October Insights

I hope this months email finds you as well as can be. This months newsletter is all about acceptance and integrity. Things I wish for all of us in such difficult times as these.

Insight 1: Failure is a greater teacher than success.

We can only learn if we are willing to be taught. If we are not willing to experience, and through that come to understand new things, our system will attempt to stay in stasis. The difficulty of that is that life is ultimately first and foremost a teacher. We are all pupils, willing or not. We can either choose to work with that role, or we can rail against it and waste our precious energy fighting reality. Our energy is itself is rooted in reality. Water is real, the image of water does not contain water. In fighting reality, we are slowly emptying our cup of everything we need to truly be alive in this world.

Insight 2: Being at war with reality steals our energy, vision, and agency.

Building on the insight above, a key theme in my client work is acceptance. Acceptance means actively choosing the reality of a situation or person, over the idealistic fantasy of that situation/person, and still advocating for and honouring our boundaries.

We humans can find it very difficult to accept things that are less than pleasant/ideal (and are often actually downright unjust and painful) because what if in accepting reality we lose hope for a better future? The paradox is that the fantasy holds us in a form of stasis, where no actual positive change could ever happen anyway. It's a holding pattern. Once we accept the lie of the land, however painful, we are at least able to see our options, make our choices, and take conscious action. It's a hard road - reality. The acceptance that our ideals are just that. Reality is also where all of our agency lies.

Insight 3: You make sense. Your response to life and its challenges makes sense. Once you get clear on why that is, you have the keys to unlocking new ways of being.

So many of us question why we feel the way we do, why we do what we do. When we unpick the confusion, what we find is that everything we do and feel is in reaction to things that have been fed to us, modelled to us or have happened to us. Doing the emotional, relational and functional maths is the first step to unlocking new ways of being and experiencing the world. It is incredibly helpful and empowering to accept that we make sense up to now, and that we can move differently through the world from now.

Insight 4: "You are what you do, not what you say you'll do." - Carl Jung

Making (realistic!) promises, and keeping them , is an act and a practice of personal integrity. Keeping promises can strengthen our self-trust (aka confidence), whereas breaking our promised (rather than renegotiating - which is great!) can shrink us down.

Unrealistic promises set us up to fail, doubt, shame and judge ourselves. Broken promises lead the intended recipient to experience hurt (I/my feelings/needs/desires do not matter to you), disappointment (I do not get the want/need/desire fulfilled) and a perspective check (I am now questioning the idea I held of you/the trust I had bestowed on you).

For the recipient, it is useful to think about the potential difference between the spirit (intention) of the promise, and the actuality of what action is/can be taken. If the intention was there and the execution was poor, perhaps they did their best, and at this point that means more than getting things perfect. Allowing people grace is an act of great humanity and generosity. There are of course limits we reach with this, due to our own capacity to be let down.

It is important, as a recipient, to be radically honest with yourself. Did you already know the promise was unrealistic when they made it? (Setting people up to fail can be a subconscious choice when we are looking to punish or to bolster our own ego). Were you looking for someone to promise to meet needs that are really only able to be met by you? Sometimes we ask for promises of things we aren't really even able to recognise or receive.

A promise is essentially a contract - an agreement, and as with all agreements, honesty, clarity and respect is crucial if we are all to feel good about giving and receiving.

P.S...Here are three more ways you can experience my work...

1 - Tailored Resources - simply let me know via email what you are working through and I will send you some helpful pointers and materials

2 - Half day Deep dive - four hours of deeply focused time working through whatever it is you want to bring

3 - Full day immersion - this is a sacred time for magical unfolding, where we get to explore whatever emerges with no limit on where the time takes us

I love to connect - please do leave a comment or share with someone you think this might benefit.