Flow

Just found this blog I wrote on 24 December 2011 and never posted… I wonder why…

I’ve been thinking about writing a blog on flow for a few weeks now, but as I’ve been wondering if that’s the right blog for me to write, I’ve realised that I’m not going with the flow.  I’m not accepting.  That’s the blog that has presented itself to me & by not writing it, I’m preventing flow!  I realised last night that no other blog will appear for me until this one is written because this is what I need to think about right now.

When I talk about flow and the concept of ‘going with the flow’, I’m not talking about following the crowd, fitting in, doing what other people expect of us (those of you that know me will know that only sometimes do I do what’s expected of me!) I’m talking about going where life takes us instead of struggling to try to make life take a different course, or to (as Eckhart Tolle writes) ‘Leave life alone.  Let it be.”

“but accepting is so difficult!”  I hear you cry… and you’re right… I agree… it is!  But, what if the benefits were to outweigh the difficulties?  Would that make it easier? “acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world” ~ Eckhart Tolle  What if accepting & being in flow were the keys to making life easier?  To helping you deal with the challenges that life were to throw your way?  When I think of the challenge acceptance can pose it makes me think of Viktor Frankl “Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Looking back on my recent travels around New Zealand with my husband and two young children I realise I had a feeling of being in flow as I travelled – a feeling of being in my natural state – of being connected – of being ‘home’.  A feeling I remember from the last time I travelled – 10 years ago.  As I write this I wonder if this feeling is what’s made me consider emigrating for the last decade – perhaps it wasn’t about the places I visited, but instead the sense of calm I achieved through travel.  I feel in flow when travelling because I’m not planning, doing, striving; just accepting and enjoying whatever presents itself… just being.

I wonder if this state of being, of effortlessness and connectedness is even possible in mainstream Western life…  It feels to me that I can attain some level of flow through meditation, walks in Nature, my work as a coach, playing with the kids and even when I’m involved in a non-thinking activities such as painting the house – but quite often I’m distracted by my thinking, the constant task list screaming away in my head, the feeling of needing to be doing something else every time I’m engaged in an ‘in the moment’ activity.  So I don’t achieve flow for long.  Probably the longest periods are when I’m coaching and focused wholly on the person whom I’m coaching.  It saddens me to say I’m not so good at quieting the ‘inner voice’ (what we call in coaching ‘self management’) when playing with the kids as I often jump up to put in another load of washing or to check my email / twitter  :-(

I realise as I write this that for me there’s a definite connection between ‘being in the moment’ and flow and that I need to reflect more on what it is that allows me to stay in the moment whilst coaching so I can apply the learning in other areas of my life.

Another connection I’ve made is that flow isn’t possible when judging – it’s only available to us when we accept.  When I judge I often want to change the people and things around me and when I worry about the ‘shoulds’ in life it affects my choices such as how I choose to spend my time.  For those of you that have read my previous blogs you’ll know that quite often my big lessons in life come from kids TV programmes and films, so not wanting to disappoint…

I’ve recently taken advice from the Soothsayer in Kung Fu Panda 2 (Have you seen it yet?!) when he says to Po “stop fighting, let it flow” and when I feel myself swimming against the tide I tell myself to wholeheartedly ‘grab shell dude’ (WARNING! YouTube link with volume!). 

I think what I’m realising is (in the words of Eckhart Tolle who puts it so much better than I could!)… “Mastery of life is the opposite of control”. “The present moment is as it is.  Always.”  The only question then is “Can you let it be?”

• Suppose you were ‘in flow’ what would tell you?
• How is acceptance linked to flow for you?
• How do you stay ‘in the moment’?

I’d love to hear from you… either by leaving a comment here or @ThePensiveCoach

the Hare and the Heron

As some of you will be aware, I recently made a life changing move to The Bivouac where my husband has taken a job.  We’ve moved our daughter to a new school, taken our son out of nursery and settled our family into a static caravan to be part of the adventure that is The Bivouac.

I haven’t been as involved in the business as I expected to be at this stage as it’s taking me a while to settle in here (it’s been just short of a month, but I’m pretty impatient!) due in part to the fact that I’m still working in Lancashire & travelling back for at least 2 days each week.

Some days I love it here & others I wonder ‘what have we done?’!  I notice when I meditate I’m more likely to have an ‘I love it here’ kind of day…

Living in a caravan with 2 small children who want to be up at 6am doesn’t give much time or space for meditation, but the last couple of days I’ve managed to fit in both a nature walk and a meditation & they have really helped me to connect… both with myself & ‘something bigger’.

