The Practical Soul

I live for....this

People come to me because there's a problem.

Because there's something wrong.

Something they want to solve or resolve.

And we talk about what it would ideally be like and how on earth  you get from here to there or what at least would be a step towards it.

But.  The initial focus is on what's wrong.  Lots of my toolkit of ways of looking at things and situations only come out in service of helping sort out what's wrong.  

We spend plenty time celebrating and sometimes being just downright overjoyed at how things have turned around but again this is the turning around of what was wrong in the first place.

I took a couple of days off this week and have been reading in a relaxed way and had quiet contemplative time to let things soak in and through and this theme came up. 

The ratio of time and energy spent on problems and what's wrong to time and energy spent on what's wonderful. 

Some of the people highlighting this for me;

Nancy Kline, Time to Think.

"In love relationships, tell each other precisely what you admire, respect, even adore in each other.  Do this every day without fail - and always after an argument; during it if humanly possible. Restrict your criticisms to one fifth of all your interactions."

Michael Port, The Think Big Manifesto

"All those I-can't-I-don't thoughts have no place. Set the tired dogma of those small thoughts ablaze with the kerosene strength of your curiosity and creativity." 

Corey Allan, at his blog www.simplemarriage.net

Let the best in you run your life. If you’re like most people, you have a scared, angry, vindictive, or lazy side that limits the quality of your relationship. You don’t have to let that side of you run your life. Instead, live from the resilient side of you. Remind yourself of what is admirable, competent and good about yourself, and about your partner. 

Noticing the imbalance, of focus on what's wrong rather than on what's great, I  decided to employ some of my favourite tools, for today, in pure unadulterated relishment of what makes life wonderful.

I use nonviolent communication, oh lifesaving, relationship healing wonderment that you are.  

At a simple level it helps shift focus from judging and blaming about a situation onto what needs are unmet and what might take place to get them met. It's been a most wonderful tool bringing peace to many situations that appeared locked in conflict.

Today I decided to use it not for solving a conflict but in exploration and celebration of what I love.  

Turns out, above all else, I love, truth, love and beauty. In that order.

How do you do, pleased to meet you.

Truth.

Those moments, maybe when I'm reading and my own mind is quiet, when I just see how something is. Crystal clarity sparks into being. I get it. I understand. I see what it's all been about or what needs to be included or what needs to be said or done.

Flashes or sparks is usually how it feels, such a pure clear sense of things.

That this is the truth of the matter and I know it.

More often than not, it happens at inconvenient times. When I'm far from paper and pen.

In the shower, the bath, the garden, whilst meditating.....there you are Pauline, delivered unto you a little piece of exquisite truth.

And then I'm tense.  How long will I be able to hold this and keep it pure and free of my interpretation, without adding to it and invariably muddying the water.  Can I hold it till I've finished showering, gardening, meditating and risk losing it.  

At this point I'm almost always, also, having an inner dance of pleasure at the truth of the insight, at the beauty of pure truth and squirming with delight, and if I enjoy that part too much then I'll also lose the insight.

For wonders to behold that I daren't risk losing, I  take my dripping self, squirming with delight, no matter the soapiness of hair and body, straight to my nearest source of paper and pen.  So many twisted warped bits of paper containing notes made whilst dripping. 

Oh wow this is good stuff!  It is the best thing for me. It is what I live for.  It is when I bubble and fizz and cannot contain my delight.

That is the truth of it.

How's your ratio?  And what's your thing you love most. Above all else?

Next installment. Love.

Or beauty.

Fixing the economy

In what many perceive as an illusion and many perceive as our economy's bleakest winter I do love it when people get creative with a problem.

Dear Mr. Darling, 

Please find below my suggestion for fixing Britain's economy.   

Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. 

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan: 

There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire.  Twenty million job openings - Unemployment fixed

2) They MUST buy a new British car.  Twenty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed

4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university - Crime rate fixed

5) They MUST buy £50 of alcohol/tobacco a week ......and there's your money back in duty/tax etc

It can't get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances

What did you do during the recession, Daddy?

