Category Archives: Musings

A Fresh New Day

I am one of the lucky ones.

Out at first light this morning in the crisp autumn air I was surrounded by the sounds of the countryside coming awake. Birds were calling and muttering an swinging on the wires. Horses were calling out for breakfast and cows were lowing to calves. My three dogs were excitedly barking at being outside with their humans again. A morning like any other in a long line of mornings stretching back years.

I am one of the lucky ones.

I love my life of semi isolation. To be surrounded by the absence of human noise and clutter is how I choose to live my life most of the time. I love my friends and family but do not feel the need to constantly see them, touch them, talk face to face. I just need to know they are out there, living their full lives. Isolating is not a burden, it is what I was born for! Well as long as we can eat, the animals can eat, I can collect the mail, we can get a vet when we need one, go to the doctor, use the internet, have the power always available, talk to friends via phone, Facebook and Zoom and so on. I don’t want to be socially isolated but physical isolation is my general modus operandi.

I know that isn’t so for everyone, perhaps for the majority of people. It is certainly not the way many people can even think about living when everything about our modern world requires most people to live in cities and towns. Where most employment is where most people are and most people are when most employment is. For most people this time of “social distancing’ and lockdowns is difficult. Difficult physically and difficult emotionally. We are going to go through tough times. Tempers will fray, waistlines will expand, boredom and hopelessness will take hold. We are going to wonder if we can get through this to when times “return to normal”.

Well the good news is most of us will endure, make it through, I am just not sure we will be “returning to normal” but instead creating a new normal. This time of enforced slowing down for a lot of us (not our essential workers who will be in one of the most pressured times of their lives) where we can go “back to grazing”. A fallow time of regeneration. A time to think creatively about what we want our future to look like. What we can learn from this time that we want to keep.

I leave you with a quote from a magical book about the nature of love and longing. I am looking forward to the time our hearts look back and only remember the good of these times.

“..the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and [that] thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Keeping sane in an insane world

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Fifteen days since my last post and it feels like a lifetime.

Sitting here on our great big Island we were still feeling a little divorced from the crisis unfolding in the world around us. That big ocean that has kept us safe from “war and pestilence” was going to let us dodge the worst of the bullets again. It was not to be of course. Perhaps if we had sealed our borders, not let our own citizens and residents return, turned back all tourist no matter where they were from, shut down all commerce, we may have not just flattened the curve but got ahead of it. But at what cost? It is hard enough knowing there are still people stuck out there that cannot get home, through no fault of their own; could we have callously left thousands more rely on the “kindness of strangers” to keep them safe. Of course not. Like everyone else, all we can do is try to flatten that dam curve.

So this is our new normal. Markets crashing, millions out of work, our normal modes of social interaction all but shut down, businesses that may never recover. And no end in sight – a proverbial piece of string.

So much that we cannot control, that we have to let go of else it will drive us insane with anxiety. Now is the time to look at what we can control and use that to help us through these insane times.

There are lots of practical things, of which there is a wealth of information out there, but in order to be able to do them, we have to attend to our inner selves. To not “losing our sh*t”,

One of the ways we cope is to just spend time with our horses, but not everyone can do that, but you can learn from their innate animal wisdom, that speaks to our own . The five lessons we can attend to at this time are:

Breath – firstly remembering to do so! Then paying attention to how we are breathing. using the slowing of our breath to calm our bodies and our minds down.

Observe – slow down, use your senses. Give your self time to understand what you are seeing.

Act – when you have clarity from your observation of what action needs to take place, do not get caught up in the stories you tell yourself.

Relax – Allow the pause after action, do not rush on to the next thing without allowing yourself to feel your action is complete.

Back to grazing – this is the fallow period that allows your creativity blossom. Where you are not in an unending stimulus response cycle. This is the going slowly, to go fast. It is where you start the cycle of Breath, Observation, Action, Relaxation again.

Above all we must listen to our bodies, not allow ourselves to be captured by our spinning minds.

Lynn

PS If your want to know more about the Five lessons from the Wisdom of Horses contact us to receive or free document “Getting Unstuck – 5 lessons from the wisdom of horses”. Contact us

Equality or Equity?

