I wish I could just highlight the portion I’d like to discuss.  Daniel Wolpert “The Real Reason for Brains,” documented the phenomena that people tend to exaggerate whatever they repeat, without realizing they are doing it in his experiment.  I’m referring to his results of his research with the jagged upward results  - that came from his children declaring the other person hit them “harder.”

So, now it’s a fact that anything that repeats will disappear perceptually from our awareness. People tend to add more effort, assuming that’s required to do the job. We tend to forget that repetitive practice automates the routine and trains a habit. We may not know that establishing a habit also disappears the sensation of performing the action.

This idea is also related to an excellent blog post by Jennifer Schneiderman at http://is.gd/rTk67A

There’s nothing wrong with any position, even slumping. Getting stuck in a self-imposed limitation can become a problem, over time.

Whenever a student tells me they have a pain, I always wonder if they are doing something to themselves repetitively in an everyday action, such as walking. Sure enough, when I observe them walking, there is some little extra thing they are habitually doing that they can undo that will address the issue.  Turns out that Alexander Technique teachers are a bit like a human gait laboratory, (without the recommendations of surgical solutions!)

Inside of us, our judgement of limb orientation and required effort feels like truth – it’s perceptually deceptive. But it’s this same “deception” that allows us to learn and adapt. There’s pleasure in being able to do something reliably. Of course, everyone knows how to slump! People go into the same sort of slump each time, and this is gratifying that you can get what you want in a reliable way.

Habits are designed to become innate, so we CAN have the pleasure of relying on them and add more new skills on top. With a chain of turning small abilities into habits, that’s how we build a complex skill.

That’s why consistently using Alexander Technique feels like such a threatening challenge – because it takes us into the unknown. Most people find it uncomfortable to not know what you’re doing, or how to do it. Later you might learn that the unknown is cool and fun. But it does take mental effort – because learning cuts new pathways in the brain.

Movement is what the brain is evolved to learn!

Strangely enough, our judgment of effort is a relative sense – although it feels like truthful fact. Moving in a way that is more efficient and constructive using Alexander Technique feels strangely unfamiliar, but it’s …easier. Extend your tolerance for welcoming the unknown and get somewhere new – now!

Even if they didn’t know what my body language meant in as much detail as I was learning, I had to admit that my own body language expressed who I was on the inside of me – not just my external appearance. As I realized that people were probably responding to what was expressed inside my internal character and sense of self, (as well as the fact that I was a tall, young woman at that time,) my whole picture of attracting attention from men I needed to consider in this new light. Even if these guys who wolf-whistled at me were not conscious how they could discern this information of attractiveness, that didn’t matter. I had to give them credit, whether they knew exactly what it was about me that was attracting their attention or not. I realized they were noticing how I was acting as I walked down the street – where my attention went, how I walked and moved. As I understood that, I began to be able to “turn it off” and on – so that when I did not want to attract attention, I could control being available. The broadcasting of attractiveness and charisma can be deliberate, not accidental.

I don’t think that most men really know what it’s like to get unwanted sexual attention from strangers. Perhaps if a guy is hetrosexual and finds himself getting sexual attention from homosexual men, it is a bit similar. Pretty much, every young woman must figure out how to deal with getting this attention from an early age, and it’s difficult. My strategy was to wear baggy clothes and hide as best I could, but it did not really work. Knowing more about what and how my body language projects the way I am inside made a big change for me concerning this challenge. Getting this sexual attention that I was forced to deal with because of being born in the culture was difficult for me. But with this new insight, it suddenly became an insight. I realized that attention from strangers was happening because of how I moved, how I paid attention, instead of it being an accident of birth and physical appearance. For me at the time, it was quite a turnaround.

Maybe you have a goal in mind, a purpose about why you are wanting to improve the way you move. Now there is also another challenge about how to interrupt one’s own routines.

I’ll explain what I mean by that last sentence. One direction will, theoretically by default, “cancel out” the other. At the moment when you direct your whole self to go physically in one direction, the other possible options are de-selected. You can’t go two places at the same time.

