listen
on using one mouth and two ears, and a bunch of other things
Hello, my dear Musers
It’s so lovely to have you here. I’m writing this late in the day as my day escaped me, possibly with the wind that howled through Melbourne today. The wind brought with it a dose of thick hayfever and a migraine so forgive me for any grammar and spelling issues in here. I was not going to push this issue out, but it is scheduled for today and I love to keep to my promises so here it is.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to get in the way of ourselves so that we don’t do the things that we love. I’ve been having a bunch of conversations with people lately who are struggling to attend to the thing that makes them sing (or dance, write, create). They throw a bunch of things (metaphorical or literal) in the way that create a sense of paralysis, inertia or overwhelm.
What about if they allowed themselves to just do the one thing that really makes them happy, the one thing that makes them feel alive?
'“Some people live ninety years, some people live one year ninety times.” - Mary Morrissey
When I listen to people talk about this problem that is sometimes masked as ‘I don’t enough time’, ‘when I finish x, then I’ll have time’ or ‘I need to find time’, it would be easy for me to jump in a start providing solutions, but this won’t help. The only thing it does is make me feel like a mighty rescuer and make them feel like a victim who needs rescuing.
Instead, it is more helpful to enter into these conversations with curiosity and to listen more than speak, to ask questions that help the person to unlock their potential and paralysis themselves. By doing this, they can grow.
Some useful questions for the person might be:
What do you really want to spend your time doing?
Why do you want to spend your time doing this?
Why is this important to you?
What do you get from doing the other things instead of this thing that you wish you were doing?
Through this line of questioning, deep listening and more questioning, I see their eyes light up. They reach that moment of realising they have the resources within themselves to prioritise their life to do the thing that they really love, or they know how to make the time to do it, or that the thing they spend their time doing is the thing that they really love. Some of these conversations have led to people wanting to explore this more with me as they recognise that there is no magical time in the future where time will be given to them on a platter so they can then spend their days living their passion.
Often, it is us who are in the way of ourselves and it is a shift in mindset that helps us to begin living the life we love.
“I’ve lived through some terrible things, and some of them actually happened.” - Mark Twain
It fills me with such joy to help others unlock their potential, and reminds me each time that I have chosen to pursue a life that is heart-led.
In other heart-filling thoughts, my April retreat is just around the corner and I’m so looking forward to working with the five writers. The retreats continue to fill up with only December and October retreats with vacancies and the April, June and August with waiting lists. My brain is ticking away thinking about what else I might be able to offer people who need time, space and clarity for their writing.
Mimi Kwa has started a mindfulness meditation course (free!) online with the first one tonight. It was great to have a moment to be quiet and meditate while also learning more about meditation and the importance of it to our health.
"For most people, their spiritual teacher is their suffering. Because eventually the suffering brings about awakening." - Eckhart Tolle
Season’s change
It is autumn and in Melbourne we have had a short burst of heat that felt more like summer than summer did. On Sunday, a good friend asked me if I’d like to go to the beach with her. After the last six weeks of being super busy with my coaching training, setting up my coaching business and organising the retreats for this year, my first thought was that I had Things To Do. All very important and earnest but all of it was not allowing me any time to just be.
We sat on Williamstown beach under my parents’ old beach umbrella and read our books, swanned around in the water and sat on my old beach chairs and chatted. It was the salve we both needed.
After we had talked about some more serious issues, she said that if it weren’t for friends, she’d really struggle dealing with it all. It was a great reminder about the importance of friendships, of drawing a friend close to share, listen, love.
The turn of the seasons also means that it is quite dark now when I was previously going for a walk, so I have flipped my exercise routine and am now swimming and gymming in the mornings and walking late in the day.
Five things
Jeannine Ouellette mentioned in a recent newsletter an exercise she called ‘Just Three Scraps’. The exercise applies constraint of only three things when creating. Constraint are useful when creating something and can bring some surprise to your craft. You can read more about the exercise in her newsletter from a year ago.
When my writing group went away last year, we attended an event at the Great Escape Bookshop in Aireys Inlet. I got chatting with a lovely woman and through that conversation, found out that she and her partner founded the amazing Green magazine, and more recently, the Walkers Journal. I subscribed straight away and whenever it arrives in my letterbox, I wistfully imagine I’m out hiking.
Last week, I went to the play of The Dictionary of Lost Words. From the moment I walked into the theatre, I was taken straight into the book. The set was exactly as I imagined the Scriptorium. The play was close the book and the actors did a fantastic job. The next night, M and I watched The Professor and The Madman on Netflix, based on Simon Winchester’s book The Surgeon of Crowthorne, another book of the building of the dictionary and again, a book I loved. Both are well worth seeing if you love words and dictionaries.
Pechakucha - have you heard about it? It’s a story told with 20 slides that are changed every 20 seconds. It sounds fun, interesting. Let me know in the comments if you have heard of it, or have played in that space.
Family dinners. They’re gaining momentum and last night I had a table full of young adults feasting on a good meal and great conversation. At the end of the night, one of them said that they love coming as, in the four years of living out of home, they have really missed having a family dinner.
Well, my friends, that is all for this fortnight.
Til next time,
x M