“The significance is hiding in the insignificant. Appreciate everything.”
Eckhart Tolle
Steve Ridgley
our stories of self
We have a story for ourselves. Sometimes more than one. Sometimes the story we tell, is not the story we live in.
This was beautifully expressed to me recently when a coach colleague shared this experience
A coach I met recently shared a fascinating story with me about a client they were working with and some profound learning they had experienced.
By their third session, the coach noticed how hard they were finding it to connect with the client and find the truth in the stories the client was sharing. They had a growing sense that the client was not being authentic. The coach noticed how this was affecting their own flow in the sessions.
After this third session, the coach spent much time reflecting on why they felt so uneasy about the situation and admitted to themselves that something just wasn’t right. Maybe they just weren’t good enough as a coach to support this client?
The coach decided to share their unease with their client at the next session. Whilst waiting for the client to arrive, the coach convinced themselves that the client might be better off with a more experienced coach as the coach clearly had now developed some bias that would get in the way.
The coach gently approached the subject with the client and said “I’m truly sorry, but I have to admit I am struggling to connect with you and more importantly I find myself doubting whether you bring real events in your stories or ones you imagine yourself having”……this last part changed everything !
The client shared how they had imagined when they were younger, that their life would be so very different from what it was now. It transpired the client was mourning the life they had hoped they would have and the person they believed they would become. Their unconscious grief for this representation of self, resulted in the invention of a new reality in which the client remained the same age, the same values and the same personal goals they had had 25 years ago.
This realisation had a profound affect on the coach and resulted in transformation for the client.
This story is both a brilliant reminder of what we do as coaches and at the same time a sobering reminder of the complexity of our humanity.
As coaches our gift to our clients is to support them navigating their personal truth in search of something more whole, more true, more fulfilling – the story is heartwarming in that regard.
Yet the story also serves to show how ‘wierdly’ our very humanness can work for us.
Our brains and bodies can take us on strange journeys, through thought and feeling patterns, to strange places. In this case, for this client, from clarity of vision for self, to grief for an unfulfilled, imagined self, to the creation of a false self, with all its stories, false realities and ties that bind that client to a life less than their potential.
It shows also the power of our stories of self. The story we imagine for ourselves, the story we exist in, and the story of what we might be.
Stop being who you were or who you could have been… instead, be kind to yourself and be who you are.
Our monochrome contradictions
Foreign policy is a balancing act. Lines are never clear. Neatly drawn. It’s a grey world rather than a monochrome extreme one.
Reading recently about the struggles in the Middle East highlights this clearly. Alliances between unlikely bedfellows; either battling against IS, resisting Iran’s regional dominance, seeking to create new states, or to destroy existing ones. Lines drawn between old enemies, new enemies, enemies for a reason, enemies for a season, enemies for a lifetime. Nation states trying to balance their contradictions. Not able to totally support one cause, because of complex overlapping interests in other causes.
It reminds me of our own human struggles. Our internal contradictions of self. That sense that a part of us wants something whilst another part wants something else, something contrary. That experience of being a certain way at times, then being a very different way, in a different place or time.
We have contradictions.
We are muted monochrome shade, rarely black, rarely white.
In my coaching work I sometimes encourage clients to explore their contradictions. The edges of themselves. I, for example, would describe myself as an “extrovert loner”. Sometimes gregarious, social, with a view to express. Sometimes seeking to be alone, silent. I need both parts. My ‘foreign policy’ needs to play both hands.
Naming these seemingly opposite, contrary, elements of self allows us to honour them, respect them, work with them all. I encourage an “I am… ” construct. I often find the choice of sequence my clients make is revealing. Usually the first part of the contradiction describes how they are, the second, who they are. Here are some examples…
I am an open secret
I am a tidy mess
I am hopelessly hopeful
I am an enthusiastic couch potato
I am an away from futurist
I am a responsible rebel
I am a leading follower
I am an unplanned achiever
I am an independent team player
I am deliberately informal
I am a selfish altruist
Foreign policy is laced with politics and self interest. But perhaps so are our parts? Just like the politicians we are trying to balance multiple interests. Just like the politicians we don’t reveal our full hand, even to ourselves. Just like the politicians, that ‘mishonesty’ can bite us.
