Making connections - Day 20

Thursday 20th December 2018

20 is known as a "score' not for sporting reasons (although a dart board has 20 sectors),
but because in the past when livestock, such as sheep, were being counted it was usual
to score a notch in a piece of wood to record twenty animals before counting the next 20
in the flock or herd. The first citation was in 1100.

It is our company's Christmas Party this evening - it is going to be a great event with an amazing live band brought together by one of our talented employees (who knocked the Beatles off number 1 in the charts back in the 60's). It will be a great evening at which to celebrate all we have achieved over this past year. I am so grateful to so many both in and outside work. Thank you!

Today's post is a charming and uplifting poem by Helen Amery. Helen is a coach who likes to work with leaders unleashing their true potential through their Clarity, Contentment and Connection. She is married and has two much loved children. She (and her business) are based in Leicester in the East Midlands. After obtaining a degree in Chemistry from Edinburgh, Helen commenced training as an accountant with PwC but then realised that she was better suited to HR. She then took a postgraduate diploma in Personnel Management at Nottingham, before joining Boots (initially within employee relations).  Helen succumbed to her entrepreneurial spirit and runs her own successful business Wild Fig Solutions. You can follow Helen on Twitter (her handle is @WildFigSolns) and read her people-centred blogs on her business site.

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Heartache it hurts
But it need not be feared
We are all OK
No matter what we feel

Hope is the light
The chinks in the dark
That leads to a rising
Of energy sparks

High fives connect
They remind we are one
Today, tomorrow, always
With ev'ry rising sun

Are you seeing the whole picture? - Day 42

Day 42 (Thursday 11th January 2018)

42 years ago, on Sunday 11th January 1976, Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen topped
the UK Charts - it managed 9 weeks at Number 1, before being knocked off by ABBA with
Mamma Mia. Bohemian topped the charts again 16 years later, following the death
of Freddie Mercury. Mercury wrote the song whilst in bed (he had a piano as his headboard)
and it was originally called "The Cowboy Song". It is the 3rd highest selling single of all time in the UK.

Today's blog is a first for the Advent Blog series - a jointly composed piece by Helen Amery and Mark Gilroy. Both are executive coaches with their own businesses and (as you may have guessed) good friends. Mark is the Managing Director of TMS International Limited, where he has worked since September 2003. Mark studied (Psychology) at york and still lives in the City. He has a passion for people, technology, photography (I love this phrase from him: “Life is like a camera. Focus on what’s important, capture the best bits, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t turn out, take another shot."), networking and social media - you can link up with him on Twitter, his handle is @thatmarkgilroy. He writes a good blog, snap-leadership.com.

Helen is a seasoned Advent Blogs blogger. She is married and has two of the most adorable children. She (and her business) are based in Leicester in the East Midlands. After obtaining a degree in Chemistry from Edinburgh, Helen commenced training as an accountant with PwC but then realised that she was better suited to HR. She then took a postgraduate diploma in Personnel Management at Nottingham, before joining Boots (initially within employee relations).  Helen succumbed to her entrepreneurial spirit and now actually is involved in two businesses - her own, Wild Fig Solutions, and she also has co-founded Aligning Teams with fellow Business coach Zoe Jepson. You can follow Helen on Twitter (her handle is @WildFigSolns) and read her people-centred blogs on her business site.

Both Mark and Helen are on personal journeys of development and are learning about Buddhism - their post was inspired by some shared reading and ensuing conversations.

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A little while back I mentioned in this post that I’ve started to learn about Buddhism and that I might write about it soon.  Then when the topic for this year’s Advent Blogs appeared in the Twittersphere this felt like it might be the right time to put pen to paper.  So here’s a joint blog from Mark Gilroy and me, the result of both reading the same book, a fabulously exploratory conversation and co-created content.  We’re beginners in this Buddhism world so would love to hear your thoughts and perspectives.

Darkness and Dawn.

The suggestion of polar opposites.  The absence of one means the presence of the other.  

Dawn kissing Night - Eos and Hypnos Painting by Phyllis Mahon

And herein lies one of our sources of duhkha (doo-ka) - our desire for things to stay the same.  Our desire to nail constantly-moving things down.  Which of course is impossible and so the illusion of permanence doesn’t last for long and dissatisfaction returns.  