If you try that theory out by putting  a new improvement into action – what happens is your old routines have the power to run interference on the new things that you really want. Your habits do this as if it’s life itself that is at risk. What’s unfamiliar and new is totally threatening to most people. Granted that some people can leap… but in order to leap, they need a complete conviction that they don’t want the old same thing. Another way around that is to go bit by bit to reassure yourself, and the imperative protective alarms never go off. There are obviously more ways to make the unfamiliar less scary too…

It takes a clarity of intent to gather one’s sense of purpose and direct one’s whole self. But, maybe that’s not what it takes. For instance, people used to tell me that I was patient when they saw the detail in my artwork. But for me, in an experience of absorption, an experience of being patience didn’t exist because my attention was fully engaged.

This ability to direct one’s attention has many qualities – some work with your goals and some don’t so well.  The one that work the most flexibly are ones that don’t focus on the goal – strangely enough. The admonition to “Just Do It,” will likely activate what is most familiarly trained and ingrained. This works fine if you know how to do what you’re trying to do – like a music conductor who only needs to give the signal at the right time.

But how to practice to train a flexible habit?

Strangely enough, the best route is indirect and paradoxical. It is a brand of surrender or suspension of desire. It even works to use a brand of trickery: refusing to mentally say the “action word” and instead stick to the new steps of what you imagine might improve things. It takes at least sixty-eight times to train a new skill!

As a skill, it turns out that “taking out the complication” of the habitual routines is all that’s necessary. “The goal does itself” as the hindrances or complications are removed. This happening is a strange feeling of effortlessness – something you might need to get used to experiencing.

It’s worth it – you figure that out by doing what you couldn’t do before. The land of unfamiliarity is where all the new discoveries are.

“Directing” is an action of thought that recognizes & demonstrates how intention is the first part of any movement response. Tricky to describe in words, it is often experienced differently by each person.

Essentially, Directing is a thinking directive about physical action, done before any action happens. But Directing is purely thinking Directions, without any overt action or movement attached to it. In Alexander Technique, what you’re thinking while directing often contains a sort of living anatomy template about how easier motion can happen. Direction is a series of orders in words, designed to undo extra effort usually present in movement preparation.  In a way, it is similar to visualizing, but it is more specific. Goals and actions are not involved, only present tense awareness.

As an example, here’s an off-shoot of Directing, called Posture Release Imagery, invented by an Alexander Technique teacher named John Appleton.  http://posturereleaseimagery.org  This is a very specific practice of imagining one’s own body to be a different shape than it really is, and noting the results.

Why would it work so well to undo extra effort by thinking of doing something without actually doing it? Because thinking is connected to response. Something happens as a response to pure thought, but it happens often below the level of the person’s ability to sense it. In fact, from brain research, we get ready long before we consciously know we’re doing anything. What we have is “veto power.” Moments right before we are going to do something, we can stop.

The point of Directing is to reorganize how to “get ready” to make a move in an easier way, beyond the clutches of habit and expectation. In a way, Direction is a strategy to take away the need to get ready, to expect. By interrupting the overt “call to action” that the habit is usually in charge of doing, other internal responses of getting ready for the action will occur anyway….but without the habitual preparation. Directing reorganizes thinking to get ready in a non-habitual way. Then when you do stuff after Directing, the most appropriate way to move can be spontaneously selected, using improvisational means.

So how do you know what happened, if so much went on underneath your conscious awareness? You can use your other senses to offer you feedback, in addition to your internal sense of movement and location in space. You can use your environment.  External feedback – such as a video camera or a mirror is handy.  Or they can cross-reference their other senses, which may result in an odd sense of synesthesia.  For instance, one musician described Directing as being a symphony conductor who is using a sort of inner moving x-ray skill to bring a present-tense all-points awareness to bear on the way he was about to do a suspended goal. Then when he did that goal – it happened in a new way, without the unnecessary habitual preparation that was unrelated to the goal anyway.

There’s a survival benefit for preferring what is certain that will preserve the status quo. If you try to move differently, your body will tell you that it feels so unfamiliar. You will avoid moving in a new way because it will feel as if you’re  “not you.” So it’s more likely that you won’t allow yourself to continue doing what is new. People are wired to prefer what feels familiar. For most people, pain is the only obvious signal that something is wrong with the way they’re moving.

On the other hand, there is also a survival drive towards the desire for doing something new, but it’s not as strong. If the daring think less of consequences and they happen to guess wrong, they probably died more often  – before they could pass on their daring genes.

