Are we down on luck?

plus middling along and all that Jazz

Leila Ainge

Mar 17, 2024

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Hello, it’s been a little while.

I hurt my back on Valentine’s Day, I wasn’t doing anything exciting unfortunately! however back recovery is steady but slow and I need to avoid long periods of sitting so my morning writing hour has been usefully deployed elsewhere! I have been taking full advantage of springtime and going for lots of walks and outdoor swimming (in a heated pool I should add)

All of this means that I have ideas, thoughts, and notes on the recent episodes of psychologically speaking whirring around in my head. I’ve also got a brand-new podcast episode with the wonderful Emma Thomas (Emma on substack) out today, where we talk all things middle-life-more on that later!

Washland walk photo from a few weeks ago

First, let me catch you up on those country walk and swim lane thoughts over three parts

Part One, All that Jazz

Last year I took the family to Cheltenham in our campervan on a last-minute trip to the Jazz festival, we were too late to book tickets to the big events, but there’s always something free going on, and my little one never passes up an overnight camping trip. Whilst my husband and son had gone off to join a food queue I stood by the big top area, where I could hear band rehearsals taking place, I recognised some of the tunes, but then came Gold, not your typical Jazz song, the singer was Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet fame! I hadn’t expected to hear that rehearsal, and it was a lovely moment standing on the outside listening in.

I was reminded of this recently because Tony appeared on the Radio 2 Piano room series, and what he said about that performance made me smile. Talking about his move into Jazz, he says the standing ovation took him by surprise because he was out of his comfort zone. And he went on to share, ‘I was so nervous I forgot the words to gold’.

I thought it was interesting, a song that he’s undoubtedly mastered over the decades, but in a different context resulted in nerves. There are parallels with the people I speak to who experience imposter feelings in online spaces, these people are not usually novices in what they do, but online spaces where they need to be visible, write or speak is very much out of the ordinary for them, the audience is different. I thought I’d share this in case it resonated with you too.

There’s a link to the Piano room episode on iplayer (UK ), it’s worth it for the full 6 minute orchestral version of Barricades

Part Two, Are we down on Luck?

I’m preparing a manuscript for a conference submission and re-reading the imposter transcripts, I’ve been thinking about cognition and embodiment and specifically the use of luck in the imposter phenomenon construct. We’ve encountered cognition already in my podcast series through the term enclothed cognition (in episode 4 and episode 6, cognition is really just the study of how we make sense of our experiences, and the world through those senses (with that in mind, what we wear impacts the way we feel.)

Embodied cognition is deeply philosophical and widely debated, but from a psychological perspective it’s this counter intuitive idea that the mind is not only connected to the body but that the body influences the mind. Embodied cognition suggests that our experience of the physical world impacts our thoughts. It’s a big old topic, but it’s useful to know that there have been claims that reading a word like ‘kick’ or ‘punch’ causes activity simulations in motor areas of the brain associated with kicking and punching, however recent studies suggest that simulations are neither required nor automatic in our high level-cognitive processes.

Embodied cognition is also used to explain the language we use, we ‘warm up’ to people, both the temperature and positioning in that statement give us clues to the intention of the phrase, these clues and our lived experiences really fascinates me. I chose to use an interpretative and phenomenological research method to look at Imposter Phenomenon, it considers the nature and structure of our lived experiences, and one of the ways I did this was to consider the language participants used, as their own interpretation and self-awareness.

I’ve spoken about the noisy words such as ‘whoosh’ that participants used about imposter feelings already in the podcast series, my research is fit to burst with interesting semantics, especially metaphors like ‘a level playing field’.

My interest in metaphors was really piqued at sixth form when I studied English language which crosses over with psychology in lots of interesting and varied ways, including child language acquisition, the metaphor means to ‘understand or experience one kind of thing, in the terms of another’.

In fact, one of the linguists behind that definition, George Lakoff believed that metaphors create alternative realities, it’s just really exciting stuff! 17 year old me was reading (and not enjoying) Margaret Atwood’s Handmaids Tail, I was grappling with a dystopian world, it wasn’t until I was able to think of the way Atwood uses metaphor, that I started to understand the text better. I’m still not a fan of fantasy or dystopian works, although I do love Atwood’s poetry!

