Coaching Wizardry

Ever since I took part in Hilda Carroll’s ‘songs to make your heart sing‘ I’ve been haunted by songs that do just that.

I came across a new song yesterday.  Driving north and west through the sunshine and showers of the west highlands.  Listening to the Tom Morton show, flickering on and off the radio as I lost reception in the depths of a glen, or when Glasgow and Shetland lost their digital connection.  He played a song by Karine Polwart called ‘I’m gonna do it all’.

It was one of those songs that made you sing out loud.  Made you feel fired up and passionate and angry.  Made me think of people I knew who had that fire in their belly to do it all.  People who’d got set back, knocked back by fate, by ill health, by circumstance.  Who were still fighting, struggling, demanding with every breath to do it all.

Which made my eyes fill with tears.

Funny that, how the songs that make your heart sing are the ones that break it too.

Anyway, enough of the emotion, here’s a snippet of the amazing lyrics, and a link to a starburst of the song: I’m gonna do it all some day.

I’m gonna fly in a silver winged space rocket
I’m gonna pick out the stars and put them in my pocket
I’m gonna bring those stars back down
So I can spread celestial light around
I’m gonna do it all some day

Dedicated to everyone who’s going to bring those stars back down, and do it all some day.

I’m having fun watching the thinking blogger meme unfold.  It’s proving a great way of finding new thoughtful and thought-provoking blogs, discovering new connections.

Thanks to Robyn I’ve found another new blogger - Lisa Gates, who’s talking about how we can join the dots.  Be creative.  Create:

Something from nothing. Something from something. Something for us to ponder and move into our day with.

All with a view to inventing "a new arabesque".  That’s right.  Another invitation to join the dance.

Meanwhile, Robyn has reminded us to acknowledge the origins of the Thinking Blogger meme.  I’ll add a thanks for kicking this off, it’s providing some great food for thought - and great opportunities to join the dots.

I love reading so I couldn’t resist Brad Shorr’s group writing project: "What’s Your Favourite Business Book?" (notwithstanding that I don’t really have the time right now for another of these questions - but you know how it is once your unconscious mind starts working on the answer…)

My chosen book is Lewis Carroll’s "Alice In Wonderland." I guess it’s a suggestion that won’t often appear on the shelves marked "business thinking" - but it was a great help to me at a difficult time in my career.  It was a point when I was struggling to make sense of my way too busy, stressful career in a very large public service organisation where things often seemed more than a little crazy if not back to front or even upside down.

So how did the book help me?

1. It helped me to realise that some things about large organisations just were plain perplexing.  There wasn’t much point worrying about it.  You just had to get on with it. Well that’s how I read the advice from the Cheshire Cat anyway.

" ‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice.  ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat.  ‘We’re all mad here.’"

2. It helped me to stop worrying about the rules that we were supposed to follow.  It wouldn’t have been humanly (or inhumanly) possible to comply with them all.  You just had to get on with it - and apply dollops of common sense.  I can’t remember which character gives Alice this piece of advice but it always make me smile when I find myself getting hung up on lists of things I ’should’ do.  (The last point is particularly important don’t you think?)

"’Speak in French when you can’t think of English for a thing, turn out your toes when you walk and remember who you are!"

3. You just can’t keep a straight face when you’re reading Alice.  So the book helped me to smile through otherwise dark days.  It reminded - reminds me - to lighten up.  Who wouldn’t with great advice like this?

"’Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, very gravely, ‘and go on till  you come to the end: then stop."

I’m sure there are lots of serious and important business strategy books that I should have been reading so I look forward to reading people’s suggestions at Brad’s site (or hearing yours here, of course.)  If you want to play, the questions are very simple, just identify:

1. (Of course) the name of the book and author.
2. When you read it.
3. The one, two, or three big ideas you got of it.
4. How it made a difference in your career.

One of the things that has surprised me most about the world of blogging is how much there is to learn - from other people’s blogs, from your readers, and from the material you write yourself (I don’t know about you but I often find myself answering my own, hidden, questions as I write.)  One thing’s for sure - whatever the critics might say - blog reading and writing is a great prompt for getting us to think.

Robyn McMaster at Brain Based Biz is one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking bloggers out there (her blog is full of the most amazing material on the workings of the brain) so I was surprised and honoured to find that she had named me for the Thinking Blogger Awards. 

I’m one of five that she’s listed - the others are Word Sell, Branding and Marketing, Own Your Brand and Design Your Writing Life. I’m familiar with Word Sell (a great read) but not the others - so more to add to my list of reading material (= brain food).

The challenge is then to come up with your own list of five nominations: the blogs that really make you think.  It’s hard, because each one gives you something (else why would you read it?).  But there are some that really do give my brain a good workout - and here they are:

1. Roger von Oech at Creative Think, whose questions, prompts and challenges get you thinking creatively

2. Anna Farmery at The Engaging Brand, who gets you thinking about leadership - of teams but also of yourself - in a very natural way, using stories and anecdotes from everyday life

3. Hilda Carroll at Living Out Loud, who gets us thinking about our ability to be happy right now.

4. Liz Strauss at Successful Blog who gets me thinking about how to use great questions to stimulate conversation, and to help us to get to know who we are

5. Rosa Say at Managing with Aloha, who has started me thinking about the values of aloha and how to apply them in my life.  The start of an amazing journey of discovery.

Robyn’s blog, I hasten to add, would be on the list had she not already been tagged…

If you don’t already know these blogs why not dip into them and give them try.  I guarantee you’ll get some interesting and unusual food for thought.

Here are the participation rules for the Thinking Blogger Award:

    1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
    2. Link back to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
    3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ (I know you’ll want to!)

Ever since I took part in Hilda Carroll’s ‘Songs That Make Your Heart Sing’ I’ve been thinking about other pieces of music that give you that ‘wow’ factor - that lift your spirits, that make you smile, that inspire you, that give you the courage to carry on. 

I’ve come across some great blogging contributions and I am really looking forward to seeing - then hearing - the final playlist.  (If you haven’t added yours yet it’s not too late to play).  I’ve been reminded by readers of one of my own all time favourite pieces of music: the soundtrack to Last of the Mohicans.

And every so often I hear other people talking about the songs that make their heart sing.  Stumbled across another one this morning, listening to the ‘Inheritance Tracks’ feature on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Saturday Live’ programme (the only way to start the weekend!).  The idea of the slot is to identify the one track that you’ve inherited from your family or someone important in your past, and the one track that you’d like to pass on.

Today’s guest was Simon Weston, Falklands War veteran well known in the UK for the horrific burns that he suffered to his face - and his courage in rebuilding his life after the war.  The track he chose to pass on was Free Bird by Lynard Skynard.

With remarkable honesty he talks about the times when he’s been in dark places, when this song has helped lift his spirits.  The time when he was finally released from hospital, after 11 months chained up and wrapped in bandages, wondering if he would ever get out, ever go out with his friends again.  Then finding himself free, once again, "able to go out, able to spread your wings, to fly off and do things with your life again".

And dark times when it was hard to see the way forward, when the challenges he faced took him downwards into despondency and depression.  Times when even in that heart of darkness a song like this could lift his spirit, lighten his heart, lift his energy "stopping you sink so deep into yourself".

He describes the song as a reminder: to feel that freedom, to get up and go, to let your spirit fly.

Not just existing, but living out loud.