The question is, do we need to go to war? Does that serve us?
Be curious about your contradictions. Explore what each part seeks and offers you. Recognise their intent for you. Embrace them all.
time, choice and freedom
Our lives are complicated.
Work has changed for many of us. The ‘always on’ technology-driven communication possibilities mean that many of us are slaves to our email, our social media connections, electronic meetings and diaries. They have become all pervasive. The global world means many of us are in meetings, conversing or delivering to deadlines spanning a full twenty four hours; with an increasing expectation to be available whenever required. Technology has become more complex, not least because it changes constantly. Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Many commercial activities have become more complex, driven in part by the opportunity technology affords us. Consequently many business processes have become more complicated, not less.
And how do we respond? We blur boundaries, we work ‘more flexibly’, from home or away from interruption; we work evenings, weekends, so we can catch up with our email, sort out our admin, stay on top of things.
There is a knock on effect on our families, our non-work life. An impact on our wellbeing. On our health.
Of course these same globalisation, always on, technology driven changes work in our favour too. As consumers. The ability to access knowledge, products, services instantly, at the touch of a button on one of our many devices, anywhere, any time, is highly desirable. It buys us time, a precious commodity. It gives us choice, freedom.
Yet we are ceding control. Irony of ironies. The time, choice and freedom we have won is eaten up by the work demands on our time, choice and freedom.
Time to simplify?
Time to recreate boundaries?
Time to take control back?
Time to makes choices?
Time to win freedom?
change is the one ever present truth
Change is ever present in our human lives.
The world around us changes constantly. Not just with the seasons, the passing years, but the tools of living, the way of living, the world in which we live. And we change too…
From birth we change, learning to communicate, to walk, to make friends, to become part of the family, to find our place. We learn to learn, we go to nursery, to school, to university, at each stage taking more responsibility for ourselves. Our family may move house, add family members, lose them too. Our friends may change. Our location. Our journeys. At work, our job roles change. Our bosses. Our colleagues. Our employers. We change our house, our car, our hairstyle, our look. Our hopes, ambitions, desires change. We meet new people, new friends, new loves. We start a family. We nurture them, they grow, they leave. Later, illness may strike and our lives change again. Relationships falter and new ones are born. We leave the world of work. We become grandparents, great grandparents. Challenges and opportunities emerge constantly in our human lives and we respond, changing to adapt, to thrive, to grow. We choose to change, incessantly.
Much of this change has a connection to learning and growth. The opportunity to become more. Positive outcomes. Yet often we are worried by change. Anxious about what it will mean. Will we cope, will it be good, will we be good enough, are we doing the right thing? It can become a psychological and emotional wave machine. Hard to keep your head up. Hard to put your feet down. Hard to breathe.
I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity of a six month career break. An incredible opportunity to take time out, travel, try something new, recharge. Yet I’m worried. It will be a change. Not the routine I have become used to. Will I be prepared enough, planned enough to reap the rewards? How will things have moved on whilst I’m away? Will I want to return? Will I be able to do the things I want? How will relationships change? How will I change?
I notice that all the uncertainty, all the doubt, is in my head. Imagined. Foretold. I have become an anxious soothsayer.
We do this at times of change, particularly in work, in organisations – catastrophising, worrying about the impact, the implications, the problems. Yet when we look back, after the change, we seem able to find good. To find benefits, positives. A new lease of life. Fresh shoots. New learning. Even in the most extreme circumstance we are, as human beings, remarkably resilient and accommodating of change.
Yet still the worry persists.
Why is it there?
What’s its purpose?
How does it serve me?
our eyes face the wrong way…
Our eyes face the wrong way.
Oh sure, looking outwards has its uses – fewer lampposts walked into, glorious sunsets to admire, great novels to read, smiles to warm our hearts, choosing your next Krispy Kreme donut (that may just be me)
The problem is that so much of our truth, our success, our learning, our qualities, our gifts, our struggle, our reason for being, our beauty, our essence, our soul … lies inside us.
