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An idealistic awakening:Part 4

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 13:15:35 GMT

Part 4 - the way forward

In this final part of the series, we are looking at the way forward. What does this awakening mean and how do we stay on the path that we’ve started to walk down?

Realising that I am an idealist in a world that values pragmatism and (so called) realism has been both challenging and liberating and has got me thinking about how I am not the only one who has experienced this kind of awakening. Whether we recognise it as such or call it something different (maybe you have called it a mid-life crisis, an existential crisis, a “who am I and why am I here” moment or something else!) many of us have this experience at some point in our lives sooner or later. This blog series has been my way of sharing my experience of that moment in the hope that it helps you through a similar experience.

The realisation, as described in part 1, is the first step and it feels quite exciting to really see yourself as you truly are. A whole new world of possibilities opens up as you realise you can come out of hiding and express yourself more fully in the world.

And then comes the struggle!

In part 2 , I shared my experience of the inner struggle that comes with being who we are in the world if it doesn’t quite fit with the collective consciousness, especially when you have grown up in an environment which was all about fitting in. It is not easy to step out of that and be different. But at some point, the desire to be who you really are becomes stronger than the desire to fit and, to move in that direction, requires acceptance.

But acceptance in this context is not about what you get from others, that just plays to the “fitting in” narrative. The third part of the blog series pointed toward acceptance as something we find from within and as the key to being able to be who we really are. This is, in my experience, one of the most challenging parts about an awakening but it is a pivotal part of the journey, from which everything can change and you can experience more ease, enjoyment and freedom in all aspects of your life.

Whilst this might sound like it’s a self-improvement journey, it is far from that. Self-improvement implies that there is something lesser right now, something that needs to be developed, enhanced or fixed which is absolutely not the case. What this is really all about is us coming back to who we really are and acknowledging our wholeness.

We are born with all the potential in the world.

We are born with a powerful ability to create in the world but that ability, for many of us, is squashed, supressed, overlaid with rules and requirements and dampened as we are encouraged to achieve and be successful in a way that has been decided as “the way” by others.

But there have always been outliers - people who chose not to conform to the belief that there is a certain way to live life - and some of those people have become the most influential people in history. They are wonderful examples of people who maintained the innate connection with who they really are that they were born with and who, in their own way, navigated life with integrity, authenticity and an understanding that the way to contribute to the world in a truly meaningful way was to be themselves .

As an idealist, I believe that we all have something to contribute to the world, that we are all innately good, loving, compassionate, creative beings and that we just need to reconnect with that part of ourselves (the part that lies beyond the controlling, scared, narcissistic ego) and ask it to guide us as we navigate this curious journey called life.

The more we can act from a place of inner wisdom, the more we will contribute to the kind of world we want to live in.

And the most beautiful thing about all of this is the ripple effect that has on others. Far from it being selfish or self-centred, when you start speaking your truth and making choices that align more with how you see the world, you might be surprised at how others respond. It’s like you give them permission to have their own inner awakening too.

So, as we bring this exploration to a close, I wonder what has resonated with you, how you are feeling in this moment, what you feel called to sit with and explore further yourself?

Remember, this journey is one of inner connection, but it is also one that we don’t take alone. There are always people who can support you and walk alongside you as you take each tricky step. I know the power of having that guide, or sherpa, on an adventure like this and that is why I show up in the world as that for others. If you feel you’d value having a trusted companion on the journey with you, get in touch and we can have a chat about how I could support you in that.

For now, if you haven’t already, check out the other 3 parts in this series to get the full picture and to be inspired to lean into your own awakening:

Part 1 – the realisation

Part 2 – the struggle

Part 3 – the acceptance

And, to make sure you receive all future blogs as they are published, join my Conscious Community .

An idealistic awakening:Part 3

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 12:27:21 GMT

Part 3 - the acceptance

We are continuing our exploration of what it means to waken up to who you really are beyond the conditioning and external influences so that you can show up in the world authentically, aligned and with confidence.

Part 1 was about the moment of realisation when we see how we’ve been hiding from what we know is true about ourselves.

Part 2 was about the inner struggle that comes with being who we are in the world if it doesn’t quite fit with the collective consciousness.

This instalment is all about acceptance.

It is an invitation to be curious about the freedom that comes from finally letting go of the need to fit in, to embrace how you see the world and how you want to approach life.