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We decided to kick off our 2020 workshops to coincide with International Women’s Day. Not because that gave us a bit of a tag to add to our marketing but because we thought this years theme around “Collective Individualism” fitted in so well with our purpose. We are not the ocean, not even a wave, but individual droplets of water that together can be come powerful when we come together to create the wave. We are working towards a better future for all who live on our world; human, animal and plant, all the flora and fauna. And we can only do that through the power of Collective Individualism, each person doing their “thing” towards that future. Our way of contributing is in building self awareness, compassion, deep listening, releasing blocks, helping people get unstuck and allowing the raising of consciousness.

Joined by an amazing group of women we ranged from 19 to mid 60’s so we certainly had age diversity covered. What was quite clear was that in other ways we were not very diverse at all. Very much middle-class privileged white women. Our conversation quickly turned to the differences between Equality and Equity. The theme for 2020 IWD is #EachforEqual and consistently talks about gender equality, which fits really well with such concepts as equal pay for equal work, and equal representation but does not go far enough in looking at the impediments to reaching those goals.

We work a lot with people’s self belief and how our stories, our narratives, that we take as reality, hold us back from achieving the things we want to do and one of the equity issues is how our narratives get in the way of us taking up opportunities of equality. You are not going to go for that promotion, ask for that pay rise, apply for that grant, put in that proposal if the narrative you are running is that you you don’t deserve it, are not ready for it, are not “perfect” enough and won’t be heard/listened to anyway. How much harder is it then if you are marginalized even further by being a woman of colour, having a disability, lacking the educational opportunities that would have worked for you or strong cultural barriers.

And of course it is not our role, as privileged middle-class white women, to “solve” this problem for others, that is just perpetuating the narrative of “savior”, but it is up to us to raise our own level of awareness of how our individual actions can contribute to that better future for all of us (plants and animals included).

And maybe next year the group photo might look a little different.

Lynn

PS. As one of the ancients in the group I was heartened by these younger women and feel that whilst we are only tending the sapling, the tree that will be around long after we are gone will be strong and flourishing.

The problem with Vulnerability

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Like many people I first came across the work of Brene Brown through her TedEx Huston presentation (which at 13 055 030 and counting on the Ted platform alone is one of the most watched Ted talks ever) and have since dived in very deep to her work. There often seems to be two worlds in which knowledge operates. One if the academic world where a lot of rigor is placed around primary research, literature review and writing dry dense academic papers that are off-putting and intimidating for the large majority of readers, where the other is the free-form, largely unreferenced, highly anecdotal but highly accessible writing of various individuals who’s credentials are not always obvious and sometimes dubious. What I love about Brene Brown’s work is that it grows from her academic work, but it is so accessible to us all that it can touch and influence so many lives.

She does not run the Guru model. As someone talking to us about vulnerability she never claims to have beaten it, to have the the 5 tips to invulnerability, the 10 fail-safe strategies for overcoming imperfection, rather she makes herself entirely vulnerable and allows us to see her imperfect self. Good on her !

So what is the problem with vulnerability? Actually the problem is with our interpretation of the word, our confusion of it with weakness. As I am want to do, I googled the definition of vulnerability for its usage outside of the context of personal growth. Before I started the first phrase that had jumped to my mind was “the castle defenses were vulnerable to attack through the postern gate ” (don’t ask me why, perhaps because I went to school near a castle and I still carry a lot of baggage from my school years, fondly though I mostly remember them) which for attackers was perhaps better that the sewer! As we might also say something like the postern gate was a weak point in the castle’s defenses the mind goes “hmm they are vulnerable because there is a weak spot, therefor to be vulnerable is to be weak”.

So, Oxford Dictionary definition of vulnerable

“exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally: we were in a vulnerable position, small fish are vulnerable to predators”

Exposed to the possibility of attack! Wow. Every time you put forth a new idea, every time you are required to give or ask for feedback, every time you create something new or open your heart to someone you are exposed to the possibility of attack (or something that feels like attack) but if you do it anyway that is not being weak, that is being courageous.

I love this little clip about changing language for better understanding “A new sign for Vulnerability”

And because new life is always vulnerable, young Renlyn TK, 3 days old 29 December 2013

A Blank Slate

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I’m a little distracted at the moment. It is that time of the year when my sleep is disturbed by the constant beep, beep, beep that demands I get out of bed, search around for my clothes, find the torch and stumble over to the yards. There I am greeted by a hopeful face (green eyes glowing back at me from the torch light) that was having a but of a rub and on hearing the house door open has been alerted to the possibility of a midnight snack.

