Life getting you down? Learn to bounce back

Even the most fortunate of us can expect setbacks every now and again. Here are some ways to get back on your feet

• Vanessa King
• theguardian.com, Monday 5 January 2015 16.59 GMT

‘When things go wrong, resilient thinkers see it as transitory.’ Photograph: Getty Images

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger” – so the German philosopher Nietzsche famously said. Luckily, the school of hard knocks isn’t the only way to build our resilience. There are a number of tactics that can get us through tough times, help us to bounce back and make us happier. Next time you are struggling, feeling stressed or stuck, give one or more of these a try.

1. Find something you can control (even if it’s small)

Often when we are struggling we can feel overwhelmed or powerless. And it’s true: there are lots of things in life that we can’t control, including big challenges such as redundancy or broken relationships or bereavement. But taking small, positive steps in any area of our life can have a ripple effect, increasing our sense of self-efficacy and eventually enabling us to move forward in the problem area.

2. Focus on what’s right

As a species, we tend to focus on what’s wrong rather than what’s right. Psychologists suggest we developed this “negativity bias” when we were hunter-gatherers, constantly surveying our environment for dangers.

Of course looking out for risks is still important, but we can benefit from paying more conscious attention to what’s going right. In one experiment psychologists asked people to spend a few minutes at the end of each day for a week, making a note of three things they enjoyed, were pleased about or grateful for that day and the reason they found these things good. At the end of the study, participants who did this were happier than those who didn’t – and this effect lasted for as long as six months.

This isn’t about putting on rose-tinted glasses – it’s about a more balanced perspective. Good things happen even on the worst days, even if these are as small as someone making us a nice cup of tea, yet we often let them pass by without much attention. Psychologists have shown that consciously focusing on these good things helps to increase our experience of positive emotions. Over time this has a number of benefits for our resilience and wellbeing as, for example, we become more open to ideas, better at problem-solving and more trusting of others.

3. Check your thinking

Albert Ellis, one of the fathers of cognitive behavioural therapy, wrote that we are remarkably good at disturbing ourselves – in other words, the way we think can undermine our own resilience.

Let’s look at an example: the way we think when things go wrong in our day-to-day lives. Leading psychologist Martin Seligman found that the way we interpret the causes of everyday setbacks can have a significant impact on our ability to cope, our physical health and our persistence in the face of adversity. He also showed that we can learn more resilient thinking styles.

Seligman looked at three key dimensions to our interpretations:

Is it down to me? When bad things happen, resilient thinkers tend to focus on causes outside themselves. For example, if they miss a deadline they will look at the computer issues they had or the other pressing jobs they had to do, rather than only beating themselves up for being late.

How long will this problem last? When things go wrong, resilient thinkers see it as transitory, perhaps thinking: “It didn’t work this time, but next time it will be better.” Someone with a less resilient thinking style might believe it will always be that way: “It didn’t work this time, and it’s never going to.”

What other aspects of my life will this affect? When something goes wrong in one area of a resilient thinker’s life, they put boundaries around the issue, limiting it to that specific area – for example: “I went the wrong way; I find following directions hard.” We can undermine our resilience if we see the problem as spreading out to everything: “I went the wrong way. That’s typical of me – I’m no good at anything.”

This isn’t about being unrealistic or not taking responsibility when problems occur, but about being realistic and flexible in our thoughts about why these issues happened. If we are stressed or down, we can all too easily fall into the trap of thinking that everything is our fault, can’t be changed and trouble will spread to all areas of our life. This makes us feel hopeless and can start a downward spiral towards lower resilience and even depression.

So the next time something goes wrong for you, pause for a moment and think realistically: how did I, others or the situation contribute to this? What can I do that will help now or stop the problem occurring again?

4. Ask others to help

When we have problems, it is very easy to feel isolated. We are bombarded by images of people with perfect lives or who have achieved great things, which can make us feel we’re not good enough or even ashamed that we are struggling. Remember the saying “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle inside” and don’t be afraid to ask for help. We all have ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses, and connecting with other people is a source of resilience.

Human beings evolved to live in social groups. Our relationships with those around us are really important for our wellbeing and resilience (and that of our communities). By asking for help we are showing that we value and respect other people. Scientists are also finding that the act of helping actually boosts the helper’s own wellbeing. Showing our vulnerability makes others see us as human, making them feel more able to ask us for help when they need it, so building the relationship. This helps to increase wellbeing and resilience for both of you.

