Although I worked for 5 years in a school that had a Jan-Dec school year, August always feels like the start of a new school year for me. I like making resolutions as the summer draws to a close, uniforms are ironed and pencils sharpened. As the light turns golden there is a freshness in the air, (although not in sticky Singapore!), and the slate feels clean. I am back at my desk cooking up new things and looking ahead to a year of coaching in schools. Much of my coaching takes place in schools and with school leaders and teachers but I also have a practice that is as far from teaching as possible. One thing I know to be true is that everyone can benefit from meeting themselves and the best leaders, whether in school or not are those that have a good sense of who they are. Brene Brown said it: You cannot be a good leader if you do not have a good level of self-awareness. Writing is one of the ways that I nurture my self-awareness and I have noticed that my clients who journal make the most progress.
In the spirit of new beginnings, I have decided to move my personal writing to Substack. It has a sense of community that I want and it will give my writing a new direction and focus. I will still write here about coaching and schools, from time to time, but if you wish to follow my writing please consider subscribing. I will be writing about being a coach, a mother, an expat, and a person walking through life, trying to figure it out and always learning, always being curious. I will also share my glimmers: the things I am reading, listening to, and finding. My aim is to share the messy, the wise, the bittersweet.
Dance! Photo taken at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, 1995
Trust me I don’t understand Physics, in fact, the last time I took Physics I was 14 and it never made sense to me. But I do understand that energy is the source of life and that energy begets energy.
There are so many ways that energy shows up and down in our life. Yes the sun, yes feeling energized, but where do we get it? Where do we direct it? What fuels it? We know the percentage of our phone battery, and the level of fuel in our car but how often do we look inwards and ask how our energy is? Where do you turn when your battery is low? It is funny how you start noticing things, thoughts and questions once something is on your mind.
Recently:
A workshop that I attended prompted some thoughts. Where do I spend my energy? Where are my strengths directed and present? And what do I want more of? What am I missing? The answer was clear, not just to me, but to the three other participants sitting at my table. Humour, laughter, lightness.
Later that afternoon after a few glasses of champagne at a beautiful baby shower for a dear friend I was in a taxi with three other women. The talk, following the openness and sharing of the afternoon, continued on the ride home. We had discussed how to teach little boys to pee (put Cheerios in the toilet and ask them to aim, by the way) we had shared our birth stories, and we had laughed over wise and wonderful advice. But during the ride home the chat took a turn towards the funnier and less known stories of post-childbirth life. Put it this way: the taxi driver certainly had an education. I laughed till my belly hurt. Later at home, I realized I hadn’t laughed like that in too long.
It got me thinking about that too-rare kind of laughter, the kind where your whole body shakes, tears come out of your eyes. Wow did that laughter give me energy! How do you inject more humour into life? Yes, you can watch stand-up comedy, or better still go to a show. Yes, there are funny films. But day to day? That ability to find the humour in a situation? To have a touch about life that is light enough to find the funny even in the dark?
Recently:
I have read two good books back to back. What fills my cup when I am depleted is disappearing into another world. When my energy is low and I have run out of fuel, I like to enter the world of a movie, a gripping tv show or an engrossing book. The characters have to feel real enough for me to disappear into their lives. Everybody knows that feeling, when your energy battery is low, when you have no more words, when you can’t give another ounce. What do other people do to recharge? Sports, video games, cooking, dancing, Mahjong? For me, it is to sink beautifully into another world. When I come back up I am recharged, inspired, full of stories and ready to create. If people know what their ‘thing’ is then they can go towards that and indulge, no apologies, until it is time to come back. (Staying away too long is problematic, set boundaries carefully and ask if this ‘thing’ gives or takes away energy.)
Recently:
I have been making new friends. Friendship is energy. I have made friends with smart, beautiful, energetic and inspiring women. Most are involved in coaching, some are connected to education, all have stories to share, we have a lot in common, and we are all of an age where we are looking into the horizon and planning what’s next. Female friendship is the key to a good life. Whether it is talking over coffee or walking and talking, there is nothing like the connection between two women who like each other. It is playful, it is safe, it is abundant.