Just occasionally the alarm has done its job and instead of the hungry hippo I am greeted by the shape of a grunting beached whale and it is on. I grab the iodine and settle in to ensure all goes smoothly.

The first of four arrived this week, at 1.00 am Monday morning to be precise. He has his whole life ahead of him, I wonder what will be written on his slate?

Building strength through self-compassion

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In my former life I was given an assessment by my peers that my greatest “skill” was compassion. I reacted very negatively to this feed back. Compassion after all did not seem to have any direct correlation to boosting our revenue, to giving clients accurate and timely results, to being able to advise them from a position of knowledge and business acumen or even to being able to transfer my (apparently non existent) skills to other in the business, Clearly they could not think of anything nice and businessy to say about me so they came up with something that seemed nice whilst backhandedly giving me a slap about the chops. I almost spat, like cat.

And I continued to beat myself up about being a waste of space, a failure as a good little worker bee, as a human being, if the only thing I was good at was being compassionate.

Do you see the hole here?

I may well have been perceived as being compassionate to others but there wasn’t a whole lot of self compassion going on. What was going on was a whole lot of repression, of just push it down, keep a lid on it, ignore the pain, grin and bare it. Write out those to do lists, repeat a few affirmations, but above all do not under any circumstances acknowledge the pain.

The truth is that I did have those other skills; except perhaps for being timely, that has always been a struggle for me. Not being “on time” to get somewhere, I’m generally pretty good at that, it’s a simple goal, but to weave complex threads together to finish in a timely manner without getting lost in a maze of side roads and rabbit holes as something attracts my interest.

In the end I could not contain it any more. I had to do something and that something was to leave my business and enter a new one where my outward focused compassion was perceived (by me) as a more positive attribute.

And along the way I started to develop just a little bit of self compassion. Wow, you mean I can be kind to myself as well as to others! Surely not. Does that not mean I am just giving my self a bit of self pity, or an excuse to slack off, to be a wuss? Not at all. To be have self compassion is first to be aware of the pain you are feeling, to be mindful, to acknowledge with no judgement and to accept and be self comforting in order to be resilient. Not to hide the pain, suppress it, try and make it go away. Rather like the description of courage as being afraid but doing what has to be done anyway.

Recently I have been following the work of Kristen Neff and finding it is helping to build a process to rely on around what was developing ad hoc.

Innovation and Creativity – A beginning

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I was doing a bit of musing about some low-tech innovations that I am the beneficiary of but first need to take the photo that explains it, so when an article appeared in my inbox about creativity, innovation the neuroscientific understanding of the process, I thought I’d talk about creativity and innovation in general.

So lets get clear on what I mean by creativity.

I feel the need to do so because for many years I had a very narrow definition of what creativity meant. Where or how I picked it up I don’t know but it is so deeply seated that it tries every now and again to steer my thinking. In my little universe I divided people into two types, those who are creative and those who aren’t. Those who are creative are artistic, and those that are artistic do one of two things, paint (and draw) or play music. So if someone said to me “you are so creative”, I’d bemusedly deny it as both playing music and drawing are way out of my skill set. And besides, I’m a scientist I’d say. (Even though it is many years since I have worked in any scientific capacity, I still identify myself that way which is is why I get so excited about Neuroscience articles). So sorry all you photographers, writers, film makers, dancers, cake decorators, knitters of the world according to DjD you are neither creative nor artistic.

How silly is that! I probably got told in an art class at primary school that I had no future as an artist and from then on art meant painting and I was hopeless at it.

Here are a few definitions of creative garnered from almighty Google

Characterized by originality and expressiveness; imaginative
The tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others
Any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one
Relating to or involving the use of the imagination or original ideas to create something
Having or showing an ability to make new things or think of new ideas
Generating new ideas and concepts, or making connections between ideas where none previously existed.

I particularly like the one from this mornings article “the purposeful generation and implementation of a novel idea”. Within an organisation that becomes valuable when it “results in a measurably useful outcome”. In fact we can all be creative (regardless of our ability to wield a hog bristle filbert) and we can develop our creativity given the right conditions.. Our organisations, our world, is crying out for us to increase our creativity in response to the ever increasing complexity of life. We need creativity to pervade everything from the response to how to improve customer service to tackling climate change and species extinction.