After my first meditation earlier this week, this article on intuition arrived in my inbox (something else I notice when I meditate… what I need to see, hear, read, etc. comes to me of its own accord! )

The article got me thinking about what signs the universe has been giving me of late & there were two that sprung to mind: last week I saw a hare (not an animal I’ve seen more than twice in my life) and over the past couple of weeks I’ve been astonished that each time I drive any distance I seem to see a heron!  So, I decided to explore the symbolism of hares and herons…

The Hare…

• often seen as having a role in the creation of the world, a symbol of new life and enlightenment …new life jumped out at me as did enlightenment – I feel strongly that my time here, at The Bivouac, will be a spiritual journey
• often associated with impatience and haste (as in the story of the tortoise and the hare) …I laughed, thinking of my impatience to feel settled into this new place, this new life!
• symbolises change in leaping & hopping movements …again I laughed, this move for us was not a ‘small steps’ incremental kind of move it was indeed a leap (of faith in many ways)!
• was an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph that stood for the auxiliary verb ‘to be’, where the Egyptian ‘to be’ was associated with creation and the senses of being, existing, being embodied, alive & persisting  …I loved reading this – it made me think that I need to continue to do what I’m doing, to find the time for meditation, walks in nature, time with the children as this is one of the main things this adventure is about for me… ‘to be’ and not ‘to do’.  See my previous blog “Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in”
• is a symbol of simultaneous destruction and recreation that is at the very heart of life.  Life is not just about being creative, but also requires the balance of being destructive …interesting to reflect that this new life wouldn’t exist without the ‘destruction’ of my old life and perhaps what I’m seeing as my struggle to settle is in fact only a ‘letting go’ of what I had previously in order to embrace the new.

The Heron…

• is honored, in Egypt, as the creator of light …again creator/creation and for me a link between ‘light’ and ‘enlightenment’
• in China, represents patience …the hare making me acknowledge my impatience and the heron reminding me to be patient!
• which Native American tribes noted as inquisitive, curious and determined, seeing the heron as a symbol of wisdom and good judgment …telling me I’ve made a wise and good judgment to be here perhaps
• as a water creature, is also a symbol of going with the flow, and working with the elements of Mother Nature rather than struggling against her  …when I read this it spoke to me so much of being in flow, not struggling, getting closer to nature…

So, if I consider both the hare & the heron to be signs from the universe… they tell me to go with the flow, be patient, trust in my decision, let go of my old life, spend time in nature and just ‘be’.

• What signs is the universe giving you?
• How aware of these signs are you?
• What are you taking from them?

I’d love to hear from you… either by leaving a comment here or @ThePensiveCoach

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Who decided to create an extra day every 4 years?  What a great idea! Why can’t we have extra days in every month?   Who agrees?  Perhaps some of you would prefer 8 day weeks or maybe 30 hour days!

But it’s not about having more time, it’s about choosing what we do with the time we have… 

• How much of your day is spent doing the things YOU WANT to do?
• How often do you look back on your day & think “that was time well spent” in terms of what’s important to you… I mean REALLY IMPORTANT to YOU?
• When was the last time you actively choose how to spend your time?

Personally I know I need to make a shift between spending time ‘doing’ and spending time ‘being’.  I’m in the middle of a life changing move to be involved in the Bivouac which is all about sustainability, family & connectedness (see my previous blog An Afternoon in Wellies).  Today when I asked my 5 year old how we’ll spend our time when we move to the Bivouac she said ‘not watching TV’ (we’ve decided we won’t have one!) & when I prompted ‘so how…?’ she said ‘together’.  And that’s the shift I need to make.

In my coaching practice I’ve seen so many leaders and managers who, like me, are a slave to their task lists and who get caught up in doing the small stuff (stuff that’s easy to tick off at the end of the day) instead of concentrating on the things that will make a difference – in their businesses, in their lives…  It’s something I coach around A LOT!  Some of the things people do to liberate themselves from their tasks lists are…

a)      throw out their task list!

b)      allow themselves to spend time on what interests them… what they enjoy…

c)       set goals in all areas of their life (see wheel of life) and then set tasks against those goals

d)      schedule into the diary what’s important against goals (see c) above)

e)      only set themselves 1 or 2 things to do each day that will REALLY make a difference (& I’m not just talking about to the top or bottom line of the business, I’m also talking about enriching relationships and other ‘non tasks’)

So, as I make my move to The Bivouac, I know it’s not just going to be a physical move for me it’s also going to be a mental shift.  As I write, I’ve just realised that I know some of the things that I want on my new ‘non task list’.  They all involve the family & are…

        picnic in the woods

        lie on a blanket and be awestruck by the stars

        go on a bug hunt

        climb trees

        roll sideways down hills

        watch the clouds float by

i.e. doing things that contribute to ‘being’ which in turn contribute to my goals to enrich my relationships with others… my family

Suppose 29 February 2012, wasn’t an ‘extra’ day, but was your last day, how would you choose to spend it?

