Thinking Blossoms

Spring is pushing through

The hard ground is starting to let little green shoots push through from bulbs. Tree leaf buds are fattening and a few brave cherry trees are in blossom. It's a lovely time because there's still the inward quality of winter when it might be cold, bleak, dricht, dark and iced-up outside but it's a good time for getting things planned and getting things done. It's as if our personal and professional lives are like fat bulbs and buds, forming, strengthening and preparing to break out into shoots, leaves and blossoms.

Magic! What are you preparing to bring into being. Have you got the right growing conditions? What will you be up to the minute the weather warms up?

Here in the UK it's been long cold winter, not easy for many people, and I'm looking forward to what happens when spring does arrive.

The Must-Have Book for Wealthy Authors This Christmas

My friends and publishers, Debbie Jenkins and Joe Gregory, are doing a special Christmas launch with
over £150 of bonuses when you buy just one copy of their new book - The Wealthy Author - before Friday 18th December 2009.

http://www.publishingacademy.com/122-10-5-13.html

For just £15 (or $25) you'll get a print copy of their acclaimed book, Free access to Publishing Academy for 30 days and loads of bonus content, ebooks and resources all authors and budding authors will love.

http://www.publishingacademy.com/122-10-5-13.html

I won't say any more here, other than they've also limited this launch to the first 200 people to buy because they want to ensure all their new customers are well looked after.

If you're interested then Debbie has a personal message for you with instructions here... http://www.publishingacademy.com/122-10-5-13.html

Note: Debbie and Joe asked me personally to share this message with my contacts so, if you get a message like this more than once congratulations! You're moving in the right social circles!

Don't accept less energy.

Well, I am way behind with posting here, and it's not for lack of things to write about. I think, although of course I can't prove it, that the malaria prophylaxis my daughter and I were taking for being in high risk areas in Uganda and Kenya was weighing me down. That, plus the fact we couldn't eat that well there - very little salad stuff unless we were sure the water was safe - might have been why I was such a blimp when I got home even though I'd been having plenty of rest and recreation, see above ;-). I was doing the essentials, muddling along, weathering a cold and having to have little rests on the sofa during the day. yuck! instant old age. Perhaps I should include a photo of the sofa.... It was as if although I had ideas for what to do it was very hard to connect the ideas with taking action. That meant there was a confusing build-up of possibilities, like things washed up on the beach, but little to show for it at the end of each day. That was even though I was eating really well again.

I had the sense to find out more about malaria prophylaxis and tracked down a Chinese herb, Artemisia Annua. I am now taking that for the rest of the month, post-risk area, that one has to have to prevent malaria.

Result!  I have my strength of will back. I'm getting things done and I've got far more energy and skip in my step, even though I'm in the far north winds of Edinburgh after the gentle reliable heat of Africa. I'm ready to tell you what I was up to there too, but there's a learning here for me that I'd like to share first.

I let a lack of wellness become the status-quo for too long, she says, pointing a wiggly little finger at herself. Some people call that a toleration. I was accepting less energy and not being nearly alert enough to the fact that there were simple practical steps to be taken to put things right. In my case it was sorting out a medical issue - the fact that I was drugging myself on antibiotics when in fact there was another way to ward off malaria. That was a wake up call not to put up with being under the weather.

The moral here of course is to look at whatever you are tolerating in terms of being less than well and to do whatever you need to do about it, as a priority. Like the little oxygen masks that the air stewards tell you about on the plane, you have to put yours on first and then help others :-)

Talking about planes,

here we are in Kenya, heading for the coast:

A completely fresh start - with support.

So, following on from the last post - do read it through to make sense of this one if you have just happened by - perhaps you now have a list of possible New Year Resolutions. Perhaps you have a list of definite resolutions. Perhaps you have one or two specific resolutions that of themselves could significantly change your life. Put them/it on paper in front of you and/or at the centre of your thoughts.

The picture I've chosen from a recent walk when snow was falling thickly is of a walkway and a bridge in Colinton Dell in Edinburgh. In snow all the details are obliterated and only the shapes and structures can be clearly seen.

The metaphor for me here is of the possibility of this time of year (northern hemisphere that is) of a completely fresh start. There's not a deciduous leaf in sight. All that is to be recreated in spring. There are two spindly trees in the middle covered in ivy, and without getting into discussion on ivy in particular it might be worth looking again at your list in terms of which resolutions are deciduous and which evergreen. Deciduous would be for specific time-limited goals and possibilities and evergreen of course are the perennials which stay on the list. These might be health-related resolutions and ones based on knowing your character well and what you have to do to support the survival of your best self. If there's anything left on your list of resolutions that is there because it was there last year, but that isn't really, totally,important and relevant to you now and in the future cross it off. Missing it already? reword it in a way that is up to date.

In terms of making your resolutions stick, actually carrying through with them to receive the benefits you sense are possible, there's another interesting metaphor here. What really catches my eye in the photo are the man-made structures, the stark beauty of the steps down to the river and of the bridge.What do you make of them in your imagination?

You have the ideal New Year's resolutions and you know you will keep them. Yeah right :-)

Unless your life is totally sorted and you have a neat little list of the perfect resolutions for 2008 that you can guarantee you'll keep this post is for you!

