Brain Blast!

Well I have to admit that I am quite ashamed not to have been more frequently "on the blog" since early October. Thanks to Jane for nudging me - she had to resort to Facebook to find out what's been happening with me! (Though in truth I've been too preoccupied for even that the last couple of weeks.)

The thing that has been keeping me so quiet has been my presentation to the Swindon Philosophical Society, which finally took place last Friday 14th November (a date which has been etched on my brain for months, and which has elicited a nervous response in me every time I've thought of it!). I did quite a lot of research, beginning, according to my journal, about mid-September. It then took an entire week to write and rework.

My topic was "The effects of science and technology on human imagination and creativity". It wasn't my title, though I decided to rise to the challenge of presenting it anyway. Once I'd crafted my core argument all the background reading, listening and watching was interesting and fun, especially as it touched on my pet interests of neurology, psychology, consciousness, and whatever spiritual conclusions we might draw from all that.

The scope of my talk ranged across the following subjects: the real relationship between science and creativity; the effects of science in revealing the secrets of human imagination; research into psychic phenomena; and how science is or isn't responding to the hunger to know more about consciousness.

I pointed to the difference between "Logical, Scientific Rigour", which tends to close down further inquiry into "that which cannot be seen"; and "The Over-Active Imagination", which tends to cherry pick amongst scientific hypotheses to knit together a seemingly coherent, seemingly scientifically valid world-view, one that just happens to tally with their own wishful thinking.

In conclusion I highlighted the value of finding a balanced mode of thinking between the wild extremes of scientific skeptism and the over-active imagination. Over-active imaginations look gullible in comparison with skeptical scientific rigour, but, without the cynicism, the imagination is a powerful guiding force for scientific inquiry.

It was the topic of psychic phenomena which attracted the most lively discussion. I decided to take the line that much of western science finds psi inadmissable for some good reasons - which I named. However, my implicit portrayal of science being rather dismissive of psychic research prompted some strong reactions, quoting the thousands of dollars that have been invested by scientific foundations into this type of study.

Had I argued the opposite - that science must actually consider these areas worthy of investigation, because of the funding that has been allocated to them, I'm sure the scientists in the room would have objected on the grounds of scientific inadmissability. So it was a no-win situation.

Of course, in hindsight the best argument would have been to declare science to have been admirably open-minded in providing research funding - but that none of the research had returned conclusive evidence.

Nevertheless I would still have maintained that this impasse may well have resulted from skewed readings of the data: either by those with over-active imaginations which saw things in the data that weren't really there; or by those with a predisposition to doubt in a more or less cynical way, while allowing the funding to provide the smoke-screen, the pretence of open-mindedness.

In fact this would have illustrated beautifully my point about the need for balanced thinking, and a cooperative way for psi researchers and scientists to work together. Hmmm...

Anyhow, the evening turned out to be a splendid success. A full house, some new members, lively discussion and lots of people going on to the pub to continue the debate. Well and truly a brain blast, and a valid excuse for being absent from blogging for a little while!

To coach or not to coach?

The other night I had a phone conversation with an old friend who is considering leaving the corporate rat-race to set up a coaching business. I had deja-vu. It reminded me of my own position seven or eight years ago when I left my Project Manager role to strike out on my own into the scary world of business ownership.

Here are my nuggets of advice:

1) Be clear and comfortable with the accredited nature and status of your coach training provider. While the profession remains unregulated - except for the work of the International Coach Federation - many coaching schools can get away with touting coach training with very little accreditation. If you are uncomfortable with the sales style or ethics of a training provider tread carefully.

2) Be aware that the majority of money being made in coaching today is in training others to become coaches. Get clear on what percentage of their coaching revenue comes from true coaching - how many clients do they have who aren't coach trainees? This will also give an indication of market demand for your services as a coach.

3) Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - if you are considering making the transition from corporate employment to full-time coaching, you are unlikely to be able to replace your current salary immmediately. Much of the discussion within the coaching profession recently has been about "how can I make money out of being a coach?", and there has been a glut of courses and resources claiming to give coaches the key to kick-start their business. Once again, while no doubt helpful to coaches setting up on their own, this trend also reveals where the real money in coaching is being made.