The first step – Idea generation

A fallow field

In traditional agriculture a field was left fallow (no crop) one year in three. A period of rest for the soil, that led to a stronger and more productive crop the following year. In order for creativity to flourish we need a fallow mind. Not an empty mind, a fallow field is not devoid of life, but one where there is space for new ideas to generate and be noticed. To put it another way, an open mind, a mind that is not overly constrained by rules. From a Neuroscience perspective – lower cognitive control. A playful mind

When we take people out of their normal environment and into the paddock with our horses, we give them an opportunity to open their minds, to be a bit playful, to be unconstrained by the usual clutter of their work day mind. We offer them a fallow field in which to open to their creativity.

Let’s talk about …….

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After in my last post highlighting meeting expectations I thought I had better not complete the title with the refrain that keeps playing in my head “Let’s talk about sex Baby, Let’s talk about you and me” as I have no intention of talking about sex. Maybe about you and me, but only in the general humanity sense, not the familiar sense.

So back on the topic of what gets in the way of your achieving success (however success looks for you). I was going to muse about perfectionism though it is not an over bearing trait of mine (I did a quiz to find out and and wasn’t 100% happy with the result so I did another one, so now I can safely say that I am not overly hampered by perfectionist tendencies). Actually the real reason I did the quizzes was because I was putting off going out into the rain to feed my poor wet horses. Now procrastination, there’s a topic that sits really close to home. My perfectionist tendencies come to the fore when I am using them to procrastinate. I am not a tidy person (and I say this with pride – hmm). I don’t mean I am an absolute slob, but I really don’t notice little things out of place, or feel compelled to have everything in its place, except when I am procrastinating! It is amazing how important it can be to make sure all the books are back in the book shelf IN ORDER when there is something else I need to do.

From a neuroscience perspective, we are rewarded for procrastination because we get little hits of dopamine when we complete those so very important tasks of lining up our pens in size order (because you have to many different ones because you just cannot resist a free pen with someones company name on it) or your coloured pencils by hue. I mean really who want their coloured pencils or textas to not look like a colour chart. That why it is such a hard habit to break. Its the real marshmallow now versus waiting test. All those kids that waited to eat their marshmallow went on to be more focused on the end goal than the eat and be dammed mob who no doubt went on to become epic procrastinators. I want my reward NOW.

You will be happy to know that somewhere in the middle of writing this I did don the waterproof (semi as it turned out) gear and took care of the mob.

Next time I will write about perfectionism – unless someone has messed up my coloured pencils again.

7 Ways To Achieve Success

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One of the ways is to exceed expectations, so I guess that means I have to come up with at least 8 ways. And do what I say I am going to do so I have to produce a list, even though producing that list was not my reason for this mornings musings. So here goes:

Start. If you never start how can you ever be successful?
Fail. I’m not advocating racing out and finding someway to fail spectacularly – do not jump off a tall building testing if you can flap your arms like a bird and fly, but give it a go, jump off a small wall or something.
Regroup. Learn from your failure, adjust, start again.
Don’t give up. You are running a marathon. You can see that big flag thing across the finish line. Your throat and chest are burning, your muscles feel like lead and the other 400 contestants are already finished. You can stop short or you can push on just that bit extra, even if you have to crawl, and get over that line. In the end you may still have come last in the race but how different will you feel about yourself for having not given up compared to quitting.
Ask for help. Many of us like to give help but we aren’t so good at asking for it. Whats the worse that can happen if you ask.
Celebrate the small wins. When we have one of those big hairy audacious goals its very easy to look at how far we still have to go and feel dispirited. How about looking at how far you have come and celebrating the steps along the way.
Don’t lose focus. Or in other words, don’t fritter. I love the ethos behind “does it make the boat go faster” which was behind Australia’s successful Americas Cup win. I cannot recall much about who was who, who bankrolled, who said what, but that phrase says it all to me about not frittering. Lots of “nice to have” things will come up but if they don’t make the boat go faster, park them till you have achieved the original goal.
Be flexible. This might seem to be in opposition to point before but being flexible does not mean following every passing whim that floats across your busy mind (what i think of as the Kaleidoscopic mind). It means adjusting based on your failures, small wins, experience and what gos on out there. It’s pretty pointless having a goal of say being the first person on Mars if someone landed there last week and sent a postcard. Adjust your goal, be the first person to hold a party on Mars whilst wearing a pink tutu perhaps.
Exceed expectations. That’s 9 things !

