Bing Sings, Walt Disney

Today I used a technique with my life coach which is attributed to Walt Disney, and colloquely called the Walt Disney Technique.

We were using this technique to help me be clearer on my goal, develop a plan and gain clarity about all the things in between.

From what I experienced, there seems to be four main areas of the Walt Disney technique... the "dreamer"; the "realist", the "critic" and a review phase. And it really worked for me...

Supposedly this is the technique that Walt Disney would use when creating his films, and in fact he would have different rooms for each different role.

Doing my Improvisation really helped in this, as each area had its own role, and I developed a characteristic for each one. The Dreamer became energetic and passionate; the Realist was my dad, questioning, doubting, provoking me; and the Sceptic was more objective, overlooking the whole thing, a kind of guardian angel, taking on board both the passion and also the challenges and giving a broad reaction, picking up on elements of both. To some degree I thought of my mum in this role.

We started with a simple example fo the technique, using an example of a plan for attending two weddings in one weekend at opposite ends of the country. In the Dreamer phase, what did I want to do? How would I feel? What did I need to do? How was I going to achieve it?

In the Realist phase, what was wrong with that plan? What else could be done? How would others feel about it?

In the Sceptic phase, ask the Realist why be so negative about the plan, yet challenge the Dreamer about having a contingency by taking on board some of the criticisms of the Realist.

We then spent some time re-focussing on the goal for me, which helped me dramatically bring myself back into the "zone" of kind of knowing what I wanted but not being really clear for my life, which was the reason for doing this in the first place...

So in the Dreamer phase, I got really passionate and excited about my dream although I felt I couldn't nail the exact "Character" of what this person was doing. Contrary to my previous thoughts, the things that got me massively excited were not the material items like a house, car or cash, but more the creativity, challenge, inspiring others and developing a tangible reality. I talked with passion about bring an idea to life, about involing a small group of people behind my idea, of taking it a customer and from making money from it. I also talked passionately about being at a dinner party, and somebody asking me what I do, and explaining I develop ideas, and them telling me they had always had this great idea, and I agreed to meet them the next day for them to share their idea with me and for me to help them nurutre this idea to life in return for shares in the idea or cash itself. I wasn't a Dragon from Dragon's Den as that involved saying "No", but rather I was saying "Yes, and what could we do with that??" (I started to see things from Impro coming to life).

I actually realised that I had started to do this already with friends. I wasn't making judgements about their ideas, just helping them out, and letting the market be the judge.

I was exhausted. It was a great session with a number of ideas coming from it, especially those bring my ideas much more into focus.  However, some ideas (especially the characteristics and the plan to bring it to life) were still vague and somewhat frustratingly vague.  I need to sepnd some time on that...