I’d love to hear from you… either by leaving a comment here or @ThePensiveCoach

Raising Consciousness

There’s a lot of talk of consciousness at the moment, more so than before, it seems, or perhaps it’s just what @presentingqueen would call ‘green mini syndrome’, i.e. when you think you’ve had a brilliant idea to buy a racing green mini with white roof & white wheel trims… so unique that you’ll never see another like it & as you leave the car showroom to drive home, after purchasing said unique car, you see three others identical to it on the way! So, perhaps it’s just that I’ve become aware of ‘consciousness’ and so I’m seeing it more…

It occurred to me before Christmas that as a coach one of the things I do is raise awareness in people – help people to become more self aware; more aware of others and their interactions with them; and also aware of their environment (which I mean in its widest sense, i.e. not just nature).  As I reflected (that’s why I’m ThePensiveCoach see blog post What’s in a Name? for more on that) on awareness I realised that ‘awareness’ is just another word for ‘consciousness’.

In my blog Are You In? I wrote about my vision for ‘making an impact every minute of every day forever’ and the project that had revealed itself to me through my meditation (see Thought is to Meditaton as Dreams are to Life for more about meditation) – a project which I then believed to be about coaching.  Since my recognition of the link between coaching & awareness and therefore the link between coaching & consciousness, my feeling is that the ‘making an impact every minute of every day forever’ project is about bringing people together who ‘raise consciousness’.

What I have then been noticing is that I am connecting with people who are raising consciousness (synchronicity at work?).  People who are raising awareness include my fellow coaches (I would list them, but they’re too many to list – you’ll have to check out who I follow on twitter… guess I should start creating some lists as well as people who raise awareness through other means, e.g. through tranquility (The Tranquility Project), through demonstrating sustainable living (The Bivouac), through meditation (Iuna Meditation).

I’ve been feeling that I wouldn’t blog anything else until I’d explored & researched the whole ‘raise in consciousness’ stuff a bit more and had a better understanding, but then tonight I decided that I just needed to blog & to put that intention out there and that that in itself would move me forward with my exploration and understanding, so that’s what I’m doing…

• What do I need to know about raising consciousness?
• What are you doing to raise consciousness?
• What do you see as the benefits of helping others raise their consciousness?
• Who else should I be speaking to about this?

As my strapline says
…asking challenging questions …trusting you know the answers

Looking forward to connecting with you here or @ThePensiveCoach :-)

Thought is to meditation as dreams are to life

I’m no expert at meditation but I know that when I do it, it makes a positive difference to my life and perhaps more noticeably when I stop doing it, it has a negative impact.

I’ve heard a number of people recently say they “can’t” meditate – they try but they can’t empty their mind; they can’t stop thinking about all the things they have to do; it’s just too difficult.

When my interest in meditation first piqued I took myself off to a Buddhist meditation centre for the day… hoping to learn about meditation.  Although it was an enjoyable day and I met some interesting people (always a bonus), I found the day consisted of a number of meditations interspersed with teachings, but disappointingly for me, there were no teachings about meditation itself.  Consequently I spent most of the day thinking…  “is this right?”; “how do I stop these thoughts?”; “what am I supposed to be doing?”; “what’s the purpose of meditation?” 

Shortly after that I found Eliza and David Harrison at Iuna Meditation who run their courses from The Meditation Centre in Dent – a beautiful space which Eliza was instrumental in the creation of.  Iuna’s “Introduction to Meditation” gave me just what I needed – to learn about meditation and to practice and of course to meet some more interesting people.  (The people were significant – I had recently realised that I connect deeply with people when I share a learning experience with them and so was keen to create more opportunities for myself to learn in groups, of which this was one.)