Recently:
I have been reading newsletters on Substack by strangers. Wise, funny, introspective women who have wisdom to share. One of them shares my last name and I wonder if we are connected. Maybe far back there was a man, he had sons, one traveled to America, where she was born. Do we share blood? Are we distant kin? What is kinship? I have blood relations I don’t see, nor even like and I have friends with whom I share no blood and yet I consider them family. But there was something that called to me when I saw her name on the screen. A deep longing to source some energy from ancestry.
Recently:
I have been thinking about self-care. What does self-care even mean? A glass of wine? A bubble bath? A massage? Fresh sheets and warm cookies? I am starting to think that self-care means doing whatever you like and not feeling guilty about it. Removing the guilt is self-care. Not being productive and that being ok. Taking a day to do whatever you want, whether reading on the sofa all day, watching back-to-back movies, or mountain biking. Self-care is doing whatever care means to you. Imagine: instead of calling in sick, we could take one of our allocated self-care days and nurture ourselves so that we can return to work, nourished and cared for. Ready for the world. Energized and replenished.
Recently:
My home smells of the scent of lilies, and it is the smell of love. My daughters sent me flowers for Mother’s Day and when I see them I am reminded of their decision to go online and order flowers. Such a simple act that brings me so much pleasure. How easy it is to bring joy. Why don’t we wake up and create more joy? I think of joy as an instant energy charge, and it is contagious, spreading and sharing energy with everyone it touches.
Where do you get your energy? What drives you when your cup is low?
My relationship with exercise is complicated. Exercise and I, we break up. A lot. It loves me, I don’t reciprocate the love. Yet I can’t ignore the immense value that moving gives my mental health, not to mention the love it gives my heart. I have had a pretty consistent walking habit, I did Couch to 5K run twice, and I have occasionally stepped into gyms or done a few classes. I love yoga but don’t currently practice. About a year ago I got back into the pool. I say back because it feels like where I belong, where I have always belonged. At first, it was inconsistent, and over the past few months, it has become a daily practice. I wake, I swim. In coaching, we learn that what embeds growth and what makes a habit stick is reflection. Asking why it works, asking what we learn, and exploring the quality we inhabit. So here, dear readers, are the lessons I have learned from swimming.
A promise is a promise
If you set an intention to swim 20 laps. Swim 20 laps. Anything over that is a bonus. But keep the promise.
Breath
Swimming has taught me the power of calm, regulated and rhythmic breathing. There is no other choice, breathing is part of the stroke, it is fluid, it propels me.
Silence
It is possible that the pool is the only place where I experience silence. No podcasts, no talking, no music. Just the splash of the water, the sound of my breath, in and out. Pure.
Love
For my body. The feeling of my body, floating, feeling it fly, weightless in the water, no judgment, just the love of my body moving, doing what it does. Full acceptance and gratitude for my body moving through the water and getting me from one side to the next. Love.
Peace
Oh, the peace, the quiet, the simplicity of being alone.
Ideas
Thoughts come and go under the water. Something arrives, sometimes it stays, and it is meditative. I count my lengths, and occasionally an idea will interrupt the count. Then I do more not less because ideas must be invited. The idea for this blog came to me in the pool. It is a place to birth ideas and create.
Strength
Okay maybe I’m not as strong as the guy swimming laps next to me but comparison is the thief of joy and I’m strong enough. Knowing you’re strong, feeling you’re strong, and being strong equals endorphins.
Mermaids
There is something magical and ancient about being in the water. I am ageless, I am part fairy tale, part human, part mermaid. I defy being human. I am beyond boundaries. I am a little bit mermaid.
Gentleness
It is kind to me. It doesn’t hurt, instead, it heals.
Wisdom
I have finally learned the truth: to exercise because of how it makes me feel, not because I am setting a far-off goal, aiming for speed, a race, a body type. I swim because it feels good. I love the way it makes me feel and that is why it has stuck.
Bathing suits, caps and goggles
Ok, truth time. I only like to wash my hair once a week. I am not a fan of wearing a bathing suit. My goggles hurt. And yet, and yet.
…
At the end of a coaching session, I like to ask: What is clearer now? What do you know now that you didn’t know an hour ago? So let me try this now, turn the question towards myself. What has swimming taught me?
