re: first thoughts from Poland

I can't believe it is already Wednesday - the day we launch our programme and welcome over 40 participants!  It has been a whirlwind few days since Sunday and I feel I have already gone into my discomfort zone which means that I am learning stacks.  Let me share some of my journey with you.

The lead up was frenetic which is why I missed the email from my good friend Eileen offering to pick me up from Warsaw airport.  I did email her but only six hours before I was arriving so needless to say there was no welcome committee.  I was incredibly fortunate however because Tania, my girls' au pair, travelled with me and speaks quite a bit of Polish so we managed to navigate our way to the appartments.

One of the first things I realised was how important physical environment is to me especially when I am not at home.  It is something that I coach people on a lot and now I recognise its significance for myself.  Let me share a couple of examples of what I mean.  The first thing I noticed about the appartment was its newness and the size.  It is just big enough to fit my husband, the two girls and the au pair but it will be a squeeze when Mum gets here.  Now I reframe that first reaction and say it will be cosy.  The initial concern however was over the lack of cooking utensils for a three month stay with my family.  Luckily my husband has brought over some of the smaller items and with help from the fabulous Ops Team for Genesis Park, more stuff is beginning to appear.  We are in the process of getting oven-proof dishes so that I can cook for the girls.  It has taken a lot of effort from various people to get this sorted; and that's largely because they are service appartments used to people doing short-term stays and so eating out a lot.  We will be here for three months - an altogether different proposition.

What I have also realised is the importance of adaptability and flexibility.  At lunchtime on Tuesday, I found out about the local culture in terms of dress.  If wearing a skirt or a dress it is essential that women also wear tights - not something I tend to do in summer. Additionally whilst it is okay to have open toes, all shoes have to have backs which means I can only wear one pair of shoes on formal occasions because I mainly packed a selection of sandals.  An excuse to go shopping this weekend!

As you can see I have already learnt a huge amount and it is only day four.  It just shows how valuable it is to place oneself in new cultural settings and how important it is to appreciate difference and maintain a sense of humour.  So I am curious to find out if you have had similar experiences in new environments and how you coped with them?

Silent Sunday: experimenting with calmness and stillness

Today was a first for me.  For months we had been planning to go away for the w/e camping with some of my hubby's University friends.  They all have children so it would have been great fun for the young as well as an opportunity for the adults to catch up on a year's worth of news.  About two weeks ago, the Universe, God if you will, decided to remind me that I was not in control of my life.  I had a huge shock and had to make the toughest decision of my life to date.  It was something I would not wish on anyone.  Anyway the upshot of it all was that I ended up having a surgical procedure last week and was advised to take it easy for a week or two.

I knew my hubby would want to see his friends; that the girls love camping; and my body needed to recuperate.  I realised that I had to convince my hubby to do the trip with the girls and leave me behind.  In fact he was all for it and needed little convincing which felt like a result. 

Yesterday our au pair was at home and whilst I rested, walked as a way to clear my mind, picked fruit at the old allotment, cooked a very healthy dinner of spicy greens with chick peas.  However it was not a silent time.  Today from about 9.30 to 16.30 I had the whole house to myself.

It felt very odd and I decided it was time to take a leaf out of Brene Brown's book on imperfection and experiment with calmness and stillness.  Initially I felt as if there were a million things I needed to do and I went into human doing mode for a good hour or so, whilst tweeting and facebooking for inspiration.  The lovely Rachael suggested the fab idea of lying on the grass watching the sky, something I enjoyed in the middle of the day when the sun was out, and yes I did apply factor 30 suncream on my face and neck!  I used my neck pillow and practised my Alexandrian technique which felt really good to my back.

What got me into a place of stillness and calm was a 10 minute guided meditation using conscious embodiment techniques.  It was magical and the key was focusing on the breath and that led to so much more.  Later I topped it up with a practice which works with one's energetic field, also about 10 minutes which is as much as I can manage in one go.

I may not have had any life changing insights however I did realise I need to slow down in the run up to Poland.  I made the decision to take about 65% of the next two weeks off which is a big step for me and focus on my family and getting fitter.  The house is also the tidiest it has been in months which I find hugely pleasing!

I can definitely recommend the benefits of creating space and time for yourself as a way to revitalise and grow especially if you are a working parent!  I had complete silence for around 7 hours and benefitted hugely from it.  What small step(s) can you take to build more calm and stillness into your life?

What value do you place on being able to read?

A colleague of mine, Moyra Weston, was inspired to set up a campaign called We dare to Care which at its heart is a vision to start a movement supporting and enrolling coaches and leaders to give their time to those that:

1. Will benefit from coaching and leading support
2. Can make a difference in society
3. Cannot afford to pay for our services

It is a response to the growing inequality within society and I and 93 others have joined with Moyra to make it happen.  The purpose of this post however is not to talk about that campaign per se because it has a momentum of its own; really it is to share it as an example of something else that I have been grappling with for a while and which has finally been birthed so to speak.

I believe that we are always receiving messages about steps and ideas it would be good to consider in terms of spiritual growth.  Quite often these ideas can seem preposterous to us and those closest to us, so it can take much longer for them to come to fruition.  I have been grappling with one such proposition for some time.

In essence, what I am talking about is money, how we manage it and our relationship to it.  At its simplest, it is about knowing our monthly outgoings and income.  Do you know yours down to the nearest pound or do you know roughly what the amounts?  I have been reading about through Ted.com and other sources about some inspirational people of late where there was a common theme.  They each tythed a percentage of their income to the Church or charity or some other good cause and in the end they made much more money.

I realise that sounds counter-intuitive and one or two close to me enquired into what I had been smoking when I shared this idea with them.  However I believe that there is an energy around money and the more that we manage it consciously and give away what we earn, the more that comes back in return.

Curious to see whether there is anything in this belief, I have decided to conduct an experiment. I looked into my current level of charitable giving against my income and decided to double the amount that I was tything.  That was the first step.  The difficulty was in deciding to what to donate the extra money.  This evening I picked up an Evening Standard on the way home and the first three pages were all about the paper's campaign with Volunteer Reading Help to Get London reading.  The most fascinating part was reading Sue Porto's, CEO VRH, experiences in the prison sector where she ended up as Head of National Training.  Chronic lack of self-esteem often caused by an inability to read and write was a common trait amongst many of the country's most dangerous offenders.

As a child, I remember how being able to read opened up a magical world to me which I could enter at any time I wanted.  So supporting VRH which is the largest provider of 1:1 reading support for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, seems like a good way to start my experiment of increased financial giving. 

The photo at the top of this post has been reproduced thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/yomanimus/