And we can’t see it.
Yet it drives our behaviour, our choices, our joy, our sadness, our fulfillment, our happiness.
The world outside can be beautiful, but take a moment to look inside.
That can be beautiful too.
the courage of truth…
I have just read an article in the paper.
The story is told by a grandmother and is of her five year old grandson, who wants to be a girl.
The author writes of the challenges the parents face, buoyed by a steely desire to support their son’s ‘wholeness’, but conscious of the white rapids of gender politics, judgement and bigotry society will toss them through.
The author also writes how her five year old grandson is teaching her. Teaching her about truth, mostly her own. Wrestling with her own inner dialogue daily – are we indulging him, what will people think of me? – she describes how she has had to turn to her own discomfort, own her own prejudice and confront the worst her imagination can conjure. She recognises the most unpalatable truth; that her own thoughts, words and actions questioning what she and the family are doing, have been about protecting herself.
What courage. What honesty. What love.
Would that we could all face our truth as this grandmother and her grandson are.
what’s your worst bad habit?
From childhood we are alerted to the dark path of the bad habit.
Don’t suck your thumb
Don’t bite your nails
Don’t twirl your hair
Don’t fidget, sit still
Don’t pick your nose…
Of course in these examples it is the parent speaking, the adult. They have decided this behaviour is ‘bad’. For many, this is because they were conditioned as children to believe these habits were bad, by their own parents, by ‘society’. It is as if we have passed the judgement ‘bad’ down through the generations.
But what is a habit? Convention might say a habit is a practice, a manner, a behaviour that has become a pattern. A pattern that is hard to give up. Change requires the exercising of that thing we call ‘will power’.
I have spoken before here about behaviour being purposeful, having a structure. Trigger, behaviour, reward.
Those childhood habits I have mentioned might share similar triggers … a sense of worry, anxiety, restlessness, feeling exposed, alone, needing comfort? They might also share a reward? They all seem to have a property of physical connection to ourselves, be it thumb, hair, fidgety bottom, fingers, nose. Maybe a form of comfort from connecting to our own bodies?
So why bad?
One definition of a bad habit is one that has the potential to be detrimental to our physical or mental health.
Convention in the adult world might list such things as smoking, eating too much fast food, gambling, drinking too much, late night snacking as bad habits. Again, maybe it is society that creates this assessment, this valuation of bad? Not just invented though, not just handed down in stories and tales from elders, we have researched the medical implications of smoking, drinking, over-eating. We have hard evidence. We know.
Take a smoker. They know it is harmful, yet they persist. Why? Lack of will power? Maybe. Maybe that’s just another way of saying the reward is too important to me?
I was once in a training, where we were asked to list the benefits or rewards from smoking. Many were social – an opportunity to socialise, connect with like-minded people. Some described it as relaxing. We listed over forty benefits, from a room of sixty people, only a quarter of whom smoked. But one delegate offered a very powerful benefit. They described how it helped them remember their father – who had died of lung cancer. An odd behaviour at a logical level? But, that’s a very powerful reward. I suggest it might trump will power every time.
So paying attention to the triggers and rewards, might be useful here? It is these that drive the habit. The rewards can be well hidden, logically hard to rationalise and so hard to unearth. Seeking them out can be tricky. Be persistently curious. Keep asking ‘what do I get from behaving like this?’ Finding another way to get that reward will help you change the habit.
Maybe we need to talk not so much of ‘bad habits’, but more of ‘rewarded habits’?
So, what IS your worst bad habit?
Not because society labels it bad, but because it carries a reward you very much want or need. Your most rewarded habit? And, if you would like to change the habit or behaviour, how might you get that reward another way?
where is your career going?
We are encouraged to think about our career, constantly. It starts from an early age. Parents, teachers, school and further education all refer to career, as we make choices about schools, subjects, classes, areas of study, qualifications… We are encouraged to aspire. Aspiration often measured by the grades we get, the university or college we go to, the job we get, the seniority we attain, the pay level we reach…
How will we spend our working lives? In a profession, as a manager, owning our own business, with a portfolio career, following a vocation…? What kind of work do we want to do? What expertise, qualifications, skills, learning do we need for that?