To be more forgiving towards me, more patient. To embrace what feels good, to let go of other people’s standards, and to be more present with what feels right, to me.
What lessons have you learned from a practice you have?
In a few days’ time, I shall be speaking at a Coaching Conference on the topic of The Power of Presence. Between my studying, writing, coaching, and my speaking, presence has been on my mind this year. So once again, I am writing on this theme and sharing a piece that was featured in the monthly magazine of an educational coaching company, MSB.
There is an expression in French that I love: “Tourner sept fois sa langue dans sa bouche.” It means Turn your tongue in your mouth seven times before you speak. Wise words to remind us to pause before we say something we might regret. Or to wait a day before you reply to that email. I think it also has a deeper significance and one that I have noticed has been showing up in my coach approach to life.
Life is noisy. Between shuttling kids, making dinner, attending a meeting, chairing a meeting, teaching a class, going to the gym, or wiping crumbs off the breakfast table, there is also Instagram, podcasts, the news to read, and friends’ texts to reply to. Not to mention the noise in your head telling you what you need to do, could be doing better, and reminding you to hold more grudges. Then there are the books to read, the tv shows to watch and the date nights to plan. Our culture is based on doing, keeping so busy that we are forced to be cut off from our feeling selves and yet feeling is more essential than ever. Rarely in the middle of this whirlwind do we stop, pause, retreat, reflect, breathe and contemplate. Rarely do we turn our tongues 7 times, as a way of pausing before we continue.
A thread that runs through all my coaching sessions is a desire for more time, more peace. Over and over again I hear the chorus of busy leaders in schools bemoan the lack of time to talk to teachers, to visit classrooms, to re-think the curriculum; they are all swept up in the wave of the day-to-day busyness of schools. There is a collective call to be still those busy minds, quieten the days, shorten the list of things to do and find some peace. I hear a call to attend not just to their ‘doing’ but also to their ‘being.’
One client brought the following topic to our session, phrased as a question, a habit I find that helps fine-tune the focus: “How will I keep momentum and be my own coach once these sessions end?” The single most important shift in his life that has come out of his coaching is the awareness of the importance of taking a pause, and taking stock of the moment, before moving on. I like to call it: Stop to Start. He has named these pauses in his day: Cleansing Time at the end of the work day, (15 minutes at the close of his day to reflect and think ahead to tomorrow), Sunshine Time, (moments to bid hello to students at the front gate) and Micro Pauses (tiny moments to stop and breathe in between meetings or tasks.) How could he keep these helpful habits going? Over the course of the session he began to see that once he aligned them to his Purpose, yes his capital P Purpose, he could see how they were integral to his function and value in the school. His Purpose is simply and powerfully to Make People Grow. These valuable pauses in his day became the soil from which growth could occur. He noticed that he was more present, the more time he took to pause. His Purpose needed his small but significant breaks for breath, to cleanse, to smile. The holy grail of productivity would function better if he stopped.
Slowing down to be quiet, to pause can take many forms. As coaches, the most important way of being is being with presence and true presence is only accessible if we slow down, get quiet, inhabit our bodies and become grounded. I start every coaching session with deep cleansing breaths for both myself and the client and the session itself becomes a powerful pause and models what deep presence can be. As a coach I don’t expect my clients to go anywhere that I haven’t, so for me too, this is a work in progress. Coaching is an approach to life, a way of being and I have started to find ways to Stop to Start in my own day to day. I have named them ‘glimmers’ and only with a pause can they be seen. Flowers, a perfect storybook cloud, a gentle breeze, the sound of rain, the sound of my own breath as it enters and leaves my body, the taste of an apple, the feeling of cold water running down my throat. By paying closer attention I am pausing, by pausing I create a transition between things. This gives me perspective, gratitude, and awareness. From that place, things shift, take shape and transform; what comes next has a different flavour.
“Wait Here” taken on 35mm on a busy street in Singapore
The other day I asked my husband: “What did we do in the mornings before?” I was referring to those days when we didn’t have phones or laptops to open as soon as we wake up. He paused and thought, “ I don’t know. I think I just listened to the radio.”
It is near impossible to remember a time when we were less busy, bored even, when we stood at the bus stop and just stared at a cloud instead of a phone.