Adapting is a human feature that allows skill development & learning, as well as compensating to mitigate external circumstances. When learning, we design a habit so the building blocks of a skill so it can become innate and later can be used as if the whole behavior chain were second-nature. If we get injured, we’re capable of changing the way we do things long enough to design a compensation habit to avoid pain to make it easier to heal.  Adapting is mainly regarded as a human advantage, because it’s what allows us to learn skills a piece at a time. This feature allows us to train a new habit to add onto the previous habit, without needing to get overwhelmed by having to sense what “standing orders” our previous trained habits are already doing. Habits become innate because it works for humans in skill building and coping with circumstances.

This blessing of being able to adapt is oddly also a built-in feature that backfires on us. Performing a habit will dull physical sensation. This means the more often we do a habit, the more often we don’t know how or what we are doing. Entrainment is automatic – which is both an advantage – and a disadvantage.

If we add habit onto habit, without undoing the previous possible conflicting habits, it can get confusing – even painful. As people get older and have a larger “bag of tricks,” it’s all too common to pull our own body in conflicting directions, without knowing how we’re contributing to our own often painful limitations. This can also happen at an early age, if we tend towards extremes.

The ways around this conundrum involve deliberately disassembling habits previous to training new ones. Actually, that’s also a skill that improves with practice. Surprisingly, it seems to work best to not have a new habit in mind to replace what you’re intentionally subtracting. If you just remove what seems to be in the way, your natural ability to respond more appropriately will resume – by itself. The way you balance and move seems to be self-correcting – to the extent you can get previous unrelated and unnecessary routines out of the way.

I learned these secrets from people who had studied with this guy, F. M. Alexander.

Let go of the wrong thing, and the right thing does itself.          – F.M. Alexander

This Zen-like aphorism doesn’t make much sense until it’s been experienced. It says something about the effect of a strategy used during Alexander Technique practice.

This functional strategy is clearing out unnecessary routines, and then noticing what happens. An easier way to go ahead has a chance to run the show, once the interference is gone. But this useful, easier way doesn’t always come forward reliably. This is because unintended “helpful” interferences tend to jump back into control.

The experience of suspending customary routines and patiently noticing what is going on afterward is a skill that takes practice. The default ease of the Primary Control principle that can emerge is not another trainable habit replacement. Instead, the move a person can make without routines is always a slightly different attentive response. The advantage is it’s a response that can be most appropriately tailored to the suspended goal at hand – and this can indirectly result in a discovery, a consolidating insight or a sense of Flow.

To tolerate this lack of predictability, a student could use a bit of reassurance that “there is a method to the madness.” It is OK to hang out and pay attention, without knowing what’s going to happen next.

The disadvantage is that our sensory ability is dulled by the use of habits. Habits become innate by design. The danger is we no longer register a successfully trained habit on our radar as an activity.  You can no longer sense what you have trained yourself to do automatically. People commonly find themselves doing things thoughtlessly that they did not intend to do or seemed to have forgotten about possible consequences. The habit “goes off” whenever the stimulus is offered on the outside, or the thought is “thunked” on the inside.

There is a significant advantage to this design inside of us concerning habitual routines. We are designed this way so we can add a new habit on top of the previous. This is known as a “behavior chain” and is handy in skill building. It is even possible to train new perceptual assumptions. The more you repeat a habit, the more ingrained and innate it becomes. The saying is: “Practice Makes Perfect.”

Especially with an entrenched routine, sometimes insight is the only way to rid yourself of its limitations; to find a new way to provide for the need or challenge “the need for the need.” Thinking skills by Edward de Bono, making art and using Alexander Technique are the only ways I know to address these significants challenges humans all face in life.

Most people never think of subtracting what is in the way as a useful strategy, just as lateral thinking techniques or other indirect means such as Alexander Technique or art therapy are not usually the first order of preference. People most often assume they must train yet another habit to take the place of whatever routine is not working as intended. Pretty soon we have so many routines, it’s tricky to pick the right one in the right instant.

Thinking skills pop us free out of habitual assumptions if they are used, just as Alexander Technique has the ability to free us from our kinesthetic sensory habits. But we must remember to use these tools to give them a chance to work and gain their advantages. By their nature, these tools of innovation run contrary to habit. However, the remembering must be assigned to be “cued” in some portion of a routine for these tools to be allowed to work as intended. Most of us miss or pass by this instance of optional choice.