Your request doesn’t have to place a burden on the other person – it could be as simple as asking them to listen, share their experience, knowledge or ideas to help you move forward, or perhaps make a connection to someone they know. You could even offer to help them with something in return (that could help you too).

5. Distract yourself

It often helps to take time out from the things you are worrying about – even if it’s just a few minutes.

When we are immersed in a problem it is hard to think creatively about ways to deal with it. How many times have your best ideas come when you’ve been in the shower or tidying up? Our brains are amazing organs – they are still working on issues even when we aren’t consciously focusing on them. In fact, allowing time off from the thing we’re grappling with can work wonders.

An effective ways of taking time out is exercise. Not only does this give us a break from what we’re doing and our worries; it’s also great for our minds. Anything moderately aerobic, such as jogging or simply a brisk walk, has a physical impact on our brain, helping us to think more clearly.

Much has been written about mindfulness, and this can be very effective way to boost our resilience. Even a few minutes can give us a little space from our worries and help put things in perspective.

Take time to laugh. We have already looked at the benefits of positive emotions. Years ago I trained as an accountant (we can all make career mistakes). This involved doing a lot of difficult exams and a lot of pre-exam nerves. To deal with that anxiety, my friend Siobhan, who was doing the same training, had a tactic that we all thought was mad at the time but, based on recent psychological research, turned out to be a good one. Outside the exam room, as we waited to meet our destiny, Siobhan would immerse herself in a joke book. She said it helped to put her in an upbeat frame of mind, ready to focus in the exams (which she went on to pass).

And finally, if you can’t get to sleep because your mind won’t switch off, find a way to distract it – for example, counting back from 100 in threes or going through the alphabet trying to think of as many animals/actors/footballers (you choose the topic) for each letter as you can.

India's ancient contribution to science

Shashi Tharoor on NDTV

The unseemly controversy over ancient Indian science at the ongoing Indian Science Congress reflects poorly on all the parties involved, including the conference itself, which is now in its 102nd year without ever having discussed the ancient roots of our indisputable national scientific tradition till yesterday.

First, it reflects poorly on the traditionalists, who have turned revivalism into a form of revisionism with their outlandish claims of improbable Vedic accomplishments. The victory of Narendra Modi in the general elections this year has propelled a number of true believers of Hindutva into positions of unprecedented influence, including in such forums as the Indian Council for Historical Research, the University Grants Commission, and, it now seems, the programme committee of the Indian Science Congress, which scheduled a talk on "Vedic Aviation Technology" that elicited howls of protest from many delegates. 

It has also given a licence to unqualified voices who gain in authority from their proximity to power - none more significant than the Prime Minister himself, who suggested in a speech at a hospital, no less, that Lord Ganesha's elephant head on a human body testified to ancient Indians' knowledge of plastic surgery. Such ideas, because they are patently absurd, except in the realm of metaphor, have embarrassed those who advance them, as well as those who cite them in support of broader, but equally unsubstantiated, claims to past scientific advances, from genetic science to cloning and inter-stellar travel. Petty chauvinism is always ugly, but never more so than in the field of science, where knowledge must be uncontaminated by ideology, superstition or irrational pride.

But the controversy also discredits the modernists who, in their contempt for such exaggerated and ludicrous claims, also dismiss the more reasonable propositions pointing to genuine Indian accomplishments by the ancients. As I pointed out on Twitter yesterday, it is not necessary to debunk the genuine accomplishments of ancient Indian science in order to mock the laughable assertions of the Hindutva brigade.

As I have been repeatedly saying, not everything from the government-sponsored right is necessarily wrong. A BJP government choosing to assert its pride in yoga and Ayurveda, and seeking to promote them internationally, is, to my mind, perfectly acceptable. 

Not only are these extraordinary accomplishments of our civilization, but they have always been, and should remain, beyond partisan politics. It is only if the BJP promoted them in place of fulfilling its responsibility to provide conventional health care and life-saving modern allopathic medicines to the Indian people, that we need object on policy grounds.

Similarly, in asserting that ancient Indians anticipated Pythagoras, Dr Harsh Vardhan was not incorrect and should not have been ridiculed. In fact he could have added Newton, Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo as well, every single one of whom had been beaten to their famous "discoveries" by an unknown and unsung Indian centuries earlier.