4) Consider what other income streams are at your disposal as a coach. This could be as straightforward as holding down your full-time role and doing some supplementary coaching on the side - or even negotiating a change in your current role to give more in-house coaching opportunities. Alternatively it could mean a radical shift towards making money out of a creative talent, plus coaching, plus contract work or another more reliable wage-making opportunity. "Portfolio careers" have become all the rage in recent years, and seem to provide people with a fulfilling variety of work, with multiple income stream opportunities.

5) Keep a healthy perspective. Selling coaching is like selling anything - it helps if you completely believe in the product, and are able to demonstrate the tangible benefits that you and others have experienced through coaching. What difference has it really made? It will pay to regularly reflect on these types of question, so you can always respond to market need in the most effective and productive way.

6) Self-awareness is key - coaching that becomes "techniquey" is extremely off-putting and will be neither convincing nor helpful. It is vital to continue reflecting on your own personal development and experience in order to be most authentic and "useful". AND you need to get out of the way completely when you are coaching others.

7) Do you have a practical skill that you can combine coaching with?

For myself, coaching has become much more a way of life and an attitude than a business. I am extremely grateful for the opportunities I have had to learn and practice coaching, and I have met some remarkable, extraordinary, beautiful people along the way. I would like to see the coach approach practiced more widely within the world of education - and for the principle lessons of self-awareness, listening to and respecting others, busting self-limiting beleifs, trusting our intuition and being curious, all of which coach training delivers, to be of more central importance within our educational curriculum.

Scribblers are go!

Last night saw the first meeting of a new writing group - the Highworth and Blunsdon Scribblers. It was fun! Six of us turned up at the Saracen's Head on High St in Highworth, to have a drink and share our thoughts and ideas on what we're currently writing, what we're interested in writing, and what we'd like from a writing group.

The interests of the group are varied but complementary. Children's books, novels, short stories, radio plays and non-fiction are represented by the members so far. Some are extremely keen, others less certain; some need structure, others feedback, everyone encouragement and inspiration.

We intend to meet every month for a couple of hours to share readings, do writing exercises, seek advice and have fun with words. The group even felt comfortable with homework! Everyone was very honest and open, and it felt like a safe place to be.

Our next meeting is on Thursday 6th November, 7.30 at the Saracen's Head. Can't wait!

"What have been the most powerful prompts or questions in your life so far?"

This question turned up as a topic thread on the coaching network. It intrigued me. Many of the responses to the thread quoted very coachy questions - like "Where do you give away your power?" and "What's the thing you want me to dare you to do?"

All no doubt valid questions, and powerful in their way, when you've hired a coach to make you think and give you a new perspective.

And while I can remember asking people questions like this when I've been "performing" as a coach, they didn't really sound like the kind of questions I have experienced in my own life as mould-breaking or delusion-shattering. I started to get curious about what those questions and comments have been, the ones that incited me to something, and that still resonate with meaning for me today.

I came up with a little list. Some of them are questions I asked myself, others aren't even questions but observations made by others. The circumstances of my hearing them are still very clear in my mind. Each one evokes the room where I was sitting, or the dress my teacher was wearing, the rain lashing, or the sunlight glinting on the fruit punch bowl in the Munro Room.

These are pivotal moments, containing information which mines deep and well.

"Why don't people just listen?" I asked as a frustrated eight-year-old, afraid of having my truest account of myself dismissed. I was standing next to my guinea-pig's cage at the time - the smell of damp, soiled saw-dust still comes to mind.

This has become such a mantra for me in recent years: the importance of listening to each other, especially to children, who have their own channels of wisdom and so much to teach us about ourselves.

These days I can turn this question into something meaningful, which stops me in my tracks and makes me think again - "What if I just listened?"

"I'd like to see the outcome of that little venture," spat my French teacher, in her knitted pink tube dress with a cowl neck, when I announced I wanted to go to Cambridge and do languages. I so wanted to ridicule her sarcasm and prove her doubts totally unfounded. I did.

These days I ask myself "What will I prove someone wrong about?"

"You are a diamond in the rough and you will go far." I wrote to my former university supervisor about 8 years ago to thank him for this comment he made 10 years before. We were making small talk at the linguists lunch after finals. I struggled to attribute any kind of sympathetic personality to this man whom I considered to be no more than an enormous brain, so at the time the comment didn't hit home. I'm sure the fruit punch didn't help. Years later I felt a great surge of gratitude for his generosity, so I wrote to him. He wrote back and told me that my letter had meant more to him than all the accolades he had received during his academic career.

