Looking back I can see that post was maybe a little starker than I intended (under-estimating the power of both visuals and headline) so I wanted to follow up the message with some compelling words and a positive – beautiful, stunning, amazing – image.

The words are from Maya Angelou.  They follow on from the idea that when you reach what looks like the end of something, the most amazing things start to open up in front of you.

“…The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.”

The picture is from my recent holiday with the islands of Rum and Eigg in far view, sparkling in the evening light.

Seascapes form the horizons of my imagination – the horizons that lean forward, beckon and call.  I wonder how they look from where you are?

How many Mondays, how many days, how many weeks of our lives do we waste wishing we were anywhere but here?  Heart sinking, spirits low, forcing ourselves to do something we no longer ‘want’ to do.

I often turn to some words of Maya Angelou when I’m in that state of wishing I was somewhere else.  She reminds us that we always have a choice of how to view our Mondays.

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

Worth a try?  See how it changes your Monday… and then the rest of the week.

I started thinking along the usual lines of national heroes who had amazing stories to tell, of courage and justice and the triumph of truth.  Then wondered about people who were great storytellers and raconteurs who would hold our attention rapt at the dinner table.  But after a while I figured it would be amazing to host a dinner party of poets.  People who can weave words into magic, spin a web of hopes and dreams and imagined worlds.  People who have lived amazing lives and seen some of the dark side.  People who can tell it like it us, often with a real sucker punch.

So poets it is, and here’s my dreamy guest list:

Maya Angelou. Writer, activist and storyteller as well as a poet, she has an amazing ability to express the human desire for an authentic life.  Here’s one of my favourite lines on the importance of the individual’s story:  "there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

Rumi. I have to confess I’ve only read snippets of his poetry so far but it contains lines of astonishing beauty and power. Words written hundreds of years before that still have the power to stop you in your tracks.  "You were born with wings.  Why prefer to crawl through life?"

Spike Milligan.  Change of tack here to make sure our dinner guests keep their feet on the ground.  Best known as a comedian (including comic poetry) but with some stunning dark material too born out of his experience of depression.  Again some great one-liners – this time to make us smile.  "Well we can’t stand around here doing nothing, people will think we’re workmen!"

Shane Koyczan.  A Canadian spoken word performer, sometimes called a rap poet.  I heard Shane a couple of years ago at the Edinburgh Book Festival and it was a stunning experience.  He moved his audience through a spectrum of emotions with the power of his words: anger, laughter, frustration and tears.  No one-liners here, and you need to listen to the poems for best effect.  You can sample his poetry here - click on the ‘play our jukebox’ for a selection of his work.

Raymond Carver.  Well just one of my favourite writers and poets.  I’d love to have had the chance to sit down and have dinner with this guy.  Again he has some lines that stop you still, questions that will continue to run through your head for long enough, who knows?  Maybe even the rest of your life.  Here’s a favourite, from Late Fragment:

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?"

So that’s my choice of dinner guests for an evening of poetry and power, of musings and magic.   Who would you want to invite along for supper – and why?

1.We can make use of existing stories to gain insight into a situation.  This gives people a fresh perspective, opening up new possibilities for change.

2. As coaches we spend a lot of time listening to the stories that people are telling – telling other people, and telling themselves – and start to pick out what’s important to them in those narratives: their values and beliefs, what’s precious to them, what might be holding them back.

3. Stories are a metaphor for life.  You’ll hear people using this metaphor all the time: "he’s really lost the plot", "I can’t wait to move into the next chapter" and so on.  And coaching is all about breathing new life into that story. The story that you are inhabiting now, and the story you want to be living – and telling – in the future.

Maya Angelou once said:

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you"

For me that isn’t just about telling the story of what’s happened to you or what you’ve been doing up to now.  It’s about having the confidence to tell the story of who you are and who you want to be.  The person, the life, the story that is deep inside you: waiting to be told.