I am not saying anything new. The shelves of my local bookstore are lined with books about slowing down, finding purpose, doing less, finding your “why.” But it bears asking again: Do we all need to be so busy?
At schools we are taught that you can’t work hard enough. Here in Singapore, students work at school all day, then many go to tutoring and then home for a further 2-3 hours of homework. I have had students tell me that their parents think reading is a waste of time, and not productive. What is often being rewarded is the doing, not the learning. We are being trained to perform, work hard, show up, and prove our worth through what we do, not who we are.
We feel guilty when we are sick, we wake up and run from task to task, apps tell us to do more, more steps, and even Duolingo doesn’t let you take a day off. And apps that help students learn to spell keep prompting them to do more quizzes even if they got them all correct the first time.
There is a gospel of endless work and we are all attending the church. The chorus of do more, do better, don’t stop, echoes in our minds all day long, an incessant chatter. There is always more to be done, emails to send, Instagram to post, social events to attend, surfaces to be cleaned, books to read, exercise to do. We end up aligning our sense of self-worth to our productivity.
We feel a sense of failure if we haven’t read that book, seen that show, or watched that film. We are cramming in all the things and doing them in plain sight so everyone can hear about how busy we are.
How often have you met up with a friend and heard the common refrain “ Ugh, I am so busy!” While I sympathize, especially with teachers, I also wonder how much of that is a choice. A subconscious desire to fill up all our time with busyness.
And how often have you heard someone act guilty that they did nothing all morning, “I got absolutely nothing done!”
Why are we doing instead of being?
And when is enough enough?
Our brains are habit machines, influenced by forces around us but we can cultivate new habits of mind and teach our brains to be healthier and more balanced. We don’t need to be stuck in overdrive if we change the habit. It is hard to ignore the message from the world that we need to do more and do better than we are right now. That if we just did more we would be better people. That we aren’t good enough the way we are.
There is an art to doing less. We are human beings, not human doings.
What if we are enough? What if our self-worth was based on who we are and not what we do?
We learned to be this busy, this overwhelmed, to never say no, and we can also re-learn a new way to live with more space and lightness of being. The art of doing less is the art of paying attention, growing awareness, and nurturing the art of pausing and taking a breath.
Stop to start.
One of my new mottos in helping my clients slow down is to stop, just for a brief moment and then start again. In that pause lies discovery, awareness, and breath.
Start small. Set a timer for 3 mins once a day and just breathe. Listen to your breath as it enters and leaves your body. And when you open your eyes pay close attention to what you see, smell, hear, and touch. Notice your food, really taste it. Put your hand on your heart and feel it beating.
Find some peace. Wild peace. For is it not an act of wildness and rebellion to stop for a while?
The peace of wild things
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
By Wendell Berry
Thank you for reading. A lot of ideas I have come from things I read and listen to. Katherine May’s substack and the Healthy Minds app were most helpful in writing this.Please click to subscribe so you never miss a post.
A double exposure is a beautiful metaphor of being messy but beautiful
Mary Oliver wisely wrote, in her beautiful poem, The Bleeding Heart, that “Most things that are important, have you noticed, lack a certain neatness.” We are sold a bill of lies if we believe that perfection is the answer, instead, I am trying to work on loving the messy, imperfect, interesting parts. The parts are not so neat.
To show up as yourself, to shout here I am and to live gloriously in your body and move through the world glowing and sharing your gifts is hard. To even try we have to unravel some pretty ingrained patterns and shift some sharp inner critics that lead to this:
The hesitation to share and to show up as proud of what you have done.
The self-questioning whether someone will like it, laugh at it, or even notice.
The fear of being seen as self-absorbed, pompous, or unlikeable
The not wanting to leave anyone out, come across as entitled, create discomfort in others
The self-doubt over what you create is something you can be proud of
The move to holding yourself with tender arms instead of harsh ones
The move from discomfort to self-celebration is very hard.
There is a lot of conditioning, both from families and from our societies (schooling, media, customs) that tells us to keep quiet.
In Britain, one of the greatest sins is blowing your own trumpet. In fact, it is what sets the Brits apart from Americans, according to some. In Canada, a quieter approach is what is considered best, not being too big for your boots. In my family, I was told that I should tone down all the compliments I give my children, in case they get big-headed. It is not done, to praise too much, celebrate too loudly, ‘less you might be seen to show off.