The Rig Veda asserted that gravitation held the universe together 24 centuries before the apple fell on Newton's head. The Siddhantas are amongst the world's earliest texts on astronomy and mathematics; the Surya Siddhanta, written about 400 A.D., includes a method for finding the times of planetary ascensions and eclipses. The notion of gravitation, or gurutvakarshan, is found in these early texts. Lost Discoveries, by the American writer Dick Teresi, a comprehensive study of the ancient non-Western foundations of modern science, spells it out clearly: "Two hundred years before Pythagoras," writes Teresi, "philosophers in northern India had understood that gravitation held the solar system together, and that therefore the sun, the most massive object, had to be at its centre." 

Aryabhata was the first human being to explain, in 499 A.D., that the daily rotation of the earth on its axis is what accounted for the daily rising and setting of the sun (his ideas were so far in advance of his time that many later editors of his awe-inspiring "Aryabhatiya" altered the text to save his reputation from what they thought were serious errors). Aryabhata conceived of the elliptical orbits of the planets a thousand years before Kepler, in the West, came to the same conclusion (having assumed, like all Europeans, that planetary orbits were circular rather than elliptical). He even estimated the value of the year at 365 days, six hours, 12 minutes and 30 seconds; in this he was only a few minutes off (the correct figure is just under 365 days and six hours). The translation of the Aryabhatiya into Latin in the 13th Century taught Europeans a great deal; it also revealed to them that an Indian had known things that Europe would only learn of a millennium later.

The Vedic civilisation subscribed to the idea of a spherical earth at a time when everyone else, even the Greeks, assumed the earth was flat. By the Fifth Century A.D., Indians had calculated that the age of the earth was 4.3 billion years; as late as the 19th Century, English scientists believed the earth was a hundred million years old, and it is only in the late 20th Century that Western scientists have come to estimate the earth to be about 4.6 billion years old.

India invented modern numerals (known to the world as "Arabic" numerals because the West got them from the Arabs, who learned them from us!). It was an Indian who first conceived of the zero, shunya; the concept of nothingness, shunyata, integral to Hindu and Buddhist thinking, simply did not exist in the West. Modern mathematics would have impossible without the zero and the decimal system; just read a string of Roman numbers, which had no zeros, to understand their limitations. 

Indian mathematicians invented negative numbers as well. The concept of infinite sets of rational numbers was understood by Jain thinkers in the Sixth Century B.C. Our forefathers can take credit for geometry, trigonometry, and calculus; the "Bakhshali manuscript", 70 leaves of bark dating back to the early centuries of the Christian era, reveals fractions, simultaneous equations, quadratic equations, geometric progressions and even calculations of profit and loss, with interest.

The Sulba Sutras, composed between 800 and 500 B.C., demonstrate that India had Pythagoras' theorem before the great Greek was born, and a way of getting the square root of 2 correct to five decimal places. (Vedic Indians solved square roots in order to build sacrificial altars of the proper size). The Kerala mathematician Nilakantha wrote sophisticated explanations of the irrationality of "pi" before the West had heard of the concept. The Vedanga Jyotisha, written around 500 B.C., declares: "Like the crest of a peacock, like the gem on the head of a snake, so is mathematics at the head of all knowledge." Our mathematicians were poets too! 

Indian numbers probably arrived in the Arab world in 773 A.D. with the diplomatic mission sent by the Hindu ruler of Sind to the court of the Caliph al-Mansur. This gave rise to the famous arithmetical text of al-Khwarizmi, written around 820 A.D., which contains a detailed exposition of Indian mathematics, in particular the usefulness of the zero. It was al-Khwarizmi who is credited with the invention of algebra, though he properly credits Indians for it himself.

But the point is that, alas, we let this knowledge lapse. We had a glorious past; wallowing in it and debating it now will only saddle us with a contentious and unproductive present. We should take pride in what our forefathers did, but resolve to be inspired by them rather than rest on their laurels. We need to use the past as a springboard, not as a battlefield. Only then can we rise above it to create for ourselves a future worthy of our remarkable past. 

It’s divorce day – let’s bust some marriage myths

The conservative narrative baffles: how can tying the knot be both a moral choice and an insurance policy?

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • The Guardian, Monday 5 January 2015

‘There’s nothing moral about making a promise, the moral part is in keeping it.’ Illustration by Mitch Blunt

It’s “divorce day”, the first working Monday after Christmas, customarily the busiest time of the year for family lawyers. In this age of constant contact, there’s been a modest surge in people seeking advice between Christmas and New Year, but for most, Twelfth Nisi is today (a half-pun for those who have already begun their divorce). If you’re married, there is a one in five chance you’re considering a split (according to a survey by legal firm Irwin Mitchell); it sounds improbably large, but there it is. If it’s not you, it’s probably him; check his phone, that’s how all the best divorces start.

