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I know EXACTLY what I want to to – I just need to build it out and launch. And in the process I plan to bust some old beliefs that I’m great at ideas and vision, but cr@p at execution. I no longer believe that story…but I do know I’m slow because I see all the connections, implications and complexity. And this is my business, on my terms, my way – I want my arms around it all – to understand it inside and out. So I’m up to my ears in tech stuff just now – building out products in MemberVault, building new landing pages on my WordPress website, connecting to Thrivecart, integrating with ActiveCampaign so the right people get the right emails at the right time. 

The products are already created (that bit I find easy), but building the means for people to learn about them, pay for them, access them and get real value and impact from them without me having to hand-crank it all is what I’m learning and building. 

It’s like a massive interconnected jigsaw; the picture on the box in my head is simply beautiful, elegant, meaningful – but it’s all still in pieces.

I may be doing it myself – but I’m not alone. I learned THAT lesson a long time ago. For example, my design skills are minimal, and I want it to be gorgeous, so the wonderful Jess Lynn is helping me with the design and branding. The simply awe-inspiring Vicky Etherington IS the Website mentor, cheerleading me, giving me the belief and technical know-how and generous hand-on support to help me get over my fear of WordPress (seriously, she is one of the most awe-inspiring women I know, and she has no idea how fabulous she is). Jo Rogers is helping me with the legal aspects and T’s & C’s. Jo is making legal expertise accessible and affordable to small businesses and I applaud her for what she’s doing with Navistar Legal. And Matt Thomas has been my mentor, creative sparring partner and is just an all round good guy. There’s no way this would have come together as far as it has without him. I’ve made more progress on my business in the 10 months I’ve been in his IN Crowd, than I have in the last 13 years. And of course I’ve some wonderful clients, who have been willing guinea-pigs, testing out the concepts, and really doing the work (you know who you are!). So I’m definitely not alone, I’m well supported – but there’s still SO much to learn and do.

So, yesterday I hit a brick wall; I felt stuck, frustrated, tearful, overwhelmed, exhausted. It was too hard, I was losing hours I didn’t have trying and failing to create what I wanted in the back end of my website. I’d lost sight of what it was I was trying to do (the “picture on the box”); I was too enmeshed in the small stuff and it felt like one of those dreams when you just..can’t…get…to…where..you…want… over and over. I’d slept TERRIBLY the night before, waking at 2pam, then 4am, eventually giving up and starting work at 5 (yes, I know – those who know me well will be astonished as sleep is normally one of my superpowers). 

By last night I just felt like giving up. So I surrendered. Shut down the laptop, abandoned my office, let go and went to bed early….and slept like a log.

This morning I woke late, but PING! Wide awake, seeing it all clearly. 

DOH! I had the answer all along. Right under my nose. I’d even been writing and sharing about it just this very week!

I’d said it myself – it feels like a jigsaw. I love difficult jigsaws. And what do I do when I get stuck doing a beautiful difficult jigsaw? I step back, take a break, regroup, study the picture again, then start working on a different part of the jigsaw, because the more other pieces fall into places, the easier it is to find what’s missing. It works every time. It’s only ever stubbornness and misplaced pride that keeps me agonising over why I can’t find how to put the pieces together on an obscure section.

Yes, of course, I needed a metaphor to help me see the answer (face slap)! Working with metaphor is a key aspect of one of my beautiful new personal development programmes “What’s Inside?”. Doh, walk the talk Rachel!

So today I’m full of energy, revitalised, and back in flow working on other parts of the mammoth list of tasks for me to do…I’ll come back to what I’m stuck on another day, when it will no longer feel overwhelming or impossible.

So maybe, just maybe, a jigsaw will have saved my launch! Watch this space to see if it has…

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Every now and then, a word forces its way into my life. Usually it’s a word that’s just always been in my periphery – not part of my day to day language, and usually one where I have only a very vague sense of what it actually means.