These days I want to know "How am I shining and where am I going?"

"Do you want to come to a Quireboys concert?" Little did I know that the rugby yob striding towards me through the rain outside the porter's lodge was destined one day to become my husband. He'd chased me - unsuccessfully - for months, usually plucking up courage to speak to me only after consuming an inordinate amount of alcohol down the Mill on a Thursday night. But this was a Tuesday. He found himself asking the question, and I found myself replying "OK".

These days I ask myself "What new opportunity will I find myself taking today?"

"Will you marry me?" This question came exactly 5 years and 7 days after our trip to the Corn Exchange to see the Quireboys. He smuggled chilled champagne and 2 flutes into the anniversary suite at the hotel, then was irked when I switched on the TV to catch up with Neighbours immediately on arrival. But eventually he got my attention and went down on one knee. There was no ring - he wanted us to choose it together - but I remember lying in a bath full of bubbles sipping champagne and allowing myself to imagine the most beautiful wedding ever. I was committed, and blissfully happy.

These days I ask myself "What am I committed to?"

"So if you want to be a writer, write!" I was in awe of the woman from Logistics Planning. Not only did she know about warehouse picking and haulage companies, she'd just been telling me that what she really wanted to be was a novelist. She was working up a few ideas and had actually made a start on her book. I was probably salivating, hanging on her every word, hoping that some of her drive and ambition might rub off on me. I was probably wibbling about how I really wanted to be a writer, how that was a real childhood dream, that I'd even receieved a commendation in the WH Smith Young Writers' Competition when I was 11. And now here I was a Management Traine at WH Smith instead. Then she asked me what I was writing currently. And I probably mumbled "nothing really". At which point she uttered the line which still has the power to make me pick up my pen and write morning pages at the absolute minimum.

These days I just say "Bloody Well Write!" Sometimes there's no room for reflection. Sometimes you've just got to get into action. These are the most powerful kicks up the backside I can remember.

Purple Swans

The spare room is now complete and resplendent in its new colour scheme of violet white. It only took a couple of days - mostly because I cheated and only attempted to change the colour of the walls and nothing else. So the "amethyst" carpet remains, as does the lilac ceiling, the mauvish wood-work and radiator, and the lavender curtains.

The walls were painted with a roller and brush I found in the garage, and the bed dragged to the middle of the room and covered with a fusty old dust cover I found next to the roller and brush.

Proud of my thriftiness, I decided to treat the bed to some new linen, and was delighted to find a complete set - duvet cover, fitted sheet and pillow cases - on offer in M&S for under £50. Hurrah! So with paint, polythene dust covers to protect the carpet, new bedding and a new tidy rail so our guests don't have to persist in arranging their clothes all over the carpet, the makeover budget only just broke the £100 mark.

Mission Declutter has made a positive start. Life already feels simpler and more ordered. At last, the laundry room having been cleared out a few weeks ago, after hubby revealed the computer kit that was languishing next to the washing machine was no longer needed, I now have a proper routine for washing and ironing - without risking my neck everytime I go into the utility room for fear of tripping over cables and bits of server. It makes it a whole lot easier to be able to load the washing machine from the front instead of having to crane round and shove clothes in from the side because there's too much junk in the way. No wonder I've got a bad back!

I've managed to find a home for the mountain of books that were balanced precariously next to my bed. So now getting into bed no longer involves stubbing my toes on a long-forgotten volume by Trinny and Susannah; and when I get out of bed I no longer have to place my feet an uncomfortable distance away and then arch my back dangerously upwards in order to allow my shoulders to catch up with my feet and bring myself to a vertical position.

Mission Declutter is certainly proving both physically and mentally freeing. I can think far more clearly about things when I don't have to look at an untidy mound of stuff in front of me everywhere I go. And chores speed up, so I'm not spending such a long time doing the things that need to be done to keep domestic life ticking over. This means I can get on with the things I really like doing - like blogging, or researching my talk to the Swindon Philosophical Society, or having my Mum down for a visit.