We have three centres of intelligence in our bodies, despite the fact that we tend only to access one of them, the brain. And listening only to our brain means we are comparing, judging, fighting with mental chatter, paying heed to the voice that asks us to please be neater, more straight lines please. Instead, tuning in and listening to the wisdom in our bodies can fundamentally change how we show up in the world. It can help to undo patterns, find our own voice and ultimately show up as we are.
Firstly, there is the gut centre. This is the centre of action and instincts as unconscious drivers. Some call it the “Ka,” the centre of presence. If we don’t listen to the intelligence here we might over-commit to things that don’t matter, we will store tension and stress. When we listen here we find it is the place of sensation, aliveness, and instinct. It is a place of grounding, a place of “I am enough.’ A place of fundamental sufficiency.
Take a few deep breaths, sit in silence, eyes closed and listen, with your hand on your lower belly: From this place what do you know?
Secondly: Our heart centre. This is the centre of emotions. Suboptimally, without access to this place of compassion, we become cut off from our feelings, our emotions and empathy for others. When we tune in we have access to all our feelings, we know what is important, we hear our values. This is the place that tells us, we belong. I am connected to myself and others.
Put your hand on your heart for a few moments and with some deep cleansing breaths, listen. What do you know from this place?
Finally, we reach our crowns, our head centre: The place of thinking and attention, but also the place of defensiveness, reactive tendencies, mental chatters, disconnection and judgements. At its most optimal it is the place of clarity, insight, creation, and synthesis and where a quiet space can be found. It is the place of “I am here, in this present moment.”
Tune in by listening to a meditation app, or sit in silence and listen to your breath as it enters and leaves your body. What do you know from here?
What is the view from these centres of intelligence? As we pay attention and notice, something opens up. An opportunity to embrace our wholeness. To accept our full messy selves so that we can get on with the business of living and thriving, celebrating and shouting from the rooftops, here I am!
This is a practice: both the noun and the verb. And it all happens behind the scenes. Can you value your gaze towards yourself, honour it even, as much as the way others regard you? Changing the way we operate in the world, turning inwards and noticing leads to paying more attention to those around us. But be gentle, it is a practice. We are unraveling before we start making changes.
I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived for sixty years if not more, and has never missed a spring without rising and spreading itself into a grassy bush, with many small red hearts dangling. Don’t you think that deserves a little thought? The woman who planted it has been gone for a long time, and everyone who saw it in that time has also died or moved away and so, like so many stories, this one can’t get finished properly. Most things that are important, have you noticed, lack a certain neatness. More delicious, anyway is to remember my grandmother’s pleasure when the dissolve of winter was over and the green knobs appeared and began to rise, and to cre- ate their many hearts. One would say she was a simple woman, made happy by simple things. I think this was true. And more than once, in my long life, I have wished to be her.
I have a daughter who used to find sunsets painful. Recently, sitting in a yoga studio with the sunbeams dancing across the polished wooden floor, she had the same feeling. It felt like all the joy and sadness got twisted into a little ball in her chest.
Sometimes when I flash back to a place I lived, a kitchen where I cooked, a cafe I frequented, a drive to work, or a forest I often hiked, I get that same feeling. Memory, time, sadness and joy all mixed up into a bittersweet symphony. The older we get, the more memories that play in our minds. It might be a scene from childhood, me as a little girl blowing huge bubbles on a hilltop in Hong Kong, or learning ballet in an old hotel facing a bay. Or it might be when my daughters were small, all soft shoulders and freshly shampooed hair, curled up at story time before bed. Recently we visited Phuket, which is just a short flight from Singapore and as I walked onto a beach on the north of the island I was struck with a feeling, a feeling that transported me back to a different time or place. It reminded me so sweetly and sharply of the beach I played on as a child, in Hong Kong, so many years ago. The colour of the sea, teal almost, the curve of the coast, the height of the mountains that hugged the shore, the smoothness of the sand. It was all so familiar, that, like a time machine it sent me back, over years and days to a time when I was small and knew nothing other than where I was. The other evening I told this story to a friend of mine, who, like me, had also been raised an expat child in 1970s Hong Kong. “Me too!” he exclaimed! He too had had the same feeling in Phuket. The familiar in unlikely places. Once again, for a brief moment, we were children digging sandcastles on a Sunday on a bay in the South China Sea.