The sun is setting on M.P.s expenses as they currently know them.  

The opportunity to live with integrity, at least in this respect, has landed on them from a great height.

Rohan Candappa takes a light look at the affair.

How can I concentrate on my constituents when my moat is such a mess?

I followed the rules

I did nothing wrong

But the system must change

That's my new song

And I know it looks dodgy

That can't be denied

That my main home isn't

Where my family reside

Yes I did claim for the pool

Plus a garden of manure

But you need somewhere to relax

When you've been fighting for the poor

The moat it looked terrible

All clogged up with weeds

It stopped me from sorting 

My constituents needs

Everyone was at it

It was all there for free

Just one of the perks

Of being an M.P.

In retrospect my problem

Is that I misunderstood

When the Speaker shouted 'Order! Order!'

I ordered all that I could

Of course I am sorry

We all are, no doubt

We're all really sorry

That the details came out

Time to clean up The House

Though renovations take dosh

But we're not really worried

We can claim for whitewash

Taken from 'What did you do during the recession, Daddy? - A collection of light verse for these heavy times' by R.L.Candappa

Can boring be a good thing?

Being Boring

'May you live in interesting times.' Chinese curse.

If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say

Except that the garden is growing.

I had a slight cold but it's better today.

I'm content with the way things are going.

Yes, he is the same as he usually is,

Still eating and sleeping and snoring.

I get on with my work.  He gets on with his.

I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:

Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful.

No news is good news and long may it last,

If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.

A happier cabbage you never did see,

My vegetable spirits are soaring.

If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me,

I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties.  Well what are they for,

If you don't need to find a new lover?

You drink and you listen and drink a bit more

And you take the next day to recover.

Someone to stay home with was all my desire

And now that I've found a safe mooring,

I've just one ambition in life: I aspire

To go on and on being boring.

Wendy Cope

When is 'being boring' a good thing?

The right conditions

I could not be happier.

Little yellow flowers have appeared in my garden.  They've positioned themselves beautifully too, nestling at the bottom of a shrubby tree and in amongst a whole load of delicate greenery.  I almost have a woodland scene.

The thing is I didn't plant them.  I moved to this house four years ago and we are the first human inhabitants of what used to be a barn.

When I moved in...no garden.

Nothing but thigh high weeds and rubble from the building work.

Everything that's here now, I planted.  And for the past four years...no little yellow flowers in this position.

I've heard of guerrilla gardeners who splash random acts of gardening about under cover of darkness in places that sorely need some greenery, but I don't know of any instances of them striking in private gardens where there are already plants.

So I'm ruling them out.

Someone planted them for me as a surprise, my son maybe?  He's surprised me before.  It's unlikely. 

He hasn't got naturally green fingers exactly, not even a green fingernail, but I checked anyway.  

No. It wasn't him.

So that's ruled out too.

My lovely gentleman friend, who notices things that some are too busy to notice, and knows of things that some may not, told me he'd heard of whole fields of flowers blooming that no-one had seen before.

Like me, people interested in the fields and the mysterious blooms, having ruled out guerrilla gardeners and investigated in a studiously horticultural way, found that the seeds and bulbs had been there all along but that the conditions had never been right, until now, for them to bloom.

How wonderful that that all that beauty has been able to show itself.

And a little bit sad that the potential had lain dormant all that time.

It's true that I've been moving things around in my garden;

 The fountain by the seat that gets the evening sun.  I hadn't remembered that the position          where the sun sets on the horizon moves round and so the seat is rarely in the right place            for watching the sun set.  I moved it.

           Several plants, rumoured to like certain conditions, but weren't happy. I moved them.

Suffice to say, there's been plenty of deep digging and moving and not much sitting at peace.*

It's possible the bulbs were there from way back but I've been inadvertently moving them, not allowing them to settle, get their bearings and put down roots to get steady and get fed.