For as long as I can remember, I have seen the world differently to how the people around me seemed to see it. I have always looked for the good in people and in situations that others might say are wrong or bad and tried to understand what lies beneath the behaviours that appear on the surface. For me, that comes from a sense of connection with our shared humanity, that we are all innately good but flawed and are each doing our best to navigate the curious experience of being human.

Since I was a small child, I have been a seeker or a searcher, trying to understand how the world works, exploring, learning, experimenting and being curious. Coming from a medical family, the world was often presented in a binary, linear, scientific way and there was not much space given to the possibility of a different way to understand the world. Whilst I clearly see the place for a scientific view of the world (I have a Maters of Science degree myself!), I was always drawn to people who lived their life in an “alternative” way and part of me (secretly) wanted to be a hippy! I can see now that I had a deep spiritual sense of what it means to be human but didn’t allow myself to really explore that, until very recently.

Looking back, I can see that as I child I became very good at supressing the inner sense of being a bit different to others in pursuit of fitting in and being accepted. As I look at it now, I can see that I was seeking acceptance in the wrong place.

Perhaps you can relate to that?

Spending your life seeking the approval of others and wanting to be accepted is completely natural. It is understandable. It is what humans have done through evolution. We seek to be part of a tribe and are influenced by how others in our tribe think and act. Many of us go through our whole lives believing that this is how it is but some of us have a moment of realisation (or perhaps it’s more like a slow dawning over many decades!) that it doesn’t have to be like that. That acceptance from the outside is fragile and can be retracted at any time, that the only true lasting acceptance is our own.

I am discovering that self-accepting and allowing are the real path to fulfilment and happiness in life.

Young children are so much more accepting of themselves and others and they allow themselves to be exactly who they are, regardless of how that fits with others' perceptions of what is acceptable. When you see a 3 year old in the supermarket dressed as superman, a Minion, a fairy or a dinosaur what do you think?

For me, I look at them and smile at their unquestioning sense that it’s ok to to be who they want to be in that moment and to care less about whether they will fit in whilst walking down the aisles of Tesco! They are not looking for acceptance from others, they are not seeking approval, they are being who they want to be in that moment. And I love that!

That is what this blog series is all about. It is about acknowledging all of the parts of ourselves and allowing the ones that we’ve been hiding or just not paying attention to, to be seen and heard. And we can do that in subtle ways, we do not need to make a big public declaration or start wearing superhero costumes!

It might be enough to simply acknowledge it in yourself.

Accept that part of you has been living in a way which helps you fit in but there is another part of you that also wants to be seen and heard. Realising that and allowing yourself to acknowledge that are key steps to living more in alignment with that part of you.

And as an idealist, I can see how the world could be if we were all more attuned to our inner wisdom and were showing up in the world being guided by our common humanity rather than influenced by the ego desire for power and control. And I want to be part of a movement in that direction.

Are you with me?

Join me for the final part in this blog series where we look at the way forward and revisit the first 2 parts if you haven't read them yet:

Part 1 - the realisation

Part 2 - the struggle

Part 4 - the way forward

An idealistic awakening:Part 2

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 14:30:02 GMT

Part 2 - the struggle

Continuing the exploration of what it is like to realise that who you have been in the world is not who you really are and to allow yourself to embrace that true version of yourself.

In Part 1, I described the moment I realised that I am an idealist and that I am no longer willing to hide behind the more prevalent perspective that the world is full of danger, is scary and that living in it is hard and fraught with struggle. There has been such a feeling of liberation that has come from acknowledging that the way I see the world may be different to others but that doesn’t make it any less valuable or valid.

There is a place for all perspectives.

But, before that feeling of liberation lies a long running struggle, an inner struggle, which wasn’t comfortable but which seems to be the prerequisite to an inner awakening. The inner struggle sits with how to maintain the sense of alignment and assurance that we feel when we touch on our true nature when the world around us is trying its best to pull us away and back to a darker, pessimistic and often hopeless view of the world.

Idealist: “Someone who believes that very good things can be achieved, often when this does not seem likely to others”

It is hard to be able to see the good in things and to always look in that direction when there is another perspective that what is going on is difficult, unacceptable, wrong or hard. We are programmed from very early in our lives to be on the lookout for bad things and to be prepared to defend ourselves and that programming can be hard to break. It is partly a survival mindset which is something that has served us well however, it seems that it has tipped a balance and now many of us are operating in survival mode most of the time.

