I was reminded of this the other day with a challenge from Liz Strauss to test our concepts of being time rich and time poor. It’s the link with the picture that tells the more compelling story – the one that lingers, the one that flickers through our mind to slow down when we’re moving too fast.  (You’ll have to take the test to find out which link takes you to the picture.  What do you mean you don’t have time?!)

Thought about it some more this afternoon – a most glorious early winter day in Edinburgh, when the leaves are dancing in all their faded glory.

You’d have to be moving really fast not to stop and feel thankful on a day like today.

And I did.

Slow Down

Slowed down and stopped to take some photos.  To breathe in the wonder of the day.

And I found some words to express that feeling of gratitude.  But I’m left with the lingering feeling that it’s the pictures that I took that will stay with me like the rays of winter sunlight, piercing my consciousness long after the last leaves have fallen.

How about you?  How do you express these waves of gratitude?  Is it through words, pictures, music, song?

The words were from Douglas Adams and this is what he said:

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

It reminded me that we often find ourselves places that we didn’t mean to go – and that’s okay.  It doesn’t mean we need to head back again – perhaps we just need to stop and enjoy the view, explore the paths that head off from here, or just accept that this is where we were ‘meant’ to get to in the first place.

I’ve been reflecting since my holiday on where I was going with my writing, coaching, and blogging.  The conclusion I’ve reached is that I want to focus on my work as a writing coach, and writing (and blogging) about writing with confidence.  I don’t think it’s possible (or sensible) to put equal effort into two different ways of writing (and coaching, learning, teaching and blogging).  You end up splitting your focus and attention, and reducing the quality of – and your enjoyment in – both.

So from here on I’m going to make the main focus of my work the Confident Writing blog.

It’s going from strength to strength (I think!) and I’d love to see you over there if you haven’t visited before.  Just click the link…

This shift in focus means writing less here, but continuing to develop it as a site:

Where I share some of my own more reflective writing. It’s a place to explore what happens when we start playing with language, and possibilities. A place to daydream. A place to share words and ideas inspired by stories, metaphors, pictures, films, music, nature, each other. The best learning comes when we share our stories together so please feel free to read, to explore, to add a comment, to explore new possibilities and conjure up new realities…

Thanks for all your support so far – I’ve learned so much from the connections that have already flowed from our exchanges here.  Although I’ll be posting less you should expect to see many of the same themes and aims as before, so I hope you’ll carry on visiting, and reading, and sharing your own thoughts, words, learning and stories.

Well, that’s me back from my two weeks on Skye. It was fabulous. More than words can say just now. I hope the picture will do.

Worth, as they say, a thousand words.

Changing the words and the language can help to unblock the problem.  I stumbled across a really simple trick over at the ‘Thinking Managers’ site.  All you do is write down the words of your problem and type them into one of the online translation services like Babelfish. Translate your problem into a different language – non European is probably best, and I’ve had some good fun with Korean – then cut and paste the new text and turn it back into English. 

By this time it’s back in your own language but no longer in your own words, and no longer in the old, fixed words of your problem.  It might have become so ridiculous it makes you laugh or at least give you the hint of a smile and – guess what – once that happens it might not even seem like a problem any more.  If you’re lucky you might even find that the germs of the solution have turned up in the translation, lurking in the problem state all the time.

I’ve had worries about money turned into not enough gold, which makes me want to start a treasure hunt.  Or “not enough time to write this” translated back to “me there is not an hour when it writes this” which makes me think, okay, it’s just sixty minutes not all of eternity, and guess what – it’s not going to write itself…

Neat, isn’t it?  Might be worth a try – and let me know if you get any really transforming translations…

Words can make us feel small, and weak, and lost.  Words can lift us up, make us feel hopeful, optimistic, inspired.

Words can be used to disguise what is going on.  And yet we can also find the words to tell the most powerful truths of all: our own.

Words, labels, language can make us feel that the world is fixed, absolute, unyielding.  But by playing with words and language we can start to soften those edges, create twirls and swoops and circles, whisper a sense of unknown possibility……can’t we?

It also creates the chance for us to have more of a ‘conversation’ so if you’re new to the site: hello and welcome. I hope that the words and ideas that you find here will tell their own story……and that it’s a story you enjoy and want to keep on exploring.

I guess if there’s one small downside to the blog approach is that you can feel like you’re joining the conversation, you’re picking up the story, sometime after it began. I’m sure you’ll soon pick up the thread, but I thought it might be an idea to include a little blurb on what’s going on, what kind of stories to expect and who else you might find here.

So, what is coaching wizardry all about?

The site reflects a core aim of my business: to weave words together, to use language playfully in order to create a new sense of possibility. It’s an introduction to the services that I offer, of course, but I also wanted a space where we can create new possibilities together.

So it’s a place to come if you are interested in a different way of looking at, talking about and defining these things called coaching and NLP. It would be great to hear from other coaches and practitioners (and I’ve created a corner just for you) but also from students, clients and would-be clients and students. Would different words, images, language and stories make the world of coaching and NLP more appealing to you? Let me know!

It’s a place to share ideas with people who are interested in the way that words, and language, and stories can shape and influence our lives, and ways that we, as the authors, can take back control and
start to live, to tell, our own stories…

What you read here will reflect my coaching and writing styles: using language playfully, telling stories, being creative with words. I hope you enjoy reading the writing and the stories and if that is all you come for: that too is just perfect.

Finally it’s a place to feel: welcome. Especially if you are just at the start of your own story of wondering, of exploring, of starting to change, of taking a peek at the looking glass world and finding, like Alice, that you can just see the edge of the passage in the Looking-glass House, which is very like any other passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different when you move on beyond.

Whatever brings you here, I hope you enjoy reading some of the stories… and if any of it sounds like you… well you might just find yourself knowing what you need to do next…