Hong Kong some time in the 70s
Nostalgia is a time machine that places us both in the present and the past.
Susan Cain, in her wonderful book, Bittersweet, writes “Our oldest problem is the pain of separation, our deepest dream is the desire for reunion.”
Nostalgia, then, is the feeling of being reunited with that long gone feeling, an effort to reclaim something that can never return.
My history is a colourful one, of many places, continents and paths crossed. Sometimes I wonder about the people who were my best friends when I was 8, or with whom I ate so many meals in boarding school. It is the sensations, not voices that come back. Faces are blurred, the details foggy, but I can feel the polished wood of a banister, the crisp cold when the window was opened into a November day in Surrey, the crunch of leaves, my first autumn in England when I was 5. A song will play on the radio and suddenly I am 14 and at a school dance, shy and nervous, wanting to kiss a boy who didn’t like me back. I have lived in Asia, in the tropics, longer than anywhere else, yet it is the first snow in Montreal that I remember, the shock of the new, walking to class, so cold that mascara froze on my face, black tears. Or the smooth cobblestones in Strasbourg and the first buds of spring, the morning light on my face as we had no curtains.
I find it can be beauty, even the unbearably beautiful, that I remember or that transports me. C.S Lewis writes of the importance of beauty even in hard times. He says it is not the objects of beauty that matter but the sensations they give us:
“For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
Beauty gives us a longing, to return to a place, to remember a time, to search again for that feeling, or to know that it may lie around the corner.
Perhaps that is why it was the unbearable beauty of a Bahrain sunset that made my daughter feel so sad, an exquisite sadness that taught her that life is like an accordion and we live in the spaces between, where the music is made.
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Have you ever been in a situation when you know you have to say no to something but the fear of letting someone down is overwhelming? Do you put yourself first or do you do what is wrong for you out of fear of damaging a relationship?
In a powerful chapter in Untamed by Glennon Doyle when she describes trying to figure out how to leave her marriage, daunted by the tragic repercussions for her children, she realizes what kind of mother she would be if she stayed. She would be setting the wrong example.
She says it is better to disappoint someone else than disappoint yourself.
“Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”
Glennon Doyle
Boundaries are important, they draw a line in the sand between what is ok and what is not ok. But while settling boundaries is essential we also need to teach people how to listen and hear them. It is a skill set we can learn- how to have conversations around boundaries, how to challenge a boundary, and how to ask for what we want.
Melissa Urban gives clear tips for how to have those conversations.
She says we must communicate clearly and kindly and be prepared to navigate the negative pushback. An example might be: “This is the right thing to do for me and for the health of our relationship.”
How people choose to respond is not your responsibility.
If the request to honour your boundary is reasonable then they are being unreasonable not to honour it.
Phrasing your boundary as a clear request can be helpful. This is you showing a green light. Only if the boundary is crossed or not honoured do you bring out the big red light and turn up with consequences.
This is all helpful but it is academic and in practice, feelings get hurt and there is a strong fear of letting people down. With boundaries, it feels like you always lose: you set your boundary and say no and then you disappoint someone, you fear losing trust and friendship.
I had a client with this very issue: in our session, she discussed setting firm boundaries with a close friend but when she returned for her next session she still hadn’t set her line in the sand and felt awful about telling her friend her decision that she feared would lead to upset and hurt. Her decision was made, and firm but she had yet to say it out loud.
These are some outcomes of our conversation and she left the session feeling stronger. She had given herself permission to let go of her fear of letting someone down.
The first step is done. You said no and now you are feeling the pit in your stomach. Yes, you feel the discomfort and guilt. But you didn’t do the thing, you said no. You set the boundary, you did what was right for you.
How you let them down matters. Do it in a gentle way with love.
You cannot control how another person sees the world. (if they don’t like your boundary even after saying it gently, this is not something you can control. At this point you have to let it go.)