I don’t believe that life is meant to be that way. I don’t believe that our experience of life is meant to be just a game of survival. I believe it can be an exciting, joyful, stimulating and enlightening adventure. But that perspective is hard for some to hear.

And so the struggle of an idealist in a world of pessimists, pragmatists and realists is that at times it can feel very lonely, like we’re sitting on the edge of the crowd not being invited into the conversation. Everyone is looking in one direction and when we point out that there is another direction they could look in we feel dismissed, not heard and ridiculed for romantic notions about the world. Self-doubt creeps in and, because of a desire to avoid conflict, we become quieter, step back and our voice gets drowned out.

I get it. I understand that it is hard to hear an alternative perspective which might sounds good in principle but which appears to be very difficult to turn into reality. This has been the biggest challenge that I have faced, that when confronted by a pragmatist who wants facts and a plan and a clear sense of how to get there. I falter and don’t have the answers.

But does anyone really have the answers??

The pragmatists and realists have not figured out how to navigate the challenges of the world and the pessimists seem to pour cold water on any sense of hope and possibility and so, surely there is another way? Surely there is space for another perspective?

That is my quest now. To lean into that other perspective and give voice to it.

And I invite you to join me.

When you can see that the way you have been showing up in the world is contributing to keeping you stuck but you have a strong inner sense that you can contribute in a different way, I invite you to step into that quest. If you want to have a different experience of life then you need to create it from a different place.

That different place is in alignment with who you really are, not who you have been to try and please others or to fit in. It is who you have perhaps always known yourself to be. Allow that part to be seen and heard and know that you are not alone.

The idealists have your back!

This is the second blog in a series of 4. Check out the other posts in the series:

Part 1 - the realisation

Part 3 - the acceptance

Part 4 - the way forward

An idealistic awakening:Part 1

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 10:01:13 GMT

Part 1 - the realisation

“That’s an idealistic notion” my mother-in-law said, with a hint of dismissiveness in her voice.

“Yes, it is” I replied, with a confidence that defied the voice in my head.

The voice in my head agreed with my mother-in-law’s sentiment that my solution to the political problem that was the current topic of debate around the dinner table with my husband’s family (a very common occurrence!) was a “nice idea” but not actually possible in the “real world”. My usual modus operandi during these, often very heated, debates is to observe, stay quiet and let them fight it out amongst themselves.

But on this occasion and for a reason I don’t know, I heard myself offering up a different perspective. The perspective was along the lines of “if we all remembered and connected with our innate humanity the problems would solve themselves” . Writing those words here and reading them from someone else's perspective, I can see that it it could be perceived as lacking strength and substance and completely unrealistic given the extent of the challenges society is facing and yet, in the moment I spoke them, there was a deep inner sense of absolute conviction to what I’d said and complete trust that it is possible despite the odds.

And that is when it struck me…..I AM an idealist!

Idealist: “Someone who believes that very good things can be achieved, often when this does not seem likely to others”

It felt unbelievably liberating to acknowledge myself in that way and to own my perspective. Rather than hiding away, agreeing with others, making myself wrong for holding a more hopeful view of the world or criticising myself for being naïve, I backed myself and stood behind my beliefs.

In truth, I have known that I see the world differently to others for as long as I can remember. I have always been someone who:

looks for the good in people and situations
seeks out ways to grow and develop and helps others to do the same
is altruistic by nature and seeks to make things better for others
has hope and positivity when others only see the negative
is self-motivated and guided by a strong inner sense of what is right
sees life as about more than the physical, is connected to a more spiritual experience of life.

And I have also been someone who has at times:

experienced self-doubt and sometimes crippling self-criticism
strived for perfection through self-improvement
avoided conflict and not stood up for what I believe for fear of ridicule
struggled with turning ideas into practical reality
felt alone even when surrounded by people
felt disillusioned and detached from the physical world around me.

Since that comment from my mother-in-law and the insight it offered me, I have been exploring the behaviours, perspectives and experiences that lie behind the label of idealist and I have discovered that the lists above map almost exactly on to what it is to be an idealist.

It turns out that I am the very definition of an idealist!

(Isn’t it funny how the human mind likes the reassurance that comes from external validation!! Watch out for another blog on that subject soon).

And so, I have embarked on a journey of embracing it and leaning into my idealistic way of viewing the world. Apparently only 15-20% of the population are idealists and so it seems right that those of us that make up that relatively small percentage have the courage to bring the hope, possibility, creativity, inspiration and love that fuel our perspective of the world to the darkness, negativity and hopelessness that is often the more prevalent perspective.