In Alexander Technique, the best time to assign it’s use is as you begin to go into action – or right before action. This is because as soon as we think of doing something, we are already preparing for it. Right before action we have a moment of “veto power.” This is a built-in instant to decide the unique means of how we are actually going to perform the action and craft it uniquely to the situation.

In parallel, a useful cue for using thinking skills is before a decision is made or perhaps needs to be designed, or when you hear that “this is the only choice we have.” There is ALWAYS another choice – and perhaps it’s a better one. Usually, multiple routines and temptations are in charge of coercing us otherwise, going off underneath our ability to perceive coercive and manipulative routines at work. It’s similar to a computer that gets overloaded with programs running in the background. If we then attempt to add in our intentional goals there is the danger of losing what we were trying to accomplish in a “systems crash.”

Best to “clear the decks” in preparation by using a little tool such as Alexander Technique that subtracts unnecessary routines and unites our intention – at the start of an action. Or take a moment to use a thinking skill or other reflective advantage.

Supposedly, we have a “right brain” power of non-linear integration skills – and we have “left brain” reasoning powers. What if both of these aren’t good enough? We’ve got insight!

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to purposefully illicit insight, even if you had to follow indirect means to get insights? Supposedly, insights happen “by accident” and not on purpose. Well, that’s what happens with a little creative thinking….and using Alexander Technique…and sometimes other experiences that can put you in a state of “flow.”

Please let me know if there are other perceptual worlds or disciplines which have this effect for you – because I’d love to take them for the ride they deserve personally!

Of course, you can’t learn Alexander Technique in a few hours, just as you can’t learn to play a musical instrument instantly either.  But you’ll be able to get a taste of what the study of A.T. could do for you. You’ll learn some of the principles that apply to daily life, and will get some practice at reading body language as you may have never seen it before.  You’ll also get some insights about self-observation, (which seems to be a rare skill.) It will be a fun time, because some who are coming are professional musicians who will demonstrate their “stuff” during their quest to improve.

You’ll find out about some of the famous people who have studied the Technique, some of the history and various styles of teaching it. You’ll find out who thinks it’s valuable and why.

If you play an instrument or spend time at an art or sport, bring along the props you’ll need for authentic demonstration of the way you move if that’s possible. You’ll learn to do these things easier and with less wasted effort. Sometimes people get a flash of personal insight too.

Some of my current and returning students will also be there, so it won’t just be a total beginner’s class. Hope you can join us!

Here’s the link to Tutu’s House with directions from withing Hawaii. Of course, if you are not, the first part would be “jump on a plane to the Big Island…”

http://www.tutushouse.org/map.html

F. M. Alexander concluded that the orientation of the head in relation to the body determines the quality and successful response of how all other intended bodily motion may occur. The head is a steering key to bodily movement. The head moving away from the body allows the whole body to expand in stature, and to be ready to move easier in any direction.

Alexander observed that once this pattern of head retraction went into action, it was very difficult to influence. So he decided to back up and make the improvement with the first motion that initiated action. He traced the origin of motion to a head movement. He wondered if he could solve his voice loss problem by moving in the opposite direction from his usual habitual preparation as he began to speak. In Alexander’s case, this opposite direction of improvement was slightly away from the body and tipping slightly forward, which he described as “Forward and Up.” This sort of movement counteracted what is now known as a startle reflex.

After coming up with some issues carrying his intentions into action, Alexander found eventually that he could counteract his habit of pulling his head down into his neck. Starting the action in this new way alleviated the pressure on his voice. Counteracting habitual self-imposed limitations provided Alexander insights about the qualities of motion related to his suspended goals of being a better speaker.

The eventual success of Alexander’s hypothesis and the commonality of observing this same pattern in other people led him to establish the importance of the head as an axiom about movement initiation. The head moving away from the body allows the whole body to expand in length. Inspired by Rudolph Magnus idea of central control in animals, Alexander called this principle primary control. Primary control works in action – whether for good or otherwise.

Later, other Alexander Technique teachers used additional terms to encourage and mark the importance of this head movement, because specific descriptions can be an advantage. Alexander’s first graduate of this first training course, Marj Barstow, felt it was important to describe quality of motion as being “delicate” and originated the phrase: “The head moves, and the body follows.”