Gratuitous photo of my horse, that’s far to good for me.

Ah now I am finally getting round to what started me off on this mornings musing. Not what are the ways to be successful, but what gets in our way. For, to be honest, there was not one original thought in that list above (shocking I know!) I mean, 100 people could read that list (or another of its iterations) but will they go on to be successful? I don’t think I could write a list of what gets in our way because there are as probably as many ways as there are people creating them (Setting expectation – no list).

There are some common themes though. I think I have lost count of the times I have read “my horse is too good for me, he deserves his chance to win the Olympics under a better rider” (or words to that effect). So lets deal first with the horse in this equation. What does he want out of the relationship? Does he settle down at night dreaming about future Olympic glory, cursing the fact he cohabits with middle aged beginner who gets nervous at breaking into trot? If he cogitated at all (which he doesn’t) he’d probably be thinking how lucky he was to have a bunch of mates to hang out with, a full belly, and no lions on the horizon. What he actually does is enjoy the feeling of his full belly, the slight breeze o his skin, the teeth of his mate scratching his itch. Lucky horse.

So whats it really about? I’m not good enough. There, it’s out there, i know in my deepest core that quite simply I am not good enough and I don’t deserve to be happy, successful, loved, cherished, valued, to own a wonderful horse.

Bunkum. Says who?

Apparently my little inner critic says it to me and your little inner critic says it to you. Now my horse, he doesn’t have a inner critic. He does not have someone that says “your pasterns are too long, you don’t deserve to have an extra bit of hay tonight, let the one with the perfect pasterns have it”. For him its more like “yum yum this hay is good EEEEK here comes bossy pants with teeth bared, hay isn’t worth getting bitten over, I’ll just eat grass”. He is reacting to what is happening in the moment, making valid choices based on his experiences and then he relaxes, goes back to grazing.

So think about how you snatch joy away from yourself by listening to that refrain from you inner critic and next time he pipes up say inner critic, I hear you, but today I am not listening. You will never shut him up completely. He will always be there ready to throw a bucket of water over your enthusiasm but you can learn to take what he says with a hearty pinch of salt.

And now I had better stop procrastinating and do some jobs that need doing and will come back to other ways we get in our way in another musing, when the moment is right, when I have done all the things I need to do first before I can start, when …………

Link

I was going to say “got to love your job” but that would have been wrong on at least two counts. For a start I don’t think of what I do as “just a job”. Having been able to meld my passion for my horses with a way to reach people and allow them to access their own passion for life through leadership, it is my life. Or part of it. The other part that has been keeping me away from the keyboard, and hence this blog, is my love of travel.

Its been a very busy few weeks. It started with a seminar we,

Horsanity, facilitated at the magnificent

Emirates Wolgan Valley Resort in the Blue Mountains. Its an extravagantly scenic location and 5 star facilities.

From there I traveled to Daylesford in Victoria to attend an Equine Psychotherapy week long intensive. This was my final seminar leading to my accreditation as an Equine Learning Practitioner, Foundation Level based on a deep understanding of Gestalt principals.

Then after all this forced time in gorgeous locations doing something I love I just had to take a holiday! I know, its a hard life but as they say, someone has to do it. The thing is though, its about choice. I remember the day I sat in front of my coach in my former business with the tears yet again streaming down my face saying “I have no choice, I can’t leave, I have loans to pay, obligations to people, I’d be letting people down” but he didn’t let me off the hook. There is always a choice, even doing nothing is a choice.

It took me awhile but to bring it to fruition but that day I finally made the choice to live a life that fills me with joy. Well most of the time, there are somethings you just have to knuckle down and do whether you like it or not, but as long as they are in service of your real intent then that’s ok, you can survive.

So where did I end up in my travels. Well after freezing my freckles off in a cold snap in Daylesford I melted them off at the other extreme in Kakadu and Kununurra taking in the scenery and wildlife.

Horsanity – Django Dreaming

Harnessing horsepower to release the wisdom of heart, will and mind

Category Archives: Musings

A Fresh New Day

Keeping sane in an insane world

Equality or Equity?

The problem with Vulnerability

A Blank Slate

Building strength through self-compassion

Innovation and Creativity – A beginning

Let’s talk about …….

7 Ways To Achieve Success

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