Are New Year's resolutions an out-dated tradition or a valuable creative tool? The former, if you don't really think them through or set yourself up to fail The latter if you like.....

This is a 'Carpe Diem' seize-the-moment moment. Everyone else is ending, completing, tidying up and finishing off, if they haven't already. The moment to be seized is a clean slate, a fresh start.

For this blog I decided to work out a system for creating resolutions for me, to test it out on me and then to share it with you, even if it is already three days into 2008. Here goes.

The photo shows steps into a labyrinth, the kind where you follow the way into the centre and out again and it can be a very steadying and refreshing process. I'm playing with it as an image of 2008, into the middle by about June and out again at the end of December. And here are some steps for the first days.

First I decided to review 2007, starting with everything I could/should/would have wanted to/planned and didn't/intended/wished I'd have..... Interesting. I expected to be putting up with some discomfort, but it didn't turn out that way at all. I thought the list might just keep going and fall off the bottom of the page, creative being that i am. But, well, why not have a go and see what happens for you? Before you read the next bit...

Before you make your New Year's Resolutions

It really is winter!

This photo of dawn through branches and trees along a ridge leaves no doubt. The light in the sky behind shows the tracery of branches bare of leaves. There's few enough leaves to count them! (click on photo to enlarge)

Please ignore the date, I haven't figured out how to remove it, and it isn't right anyway...

What's the invitation of this winter image? I'm seeing it as a metaphor for looking at the basic structure of your personal and professional life.

It's all very well making New Year's resolutions, a very good idea in fact if you can set yourself up to succeed with keeping them (coaching offers brilliant support with following through) - more about that in another posting - but where are you standing when you make your resolutions? Are you very clear about where you are now? Are you sure about which resolutions will support what you are already doing in your life and what you want to develop in the year ahead?

Here's an exercise you can try....

 

Motivation and Dawn

This image stays in my imagination because of the contrast it contains.

There's the hillside covered with dry autumn bracken and it is lit up in pink by the dawn light. (click on picture to enlarge) It's got me thinking of the two rhythms within which we live, the rhythm of the year and the rhythm of the day.

In autumn there's the dying back of leaves and stems. Plants take their life energy back inside or encapsulate it in seed and spore form. In a sense we  retreat inside too. By analogy for us, that can be about harvesting, letting go, ending projects, cutting losses, retreating - even hibernation of some parts of ourselves if we don't watch out. It's the polar opposite of the flourishing of the new.

However, at the same time, there's also the daily rhythm. Everyday, even when there are thick grey clouds, there's a dawn. We get a fresh start everyday. That's an awareness worth keeping in mind when things are tough, motivation is lacking and it isn't easy to find a way forward. There's always a new possibility in the morning, perhaps the dawning of a new insight or some common sense, perhaps seeing things in a new light.

It's worth fine-tuning your awareness of the rhythm of the seasons and of the day. How might you make the most of the new start offered each day in any season, at any stage of a project?

The Best Harvests Are?

For this photo I was walking around the town wall in Conwy in North Wales and noseying down into someone's garden, into a very perfect little autumn kingdom,  ladder against fruit tree, lush profusion of plants. And look at those Victoria Plums (click on photo to enlarge), yum. This is harvest time.

Time to turn in perhaps to one's own world, be that the world of work, of business or of home. Nature is changing on the outside and there's a richness to take inside. What is there for you to harvest this year? What kinds of crops? What has done well?  We can plant seeds and plants, raise and care for them, prune, feed, whatever, but we can't predict exactly how well they will do or how external factors will play in.

 

Unconscious and Conscious

I went for a walk early this morning. Overcast, 'not very promising' is what people might say, but it was good. I find any walk in nature is good, and unique. I walked along lanes slippery with leaves and down into this valley in the woods.

I was looking down between the three trunks of an old tree. (click on photo to enlarge) It's quite a dark photo as I was relying on natural light. I wanted to catch the relative brightness of the leaves. I liked the reflection of the sky in the stream bringing in light.

It's a primeval experience, going into the wild woods. In old stories, such as those collected in Grimm's stories, going into the woods can be symbolic of going into the 'unconscious' or less-known, less explored, parts of oneself. Once one enters the 'wild woods' of one's own nature there is plenty to explore and know. I was carrying with me a whisp of something from the waking edge of sleep and it became clearer to me what that was.

Roses and everyday tasks

So why have I chosen a photo of roses when I'm thinking about all the ordinary everyday tasks of life? The unending paper tasks, the dishes, the tidying up, the book-keeping, report-writing, preparing meals and all of that?

Its because roses are ubiquitous, well in August in Britain they are, and in my imagination too. Nothing unusually special about roses is there? They grow everywhere in such variety. Wild ones, tame ones, neatly clipped, climbing all over the place, forgotten in corners, waiting in garden centres, heavy with rain, scented, pale, richly coloured, budding, in full bloom, blowing and turning to rosehips. Wherever you have been walking this summer you'll have seen them, whether that's in gardens or parks or out in the country.

These in the photo (click to photo to enlarge) were ones I walked past everyday in Cambridge. Noticing them enriched my day. How?