The Thing About KASH

When you get to places like the ManMind website, it’s probably because you’re thinking about some kind of change or have something in mind for someone else. A close friend maybe.

To start talking about KASH, here is an opening “No-shit Sherlock” statement for you:

If I’m “here” and I want to get “there”, something has to happen – I need to do something.

Trouble is, if I keep repeating what I’ve done before and it didn’t work, I’ll make no real progress and there’s a good chance I’ll stay stuck. At the same time, there’s something strangley helpful about holding onto a familiar technique – it’s both relatively painless and protective in some way. As a result, we can get into a bind. We keep doing the same old stuff even though it isn’t that productive because we get some kind of reward or feeling of safety.

So, when it comes to making changes to the way we live, we can go as deep as we want. We can either make a couple of tweaks here and there in a relatively short space of time or really get to grips with the deeper stuff over a longer period of time. Both, of course, can be helpful.

Anyway, before we head toward talking about KASH, here’s a core idea.

Feeling, Thinking, Doing

There are three components:

• The way we are Thinking in the moment.
• What we are Feeling, the sensations in our bodies and urges we have to do something (emotions).
• The way we act, what we actually do and the way we behave. Labelled as Doing.

The model is very useful in the therapeutic sense because it covers both external “stimuli” (threats and opportunities) and the internal prompts from our minds. We can have a chicken-and-egg discussion (which comes first?) and work out the sequence of steps going-on inside us. If we can spot some patterns, then we can make conscious interventions to steer us away from difficult situations and take advantage of the more positive things the universe provides.

So where does KASH fit in?

KASH – Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habits – links to the Thinking/Feeling/Doing triangle in straight forward ways and gives us extra depth, so to speak. For example:

• Thinking is affected by knowledge and attitudes.
• Thinking can also be habitual (this worked before which means I don’t have to revisit the thinking process every time). The same is true for a lot of our actions.
• Feelings are physical sensations and can become amplified by thoughts and attitudes. We’ve all experienced the move from feeling uncomfortable to really agitated by thinking about it. (Handily, the opposite can be true also – we can dampen intrusive feelings by thinking in a certain way).

There are plenty of other connections and examples of course and the main point about KASH is this:

I can use the idea of KASH to recognise what I have now and what I need to get hold of for my future.

Time to Make a Change

Change is motivated by noticing the gap between the gratification we desire and the outcomes we are experiencing. The bigger the gap, the bigger the discomfort. When things could go well, we feel good about and on the other hand, they go badly and we receive a right-royal kick in the teeth (metaphorically speaking, obviously).

In the cold light of day (i.e. reality), the question to answer is this: did I come up short or was this just “bad luck”?

The answer might be a bit of both, of course, although I could kid myself that it was all bad luck instead of accepting that I have come up short in some way:

• Did I just not have the skills and believed myself to be expert enough?
• Was there a missing piece of knowledge which was key to the outcome? (Hopefully not too public – shame is a nasty feeling).
• Did I jump to an old habit poorly suited to the outcome I wanted? (We do this when under pressure btw).

And so on – you get the picture.

Bottom line: it’s entirely possible that didn’t have the right KASH as well as enough KASH in the moment.

So What?

Always a useful question to ask, so see how this lands with you:

1. If you recognise you’re stuck in some way, you got there via circumstance and the decisions you made – your reactions to both the external and internal events (Knowledge and Skills was involved somewhere).
2. Using the same techniques to find a way out that got you there in the first place (something Habitual) won’t work – unless you experience some kind of miracle .
3. “Putting up and shutting-up”, “getting on with it” or “”Manning-Up” (all Attitudes) will just prolong things and use up a lot of energy.
4. Sounds really simple but you need some new KASH.