of gremlins that lurk around such pursuits (due to being frogmarched to outdoor activity centres all too often when I was an overweight and underconfident teen – shudder), but I’m not afraid of heights and I knew the likelihood of everyone else pointing and laughing at me was extremely low (and now I’d have things to say and ways to deal with it if they had done!) – so why this paralysing dread?

When I calmed down enough to trust that I wouldn’t shout, swear or do harm to him, I talked to Richard and asked him (very politely!) what had been his thought processes around this particular present. He said that he’d known it was not the sort of thing I’d usually do (admitting he hadn’t anticipated how strongly against it I’d felt!) and he’d thought it would be a fun challenge, in a widening-your-comfort-zone sort of a way.  He also added that I could change it or not go if I wanted.

Oddly enough, it was this comment that made me decide to do it.  It reminded me that, as adults, we always have choice, even if it doesn’t appear obvious.  The fact I could actively choose to abseil down a 10m tower, rather than react to an event (ie being given it as a present) and therefore give away my choice by making it ‘Richard’s fault’,  immediately quelled some of the panic.  I also decided that I’d phone up and book myself in soon, rather than ‘oops’ letting the deadline come and go without any action (inaction being a passive choice in itself).  Besides, I wanted to show my girls (and myself, for that matter) that mummy can face her fears.

So finally, last weekend, the day came, after almost 9 months’ of nailbiting since that Christmas drama.  Although I felt strong and proud that I’d made the decision to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’, the fact was that I still couldn’t even think about leaning back over that precipice without wanting to be sick.  My family rather sensibly kept a low profile all morning and then the time came.

The more I felt unwell at the very thought of abseiling, the more I became determined to go for it.  However, when the instructor was showing us how to put on our harnesses, there was an almost primal urge to bolt – I had to physically restrain myself from running a mile in the opposite direction.  At the same time as feeling this overwhelming fear (the likes of which I don’t recall ever having had before), I was really interested in the feeling.  I’ve been practising mindfulness lately and it was comforting, in the middle of such an intense experience, not to be trying to block the feelings out but to observe them, almost subjectively, in a loving way. It didn’t stop me sobbing as I watched the first of our group balance on his tiptoes 10m up before lowering himself down though!

When it came to my turn, I focused on the choice I’d made to be there. I climbed up three flights of stairs inside the tower, willing myself on with every step.  At the top Simon, the instructor, explained what I needed to do whilst I clung on to the handrail for dear life. All the time, I had a still small voice telling me what amazing learning this all was.  But I still had to lower myself over…

Well, I did that.  The part that had worried me most was done and I was horizontal, many metres over the ground.  Then Simon said I needed to loosen my grip on the rope if I wanted to go anywhere.

I don’t know whether you’ve ever hung, clinging on to a rope, high off the ground. However, I can tell you that all your instincts scream at you to keep clinging on to that rope, whatever you do, don’t let go.  And here was Simon telling me I had to loosen my grip!  Well, that did it – all mindfulness was forgotten and sheer unadulterated terror took over.  I screamed that I wanted to get back up and was back up in a second, crying on poor Simon’s shoulder.  He was the perfect mixture of encouraging and listening, told me that I’d done the bit most people bottle out at, and asked me what I wanted to do.

I had choice again. I projected forward and tried out telling my daughters both scenarios, and telling them I hadn’t done it was awful, as was the idea of descending those stairs.  My decision was to do it. I composed myself, answered ‘yes’ when Simon asked if I was happy, and I leaned back and eased off on the rope.

It took a long time to descend those few metres as my grip was still pretty tight, but eventually I got to the bottom, to applause from the rest of the group. I had wondered whether I’d feel euphoric having done it, but I didn’t. What I did feel was that the worst part of the experience had just been the fear, but that I now knew I could get through that – even the abject terror. Franklin Roosevelt said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, and that seems a particularly apt quotation for my experience.  I saw fear in that moment for just what it was – a feeling, and nothing else.

Having beaten the fear once, I wanted to test myself and eventually went down the tower a further three times. I’d told Richard and the girls to stay away at the beginning (mostly as I didn’t want my daughters learning the swear words which have a habit of coming out when I’m under pressure), but called them after my second descent so they could come and see.  My six-year-old was typically unimpressed (“jump, mummy!”, “mummy, you’re not going very fast!” etc) but I was happy to have been a positive role model for them and I hope that they will remember the experience one day when faced with a massive personal challenge themselves.

As for me now, I will probably never do abseiling again, but I know that I could do if the situation arose. I also know that I have the ability to overcome that sort of fear and so could do something that provoked similar feelings if necessary (although I’ve told Richard that this does not mean a potholing experience would be appreciated this Christmas!).  I also know now – thanks to Simon – that to get anywhere in abseiling or in life, I need to loosen my grip on the rope a little.

Are you holding on too tight anywhere in your life? Do you have a dread of something that’s coming up? Give me a call!

Loosening my grip

Back down to earth!

Back to Straightforward Coaching website

www.straightforwardcoaching.com

The Abseiling Experience was provided by Hatt Adventures
www.thehatt.co.uk