Until it starts urgently whispering in my ear by popping up more and more often in unexpected places and odd contexts. It gets louder and louder, like a small child looking for my attention, until with a sigh I have to stop what I’m doing and turn to find out what it’s all about.

The most recent word finally got me to stop and listen to it properly the morning. And oh, it is a beautiful word. I understand now why it’s been haunting me, drifting in and out of my awareness. But only after I’d looked it up..

Liminal

I like the way the word feels in my mouth, playfully connecting and bouncing between tongue and palette, onto lips and back again. It’s sound reminds me of a sigh.

Liminal

And it’s meanings are perfect for the place I find myself on so many levels. Coming from the Latin for threshold, it can describe a barely perceptible sensory boundary; and it can describe the space in between, as we let go of what we once were and before we become what we will be. It’s a word that means between or belonging to two different places, states, phases, conditions. It’s a wonderful word to hold us in not-knowingness, to help us be safely lost.

Menopause, my physical liminal stage; stepping away from employment and building the foundations of my new business; not quite locked down, not quite free; old society constructs challenged and crumbling, the new not yet emerging.

Ah yes, my life is liminal, and I love it. No wonder the word wanted me to find it, even teasing me with a subliminal gentle play on words! 

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Generally I’m a night owl who loves long lazy lie-ins. I sleep well and deep and long. But every now and then my subconscious  finishes its processing work way earlier and then excitedly tugs at my sleeve saying, ”Wake up, wake up! I’ve got something wonderful to tell you.”

And that’s how it was this morning, so I propelled myself out of bed, pulling on a jumper and jeans over my pj’s, then tiptoed out the back door into the damp grey morning light.

The rabbits in the playing field at the back of the house froze in shock, and a couple of blackbirds chattered indignantly at me. But I strode off purposely into the woods (secretly hoping to catch sight of deer – no luck), and began to tune into my internal chatter.

Yesterday I had a stimulating day with some wonderful fellow coaches exploring aspects of human adult development. The theory can feel a bit cognitive and dry, but when I open up my whole neurology to the exploration it comes alive and beautiful; and I can feel myself growing and opening to new possibility.

And that’s what my subconscious wanted to talk to me about. As we continue to grow and change throughout our lives, our sense making and how we make meaning changes too. We see how things we once held as absolute are anything but. Our ability to hold complexity, nuance, other perspectives and self awareness expands and grows (if we allow it to).

We grow up. But being ‘grown up’ doesn’t mean losing a sense of magic, wonder or joyfulness and replacing it with a heavy burden of responsibilities and duty. This morning’s walk had me musing on what I had erroneously let go of in earlier stages of my development and as part of growing up. Things we somehow foolishly decide are ‘childish’ and need to be put aside if we are to be mature.

Whereas they are often the very attributes we need to help us to continue to grow  – open light-hearted curiosity, playfulness and experimentation, imagination, being in our bodies, feeling our emotion, not just being in our head. And many many more.

A child may not yet have the self awareness, or ability to hold multiple perspectives. They may not yet be able to grasp complexity, systems or paradox. But as they grow in their capacities, we should also encourage them to hold on to those amazing attributes that will help them navigate the world and other people when they are older, not squash or discourage their ‘childish’ ways.

So I returned to the house, my feet and clothes soaked from the morning dew in the fields and woods, my hands tingling from the sensations of running my hands over the crops in the fields, ears ringing from a deafening morning chorus, and smiling with delight at feeling spontaneous and alive. I’m glad to find I didn’t let go of my child as I grew up; she’s still right here inside with much to teach me, should I choose to listen.

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But we’re not in control, we’re in co-existence. And we can’t neatly isolate events and our response to them. At any one time we’re processing and responding to multitudes of events external to ourself. It’s complex, it’s messy…and it’s ok.

At any one time we’re both changing and static, losing and gaining, grieving and greeting. Our lives are full of paradox and apparent contradictions that are confusing to us when we are used to thinking in absolutes.

