... little words make a world of difference ...

One of the advantages of flying solo is quiet alone time. When you are in a space void of distractions and comfortable with your own company, the mind becomes free to process your inner world.

I found myself in such a place today while working on some customer's projects. I am deeply focussed on the job at hand and with my thoughts wandering peacefully though my mind. One train of thought was "Why do we often find it so difficult to feel whole?"

It occurred to me that our language about how we describe ourselves or others or experiences is generally geared towards a confrontational duality: good and bad; light and shadow; love and hate; us and them; wise and foolish.

When I stumbled upon yin and yang, a symbol of wholeness and synergy, I tried a little experiment to see how something would feel. "Yin and Yang" gives distinction, a sense of opposites, although in my mind's eye I instinctively imagine a complementary wholeness. I then started to say to myself "Yin with Yang" . "With" is a softer word than "and"; and with it brings a greater sense of the relationship between the two, an appreciation that one cannot be understood without an appreciation for the other.

When we are given a coin, we accept both sides of the coin. We are not asked to choose one side of the coin over the other and only take one side. It would be impossible to do so. We set ourselves up for inner conflict and psychological warfare when we only give attention to the things that bring us pleasure and not deal with our pain; or accept our strengths and not our vulnerabilities and vice versa. It is impossible to take the light without bringing the shadow. To bring balance to our lives, we must be prepared to embrace our light and delve into our shadows. We can safely explore our shadows while holding onto our light. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow ...

(written morning of 14.07.16) It was at this point in the early hours this morning that I could no longer write and finish this post. In seeking wellness, I am often reminded in extraordinary ways to simply allow my life's path to reveal it's mysteries rather than reacting in egotistical ways to force an instantly gratifying outcome. This morning, after a few hours sleep, I can now complete this post with a twist.

Our emotional life is in a symbiotic relationship with our mental and physical states. That relationship may be mutualistic where our emotions, mental and physical states benefit from each other in a context of ease. The relationship between the different parts of ourselves may be a parasitic one, where our emotions, mental or physical state are given free reign at the expense of the others and we find ourselves in contextual dis-ease. Whatever the case one state does not exist in isolation from any of the others and will feed each other. Similarly our external relationships are in a symbiotic relationship with the relationship we have with our selves. Our outer world is a reflection of our inner world. When we have inner conflict, we desperately seek resolution. Our eternal capacity to heal and desire for wellness gears us to find relief in whatever ways we allow. As we resolve our inner conflicts, our life experiences will change to match that inner state.

We all enter into relationships mutually. So to, both parties have to mutually accept to exit from the relationship. Independently both parties have to take personal responsibility to disentangle. It is only at that point when both parties have consciously acted to end the relationship that a truly freeing space can be afforded to both to move forward with the potential to heal. That space suddenly allows other external and internal experiences to enter into our lives, almost magically or mystically or fatefully. That space gives us access to time, energy and different resources to invest in other relationships, or a fuller more satisfying relationship with our own self, or to pursue opportunities with renewed energy and vigour. We find ourselves in a position where what may have been perceived as unlikely or as an insurmountable obstacle become possible or achievable. We find ourselves amazed at how quickly our needs are being attended to by different relationships, encounters or opportunities. We may feel a burst of tremendous energy, we are rejuvenated, we feel the force of life pulsing inside, we want to embrace all that we had been denying ourselves under the guise of a unhealthy relationship. In letting go, we give ourselves a gift but we also give to the other.

Some break ups just transform to a different understanding of engagement; some are quick and heal just as quickly; some can be protracted and painful taking months or years. In a protracted breakup we have to be patient. We have to trust that at some point the process will find a mutually satisfying resolution. Neither party can truly be free of the other until that occurs. We have to be careful not to inadvertently disempower or maliciously interfere with the other from being able to reach their own point of conscious resolution while we seek our own path to move forward. When that point is reached, whether we are the initiator or not of the breakup, our egos may be unprepared and taken aback at how quickly things change. The ego is always the last one to know. Ego is a fickle beast and it's distress is readily soothed - the ego has no care whether the antidote is healthy or not, it is single minded about getting a sense of relief.

If a function of love is to to respect the path of another and to take actions that support their journey from dis-ease to ease, then ironically we can still act from a place of love and open heart when breaking up, while protecting ourselves from harm. When we make that conscious decision to part we may feel as though we have taken a knife and stabbed it into our own heart or stabbed the other; yet all we have done is allowed an inner hurt to be healed, a dis-ease to be eased, an untenable situation to find relief.

The feeling of equilibrium and space that I found myself in yesterday while pondering wholeness was a precursor to the feeling I find myself this morning. As is often the case for me, my dreamworld had already revealed to me that I would wake this morning and discover that I have been gifted by the conscious resolution taken by another. Years ago we had found each other at an intersection in what seemed to be an unlikely set of circumstances and chose to travel a shared path. Today, we have both arrived at a different intersection. By both taking conscious decisions, a space has been cleared. A moment in time has been clearly and resolutely defined for me to walk in one direction while they walk another. The only small words that count this morning are "thank you". Thank you for meeting me at this intersection and choosing to walk away. We are now both freed from our perceived obligations to each other.