Sir Paul Coleridge, a former high court judge, runs the Marriage Foundation, a charity that encourages getting and staying married. He told the Sunday Times, as part of a marriage-promotion drive in the lead-up to D-Day, of a case he’d seen: “She was the long-term girlfriend of a very high-profile celebrity person by whom she had had no fewer than four children. It was looking as if it was going to come unstuck, and she wanted to talk to me informally about what her position was. She said, ‘We’ll no doubt need an hour or two.’ I said, ‘We’ll need a minute or two because the answer is very simple: you have no rights.’”

Many people – in the 18-34 age group, almost half – believe that “common law” marriage actually comes with rights attached; that cohabiting couples with children have the same access to each other’s incomes, in the event of a split, as married ones do. This is untrue, though the “no ring, no rights” rallying cry of the marriage lobby is a bit of an overstatement (maintenance obligations obviously exist for the non-resident parent, whether previously married or not). This can prove disastrous for the main carer, who is unlikely to be the higher earner and, labouring under an illusion of legal protection, may have made no attempt to shield their finances from the hit of parenthood.

Family lawyers are divided on the answer – some would like to see new legislation that brings the common law into the purview of the actual law. Others, like Coleridge, see this as totally illogical; marriage, being limitless in both time and liability, is about the most profound contract a person can enter into. You can’t just slide into it, via cohabitation and parenthood; you have to enter into it willingly. His view is that marriage must be taught in schools (as a good idea, that is; I believe children already broadly know that it exists), and he’s supported in this by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), among others. There is something touchingly absurd about the amount of store people set by telling children things in schools – as if, when you want to alter behaviour, you simply insert a lesson and make it so. It doesn’t even work with oral hygiene.

Conservative belief in the institution of marriage runs like this: making a commitment to one another is what moral people do, and this makes marriage the most stable of all known relationships. Since stability is good for children, marriage is good for children (this mantra is given by the CSJ, especially, as something akin to gravity in its self-evidence).

Then, finally, if it all goes Pete Tong, you have the protection of the law, without which the weaker party may well end up dependent on the state. (The Sunday Times article was illustrated rather vividly by the story of a woman who, while waiting two and a half years for her husband to pay maintenance, said: “I’m pretty sure I cost the government around £400,000.”)

Few of these suppositions make much sense. There’s nothing moral about making a promise, the moral part is in keeping it, which 42% of married people don’t. Arguably, cohabiting couples are more moral than married ones, never making the promise in the first place that, most people agree and 42% prove, is rather unrealistic. In many cases, the so-called stability conferred by marriage is indistinguishable from that bestowed by wealth, which has itself become a major determinant of people’s decision to get married. But the critical contradiction, the bit I really cannot compute, is the idea of marriage as at once a moral choice and an insurance policy. It’s one or the other, surely? The abnegation of the self in the search for true togetherness, or a bid for your spouse’s income: how can it be both?

A conservative would see no contradiction, here: to have taken out the insurance policy of marriage is to have assured one’s self-sufficiency, thus protecting the state from its otherwise 400k liability (that figure does seem improbably high, but let’s go with it). Self-sufficiency is a moral act, to a conservative. In practical terms, this is nonsense; you may have left a copper-bottomed marriage, but if you weren’t rich to begin with, it is highly unlikely that your family earnings will expand to cover two households. Forty-two per cent of single parents live in poverty, 63% have no savings, 71% of all those renting are on housing benefit; so “self-sufficiency” is a byword for affluence, which then has moral superiority conferred upon it.

This is a recurring motif in the political mood music, cropping up in discussions from marriage to poverty to growth. The view from the right is that the ultimate in respectability is to need nothing from anyone: to which the left generally answers, self-sufficiency is about systems, and in the current system, it is very hard to be self-sufficient, however hard you work. But perhaps the question should be: what’s so wrong with needing one another in the first place?

How I broke my game and then fixed it again

When your feet and hands talk to each other, the runs start to flow © Getty Images

I recently stumbled upon a short but wonderful five-minute video on a camouflaging octopus. Its climax featured it changing its colour and texture to make it look like the surrounding coral.

It provoked thoughts about my own evolution and the impact our environment has on our behaviours. Slowly I started to piece the narrative of my cricket growth together. More specifically, how my own batting had changed and shifted, sometimes subconsciously, other times deliberately, to adapt to various conditions around the country and the world. I realised that what I occasionally thought was right was, in fact, inhibiting my game. Imagine the octopus camouflaged as coral in the middle of the Sahara.