Boundaries are healthy and when set with respect are very kind. Let’s open up the conversation with the people in our lives. Here is an idea:
Discuss the idea of boundaries with your children, families, students, and friends. Talk about it over a meal. Let your children know that they can also have boundaries and ask them to express their own. Teach young people to express their personal boundaries now. Ask your friends how easy it is for them to maintain their boundaries. Let’s start a conversation.
Hold your boundaries with tenderness, they are keeping you safe and healthy.
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Courage, oh you brave lion heart. Where would we be without it? Where could we be with it? A common coaching question is:
What would you do if you had no fear?
Easy to ask, hard to imagine. The idea, of course, is that you will see that it is only fear that gets in your way. But let’s dig a bit deeper. What is that fear about?
Back when we were tiny tots we started to learn what would keep us safe, well-liked, out of trouble, and in good favour. What would make people smile and what would make people cross. Our brains are really very very old, parts of our brains are even called the lizard brain, and it is that part that is wired toward fear. In order to survive, our brain became wired to pay attention to negative things: that rustle in the tree might be a snake, that strange noise could mean danger, that angry face could mean trouble. The negative stuck to our brains like velcro, to use a term coined by the imminent neuropsychologist, Dr. Rick Hanson. So fear is normal. The courage to break away from the wiring, to turn away from the fear is extraordinary. In order to become braver, happier and more positive we can actually re-wire our brains. Scientists have shown that, with sufficient training, we can rewire the neural pathways that regulate our emotions, thoughts, and reactions. Our brains are more plastic and changeable than we thought. Could we actually rewire our brains to take risks and be braver?
So. Courage.
Courage is the driver that gets us to where we want to go. I don’t think anything can happen without courage. It takes huge courage to use your voice, to speak up, bear witness, tell your story, and also ski fast down a mountain. Courage is a key value of mine, but that doesn’t mean I have a lot of it. People have often said to me “ Wow you are so brave! You have moved so many times!” But to me that is not brave, that is a necessity. What is courage to one, might be completely normal to another. I am terrified of cold water and therefore find people who jump into icy ponds, or the winter sea at dawn, magnificently brave. I have three friends who do cold water swimming. They don’t get into ice buckets, they actually swim, in icy ponds or even in the sea, in December. They don’t consider this brave. They love it and believe it thoroughly enhances their lives, and makes them feel fully alive and awake. But since I am terrified of cold water, I think it is the bravest thing I can imagine.
Likewise, I think writing is brave, but some people get paid to do it every single day. Some years ago I used to write an award-winning blog. I wrote at least 3 or 4 times a week for more than 4 years. And then I stopped. I love writing and I think I have something to say but recently an inner voice has stopped me from putting my words out there. Maybe it is the thought of someone watching you, reading you, hearing you that is most terrifying. Especially if you compare yourself to others. It takes courage to only compare yourself to who you were yesterday.
Then I heard something clever the other day: What scares you or what challenges you is exactly what you should write about. And so here I am writing about courage. The courage to say “no, thank you” to the voice that keeps me quiet. To the voice that says I shouldn’t. To say “yes please” to the desire to use my voice.
So what I am finding is this. If we want to re-wire our brains, if we want to face fear in the face and do the thing, if we want to live with courage then we need, to borrow someone’s famous words: just do it.
Think of one thing you would do if you didn’t have fear. It might be a tricky conversation with a boss, or maybe you would sign up for that marathon, take a solo vacation, write the book. Now consider a tiny step that you could take that would set you on the path. Maybe register for a run, write a page, share an idea, or tell someone you are going to do it. That tiny step is a start that will tell your brain that yes you can.
For me, I am going to keep writing, and sharing my ideas, my learning, the things that inspire me. I am going to try hard to turn away from the voice that says “who are you to write such things?” It is not easy to click publish, it doesn’t come from a place of entitlement, more of a place that wishes to be brave, face fear and live facing the sun rather than, like an ostrich, face in the sand. Hiding might feel safe but I choose a bigger braver fuller life. Courage is doing it even if….
Again and again, even though we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
RAINER MARIA RILKE, ‘Again and Again’
I acknowledge that courage and feeling brave is a choice for me. There are many people for whom courage is not a choice, it is a necessity. Choosing courage is an act of privilege.