If our meaning making revolves around right or wrong, black or white, good or bad we can get befuddled and upset when we realise life is about AND not OR and that two apparently contradictory states can co-exist.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross famously and beautifully framed five stages and responses to dying, and then adapted them for grief. Her co-author David Kessler has since gone on to frame a 6th stage. These stages (or subtle variations thereof) are also now widely used to frame any change we may face, personally and professionally.

The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and meaning. The stages are not linear, or absolute. Despite our desire for them to be, they are not neat little boxes for us to tuck our emotions into, to be taken out in an orderly and organised fashion at a suitable time. Everyone’s response is unique, and in motion.

Personally I see the stages as ripples or waves. Something external to ourselves impacts – like a pebble thrown into our water. Our response ripples out in waves of emotion. But there is rarely one event; pebbles, gravel, rocks and great big bloody boulders are tossed into our water at different times – each with their own ripple pattern. Now our anger in one ripple meets our acceptance in another, our depression intersects with meaning from another event. Now it’s hard to know and tease apart cause and effect in any neat way. It feels confused and choppy. We worry what is wrong with us.

There’s nothing ‘wrong’…our emotions will flow through and ripple out if we simply allow them to be without judgement.

We can ride the waves through self acceptance, protected by building a raft of self-compassion. Stay gentle and kind with yourself amidst all the confusion – become more comfortable with what’s uncomfortable. It’s ok sometimes to simply not know, and instead to just…be.

And reach out to others you trust and let them hold kind, accepting space for you to let go. Find those who can stand by you and remind you that life is the light AND the dark, the joy AND the sorrow. They co-exist simultaneously without cancelling each other out; you can feel one, without denying or dishonouring the other.

Life’s messy, and beautiful, and wondrous and confusing. When we let go of our illusion of control…ahh, then we can feel truly alive.

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I realised it was time to stop seeking. It’s time for me to accept that I have ENOUGH.

I have enough books, and course materials. I have enough knowledge and experience. I have enough clothes and gadgets. I have enough friends and connections. I have enough clients. I have enough money. I am loved enough.

My parenting is enough.

My home is enough.

My body is enough…

…I am enough.

Right now, for now, in this moment…I am ENOUGH.

That doesn’t mean that nothing will change. It doesn’t mean I don’t want things to be better…for me to be better. It doesn’t mean my business won’t grow, or I won’t do new things. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect – far from it.

It doesn’t mean I give up.

It does mean I let go.

I let go of shame.

I let go of striving and always pushing on; too focussed on the future to notice the present.

I let go of beating myself up.

I let go of comparisons.

I let go of the continual search for answers outside of myself.

I let go of letting other people’s opinions shape and distort who I am.

And it does mean I start noticing and appreciating all that I have.

More and more I begin:

To treasure and nurture the relationships I have;

To nourish and appreciate the body I have;

To maintain and enjoy my home and garden;

To pay attention and tend to my money, and my assets;

To enjoy, and use all the ‘things’ I possess – exploring my existing wardrobe in new ways, reading and rereading that enormous pile of books, completing the online learning and classes I’ve bought in the past and never fully utilised, using the food in my larder, and fridge and freezer (..ok I confess for this last one I still rely on my hubby – my cooking is definitely on the ‘just about adequate’ end of the spectrum of enough!)

And as I do this I realise I have more than I ever knew. I realise I AM more than I believed.

The paradox is the more I stop trying to change, the faster and easier it is to become the person I’ve always wanted to be.

I discover I didn’t need to try to change all this time – to strive to be somewhere or someone else.

Simply opening all my senses to what is present right now gently eases me into an irresistible flow, a natural growth, that feels nourishing, and simple. It’s like an awakening and unfolding – perhaps an ‘aware-ing up’, as well as a waking up.

So on those days that feel difficult, when a sudden sadness or anxiety appears that I should be doing, or being something other, the soothing reminder to self that I have enough, I am enough is a balm to my soul.