[Duhkha is one of the four Truths of Buddhism.  It’s experienced like a wheel being out of kilter, something isn’t right, we develop discomfort which grows over time.  The arising of Duhkha is because of a thirst, craving or wanting.  The back-and-forth shift we experience between longing and loathing.  Hence, the desire to keep things still is a source of Duhkha because we long for things to be still, and when they aren’t we loathe them. They aren’t doing what they “should”.]

And so when we long for the dawn and loathe the night, we experience duhkha because, of course, the dawn and daylight don’t stay forever.  In this place we’re not seeing dawn and darkness for what they really are.  When we step back to see the whole, to see Reality, we see the interconnections.  We see the dynamic flow and flux.  

 

We see the Reality that daylight here, means darkness elsewhere – both are present at the same time.  And even at night, the sun is seen in reflection on the moon.  It’s never completely gone.  Neither darkness nor dawn are absolutes.  They are part of an interconnected whole both of which are essential for the wellbeing of all that lives on our planet.

When we see things as they really are, we drop the concepts that we humans place on everything around us.  These concepts make our lives simpler, faster, easier to categorise.  We like that.  It meets our (deluded) belief that things can go in boxes and won’t change.

Darkness is a concept.  It’s a made up “box” for that period in the 24 hour cycle when the sun is not visible.  The instant we separate a concept from the whole it sits in contrast to an “other” of some kind or other.  We deny the reality. Because what’s really happening is that every moment of the night is different from the one that went before, and different from the one coming next, because the light levels will have shifted marginally in one direction or another. The concept of darkness as a solid single thing is (we think) comforting.  It’s a controlled box or label for an ever-changing phenomenon.  And yet concepts like this only lead to suffering.

Especially when we layer beliefs onto the concepts we create, attaching meaning to the concepts that wasn’t there when we were first born.  I don’t like the dark, that’s when spiders come out.  I don’t like the dark, my sister used to jump out at me from behind the bedroom door.  I don’t like the dark, that’s when I think of my lost loved one.  Or maybe, I love the dark, that means it’s time for a party and seeing friends.

Whatever we make the concept mean, it hooks us back into the arising of duhkha – longing or loathing based on our life experiences in relation to that concept.  Wanting it more or pushing it away.  Trying to make it go away faster or stay longer, depending on our beliefs.

Step back again.  See the situation for what it really is.  See that the sun has gone too far to be seen directly, but it is still there, still shining on earth, still bringing life to the plants and people on another part of the planet.  See that the darkness is an important time for people to recuperate, for plants’ photosynthesis to pause, for night-dwelling creatures to seek their food before daylight returns.  Knowing that in this world of constant flux, the sun will again return to our part of the earth and rise with a new dawn.

 

The same is true of us as people.  Our notions of “personality” or “self” try to capture fluid, ever-changing phenomena with frozen concepts, immediately positioning you as “other” to me, separate and “out there”.  In Reality, we don’t exist alone but in relation to others, and to everything around us.  By attaching our ego to a “self” we see ourselves as corks floating in the stream of time,

whereas in truth, we are the stream.  

There is only stream.  As the stream ebbs and flows, so do we.  In this place there is no duhkha.  We are in flow.

So when you find yourself in a place of longing or loathing ask –

• What am I making this mean?  
• What are the beliefs you’re ascribing to the situation?
• What are the “should’s” you’re telling yourself?  
• What's really going on; which of these beliefs or should’s are man-made, box-like concepts which deny the reality of the whole?

If you step back, what is the “whole” that you’ve not been seeing until now?

These are not Hollow words

Day 32 (Sunday 1st January 2017)

32% of Fiji's GDP equates to $1.4 billion - which was the cost of the damage incurred by the
island as a result of Cyclone Winston that hit on 20th February 2016. Cyclone Winston is the
strongest recorded tropical storm in the Southern Hemisphere (with winds of 180mph).
Winston occurred just 4 months after the most powerful tropical cyclone was recorded in the
Northern Hemisphere, Hurricane Patricia, with winds of 215mph. Our climate is changing.