Lakoff identified primary metaphors, so ‘affection is warmth’, ‘similarity is proximity’ and ‘Happy is up!’ and they are often referred to as embodied metaphors (quick note: In the podcast episode 7 with Lucy Werner we touch on proximity effect whilst talking about comparison/similarity, and I promise to come back to this in a future substack as I have more thoughts). As I was revisiting transcripts, and I couldn’t shake the idea that the way ‘feeling lucky’ has become a negative connotation with imposter. In Clance and Imes’ 1970’s research, participants were observed to feel lucky, this is widely written about and described as ‘they put their successes down to luck.’

So let’s focus in on the metaphorical representation ‘down to luck’ - are we literally looking down on luck, as being lesser than say competence? I was intrigued by this because there is SO much psychological research on the benefits of feeling lucky, in fact the happy-go lucky research tells us that happiness is often associated with luck, even if it is not correlated. Luck also shows up as descriptive metaphor for how people believe past events and current events work out, and feeling lucky positively correlates with environmental mastery and self-acceptance, and negatively with discomfort and anxiety.

So it’s odd isn’t it, that in the imposter literature and research, luck sits side by side with discomfort and anxiety! And not for the first time, when we are told something is a problem, the things attached to it become problematic. There’s a little leap for me between someone describing ‘feeling lucky’ to the way we talk about ‘putting success down to luck’ – that word down is giving an embodied cognition to the phrase.

And my thought process pauses here a little because I don’t know the origins of the phrase ‘down to luck’ (and I need to focus on my PhD research and not go down too many rabbit holes), but is it linked to ‘they’re’ down on luck?’.

I’m guessing there is a societal link in there, was it originally a passive way of dismissing an achievement, or an attempt at modesty? The question it leaves me with is, who interpreted what?

Is it the participant who feels lucky, was that in a positive or negative light? Or is it the psychologist who interprets that as dissociation in some way? And that’s not a slight on the original research, but a curious point of enquiry. Interesting stuff, and this is what’s going on in my head when I’m doing the front crawl, and possibly explains why I’m terrible at letting go of thoughts in a yoga class!.

Part Three, middling along with Emma Thomas

On Saturdays I drop off my child at a theatre school for an hour and go for a lovely walk (I would rather be runing, impatient but following orders!) across the ferry bridge, over the washlands to town, this morning I was reflecting on middle age friendship and what it means to me.

Last year, I went to a menopause event in Oxford set up by Emma Thomas (another campervan weekend!), we connected through an online business community but hadn’t met up in person, yet Emma welcomed me and my family round to her house for a home cooked dinner the night before she hosted the panel event, and let me tell you, both were fabulous!

I love that my middle life has been a series of changes and transitions, from studying to gaining new friends, and still ongoing, my reflection is that my life feels psychologically richer for it.

Emma is a menopause expert and she’s interested in all things middle life, because the average age of my participants for the imposter research was 40 years old I had to invite her onto the podcast! I think you’ll enjoy this week’s episode as we get curious about the intersection of imposter experiences and middle age, we explore the complexities and the poignant sense of loss that can accompany middle age and its impact on self-comparison through my research theme ‘I miss her, I miss me’.

So, there you go, audiences matter as Tony Hadley experienced at the Jazz festival when nerves set in, the way we position luck as up or down might have a bearing on its use in imposter phenomenon, and staying on the embodied metaphor track, serving up a warm meal to new friends is psychologically speaking, an effective way to foster warm feelings!

Thank you for reading, I’d love to know your thoughts, perhaps you can tell me more about metaphors and our use of the phrase ‘down on our luck’?

You can listen to psychologically speaking with me, Leila Ainge on all the usual platforms. You can also head over to my website www.leilaainge.co.uk to stream the latest epsiodes.

Are we down on luck?

plus middling along and all that Jazz

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