Now they've had time to settle they've come up.  And bloomed.  And I'm very happy that they're here.

But the reason I love it so much is not because I have some surprise flowers, lovely though they are and I couldn't ever have arranged them so well myself.  It's because they are such a beautiful visual reminder of what's possible when the conditions are right and of why I do the work I do.

As with surprise flowers so with clients.

They all have their potential, their reason for being, their own version of 

'find which way is up, make your merry way through this heavy clay soil and chunks of rubble to bloom in all your yellowness for the benefit of the world'

And I get to help ease the way when they're stuck.  They're trying everything they know but are stuck and have often tentatively concluded that the job of getting through heavy clay and rubble;

•     is just not do-able
•     is do-able but the price in stress and lack of personal life is higher than they care to pay
•     is more than they are capable of
•     needs more know how than they possess

It's rarely the case, once we get into it that any of these conclusions are true.

A bit of careful, gentle attention and we find the conditions that would be just right for blooming (this side of four years).

Plus (the bonus for some, but pretty much the whole point in my mind) restore the pleasure to the whole blooming malarkey.

* I'm told that perhaps 'sit at peace' as in 'can't you sit at peace child' could be a Scottish utterance from my upbringing requiring explanation for a wider audience.

Brain overclog via books

 

The clutter had reached a clogging point, slowing things down, but not in a good way.

You wouldn't think so. If you walked in, you'd probably think all was orderly, cared for, interesting books around the place, nice. 

I dip into and find fascination and stimulation in many books at a time.

I do love them.  I have them everywhere, on this table, on that, beside the bed, in the kitchen, bathroom, on the windowsills, in the office and in three bookcases. 

Visually not too clogged, mentally, well into overclog.

So today, steps were taken;

1. Clearing

    Fiction, out 39

    Non-fiction, out 65

     Fiction, stay of execution while I decided 36

     Non-fiction stay of execution while I decide 31

2. New rule to try.  Only one fiction and one non-fiction book on the go at any time, the others on a shelf knowing their time will come but it's not now.

3. New reading retreat spot ....put chair on landing.....oh snug 

4. New experiment.  Reading time booked in, not snatched time.  5.30-6.30 on non-client days and 7-8 on client days

Now.  Good.  Let the easier breaths and pleasure in reading resume.

Ernest Hemingway first with 'A Moveable Feast', it's about his time living in Paris and writing in cafe's all day. We're going to Paris soon and I'm soaking up an advance dose of Parisian-ness.

Nancy Kline alongside with 'Time to Think'.  Nancy has such a beautiful heart and beautiful nature.

" Listening this way" (from the back cover)," is a radical act". 

This way of thinking, way of working together where time to think is not just allowed but it's facilitated. 

What a difference to corporate days and results and health this could make.  

All that pleasure and a new reading spot too. 

Development got fruity, well mainly veggie

Personal Development for me doesn't come in the form of an annual course, it's a daily event.

It's lifelong and means that I always have (or am only a few hours away from having) my eye on what's working and not working for me and for what I'm doing with other people.

If I stop giving it attention for any length of time I get a bit slow and stuck, tired and lifeless without knowing why. Then I remember, get right back in there and wellness resumes.

Over the years the murk and stuck spots I've been working through have slowly, really really slowly, been changing density.

There was a time, way back in the time of young murk, when it felt like cold hard soil in the winter that I was working my way through.  It took herculean efforts for very little movement.

But as with hard clay soil the more it's worked and the more rich manure dug in, the better an environment it becomes for things to grow and flourish.

This year I'm having a series of 'transformative coaching' sessions with the most beautiful hearted Moriah. (Transformative by name and nature).

Each session we work with what Moriah intuitively senses needs attention for my development and each time it's just bang on.And, here's where the big change is, and the veggies.

  

It's not feeling at all dense.

In fact today, as I was trying to describe how it felt, I saw it as a layered salad.  One of those beautiful brightly coloured salads in a glass bowl.

