I normally write my blogs when I get up on a Saturday morning. When I was in the groove a few years ago, it was my Saturday morning routine. During the pandemic at one point it was a daily routine. I found it incredibly helpful in managing my well-being. More recently I lost that routine until 4 weeks ago when I started again. 4 weeks ago I felt lost, I was worried that I was becoming depressed again. My bandwidth was narrow and there was just too much happening. I decided to try writing again, to see if would start to improve my well-being. In the short term after my first blog, it did I got some lovely feedback and my ego was certainly massaged, it felt good to be appreciated. That feeling didn’t last, I didn’t really expect to either, one blog is not going to have that kind of affect. I got a similar response after my second blog, but after the third I felt a dramatic shift in my mood and capacity to manage what is going on around me. I am not saying it was just writing the blogs that has made the difference but what it has done is start a shift in my mindset and got me reconnecting with what is important to me. After last weekend I have started to feel more balanced and able to quieten my mind long enough to see what is going on around me and see my thoughts and feelings for what they are, which is that they are just thoughts and feelings and not my reality. They are there for data to guide my actions, not to dictate them.
So, why do I write my blogs on a Saturday morning? When I start writing I am generally the only person up, so I can start to think about what I am going to write which is helpful. Lisa normally gets up whilst I am writing (she has just walked into the room now), which is fine as my thought process has already started. The other reason for writing on a Saturday is that it helps me reflect and make sense of the week I have just lived through. As I have said before to help me sort my shit out. It has certainly started doing that over the past few weeks. I never really know what I am going to write about until I start writing, sometimes it comes quickly sometimes it takes a little longer to work through what is going on in my head. Last week I had several stops and starts and deleted the first paragraph several times until I had my thoughts in order. This week I wanted to write about the change I have noticed in my mental health since restarting these blogs. It is probably time to actually tell you about my week and how I feel different and why writing a blog helps.
Last Monday was the first time in months that I have not felt anxious on my way into work. I was very clear what my sense of purpose was and how I could achieve it. My purpose is to be useful, be courageous and enable others to improve. When I think about how to support others to improve I am energised, however I would often feel anxious when I felt I was not being useful enough and showing courage to get stuff done they it needs to be done. When I lean into my courage and trust that what I do is useful I can realise my desire to enable people and teams to improve and that makes me feel energetic and fulfilled. As each day has gone by this week I have felt more energised. This week has been challenging, with a lot going on, in particular yesterday had the potential to be overwhelming, but it didn’t feel like that, it felt exciting, there were times when I did feel that I could be overwhelmed by it all, and I definitely had to draw on my courage to dive in. Previously I might have worried that I was not being useful enough and would have tried to rescue everybody and take too much on. But having the balance of courage and usefulness allowed me to support people to do what they needed to do to improve the situation for themselves. All week there have been I series of separate problems in front of me, some big like one that came to the fore yesterday and another that is long standing and I started work with this week, and others being smaller and more contained. All of them needed attention and all of them needed not to be overengineered, which I might have done when my bandwidth was much narrower.
This week on a personal level has been a fulfilling week, it did feel like I had turned a corner and my thoughts and feelings were lined up with my values. The lesson I have learned, which is a lesson I probably have to learn periodically is to keep your purpose in your eyeline, if you lose sight of your sense of purpose and do not align your values with what you do it is so easy to lose your way. There is something else that I have just reflected on as I am writing this and it is something I have heard before, but this experience has made it real for me, is that life is not static, we do not walk along a straight clear path, we walk along an ever changing route that is often uncertain and dynamic. Our purpose and values may shift because of the part of the route we are on, so be open to changing your approach and re-evaluating your values and purpose, but never lose sight of them.
Have a fabulous weekend everyone.
Connected Coaching 