Most of our habits interfere by superceding the primary control response as a special exception. In most adults, so many special exceptions have been put into place that these pull in opposing directions, often firing off simultaneously. The teacher helps the student to become aware of these routine interfering patterns in order to inhibit them and regain control against conflicting automated habitual responses.

The other special action Alexander found helped to undo the coercive power of routines was to “Direct.” This special term of “Directing” means to suggest the thought of a constructive means without overtly performing the action. Through experimentation, Alexander discovered the fact that movement preparation occurs long before the person is aware they are about to move. This agrees with brain science findings done a hundred years later.

The suggestion of thinking about primary control while moving achieves many advantages. Most important, this ‘Directing” allows a minimal tonus of the neck musculature, so that the head balances freely on top of the spine, rather than locked in a certain position. This freedom of balance allows the torso and spine to respond by slightly expanding. That is exactly how and why Alexander Technique has gained a secret reputation for expanding height in adults and preventing height loss during aging.

This is a reprint of a definition of Primary Control I wrote today for the excellent wiki attended by Lutz at:

http://alextech.wikia.com/wiki/Primary_control#

LOWER AND HIGHER BRAIN FUNCTION

The lower reptilian brain that thinks in images is the first part of the brain to mature. This part of the brain drives self-involved imperative survival reactions – such as sex, avoiding danger, protecting family and clan members. This reptilian brain dictates swift and sure reactions that preempt the slower, deliberate and complex reasoning ability in the upper fore brain area. The advantage of the reptilian brain is it takes over, makes a quick and sure decision that sizes up a situation, hopefully in enough time to preserve survival.

CONNECTING FIBERS: GABA

What brain scientists called GABA fibers are what connect the higher cognitive reasoning function of the upper brain and the survival-oriented reptilian brain. To start out, these GABA connecting fibers are thin, so the faster reactions of the lower reptilian brain are the default. Maturation of the upper brain occurs starts at around twelve years of age and grows until around twenty-five. This growth can be accelerated by the person’s responses to circumstances – along with which external circumstances exist to test responses from integrating advantages from both brain areas.

WHAT COUNTS – AND WHAT DOESN’T MATTER

What enhances this GABA fiber growth is confronting fear and gaining the ability to differentiate meaning from significant vrs. significant evidence. With experience, the person realizes that most apparently dangerous conditions are, in fact, inconsequential, (and which are, in fact, dangerous.) They learn when to act and when to to calm themselves and not allow their “chain to be yanked” unnecessarily. These connecting GABA fibers bulk up, as muscles do, each time this internal reassurance happens. As specific fears are countermanded by reassurance, the growing bulk of these connecting GABA fiber eventually allows the action of the fore brain to happen at the same time survival measures are being taken. The person learns to fight smarter when fighting is necessary, to be coolly calculating to determine this need. Wisdom and reasoning eventually eliminates the need for desperately trying harder at any cost.

Thinking deliberately in spite of (or in addition to) feelings & impulsive reactions gets easier with practice – even though this foresight takes more time and must be cultivated with accumulated experience. With practice, it’s possible to preempt knee-jerk survival images, fears, interpretations & conclusive suspicions that so effectively run the lower brain entirely.

HOW GABA FIBERS INTERCEPT FEARFUL REACTIONS

Each time reaction is refused or redirected, we send a new electrical response along these GABA fibers that connect the two brains. Each new response makes the fibers fatter, as a muscle grows stronger by exercise. Eventually the GABA connectors bulk up and make it easier for us to stop fear impulses entirely. The GABA fibers eventually act like insulators. The GABA fibers can be described in a poetic way as courage – or “grace under fire.”

INSTINCT, PREJUDICE, OPINION, TASTE

After some experience, the person learns the differences between a gut instinct, a prejudice and a preference that is merely a customary opinion of personal taste. They learn to “choose their battles wisely.” Of course, they often learn from unfortunate lessons that negative speculation & paranoid suspicions are not always a benefit to one’s long-term survival advantage. The reptile brain functions only with a short-term need to survive now.