As always, thank you for reading and for sharing this with people. It makes my heart full to know that youare enjoying my words, and makes my courage grow.
I was practicing Awe when I stopped to admire this guy on the door of a cafe
A few weeks ago I wrote about our complex relationship with time. I wrote about how we are rushing, running and scrolling through our days and often resisting the discomfort of just sitting with the unease, the quiet, and the often too-slow track of long days. Today I want to continue that discussion but this time to write about our desire to slow time down. When my daughters were little girls there were moments when I just had enough and their 8 pm bedtime couldn’t come fast enough. There were other times when I just wanted to freeze time and stay in this very sweet moment, the here and now, feeling everything and stretching time.
How can we slow time?
There is one solution and it is this: We chase Awe.
Dr Dacher Keltner, a world expert on chasing awe as a means to happiness says this:
“Awe occurs in a realm separate from the mundane world of materialism, money, acquisition and status signaling, a realm beyond the profane that many call the sacred.”
Awe is the state that connects us to the web of life, calms the restless and busy mind, and forces us to be completely present. Awe is hard to define but it is what connects us to the vastness of life. Awe is the key that unlocks happiness and awe also stretches time. Just 5 minutes of practicing awe in a day can have huge health benefits – as there is a definite relationship between happiness and our life span.
Gratitude, compassion, forgiveness and laughter, pleasure, and meditation correlate with life expectancy findings. Practicing gratitude, getting outdoors for a walk, serving, and giving to others matters. You will live longer. Social connection can add 10 years to your life.
There is evidence seen in the neuro-physiological pathways, the proof is there: awe activates the vagus nerve, calms inflammation, helps the heart, and de-activates stress regions of the brain, (the amygdala), all leading to the conclusion that happiness is good for your body.
And you do not need to get on a plane and go to see the Northern Lights or gasp at the expanse of the Rift Valley or the Grand Canyon to take part in this practice. Since Awe is a response to something vast, and mysterious and can make us feel small and full of wonder, you can experience awe today. You might stop to look closely at a butterfly or the shape of a cloud, read a poem or smell freshly ground coffee beans. To consider what awe is for you ask yourself: when was the last time you got goosebumps? Or felt tears prick when listening to a song. When did you last feel part of a collective, what Keltner calls “collective effervescence.” It might happen at church or at a football game, at a music concert, or when singing in a choir. Or marveling at a ladybug. Have you noticed how awestruck a 3-year-old is?
I consider myself an awe-hunter. I will stop during a walk and marvel at the shadows on a wall, seemingly painted there by the reflections of leaves. I will stop and point in wonder at the roots of a tree that curve and coil and wind for meters. I will bend to examine the shocking pink of a flower or stand and observe a tiny bee doing what bees do. But I also feel awe in an art museum, or when the lights go down and a film rises onto a screen. When I come across a line of poetry or a passage in a book that is so beautiful it takes my breath away.
Katherine May also writes about the power of Awe to connect us to things beyond ourselves in her book “Enchantment.” And, like Keltner, she calls on us to find awe in the smaller things within our daily grasp.
“Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; the sublime is not hiding in distant landscapes. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. It becomes valuable when we value it. It becomes meaningful when we invest it with meaning. The magic is of our own conjuring.”
When was a teacher, I made time, when I could, to bring Awe into the classroom. Whether through a photo, lines of a song, a painting projected on the board, a paragraph in a book, or the booms of thunder outside, I made a deliberate effort to name Awe. Schools need to make Awe part of their mission. Imagine what a school would look like, what students would learn and feel if we stopped to include moments of Awe into the day. Jennifer Garvey Berger calls it the Genius of Noticing and they can turn days, classrooms, busy schools into a treasure hunt of joy.
What you pay attention to will grow.
This poem by the wonderful Mary Oliver is often read incorrectly and seen as a call to do more, to act, to forge ahead, and not waste time with your one rare life. But what it is actually saying is to do less, and pay attention to what is in front of you. What could be a better way to spend your wild life than to slow down, pause and watch a grasshopper?
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
What Awe are you chasing today? Next time your interest is pulled somewhere, go along with it. Make time to focus in, and experience Awe.
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