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Coaching

Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is…

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I believe in providence and serendipity.

As I work out my next career steps I’ve been applying for new part-time roles that might fit well alongside Quiet Space as part of a coherent career portfolio, and recently got news that I’d been unsuccessful in an interview for a job I’d really wanted.

Naturally I was disappointed, but I’d been satisfied with my interview performance and had pretty much expected the outcome. So by the time the news came, I think I’d already mostly moved on. In that context the prospect of exploring other opportunities has become exciting and liberating, for which I’m grateful.

Coaching others these past few years has been incredibly helpful for my own personal development, particularly in terms of my appetite for risk and attitude towards the unknown.

Embrace pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. That’s where the growth comes. It is stressful and scary and destabilising, but it is without a doubt worth it all. Everything will be all right. Things will take shape. At the end of this you will look back and be amazed to see how far you’ve come.

Coaching

From this moment despair ends and tactics begin

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I rather liked this slightly off-the-wall motivational poster that I came across in my travels today. Buckle up, folks, say goodbye to despair because here’s where the good stuff starts.

Now go work out those tactics. You’ve got this, stay in the game!

Change

And through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you

 

I’ve felt several times over the past eight months like life was unravelling. Things falling apart; questioning maxims I’d thought I lived by; reevaluating lots of things about me and my relationships with various people. When I’ve lost ground in the past my faith has always been there for me but lately I’ve felt distanced from that too. It’s been an interesting time.

This week I visited Salisbury Cathedral and was struck by the beautiful font in the nave and the reflections in the water.

This life has got to be about something beyond yourself. Something bigger than you. Not necessarily God, if that isn’t part of your belief system. But as humans we naturally seek meaning, purpose and connection. What am I doing this for? For whom am I doing this? Who’s got my back?

Coaching

How long is forever

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“How long is forever?” asked Alice. “Sometimes, just one second.” replied the White Rabbit.

There are dreams lasting but a moment in which everything is suspended in eternity.

Get more of those moments. Don’t be afraid to dive deep with someone. Love intensely. Make that connection, take that leap, embrace the now. It’s all we have – the past is gone, and the future is promised to no one.

Change

Finisterre

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I took this photo yesterday on the beach and it made me think of ‘Finisterre’ by David Whyte: https://onbeing.org/poetry/finisterre/

“but because now, you would find a different way to tread, / and because, through it all, part of you would still walk on, / no matter how, over the waves.”

If you’re looking for something to read that makes you say yes! that’s exactly it, you just put into words exactly how I felt – have a look at Whyte’s poetry.

One of my other favourites is ‘Sweet Darkness’.

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet / confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you”.

Your world is so big and blue and beautiful. Go explore.

Personal development

Yoga and life

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28 June vs 7 July. I like yoga because it teaches you to quiet the ego and conquer the self. The things you need most in yoga are the same things that get you through life – balance, strength, and breath.

Change

Come, let us go and try it – why…

Fyodor Dostoevsky quote

As we look ahead to Monday, and as you take on whatever challenges and journeys this week brings, I want you to remember this. Don’t be someone who looks back at the end of their life, wistful that they never took a chance and never followed their dreams, and is filled with regret for wasted potential and opportunity.

You want it, go and get it. Make it a priority. Support is vital – you don’t have to do it on your own. But you have to do it.

Come, let us go and try it – why dream about it?

Coaching

Life, measured not in coffee spoons

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Are you making space for things in your life that truly excite you? (We’re not talking thrill-seeking, although I do like this photo from the Storm at this year’s Kenilworth Carnival.) Or, as T.S. Eliot’s Alfred J. Prufrock so memorably said, are you measuring out your life out in coffee spoons?

Coaching

What’s past is prologue, but the future is still…

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Shakespeare, he knew a thing or two. People sometimes misunderstand what Antonio meant by ‘what’s past is prologue’, taking it in isolation to mean that the past predicts the future. The full quote, however, says quite the opposite.

“Whereof what’s past is prologue; what to come, in yours and my discharge.” The past is written, but the future is yours to wield, subject to the choices you decide to make.

Make good ones. Each day is a new day with no mistakes in it yet.

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

Change

The order of time

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I’ve been feeling melancholic lately. If I were to try to find a unifying theme in my thinking, it would probably be about how people, relationships and things change over time.

I’ve been reading a wonderful book by Carlo Rovelli called The Order of Time – it’s thoroughly fascinating, and confusing in parts, and you should go read it. It’s about how time is in us rather than us being in time, and how time flows differently in different places, and how the notion of the present evaporates in the context of the universe. Philosophy, poetry and physics all in one book.

There is something beautiful about old things.
The creak of a joint
History of a glorious past
Wrinkle of a life well-lived
Collected stories from a lifetime
And the rust of days gone by.

Some things, though, wear more acutely
Than time, oxygen and water.
Like gradual disconnections
The sharpness of sour truths
And how the beauty of a siren call
Ends, usually, on the rocks.

– Written by Natalie Snodgrass Tan, Quiet Space Ltd

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