WHY GROWING GABA FIBERS IS A GOOD IDEA

Not growing GABA fibers has more than a moral danger of a lack of wisdom. The reptile brain manufactures fears and motives that are sometimes self-fulfilling prophesy. If a person never gets the practice of calming themselves and learns to laugh at their unnecessary fears, this ability to countermand and temper the reptile brain does not mature. The person remains at the mercy of their lower brain. This comes out in the roles of suspecting those who are loyal, complaining and creating troll-like “Drama Queen” situations that force polarization, possessing an intense, manic/depressive, trusting/untrustworthy and unpredictably reactive point of view. Along with this come temptations for undue complaints, a lack of commitment, social manipulativeness or outright self-justified dishonesty or criminal behavior.

BRAIN PLASTICITY

Fortunately, this growth toward the maturity of being able to calm oneself can happen at any time in life. The plasticity of the brain can always be reshaped by current usage – and forgiveness. Expressing positive values in action is an effective avenue for change. Keep in mind that because we are talking about growing new brain parts, it takes time and the ability to discern and plot one’s own signs of improvement.

SOME WAYS TO GROW YOUR GABA FIBERS

The practice is exercised by refusing to react & self-reassurance. Many means are possible to put this intent to strengthen GABA fibers into action. This may be practiced in many small ways, in fact, the smaller the better. Some of these ways are:

• by calming ones’ own emotions;
• by changing any new “inconsequential” habit;
• by learning a new skill, which demands being forgiving of mistakes;
• by calming down fear when it arises;
• by releasing physical tension through exercise, massage or other unifying mind-body practice or discipline;
• by deciding not to say what will offend;
• by daring to say what might offend anyway;
• by deliberately changing your mind before you would normally react to do anything habitual or routine;
• by being aware that your thoughts are untrue fears and deciding to not take them seriously.
• by refusing to think about them, using distraction, substitution
• by thinking about something else or distracting yourself.
• by being sarcastic when mistakes are made that word the derogatory put-down in a positive light, such as, “that was a really smart thing to do” (instead of cursing, attacking or accusing when a mistake is made.)

PERSISTENCE IS GOLDEN

If these don’t work, some people get out concerns that are whirling around in their head by

• using de Bono thinking skills,
• writing down these thoughts in descriptions,
• talking about them to a person who is not involved and will not react,
• making art and allowing symbolic imagery to process them,
• exercising and doing physical things,
• doing mundane but productive activities, using them to re-direct your energy with the intent of leaving past, irrelevant concerns in the past where they belong and going in a positive direction -  such as taking a shower or by changing one’s external environment.
• originating strategic, practical plans to get yourself

Perhaps if these methods do not work in isolation, they might work together in a certain sequence.

Many wise people have advice what will work in this situation; perhaps someone else or a religion will have different advice that will work for you. It’s best if the advice has a simple practice to show the expressed values that are advised. Philosophical advice is not worth much unless there is a practical means to carry out the ideas that cultivate new abilities as a skill.

HOW THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE DOES IT

Using one of the principles from Alexander Technique, physically refusing to react can be practiced during any movement. For instance, before any motion, our body has already prepared to move. If we do not stop it, we will continue and complete the motion. We have only 1/64th of a second to refuse or change this motion as we begin to go into action. If we do not use this time, we lose this time to refuse to react. We must act as we have prepared to act. Once started, a routine is much more difficult to interrupt or re-route than it is to intercept it at the beginning window of opportunity.

WHY IMMEDIATELY BEFORE YOU BEGIN IS A GOOD TIME TO CHANGE YOUR MIND

Brain science says that whenever you make a move, your expectations have composed themselves into preparing for the move you are about to do long before you know you are going to do it. You can still “veto” this preparation by changing your mind right before you are about to move. You have only 1/64 of a second to change your mind, otherwise you will continue to perform the action in the way you have prepared to do it. Each time you change your mind, you strengthen these GABA fibers between the upper and lower brains by refusing to act habitually.

REFUSE THE DOMINANT PARADIGM – PRO-ACTIVELY

Practice can occur now. Merely change your mind right before you are about to make a move – any move, such as moving a mouse or typing on the keyboard. Decide to do nothing or to do something unrelated instead of doing it in the usual way. (Plead to your impatient objections that you’re practicing in case of injury. You can say you are interrupting a tiny mannerism that has been identified to be gradually causing you cumulative harm.) You do not even have to determine that an action or idea is “harmful” or potentially harmful. (This is the familiar logic style of of “put-out-the-fire” thinking.) Instead of waiting until something is no longer useful at all to improve it, you can be pro-active.