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?

It made me think of times when we, too, might feel like there’s a gap site, a wasteland, inside.  As if something has burned away, leaving a space, an emptiness, waiting to be filled.  Times when we know we have got to the end of one chapter and know it is time to start another, however blank the pages might appear. 

And it helped me remember that those times are precisely when life is most full of possibility. Of change.  Of potential.

Spring is also the season of new possibilities.  A reminder of things that might be starting to stir and change within us.  The knowledge that it’s time for a change – even if we don’t quite know what that means – yet.

I found a wonderful quote that captures this mood – it was on one of Hilda Carroll’s ‘thoughts for the week’ (I love the way she puts these out to get us going going again after the weekend).  It’s from the writer Anais Nin:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

If that sounds like you and you’re ready to take that step forward… or if you just want to take advantage of the power and the energy of the spring-time I am offering a special “spring into summer” tele-coaching package.  It’s a great opportunity to get you moving on your goals, your dreams, your ambitions.  To start tackling the things it’s long since time to clear away. To create the space for possibility and new growth.

Meantime, enjoy the start of May, the long weekend and the joy of watching the trees in blossom.

Not knowing which way to go next is part of the human condition.  As Mark Twain once said:

“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life.  The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want…”

In fact a lot of people (myself included) first come to coaching precisely because they can’t see the way ahead – but do know that something needs to change.  There are a number of ways that coaching can help here:

discovering the motivation to change – what brought you to here?  how do you want things to be different?

accessing resourceful states – how do you want to feel, to live, to be? eg relaxed, confident, smiling, powerful.  These are things you can have now…

identifying possibilities and choices - there may well be options you want to pursue but are limiting because you think you “can’t”.  Hopes, dreams, aspirations and desires might become stronger once you realise what’s possible…

exploring your values – helping you to identify the things that matter, that are precious to you and that you want to express and enjoy in the future

negotiating the transition – sometimes you just need another person who is completely on your side, challenging, but non-judgemental, to walk with you through some of the toughest stretches of the most difficult periods of change. You might not know what lies ahead – but you know you need to keep on walking.

It’s one of the reasons I love coaching through stories and metaphors – it gives you the breathing space to explore possibilities in a less demanding, more creative kind of way.  You might not know what your goals are for the time-frame ahead.  But I’m guessing that you do know you want things to change.  That there’s a door you’re ready to open.  An entrance you’re ready to walk through.

A different story that’s waiting to be told.

This is often put down as a mid-life crisis but I think it’s more illuminating to think about it in relation to the "milestones" that precipitate this change.

Milestones (as per the thesaurus) are significant events in our lives.  Events that occur at a critical time.  But the meaning comes from their original, practical purpose. Stone posts at the side of the road that show us distances.   

Constructed both to reassure the traveller that the proper path is being followed and to indicate distance travelled.

And I kind of think that’s what we’re doing when we approach a milestone birthday.  Looking back at the distance travelled.  And checking that the proper path is being followed.

And if, when you check, you find that you’re not… well, I for one found myself doing quite a lot of stuff in the milestone year that’s just finished – left my job/career, trained in coaching and NLP, went to volunteer and study in Mexico for 3 months, started a new business, had my first book published…

Now I’m at the end of that 12 months I feel good that I’m back on the right path, and proud of the distance travelled.  I’m also quite relieved that my most recent birthday wasn’t a milestone, and I’ve a good few years before the next one – because now I can just relax and see how the story unfolds…

It might be because you are facing a major transition: the need or desire to change your job, children leaving home, the end of a relationship, moving into a post-working world.

Or perhaps it will be because you are starting to notice a feeling… or a whisper… or a knocking at the door… or the sudden onset of tears… or the knowledge without knowing what that knowledge means or where it will take you… that something needs to change.

And if that feeling, that silent whisper, that knowledge goes on for too long you might start to say to yourself, to hear in yourself, to feel in your self, deep inside, that you are lost, that you have lost your way.  Or that you have lost your purpose.  Can’t work out where to go next.  Lost sight of what it all means.  Or just plain lost the plot.

Or maybe you know that things need to be different but you can’t see the way ahead.  There’s just a brick wall. A dead end.  And so you stay.  Stuck.

Or for some people it’s what happens when you get tired, really tired, and the thought of changing makes you feel: overwhelmed.  And you don’t want to move forward because the world has got so grey, so dull, so drab, so lacking in colour that you can’t really see the point.  And yet, inside, you know that this isn’t how things were meant to be.  Not how you were meant to be.  And that this isn’t how the story is going to end.

But that it is, in fact, just about to begin.

Here’s what one client said about the benefits of this approach for her:

“The coaching gave me a greater sense of direction and purpose.  What I liked was the way we identified actions to take each week, even small things like changes to my daily routine.  This helped to create a sense of forward momentum.  It was also a great reminder to me to that things change when you do something rather than just think about it…That’s probably the main point that I’ll carry with me as I continue in my journey to set up my own business practice.”