The spare room project represents a purple patch of domestic order and calm. Meanwhile those little swan legs are paddling hard below the surface.

Unlocking Mission Declutter

Rather than finding the key to the filing cabinet this time I discovered that shifting the old filing cabinet was the key to unlock Mission Declutter. The brown and beige 2 drawer filing cabinet, which we'd bought on a budget 15 years ago, when we first joined the property ladder and needed somewhere to dump the aforementioned bumf that various financial institutions would send us, had to be shifted in order to make room for the large bookcase out of the spare bedroom. The bookcase out of the spare bedroom needs to be shifted so that I can redecorate the room.

So like one of those puzzles that you have to slide tiles around in order to create the picture, pieces of furniture needs to be shifted around between permanent and temporary homes and back again.

The redecorating of our spare room is long overdue. When we first moved in we were so bored by the perpetual beige and brown of the previous residents' decor that we decided to go radical. So one evening, over a bottle or two of red wine, we devised our colour schemes. The spare room became a riot of purple and orange, and I’m sure that guests of ours over the years have been rudely jolted into their Sunday morning hangovers by the violent clash taking place on the walls surrounding their bed.

The joke, if ever it was one, is wearing a bit thin now, and once again we are beckoned towards the safe haven of “neutrals”.

I used to be a project manager and I know about things like critical paths, milestones, plans, objectives and costs. I also know about risk management and contingencies, resource planning and implementation. It gives me a huge degree of satisfaction to plot the sequence of tasks that must be undertaken to ensure that nothing blocks the critical path and that all risks are averted.

Of course, in my relatively modest project called Mission Declutter, the risk management amounts to taking down the curtains before I start painting, and the contingency planning hinges upon the number of coats of neutral paint I’m going to need to cover the dark vileness that currently adorns the walls.

But now the filing cabinet has been moved the only thing that blocks my progress is lugging the great bookcase down the stairs. I have done my resource planning – having cleverly worked out that I require hubby’s assistance for this task, and sensibly acknowledged that I’ll have to wait ‘til the weekend, ‘til after he’s played golf on Saturday morning, before that milestone can be reached.

And with that I’m off to take down the curtains.

Wake up - it's September!

Always at this time of year I feel a huge amount of motivation to start new projects, and turn over new leaves.

This year is no exception as I've embarked on MISSION DECLUTTER, to get the house organised and do a bit of decorating, so I can feel life running smoothly.

Whenever there's a lot of stuff lying around I find it increasingly difficult to move, and think. Stepping over stuff all the time is extremely distracting, and fighting the huge pile of books, files and papers strewn around my desk makes it literally impossible to see the wood for the trees.

My first task has been to clear out our old filing cabinet - a grotty old metal one from Office World - which has been groaning under the weight of expired insurance documents, financial information and old tax returns for far too long.

A couple of years ago, my brother, a gifted carpenter and furniture builder, created a brand new filing cabinet for us, which truly is a thing of beauty. Today it has finally been commissioned for its intended use, rather than being used as a docking station for one of hubby's computers.

As I was going through all the bumf out of the old cabinet I grew increasingly irritated by the amount of paper issued by financial institutions, often with only a single line of information on about this or that investment, more frequently with reams of information you couldn't pay me to read and inwardly digest. It became clear that, like us, thousands of good people of the world must avail themselves of "private banking", to spread their financial assets across a wide range of global funds, only to be rewarded with tons of poshly bound paper reports that tell them a) their investment has dropped in value and b) the bank will charge an admin fee of £120 for the privilege of sharing this information with its valued (?) customers. What a racket!

I also have absolutely no idea what the global investment funds represent. Are they ethical - or do they sponsor capitalist activity which is actually exploitative or detrimental to natural resources? This is a big deal for me. And I feel blinded by financial gobbledegook.

Anyhow, of course I'm not blaming the banks for putting this stuff in my decrepit filing cabinet in the first place - I guess hubby and I had a hand in doing that - but I am waking up to how easy it is to go along with someone else's investment policy or approach without really understanding or appreciating what's involved, or the impact of our actions. Posh banks with their fancy bindings appear to legitimise everything - but is our money that is inevitably trickling away actually being put to good use, or are we just lining the pockets of smarmy city boys?

Like the clutter in my house this is something I'm not happy about stepping over any longer!