Then when we start work, chances are we have a performance review or a discussion with a line manager, exploring how we might develop our career. We are encouraged to seek new challenges, new opportunities, new skills, new experiences. Maybe we get bored with our job, or learn what satisfies us or motivates us, and so seek to move our career to a different path?
Career seems almost to have become a synonym for life at work, for progression, recorded by the job sequence captured on our CV, our roles, our employers, our promotions, our job titles…
The origin of words is fascinating, especially in the context of how they are understood and used today.
Career comes from the Latin Carrus – a wheeled vehicle. Taking us on a journey. Adopted in French as Carrière and Italian as Carriera, it referred to the road we take. One Oxford English Dictionary definition of career is a person’s “course or progress through life”. Life’s journey if you will.
It doesn’t specify work, job, promotion, pay, skills, grade or profession.
So, maybe the question “Where is your career going?” is in itself limiting? Perhaps a better question would be “How do you plan to progress through life?”
This bigger perspective widens our choices. I might, for example, respond to this question, ‘being kind to other human beings’ or ‘being at peace with myself’ or ‘learning forever’ or ‘having fun’ or ‘being exhilarated by new challenges’.
This opens up possibilities. My choices are more rounded, more whole life. I can still occupy myself and earn a living in the context of these responses, but equally I can pursue them in all parts of my life. Home, hobbies, pastimes, leisure. With family, friends, alone or with like-minded individuals.
So maybe ask yourself not “Where is my career going?”
Instead ask yourself “How am I going to progress through life?” Or “What life course do I want?” Or “What will my life journey be?”
This may afford you more possibility, more freedom, more balance, more happiness.
why do we question?
Some time back I facilitated a workshop during which we experimented with silence.
It’s a difficult art.
Delegates had individually completed a five minute exploration of one aspect of themselves, resulting in a few written sentences. The second part of the exercise was to pair up and share that with a colleague. The only ask I made of those listening was to say nothing. Yes, to remain fully present. Yes, to listen completely, not just for what was said, but for deeper meaning and what wasn’t being said. But to remain silent. For the full five minutes.
They were all unable to avoid asking questions. So we explored that when we came back together.
It transpired the questions were all for the benefit of the questioner. Questions to clarify the questioner’s understanding. Questions for the questioner to understand context. Questions for the questioner to compare with their own experience. Questions for the questioner to shape appropriate feedback, input, opinion. Questions for the questioner to demonstrate they were listening. Questions for the questioner to collude. Questions for the questioner to feel they were adding value, helping in some way. Questions for the questioner to demonstrate empathy.
“When does this happen?” “What have you tried?” “What happened when you…?” “Could you speak to…?” “How long has this been like this? “If you approached it this way…?” “I know what you mean, it’s hard isn’t it?” “What did they say when you did that?” “How can I help?” …
It seems we have become accustomed to ask questions for our own benefit.
Shifting focus to only ask questions for the benefit of the other person is a skill. It offers the other person a way to expand their own understanding, broaden their own awareness. It offers the other person an opportunity to explore choices, possibilities. It offers the other person the opportunity to learn, to grow.
Above and beyond this enhanced learning, to have someone be with us, solely in service of us, is rare. To have someone listen that deeply, to witness but not judge, to empathise not sympathise, can be a very connected experience. To be given space to be with our own experience is a gift, humbling and trust laden. At this level, silence becomes the deepest form of listening. The purest form of being with someone.
In many of our conversations, our human interactions, we fall into the pattern of asking questions to broaden our own understanding or to feed our own need to be useful. Questions to find solutions for the person, to be helpful and affirm our own value… to ourselves.
Seeking questions solely to broaden the speaker’s awareness offers a different way.
Be curious about the true intent behind the questions you ask.
Practice seeking questions which broaden the other person’s exploration of their own experience and to find new learning, new possibilities, new meaning for themselves. Practice too the art of silence.
illuminated dandelion 