Growing up, I had always tapped my bat in a relaxed and rhythmic manner at the crease. My batting was natural and flowing, and though I had no knowledge of its benefits, my "technique" allowed me to score freely around the ground. Of course I still had deficiencies - some days it felt like I had magnets in my front pad and the ball was made of iron - but I was learning about the game. I enjoyed the feeling of being able to hit the ball where I wanted by simply picking up my bat, moving my foot to where I thought it was going to bounce and swinging. If I wanted to hit the ball a fraction later, on top of the bounce, my hands would allow for a change in bat speed, as they were moving as required and in sync with my feet.

I enjoyed being an aggressive opening batsman with a good defence. I got caught at long-on too often off the spinners in the exuberance of youth, but it always felt like my risk-taking was calculated. My batting lacked consistency, but when it was on, it was on. I thought I understood my game, my limitations, but in hindsight I understood the feeling of rhythmical batting and that the hunger to score runs relied on a clear mind and the reliance on a manageable routine. That was about it. I played the game generally with a smile - scoring runs is fun after all. Writing about it now makes it sound like it was too good to be true.

The first significant evolution came when I entered professional cricket at 21. I had always played the pull shot, but I quickly realised playing the short ball at 140kph was a different proposition. Ducking and weaving became my modus operandi. In the modern era, no one escapes trial by video, and word spread to not let the kid drive. "Push him back, he won't hurt you unless you feed the cut." Run-scoring slowed and my ribs were generally bruised.

	I loved the challenge of opening the batting, but my enjoyment of my own batting started to wane. I found it hard to appreciate the days I did score runs. I always felt like the handbrake was on

The following pre-season, I vowed to stay one step ahead of the opposition by finding my pull shot afresh: if played efficiently and selectively, it would force the bowlers to pitch it up and allow me to play my favoured drives. For months I practised facing tennis balls out of a bowling machine at abnormally fast speeds. I found by holding my bat off the ground, as high as the top of my pad, I got a little head start. Time I thought, was what I needed.

The second ball of the season was a bouncer from Andy Bichel, and out of pure instinct I pulled it over square leg. I could see a look of bemusement in his eye as he growled an expletive. With this slight camouflage I had adapted to my new professional environment. Not to say it was perfect. Some days my hands would drift from my back hip and I would slice across the ball, but I told myself you have to give something to get something, and it generally felt like the trade-off had been a fair one.

The second major adaptation in my technique came after spending 12 months in Tasmania. Our home wicket was a seaming monster and driving on it a very risky proposition. Fielders would be loaded behind the wicket, licking their lips, ready to lap up any half-mistake. Batting was hard work but I loved it. You had to grind, play the ball late and cautiously, and be prepared to be in at tea to get a big first-innings score.

With a big red cross against the drive, I started to hold my bat up higher off the ground, like a baseballer at the mound in what proved a highly effective position to cut and pull. It was also a great position to just drop the bat into the line of the ball for a forward defence. The bat would generally come down at one pace. It was certainly repeatable and it felt little could go wrong. It took the variation out of batting. Risk-free almost, but with no risk comes little reward. Ironically, due to the plane of the swing, it also helped my one-day cricket "slog" over cow corner, and with the emergence of the BBL, it felt like a decent technique to apply across formats.

I would hide the deficiency of not being able to drive with any power by practising with a sawed-off bat, ensuring I got low into my drives to compensate for not having a swing at the ball, as well as having an overly wide stance. My footwork relied on a heavy forward commitment that was the only way to create any power down the ground. If in sync it still felt good, but flowing batting was rarely the order of the day. I was hard to get out but rarely dominant. Batting had become mechanical and success relied on the mental strength of resistance: defend, don't get out for long enough and you will walk off with some well-grafted runs. I had found a method that generally worked in my environment and I was going to stick to it.

The first person who alerted me to the dangers of my new technique was Greg Chappell - a natural maestro and modern great of the game. You would think he had decent credentials for me to value his opinion and perhaps heed his advice. I politely declined. I had just scored my first hundred for Australia A and was feeling pretty good about my game. I would prove him wrong, I thought. Despite my bubble being limited, it was comfortably consistent. I kept telling myself, "It's not how but how many." Looking back, I was being stubborn, as though it was just another hurdle to overcome, another challenge to rise to.

