Coaching Wizardry

A selection of inspirational quotes from the archives:

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose” ~ Dolly Parton (~ Maya Angelou (Read more here)

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” ~ TS Eliot (Read more here)

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” ~ Maya Angelou (Read more here)

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” ~ Alan Alda (Read more here)

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~ Maya Angelou (Read more here)

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” ~ Picasso (Read more here)

“Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep… They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.” ~ Father Anthony de Mello (Read more here)

“Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.” ~ Thomas Carlyle (Read more here)

“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake…” ~ Sir Francis Bacon (Read more here)

“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.” ~ Mary Oliver (Read more here)

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be” ~ Douglas Adams (Read more here)

“And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance, I hope you dance” ~ Lee Anne Womak (Read more here)

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch that I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” ~ George Bernard Shaw (Read more here)

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Emerson (Read more here)

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.” ~ Pablo Neruda (Read more here)

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” ~ Rosalia de Castro (Read more here)

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~ Anais Nin (Read more here)

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” ~ Anais Nin (Read more here)

Here are some snippets from posts inspired by those days, those moments, when you just know that it’s time for a change.

Resilience or the art of bouncing back

What a great set of ingredients for being resilient, for bouncing back.  And don’t you love the word - I feel more positive just saying “bouncebackability”… and for me it immediately conjures up a sense of movement, of energy, of dynamism, of springing back…

Permission to narrow your focus

But it also reminded me that picking your spot takes some courage, some conscious, explicit decision to turn your attention away from all the other things that are calling to you, that you could spend your time on, that might be fun to explore, that are worthy causes for you
to commit to.

And sometimes you need nudges, reminders, pointers, permission maybe that say: it’s okay to narrow your focus, to turn your attention away from everything else.

When it’s time to wake up

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like you’ve been sleep-walking your way through life?  I think most of us have, some time.

Times when we’ve been so caught up in our busyness we’ve forgotten what we were trying to do or where we were trying to get to.  When we’ve given so much time and energy to other people that we’ve lost sight of ourselves. Our selves.  When life starts to lose its colour, its detail, its wondrous beauty.  When we we just drift along, as if asleep

Happy Butterfly Day

I think for me “Happy Butterfly Day” would mean a celebration of:

• everything that was colourful and beautiful in the world
• the amazing diversity of human life
• the wider world that we live in, recognising that our actions,
  our butterfly wings, can make a difference (for good or ill) in other
  parts of the world
• people who have the courage to step out of the chrysalis
• the importance of flapping our wings and flying free

Find out who you are and do it on purpose: Part II

Find out who you are and do it on purpose - well to me that’s about starting with yourself, so the purpose stems from inside, the unique person that you are, rather than what someone else has decided for you (even indirectly, like pressure to live or think in a certain way). It also makes me smile because - for me - it captures a sense of pride in who you and going out and doing it big style, full of va va voom - which is definitely how Dolly does it

That’s what “find out who you are and do it on purpose” means to me.  It’s only one answer though.

I wonder what it means to you?

Here are some of the most powerful metaphors that we use to explore, to learn about, to make sense of life.

Dancing as the adventure of being alive

“… and the invitation opens up another a new metaphor: of life as a dance. Dancing as the adventure of being alive. Which brings us back to the question: will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?”

From the post: Won’t you join the dance? An invitation

Ease up on your golf swing

“I could see from reading on that the metaphor of golf for life worked on lots of levels: you always learn something new; it can be difficult, challenging, fun and rewarding. But the bit I really loved was that advice to ease up on your golf swing…”

From the post: Golfing as a metaphor for life

The path we are travelling

“But looking too hard for the one, true path can create its own problems. You can find yourself fixed on finding ‘the’ answer rather than noticing and enjoying where you are. The path that is unfolding under your feet. The trail you have left behind.

And it can leave you focused on the path that other people have created, the ’shoulds’ of other people’s expectations, or the trails that others have blazed, rather than the path that is distinctly yours. Focused on external pointers and signs, rather than trusting your instincts and intuition to find your way.”

From the post: looking for the right path

Lessons from the art of juggling

“I know, I know, it doesn’t take Einstein to read and apply the lessons from the art of juggling as a metaphor for life. In fact, I’m constantly amazed by the relevance of each learning point for other areas of life, of work, of learning where I’ve got temporarily stuck.

The trick is deciding you’re not going to stay there. Not stopping after the first juggulation. Moving on when you’re stuck. Resolving to keep throwing the balls.”

From the post: the art of juggling - keep throwing the balls

Songs and music can inspire us to sing a different song ourselves. Here’s a selection of posts from the archive that are inspired by some great songs:

Sunshine on a rainy day: ‘Shine’ is a blogging favourite to chase the blues away. Check out the video here - guaranteed to bring you some inner sunshine!

Slow down you move too fast: Do you ever feel like you’re hurtling through life? Tune into these lyrics from Simon & Garfunkel and you’ll find yourself slowing down (and yes, feeling groovy)

Search for the hero: my choice of songs that make your heart sing

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.

                   

As 2007 draws to a close we naturally look back on the year that’s gone by and forward to what we want to achieve in the year ahead.  I’ve been doing some of that too.  I’ve got bundles of ideas that I want to take forward as part of my writing coach work and I know that I need and want to make this the priority for 2008. 

This has consequences for my time spent blogging.  Even for a prolific blogger like me I can’t maintain my Confident Writing site, guest write at four other blogs and give Coaching Wizardry its fair share of attention.  So I’ve decided that this - the 150th post - will be the last live update here. 

I’m going to maintain the site as an archive because there are lots of gems contained within it, and I hope people will continue to enjoy exploring it in the months and years to come.  I’ve been doing a bit of work dusting down the archives and will post a few ‘best of’ pieces in the next day or so to make it easy for new readers and visitors to find their way around.

But I couldn’t close this particular chapter without a huge thanks to all of you.  This is the site where I started blogging - and caught the blogging bug as a result of the huge amount of support, encouragement and feedback that I got from all of you.  It meant a huge amount to me, and I treasure the blogging friendships that have emerged through our conversations and exchanges here.

If you want to keep in touch please do come over and join me at Confident Writing - I will continue to blog with a passion and a fury there.

For now though I all I can say is thanks.  Sincerely, thanks.

Joanna

And it wouldn’t do to close without a thanks to Erik Kastner for the fantastic spell with flickr service - and thanks to Rosa for pointing me towards it.