So, back to the meditation… several things stayed with me from the “Introduction to Meditation” day and probably the biggest one, which I share with people who tell me they “can’t meditate”, is “thoughts are to meditation as dreams are to life”.  I found this incredibly helpful as previously I had thought meditation was about eradicating thought.  Perhaps in a purist sense eradicating thought is what we aim to achieve in meditation, but that is so far away from where we’re at in Western society it is almost impossible to achieve, so it is necessary to take a more pragmatic approach…

Eliza and David’s teaching says that meditation is not about eradicating thought, it is to focus solely on one thing –your breath, a mantra, a question, etc. and that when thoughts arise, as they inevitably do, when we become aware of those thoughts we should accept them without judgement and bring ourselves gently and ‘effortlessly’ back to our focus.  So, thinking back to the thoughts that were going through my head as I tried to meditate at the Buddhist meditation centre…

“is this right”	If there is no judgement, there is no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and therefore no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’
“how do I stop these thoughts?”	I don’t, I allow them and when I realise they’re there, I gently bring myself back to the thing on which I was focusing
“what am I supposed to be doing?”	focusing on one thing and when I noticed I’ve stopped, refocusing again

With regards to the question of “what’s the purpose of meditation?” Eliza and David have much to share and I would prefer you heard it from them (click here) than me – as I said I’m just a novice!

For me though, I guess there are 2 purposes – the first is what is happening when I am in the process of meditation (removing limiting beliefs, getting rid of negativity, unlearning, connecting to core, energising, etc.) and the second is what happens as a result of regular meditation, i.e. the benefits which help me deal with my every day challenges.  Below are some examples of the benefits I’ve noticed recently…

Challenge 1: over the past 12 months I’ve continually pushed myself out of my comfort zone in order to grow and develop in new areas
My meditation has helped me… take on new challenges calmly, more confidently and with less fear

Challenge 2: redundancy just before Christmas
My meditation has helped me… remain positive and keep my stress levels low

Challenge 3: not knowing where next in terms of job/career
My meditation has helped me… ask my heart (as opposed to my head) where next & what action I need to take and trust that that action will reveal opportunities.  Also, I think it’s ‘opened’ me up so that when the opportunities do arise I’m much more likely to see them and explore them – see the ‘An Afternoon in wellies’ blog I recently wrote for The Bivouac about one such opportunity!

Challenge 4: to continually improve my coaching practice
My meditation has helped me… access my intuition and have the courage to act on that intuition, e.g. feeding back to a coaching client what my intuition is telling me about what’s going on for them

Challenge 5: how I measure my impact
My meditation has helped me… connect with my purpose through asking my heart – see my Measuring the Crater blog

So, now I’m wondering…

• How has this changed your thinking on meditation?
• What benefits might you experience from meditation?
• When are you going to start to find out? 

And if your “I can’t” has now changed to “I can’t find time”, I would encourage you to find it & if you can’t find 20 minutes, start with 5, and when you start to experience the benefits you’ll find more time. 

Of course you may start to meditate and not really notice the benefits & so stop and that’s when you’ll really see the benefits it was bringing, which may just be what you need to meditate more regularly

I’d love to hear your perspectives on meditation, either through your comments on the blog or tweets to @ThePensiveCoach

Are you in?

… So there I was, still in my meditation, still reeling from the meteor insight and knowing that it wasn’t about measuring my impact it was about making my impact as big as possible… but that’s not where the story ends (despite my previous blog’s desire to hoodwink you into thinking it is!)…

Here’s how the conversation continued:
Me:                 “So, how do I make my impact as big as possible?”
Me(ditation): “You can’t do it alone, you must do it with other people.”

And bit by bit a way of doing so revealed itself to me… I knew that this was about bringing together people all around the world who, together, could make a big impact. What came to me next was the idea of a coaching project with coaches in each timezone – a “follow the sun” project whereby together we could coach for 24 hours.  This then turned into a project of 1 month whereby if I could connect with 30 coaches in each timezone around the world and each gave just 1 hour of their time, we could provide continuous coaching for a whole month.

Wow! That sounded like a big impact… Coaching 24 hours a day for 30 days = 720 hours of coaching, i.e. 720 people helped. Big… but not big enough… as my meditation then told me… “if we can get each of those coaches to give 1 hour, then why not 1 hour a month every month which means… “Making an impact, every minute of every day, forever!”

The whole meteor insight knocked me sideways… this stuff was at risk of knocking me out! I still feel like a novice at meditation and yet this all came to me in a 20 minute meditation.

So there it was… The Vision… “Making an impact, every minute of every day, forever!”

At that point I had the vision; and I had an idea of where to start, and then realised that my idea for a “round the clock” coaching project was simply one project that was part of achieving the vision. It didn’t need to be limited to coaching – literally any helping intervention could contribute to achieving the vision.

When my meditation ended I knew I needed to take action quickly to give this some impetus, so logged on to Amazon & ordered my world timezones map and a set of flags.  Next I started to tweet about the vision to see what interest I got. Straight away I had interest from people who I had already connected with on twitter saying they were “in”.