Happy New Year - may the next 12 months bring you joy, health, experiences that make you think and enable you to grow and memories that you can cherish. Today we have a short, impactful and wise post sent to me by Helen Amery; written while she was in hospital, accompanying her young daughter who had injured her arm. It is full of "heart" and acknowledges Life's highs and lows - hence it seems a perfect piece with which to start 2017.

Helen specialises in executive coaching and leadership development, via her own business, Wild Fig Solutions Limited. She is based in Leicester, but helps people and businesses across the UK. She writes an excellent blog - originally called People-ology but now hosted on her business Wild Fig site. After obtaining a good degree in Chemistry from Edinburgh, Helen commenced training as an accountant with PwC but then realised that she was better suited to HR. Before establishing her own consultancy, Helen worked for a number of years as a respected HR professional with Boots. She is active on social media and excellent at encouraging people to connect IRL (in real life) as well as online. Her twitter handle is @WildFigSoins.

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These are not Hollow words

The heights of laughing with my daughter to the hollow of her in surgery and the words from the surgeon of 'we lost a pulse' (thankfully not forever). Extreme swelling and breaking of my heart in the space of a day.

The extreme height of excitement of a new baby for the family. The bottomless hollow when he didn't make it, complications during pregnancy. Heart swells and wrenches for months and years.*

Sculpture by artist Martin Hudáček from Slovakia
 in memorial of unborn children who have passed away.

The daily muddle of mini heights and hollows when things go ok and then less well, good and then bad. Short-lived but each as real as the next and every one of them influencing how we feel from moment to moment. 

Emotional scale devised by Abraham Hicks

We're all different, and how we experience our heights and hollows is different. But we all experience them and too many hollows for too long can take their toll.

Pay attention to yours.  Get the help you need when you need it.  Someone is always there - someone you know. Or maybe someone you've not spoken to yet.  But they're there.

If you need them, the Samaritans are always there - 116 123.

*Our friends' experience this year. 

Better. Faster. Brighter. Bigger. Happier. Sparklier.

Day 18 (Friday 18th December 2015)

18 - the number of, arguably, Shakespeare's best loved poem, Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; 
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Today's post is by the ever inspirational Helen Amery. Helen runs her own consultancy, Wild Fig Solutions and is an accomplished executive coach and leadership development specialist. Helen encourages people to dig deep and understand their own drivers and areas for growth. You can follow her on Twitter, her handle is @wildfigsolns. She is an excellent blogger - read her own posts at People-ology on Wordpress or else catch her in HRD Magazine. Helen commenced life as a scientist - studying Chemistry at Edinburgh, before switching career to specialise in people. She spent 10 years in HR roles with Boots (The UK Chemist and retail chain), culminating in leading the group's strategic organisational development programme, before deciding to found her own business. Helen lives with her family in Leicestershire.

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We chase a perfect life, with perfect ‘stuff’ and perfect relationships.  The Hollywood dream, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the comet tails that are seen but can’t be caught.

And you will always be chasing.  Because life isn’t perfect.  

Sometimes while you’re running after those things, you’ll be knocked off course.

Loss of a loved one.  A flooded home.  Arguments.  Burglary.  Divorce.  Illness. Injury.

Peter Clarkson 72, swimming in his kitchen after recent flooding in Cumbria, UK
Photo: Dave Nelson

Coal dust flurries up and distorts your view of the beautiful comet.  Because life isn’t perfect.  

John Constable, "Seascape Study with Cloud" (c. 1824)

And that would be OK if you knew it would pass, or become easier.  If you knew it wasn’t forever and the dust would blow over.  You might even find a way to clean the coal dust away for yourself.  If you knew that this is just what happens and that by surviving the coal dust you’ll once again see the comet.

What would that change for you?  

When you find this place, you can quieten your judgement of the bad times. They are just what happen.  And when you see the comet again, it will look all the brighter and more precious to you than it was before.

 

Comet over Rotterdam, 1680 by Liev Verschuier

So as this year ends and the next begins, resist the belief or the hope for a perfect 2016.  Because life isn’t perfect.  Make peace with the knowledge that there will be good times and bad, happy times and sad and that both are valuable in making us who we are and taking us to where we need to be next.