It may not be an easy road and undoubtedly I will meet resistance, ridicule, defensiveness and may be dismissed or ignored by those who think the only valuable perspective is a pragmatic one, but I am willing to go there. I am willing to be the shift in energy and focus that is needed in the world and so, check back in as I continue to explore the idealists perspective in future blogs.

And if you have read this and realise you are also an idealist (whether in the closet or fully out in the world), get in touch!

This is the first blog in a series of 4. You can read the next instalments here:

Part 2 - the struggle

Part 3 - the acceptance

Part 4 - the way forward

To make sure you receive new blogs as they are published, join my conscious community.

Find your way back to your comfort zone

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 15:22:31 GMT

Why has the concept of our comfort zone become demonised?

Would it really be such a bad thing to live life more from within our comfort zone?

Broken night’s sleep, restricted movement, persistent pain and a mind that is judging the experience, analysing it and trying to find a way to make it go away. I am very much in my dis-comfort zone!

For over 9 weeks I have had something going on with my shoulder which has created uncomfortable sensations in the body which has, in turn, created emotions of frustration, irritation and something bordering on anger at its persistent nature and the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a diagnosis for what it is or what is causing it.

Faced with three choices;

grin and bear it, carry on as normal and hope it goes away,
seek out as many people as possible who might be able to tell me what the problem is and then make it go away or
lean into it and discover what it is offering me as a fresh insight into my present moment experience.

Which choice do you think I made?

Yes, you guessed it, I started at 1 and have now arrived at 3! Since it hasn’t gone away, no one has been able to diagnose the problem nor offer a solution to it I find myself at option 3 which is, I suspect, where I should have started.

I have leaned into the experience with curiosity and asked “what is this discomfort here for?”.

I know. It is not always easy to even consider that something painful, challenging, unpleasant or (what the mind might label as “wrong”) could offer something good let alone believe it. But it is worth a shot. And this isn’t just about thinking positively about things. It is amazing what can happen when we are willing to see another perspective to a situation. It opens up something within us which relaxes the mind and helps it release its grip on the one perspective we are holding as right and true and real.

As I woke up from yet another broken night’s sleep with the familiar nerve pain radiating up my neck from my shoulder and the numbness and tingling in my arm, I finally gave in. I finally gave up my quest to make this go away and instead asked what this could possibly be trying to show me. And it struck me like a bolt. No really! It was a bit like a sudden flash of inspiration…..

I was experiencing discomfort. I was well and truly outside of my physical comfort zone and I dearly wanted to find my way back to it and to experience the body without pain again. Then the realisation hit me……I have spent so much of my life taking myself out of my comfort zone in the name of personal growth and development, of fully experiencing life, of having adventures, of making myself a little bit scared and always believing it was good for me to be in that other zone – the Growth Zone some might call it.

Don’t get me wrong. It is really good to experience life from outside of our comfort zone and I have had some amazing experiences in doing so, but it’s also great to be able to find our way back there when we need to. And, that is a message I don’t think is shared nearly as much as the more common narrative that “life happens on the edge of your comfort zone”, “success in life lies beyond your comfort zone”, “your life will only change if you step outside of your comfort zone” and even “your comfort zone is your danger zone”. In fact, a Google search returned nearly 7 million results for “step out of your comfort zone” and just over 3 million results for “stay in your comfort zone” but interestingly, most of those were actually pointing towards messages about going outside your comfort zone too!

So, there is a very common message that we are being fed which is that to be in your comfort zone is not the place to be and that somehow your life will be a lesser experience if you are there. But my recent experience has shone a different light on all of that. My body would dearly love to find its way back to its comfort zone, to be free from the pain and tension it has been feeling. It is seeking equilibrium and balance again after many years of intense exercise and physical challenge and my mind would dearly love to not be worrying about what is going on in the body and to feel free again. And so this experience, painful as it has been, has helped me see my comfort zone in a whole new light!

My invitation to you is to look at where in your life you are being called to step into your comfort zone?

Where do you need to find some more balance, to feel more relaxed, at ease and less in force and effort mode?
What difference would it make to your experience if your mind was able to let go of the need to be in control?
What would it be like if you could give up striving to make things happen and instead allowed yourself to be just as you are in this moment – nothing to achieve?