	Cowan and Warner's partnership was based on Warner's ability to attack effectively and Cowan's ability to not get out too cheaply © BCCI  Enlarge

The height of my bat admittedly fluctuated depending on whom I was playing and where and how I was feeling, but slowly and surely I started to resemble a caricature of myself. My stance got wider, my hands slowly slipping further ahead of my back hip. As a job, I loved the challenge of opening the batting, but my enjoyment of my own batting started to wane. I found it hard to appreciate the days I did score runs. I always felt like the handbrake was on. I struggled to watch footage of myself. I wanted to change, but it is either a courageous or incredibly stupid man who would do this in the middle of a series or season. The stakes had become too high.

By this stage, I was acting it all out on the brightly lit stage of international cricket. The game at this level felt largely mental. I knew my limitations and I was prepared to not swim outside the flags, so to speak. I found myself exhausted by the time I had ground my way to 30 or so, and would eventually get out having put little pressure on the bowler. My opening partnership success with David Warner was forged on his innate ability to smack it around and my ability to not get out too cheaply more often than not. I was a ball de-shiner. Or so it felt. His tank was full of premium unleaded to my diesel. Some days we got there just the same, but he would often roar like an F1 to my farm tractor.

An Australian legend of a different kind was the next to try and help, offering the advice that I would find freedom if I narrowed my stance and tapped my bat. This time it was coming from a friend. Justin Langer's words, unlike Chappell's, felt fatherly. He had spent hours with me honing my game and was invested. I went out and batted for him every time I crossed the rope. He mentioned it once in the West Indies during a rain break, but he also knew of the difficulties of changing the recipe on demand. He mentioned it again last season as it became more and more clear that my camouflage had worn off and I was a sitting duck to the predatory bowlers around the country.

And so to the present and the latest adaptation: the winter of 2014 saw my first "off season" in three years. Finally an opportunity to not just fine-tune but rebuild the car from scratch. The game as a travelling professional is now a 12-month gig, which in itself has its drawbacks when you're trying to make improvements to your game. It only feels like you are picking up little gains, and directing more attention towards competing week in, week out. There is little time to step back, take stock and go about putting the parts backs together.

I set about finding my 20-year-old self who had made the game so simple. I started to tap the bat and pick it up only when it was required. Within ten minutes I felt like a bird released from its cage. The ball started to fly purely off the face of the willow as it is meant to - with little effort and an ease that only comes when your feet and hands are talking to each other like loving siblings. That is not to say this guarantees more runs, but I feel like at least I am giving myself the best chance.

	I set about finding my 20-year-old self who had made the game so simple. I started to tap the bat and pick it up only when it was required. Within ten minutes I felt like a bird released from a cage

Having made the change, and enjoying the freedom it is providing, it seems that history is also on my side - a shot of the top 15 Australian run scorers in Test and first-class cricket recently appeared on our change-room wall. The photos were taken as the bowler was in his delivery stride. All but one batsman has his bat touching the ground. Admittedly most then move their bat upwards as the ball is leaving the hand, ready to pounce.

Imitation, they say, is the greatest form of flattery. For years Australians would mock English batting techniques as structured and complicated, and yet we have a generation of Australian cricketers replicating their styles. Cricket on television is an important medium for skill development, but also turns the players into imitators. Trying to bat like your favourite player is akin to a teenage girl wanting to dress like Kim Kardashian. Perhaps in their formative years of the mid-2000s - years that saw such English dominance (think Cook, Pietersen and Bell at their best) - youngsters jumped ship on the "Australian way" and imitated those succeeding at the time.

Finding your way as a young professional brings you up against the ultimate paradox. You may try to find consistency to ensure a lengthy career in a tough but financially rewarding environment by minimising risk and simply "surviving", but this will no doubt diminish your ability to put pressure on the bowlers. The more pressure the bowler feels, the more likely they are going to serve up more run-scoring balls and fewer wicket-taking ones. Even in this day and age of travelling batting coaches, analysts, mentors and batting gurus, the journey to find improvement and how you want to play is self-driven. Effective coaching is as much about leading the horse to the trough and allowing self-discovery, as arousing its interest in a drink.

The tide, though, it seems, is turning. I have seen Adam Voges in recent seasons - perhaps at the suggestion of Langer - go back to his natural best, George Bailey and Tim Paine, both fine players and as naturally gifted as they come, too have returned to tapping their bats in recent weeks and months.

Writing about my own batting seems a little self-indulgent, but the motive is simply to illuminate my journey and self-discovery in what has been a ten-year batting evolution. Perhaps if just one young cricketer retains his naturalness then the self-indulgence will be worthwhile.

Ed Cowan is a top-order batsman with Tasmania and Australia.