U turn if you want to...

No sooner do I decide I'm not going back to my old life and write it down, and along come those familiar doubts:

1. You're being ridiculous.  What makes you think you can do anything else?
2. And, tell me, how are you going to support yourself?  You know you hate being skint.
3. Why can't you just get on with it like the rest of us?  Why this drama?
4. What makes you so special that you'll find your ideal groove?
5. You don't have the balls to really go for it

etc, etc, etc.

Wake up call or a temptation to be overcome?

Turning Point

Maybe it was the lack of sleep.  Maybe it was singing 'Don't Stop Me Now' as the closing hymn at Ken Robinson's School of Life's secular sermon on Passion.  Maybe it was his funny, witty and wise sermon.
Maybe it was the fact I went to a talk on finding your passion after deciding it was an unhelpful quest.

Regardless, today in Conway Hall in Holborn I realised that I was never going back to the work I was good at but which did not nourish me.  The "well, I can always go back" backstop is no longer an option.  The bridge has burned.

It's an exhilarating, freeing and terrifying thought. There were tears.

The only direction available to me now is forward.

You can't bullshit a horse

This morning I went on a taster morning of Equine Guided Creative Leadership Training.  Many moons ago I remember a fellow director showing me an advert for just such a training and giggling madly at the absurdity of it.  A few weeks later I spotted the same ad in Pseuds Corner in Private Eye.  The world and my world have moved on a little since then.

The exercises with these horses are simple and incredible effective.  They are about learning how you lead and what works.  They challenge and illuminate both your ideas of yourself and your notions of how you lead and follow.

The horse doesn't care what your job title is or how many degrees you have.  It responds only to your body language, tone of voice and energy levels.

I learned that I really didn't need to do that much for the horse to respond and follow my lead; the rope could be loose and trust could be established quickly when I was most myself.  I was reminded what a waste of time over-thinking was.  Different approaches and styles were appropriate to different horses and situations.  The discussions after each exercise among our group teased out our assumptions and difficulties with aspects of leadership.

Ultimately the power of the process is that it is experiential and non judgemental (horses might not always follow you but they won't be rude).

And it was fun.

www.equinoxcoaching.co.uk

Tired Malcontent

Since I have put some gaps back into my week (teeny but necessary ones) a strange magnetic force seems to be sucking phone calls, visits and other activity into the gaps.  All welcome in their way but it seems I am going to have to put some bigger gaps in and keep them sacrosanct if I'm to stop feeling so tired.