And you. The same is true for you too, you know. You are enough, if you are willing to open your eyes to see it, if you have the courage to look deep within and explore all of who you are – the light AND the dark. Look into the shadows and you will discover you have and are more than you know…

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But then – a blessing! I hit a spell of commitments that gave me the opportunity to slow the pace and catch my breath because they involved long train journeys. I like train journeys. The motion, the countryside flicking past, the ability to be alone in a crowd (headphones firmly in) allows me to drop into reflective trance. Jumbled thoughts are sifted into place by the riddling of the tracks. I can hide myself without guilt on a train journey, blaming intermittent phone signal and dodgy wifi, knowing it’s still a journey taking me to something or somewhere where I will be of service to others.

I often write about how it’s not selfish to put yourself first, but I confess, although I absolutely know that to be true, I’m not sure I’d caught how habitual the guilt I feel is when I do something just for me. I noticed it in my reaction to something Dan Meredith shared (I’ve recently started following him) about catching a train to nowhere, to claim the space to think. I immediately thought “how delicious – what a guilty pleasure that would be!” But then wondered why I feel apologetic and guilty about doing something that helps me to be at my best? So I’ve made a commitment to myself to catch the guilt when it arises and practise shifting it to something that’s more true. I won’t lose the habit of guilt overnight, but that’s ok – life’s one long practice.

And to underline that a train to nowhere still takes you somewhere, I’ve just had two days training (which also felt like a guilty indulgence, instead of a professional essential – doh, Rachel!). It was on ORSC (Organisation and Relationship Systems Coaching), which taught me the fundamental mindset shift – in my usual coaching my attention is wholly on the human being I’m with, but in ORSC the relationship or the system is the client, so attention shifts to the spaces in between!

Space is not empty, nowhere is not nothing. There’s richness and beauty in the gaps, and my introverted soul is very at home spending time there if I simply give myself permission to be.

Hmm -perhaps a bit obscure today, but I’m just back from a place deep inside of me. If you fancy hanging out with some similarly deep and obscure people, come ask to join us over at our closed FB group Introvert by Nature (we’ll ask you some questions before you can come in, but I make no apology for not just letting anybody in!)

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About the same time, I also ran out of charge. I had one of those days when I just had no energy, no oomph. I couldn’t focus on anything, or see a task through to completion. My brain felt like it had shut down – I didn’t even have enough energy for my inner critic to have a go, and she’s normally so chatty! All I wanted to do was crawl off to bed, shut down and shut out the world. So, that’s what I did (just for a very little time); a short nap got enough juice back into my system for me to work out what was going on.

I also have a lot of internal ‘apps’. I’ve an app for the kids, and another one for the logistics around their multitudinous activities. I’ve an app for my hubby – and whether he’s away with work or not, which links to the kids and logistics apps. It also links to the catering app. And the house app (boiler on the bloody blink again, no hot water argghh…must call the plumber). There’s a garden app. There’s a whole suite of apps that go with the business, and another whole suite that go with my full time job (and that has A LOT of apps running right now). There’s a health and fitness app, a ‘musing about big questions about life, the universe and everything’ app, a finance app, holiday app…I could go on and on.

Actually, perhaps I should call them ‘atts’ rather than apps, because these are all things that need my attention. And they all take energy. I’m an introvert, so I recharge internally with alone time and space to reflect without external demands. External stimulation, no matter how pleasant, will drain my energy if I don’t get to introvert too. Multi-tasking also drains me – very quickly. Too many apps (atts) open at once.

So time for some battery management – one thing at a time. And I want to trust myself that if I mentally close an app as I move to the next thing, I won’t drop the ball. I can simply re-open the app and pick up where I left off when I need to, because there’s too much to leave it all open and running in the background. No guilt necessary – just focused attention and energy management!

Now, where’s that charger to get my battery back to 100%?!

BTW, if you’re an introvert too and fancy hanging out (quietly) with some fellow internal re-chargers, for gentle sharing, reassurance and nourishing the soul, I’ve a closed Facebook Group called Introvert by Nature. Come knock on the door – if you’re able to answer the secret entry questions, we’ll let you in!

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