Our long-suffering palm tree is finally about to flower after years of ups and downs.

We bought it with high hopes and great expectations for how it would grow and what it would look like. Instead, it gradually wilted and browned and declined.

We couldn’t work it out. It was supposed to be a good one for our garden and everyone else’s looked amazing. Why wasn’t it living up to its potential? What was wrong with it? Had we bought a bad plant?

Turns out there was nothing wrong with the plant.

When you’re doing - or being, or experiencing - something for the first time, do you reach for an existing recipe?

I know I do, it’s been my default.

It can feel easier to look to someone else for the ‘right’ answer or approach.

After all, they’ve done the hard work and figured out the solution - surely if it works for them it will work for me?

Especially if it’s a proven formula, or it seems to be working for other people, or it’s simply the way it’s always done.

And yet so often, it hasn’t worked out that way. The results have been a mixed bag.

Recently I found myself creating a framework for the different types of people I coach, and the different types of ways we coach together.

There is now SO much variety, and I thought I’d found a brilliant way of organising it all.

It felt so interesting - look at these patterns! I could even make it into a 4-box matrix!

It made complete sense in my mind, until…

• I started to spot the (many) exceptions to the rule.

• I shared it out loud, trying to explain my thinking, and confused myself each time.

• I finally realised what a ridiculous thing I was doing (with thanks to Claire Pedrick MCC).

Why was I trying to fit everyone and all their experiences into one of 4 boxes???

A number of years into my corporate career, we did an assessment to find out our Career Anchors.

Mine was Lifestyle, which I was absolutely mortified by at the time. How unprofessional of me!

Was I not committed enough? Driven enough? Would my company think I wasn’t serious about my career and development?

It felt embarrassing. Definitely something to keep very quiet and try to change.

And yet…

It was so very accurate. And so very useful.

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.

Who do you admire?

I love this question.

Both asking it and answering it.

It gives such insight.

I haven’t always loved it though.

In the past I found it really hard to answer. I couldn’t think of people I admired without my inner critic getting very noisy.

It told me that everyone I thought about was too far away from where I was - completely out of reach. I fell into compare and despair and couldn’t see why it was helpful.

Are you out of alignment?

After a few niggles resurfaced recently I booked myself in for a physio MOT.

I was expecting to have a few small adjustments.

A once over to iron out any little things before they became bigger. A self care top up.

It turns out my ribs were completely out of alignment!

For a long time I’d been walking around slightly twisted to the left. Compressed on one side, with my poor neck constantly stretched to try and keep my eyes level.

Yikes.

And yet it hadn’t felt ALL wrong.

It hadn’t felt completely right either, but my body had adapted and was doing a brilliant job of keeping me upright.

Until it got too tired and started to send out some signals.

I love to read.

It’s one of my favourite ways to spend time and I am often found curled up in a favourite chair, book on knee, mug in hand. Not to be disturbed :-)

It’s also one of my favourite ways to learn. To absorb ideas and to filter them through my brain. What really stands out? What brings a different perspective or opens up a new way of seeing something? What do I know now that I didn’t before?

Some books have changed my thinking and perspective in an instant - Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott comes to mind, recommended to me by my first coach well over a decade ago.

Some have had a slower burn.

Some I read once and some are well thumbed and underlined in a million places.

It’s these books - the ones that have changed my life - that I love to share.

Have you met your future self?

The older, wiser version of you?

The you that’s waiting to emerge over time?

The calm, clear, quiet voice of wisdom we all have within us?

In a powerful yoga session, the brilliant Roisin spoke about making choices that day that our future selves would be grateful for.

They were words that snagged in my brain - and those of other people in the class too. Lots of us gathered round her at the end to ask her to repeat the words.

They were wise words.

And useful ones too.

It’s why visualising our future self - who we will become in 20 years or more - can be a powerful thing to do.

I’ve realised recently that I love to learn by listening.

Preferably outside and walking as I do it.

It’s a rather astonishing discovery!

For years I have sat down at a desk and taken notes as I absorbed information. Lots of notes.

I’ve also read a lot, and taken a lot of notes.

And it’s worked in lots of ways. It’s got me here.

But now it’s my least favourite way to take on information and get insight.

So what’s changed?

Have I changed?

Or have I been able to test out different ways of learning and found ones that work better?