(There actually was no meat, eggs or cheese in my vision but the great photo I found like that was priced at £430 which I thought was a little ott, despite my joy at having this uplifting vision)

A layered salad!  I ask you....not some dark and poetic vision of deepest inner wrestling but a layered salad.  This is cracking me up. So funny.  I love it when these visions arrive...often dark, always illustrative....this one is such a surprise.

All vibrant, alive, healthy, very loosely layered, you can breath easily in there and move your arms and Moriah has me on a string, not a rope to drag me out, just a string so I know which way is up and don't go tunneling back downwards.

I'm delighted.  Development has never felt so good.  That's not to say there isn't all the usual wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth, but it's just lighter, not so much effort needed for movement.

I couldn't be happier, it seems that my time underground may be done.

Unconscious riches

I'm always happy, more than happy, more like delirious to find things that really work for helping peel off the layers masking the real, exuberant person sitting inside.

 To understand what's unconscious and have that understanding dissolve away anything that's standing in the way of (what a client today described as) that 'ooooooooooo' feeling (need for video to get the full effect....if you could have seen her you'd have immediately dropped everything and committed yourself to the pursuit of 'ooooo').

So, here it is....another thing that really works. A thorough, (and so a tad lengthy, but worth it) method of dream analysis in Martha Beck's book Steering by Starlight.  Chapter five is the one you want. 

I've done lots, really lots, of dream analysis, in lots of different ways;

Someone telling me what the symbols mean and me humming and hawing about whether that feels right for me.

Someone helping me talk it through and asking me what I think the things in my dream mean

Someone helping me ask questions of the things in my dreams to find what they mean

And other variations of these

Martha Beck won't try to tell you what things mean, nor get you to ask them what they mean, she gets you right in there becoming them so you feel it from the inside what they mean.......oh mmmmmm, mmmmmmm......good stuff.

If you're taking the half term holiday's off and fancy a bit of reflection into your deeper parts this could be just the thing. 

Enjoy!

PS. The photo.......well, ok I didn't pick it out for its dreaminess, I just like it.....and I do think the sky is a bit dreamy.  And who's never had trees as symbols in their dreams.  

 

Still life with moving part

It's February.  It's still dark in the morning when I get up , I'm working, working, working and seem to have fallen into a 'stopped noticing' mode.

In general I mean. Stopped noticing the colour of the mangoes in the fruit bowl...the 'mmmmm' as I pass the bread bin and there's fresh bread in there....that sort of thing.

The snow this week was a special event (the most snow in 18 years) and I think maybe it's responsible for waking up the noticing again. It had me stop and look at it and love it and notice where it was sparkling and where the flat shadow light contrasted.....it quite grabbed me.

Back inside after snow gazing, and making some tea, I noticed the small still life picture I have above my bread bin (it's been there all the time) and then noticed how much like it my actual fruit bowl was and thought...mmmmm I'd like to have a photograph of that.

Aha! The noticing is back.

A warm welcome back for the noticing...celebrate with a photograph...

My cat, Flo, decided at that moment to get in on the noticing thing so my still life has a moving part.

Happy February. 

  

New ways of being

The sun is out and all I can see from every window is sparkling.

I had a wee wander round the garden this morning, crisp air, sunshine, wonderful stuff.

Now I'm writing away, tap tapping on my laptop, Jan Garbarek's Officium accompanying me and matching the snow in it's beauty.  What a gift! 

I heard on the news this morning that some schools have said that it's sending the wrong message to children to say when things get difficult it's ok just to stay at home.

Oh weep weep.  

How about just when nature has put on the most magical snow show for 18 years that you notice it and maybe even enjoy it. 

I also heard two gentleman of the press debating whether the snow was a joy or a pain....as if it has to be one or the other.  As if we can't see it's gorgeous and find it difficult to get into work.  The man from the Telegraph conceded that London did look beautiful but asserted (to nature?) that we MUST be able to go about our daily business.

Let nature be told!