And at that point… I froze!

The massive challenge ahead of me overwhelmed me and I ran away. I stopped all activity on twitter and the rest of social media and hid for a while

In the last couple of weeks I’ve started to have a few of conversations about it again, one of which (thanks to @aswsolicitors) made me realise that I need to listen to my own advice & know that I don’t need to know the ‘how’, i.e. I don’t need to see the whole staircase I just need to take the first step.

I have also had some amazing messages from friends & family…

• “it’s not because things are difficult that we dare not, it’s because we dare not they are difficult.” thanks @jdelacr
• “I love your BHAG – go for it girl!” thanks @AmandaTigerfish
• “your courage, strength and vulnerability created a ripple effect that has had an enormous impact on me and lots of other people, and I really want you to know that. THANK YOU.” thanks @RobPitt1
• “we were just talking about you last Friday and how your coaching had affected our lives and the decisions we’ve made… Just wanted to say thanks.” Thanks Y
• “I believe in you.” Thanks J
• “You amaze me. What you explained to me was phenomenal. To know what your life purpose is is so amazing. Go for it, you have been chosen for the job.” Thanks M

Your messages have given me the courage and strength to move forwards with this. Thank you all for rekindling my light!

So here I am, back from wherever I ran away to, taking my first step… sharing this with you, the intention of which is to get more people to say “I’m in”.

I’m not sure where we’re going yet, but I know that if we stay true to the vision… “To make an impact, every minute of every day, forever!” We’re going to make a difference to a lot of people’s lives.

So…

• Are you in?
• Who else do you know that wants in?
• How can we work together to create an impact so big it’s self evident?

Looking forward to connecting with you here or @ThePensiveCoach  

Measuring the Crater

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours thinking and researching a topic that’s been in the back of my mind for some time – the idea of measuring our impact in order to see the value we add and better demonstrate that value to clients and potential clients.

With no coaching or other delivery in the diary for the day (a perfect opportunity to focus on something important not urgent) I set about tweeting, googling & reading.

I came up with a framework for how we might record goals – both individual & organisational – set at the beginning of a programme, in such a way that we make behaviour change measurable.  This led me to consider how the process might need to be improved to set highly robust goals; who might need to be involved in the conversation and how we might deal with the fact that the client (again both the individual and organisation) may not have clarity around their goals at the outset (it’s common that our initial time spent with clients is in helping them gain clarity on their goals).

So I concluded that the most important thing was not in fact how we recorded the goals (although it was important to find a way in which to make them quantifiable), the most important thing (as always) was the conversation and specifically in asking and helping clients answer the following questions…

for organisations:

• What behaviours and/or actions will lead to the organisational outcomes you want?
• How do your people know those are the behaviours and/or actions required of them?

and for individuals:

• How can I be and do what this organisation needs of me?
• What behaviours and/or actions will lead to the personal outcomes I want?
• How can I be and do what I need of me?

Being pretty happy with my morning’s work I decided to leave it there and spend 20 minutes of my lunch hour meditating…

Over the summer I learnt a new technique in meditation (thanks to Eliza & David of Iuna Meditation) – to go into meditation and pose a question, so I decided to meditate asking the question ‘what shall I do about measuring impact?’ (not very ‘life purposey’ I know, but I just wanted to see what happened).

Not long into my meditation the following question came to me…
“when a meteor lands on the earth, do we need to measure the crater in order to know it’s impact?”
no we don’t, we can see it, hear it and feel it – the impact is self evident!

At that point it felt a bit like Stephen Covey’s quote… “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster”.  My earlier thinking had led me to answers, but my meditation revealed that I had been asking the wrong question!

So what I’m taking from this is… instead of focusing my efforts on measuring impact, what I need to do is focus my all my efforts on making the impact for the client as big as possible and as such self evident!

As I sit here writing this I wonder then if my morning was wasted, but as I now have…

1. some ideas on how to make behaviour change measurable
2. clarity on the important questions for us to ask organisations and individuals, and
3. a determination to help the client really understand what they want and therefore need from their people

I think it was definitely beneficial.  In fact, these three things are the very things that will enable me to maximize my impact along with a couple of other things …but I’ll save those for another day

So, now I’ve shared some of my thinking with you, perhaps you’d like to share some of yours with me…

• What can you do to make the impact you have as big as possible?
• How do you & your clients know the impact you’re having?
• What do they see, hear and feel when your work is really having an impact?

I’d love to hear from you – feel free to leave comments here or tweet me @ThePensiveCoach