I love spending time on my own close to home. Reading, journalling in a cafe, doing a puzzle. Nesting and resting and being in my own space.
I also love going further afield. Taking a break from the norm, mixing it up and stepping out of my everyday life - a change of scene.
Sometimes it’s just me.
Sometime it really helps to have a like minded companion. Enter my friend - and adventure buddy - Penny.
Who are your champions?
The people who will wholeheartedly celebrate your successes?
Who you get to shine with?
Who see the future version of you that you’re becoming, even when you can’t see it yourself?
Many years ago someone asked me who I got to be unapologetically successful with, and it really stuck with me.
I came upon this sign on one of my regular dog walks recently. It really struck a chord!
Sometimes in life we are clearly moving and growing. Things are happening, there’s a plan and regular progress, we’re on track.
We’re in motion.
Sometimes we’re regrouping. Taking some time to reflect on, and integrate, what’s been. Pausing to let what we have sown grow. Taking stock and working out what’s next.
We’re still.
What’s your relationship with praise?
Do you delight in it, or dodge it?
Do you take it to heart, or skip right past it?
Do you rely on it, but worry that it might not last?
I have done all of these, and often still do.
So, it’s been useful to remind myself to take a closer look at it, in a productive way.
I love Values.
It’s where we start every coaching relationship.
I see them as the foundation for everything else.
In my life too.
But recently I realised that Values isn’t quite the right word for how I see them, what I mean when I think of them, what they feel like they are.
More and more I think of them as ingredients.
For what makes our particular lives, our unique work, the whole of us, feel good - have energy, satisfaction, peace, success, delight…
For what makes us feel like us.
In a yoga class recently, I realised that I couldn’t switch my quads on - “lift at the kneecaps” was something my brain simply couldn’t connect with my body to create.
In some ways it wasn’t a surprise. I’ve been intentionally focusing on other parts for the last few months - my core, my balance, my strength in different places.
All brilliant and needed at the time, and now I need to pay a little more attention to the parts I have forgotten about.
This can be true in our life as well as with our body. At certain points we can be focused on a particular part of it - our work, our health, our past, our future.
Are you forgetting to look back?
So often in life we are focused on the future, and the gap between where we are and where we want to be.
It can feel hard to see how we will get to the destination. We can feel like we are a long way off, and maybe that we will never arrive.
We can end up…
Focusing on how far we have to go, rather than where we are.
Reviewing what we haven’t done, rather than what we have.
Measuring ourselves harshly against expected progress, rather than actual progress.
We can forget to to look behind us to celebrate the journey we’ve already made.