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Flying Solo Tip 013365 : Zen is a little word with big impact.

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... money matters ...

There are matters of the heart, then there are money matters. It is said that our wealth psychology, our attitudes to money are cemented early in life. Those attitudes will colour the way in which we view money and the acquisition of wealth for a life time, There seems to be two camps in relation to money - those who have it and those who do not.

I grew up in an environment where there was very little money to go round, yet in spite of that my parents would scrape together the pennies so that I could go to dance, art and music classes. Although it was never discussed, I believe they wished for me a better future, free of the struggles that financial burdens can bring.

My earliest memory about money goes back to when I was about 7 or 8 years old. It was almost the start of a new school year and my uncle came to visit. When we has leaving he handed me an envelope and said, "Give this to your mother after I have gone, it is help out with your school books this year." On that day I realised how poor we actually were; and I was afraid because school was my haven and devastated about what would happen if mum and dad couldn't afford for me to go to school. At a deeper level, there was a sense of shame. It was around that time, that as a family we would go fruit, onion or potato picking and any money that my brother and I earned went into an account to finance our later schooling years. My parents had allocated a cow to both my brother and I. When the offspring of those cattle were sold that money went to our schooling. I took on my first part time job at 15, and have worked hard ever since funding my life. I had taken on an attitude that you had to work hard to get through life; and that money was simply a practicality of life. I had a very warped value around money - I did not value its worth as I knew what it was like to grow up without it and survived.

When I started to earn good amounts of money, I felt guilty when I spent it on personal pleasures. I felt far more comfortable in giving my money away to others whose needs I perceived to be greater than my own. It was a spirit of generosity fuelled by guilt and founded on shame. I placed a low value on money - what I had was because I had worked hard for it, and I gave it away because if felt that I was not deserving of the luxuries and pleasures that it could bring. I would find immense joy in seeing someone else enjoy luxuries and pleasures that my money afforded them. Personally, I would feel uncomfortable being around symbols of wealth and luxury. To counterbalance those feelings, I assumed a sense of pride that I was not driven or motivated by financial reward. At the time when I was given the best wealth opportunity, I walked away. In more recent times, I have had to learn some very harsh lessons with respect to money. More than ever before it has been a time to reassess my relationship with money.

When you run a small business, and particularly as a freelancer, cash flow is unpredictable. Yet the success or failure of business significantly depends on a predictable transaction of money. When choosing to fly solo, you also choose to a large extent, remove safety nets and certainty and security. There is no fall back position - you risk it all and place all bets on yourself. There is a level of confidence required to do that, but to do that in a vacuum of healthy values around money, from very personal experience, is fraught with danger or at the least, financial ruin.

A couple of months ago, I engaged in a daily ritual for 30 days to reframe my relationship with money. It was a great exercise of setting a daily consistent intention throughout the day and sharing that intention with another. There is nothing like having someone else to hold you to account to move your intentions to actions. The interesting thing about this process, is the way your internal dialogue does start to change. Interestingly when doing the process many opportunities cross your path to "test" out and cement those inner changes. There is a sense of satisfaction when you realise that your immediate reactions to a particular kind of situation are beginning to change - sometimes in small measures, sometimes in more substantial ways.

It is possible to change our inner dialogue, and alter our psychology. It does require awareness of the connections between our feelings, attitudes, impulsive reactions and conscious behaviours. It does require a commitment to stop ourselves in the moment, to pause and experiment with a slightly different way of doing things. This approach applies to matters of the heart and money matters.

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Flying Solo 012365 : Give credit to the inner dialogue. It is more powerful to change the inner dialogue and act upon the world, than it is to react and then seek for inner justifications.

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... exhausted

I am exhausted.

Today I was asked to give a verbal reference for a person who used to work for me back in my corporate days. Just digging into those archived memory banks was insightful. In those days I fuelled by coffee, cigarettes and chocolate. I was addicted to cortisol - the hormone released in response to stress. I thrived on the stress (or so I told myself). I loved my obsession with work - I would be so focussed on getting the results, and delivering above and beyond that I would forget to eat, forget to sleep. It took me a long time after leaving that environment for me to realise how out of control and unbalanced I was ... but highly functioning addicts can fool anyone - even themselves. My apparent ease at jumping from one organisational crisis to another and fixing the problems was in retrospect chronic disease.

The feeling in my body today is that same as it was all those years ago - so it was rather poignant that this opportunity to give a reference today was an opportunity for me to take stock of my feeling of un-wellness. I have unconsciously stepped back into that madness, pushing myself to the brink of utter exhaustion.

So before I crash (literally) I am ending on a note of gratitude. Gratitude for all of the gifts of direct support that have come my way these past days, and gratitude for the more obscure gifts like having to give a reference to bring me to a state of awareness so I can learn to support myself in healthy ways.

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Flying Solo Tip 011365 : Between flights, remember to rest.

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