I have already felt the pain easing as I sit with this treasure, this new insight. Challenging the narrative that a life truly lived is one where we are pushing ourselves and bettering ourselves and making space for more periods of okay-ness, to feel comfortable, content, peaceful and at ease.

Imagine a life lived from that perspective!

The lighter way to uncover wisdom

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 13:19:01 GMT

Our ability to approach this human experience with humour makes the journey so much easier.

Oh the irony! Two days before the launch of my first Inner Work Summer School and I find myself caught up in the messy and murky world of the ego, having lost sight of the shore and finding myself flailing around trying to stay afloat and regain some sort of balance.

There is no coincidence in the timing of this uncomfortable yet deeply insightful experience and it offers the perfect reminder that wisdom can often show itself with a sense of humour!

It started as a simple conversation with people I know very well and ended up with me in the bathroom sobbing and wishing I could magic myself away from the situation. The conversation started innocently enough but gradually moved into a realm of contrasting perspectives in which we might as well have been speaking different languages. I can’t say what it was like for the other people in the conversation but for me, I felt as though I wasn’t being heard, that I was being patronised and that my perspective was being dismissed as having no substance. I am entirely sure that was not their intention but when we get hijacked by our ego, we lose the ability to see things clearly.

What I can see now is that that is a theme which I have come to know over the years. Not feeling heard (or even the perception that I am not being heard) is something which has the power to trigger me and take me to a place of a self-protection and defensiveness in which I become dogmatic and overly principled. Far from helping me find connection and coherence, it leaves me feeling vulnerable, exposed and unworthy.

Irony – a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.

The ironic part of it all is that the Inner Work Summer School , which was launching just two days later, is all about helping people navigate life with more grace and ease and recognise that the outer world does not create our experience, that it is entirely an inside job. And yet here I was doing the very opposite of practicing what I preach!

And this is the reality of life.

We forget and fall into the predictable traps of the ego and its susceptibility to the outside world.

Seeing how life really works and knowing you have the power and capacity to create your own reality, doesn’t make you immune from having your buttons pushed or falling off the wagon of calmness and inner peace every so often! But it does help you find your way back there more swiftly and with less pain and suffering.

The fact that I could see this situation as ironic is testament to the many years I have been practicing the inner work. It means I am able to see this experience for what it is and find some humour in it. But it hasn’t always been like that and it doesn’t feel any less unpleasant when I find myself in the middle of it.

The key difference is that rather than making myself wrong for how I felt or my reaction in the moment, I have been able to step back and see, with kindness and humour, my beautiful demonstration of the imperfection of being human!

So, the Inner Work Summer School has launched and I am sensing that it is as much a journey of discovery and remembering for me to keep reconnecting with my inner wisdom as it is for the participants who signed up to join me. We are on a never-ending quest to create more ease, enjoyment and freedom in our lives and it’s helpful to remember that it is not a destination that we reach but that it’s something we need to keep practicing every day. And every day we uncover a little bit more of our innate wisdom which makes the next stage of the quest that little bit easier.

Where are you missing out on uncovering your own wisdom because you are taking life (and yourself) too seriously?

What could it be like for you if you were able to see whatever is going on for you from a different perspective?

How would it feel to bring more humour and lightness to your experience?

It's time to re-write the story of you

Mon, 27 May 2024 14:56:23 GMT

Who could you become if you were willing to re-write the story?

“I hate swimming” , I heard myself saying as I was up to my neck in the cold water of the loch near where I live, on a morning swim surrounded by nature and with a new group of friends.

“Well, that’s clearly not true” , I heard someone say back to me. And, of course, they were quite right. How could I say I hate swimming when there I was, having (voluntarily!) got into my swimming costume, into the water and was doing a good job of keeping afloat? I was swimming……..and I was loving it.

In that moment, I re-wrote the story of who I am.

(in relation to swimming at least!)

I saw something clearly in that moment, you could say I had an insight, which went far deeper and wider than swimming and it is something that I know has the potential to crack open other untruths I’ve been telling myself for years.

For years, I have said I hate swimming; “It’s boring, I am not very good at it, I don't like getting out of my depth, it’s such a faff to get dressed again when your skin is damp and has that sticky feeling about it.......” . As a result of these thoughts and beliefs, I have found many other ways to get and stay fit, to be in nature and to hang out with friends, so swimming has not featured as part of my life and that seemed just fine to me.

However, in that moment last week, I suddenly realised I was doing the very thing that I believed I hated and, in an instant, the storyline I had had running in my mind for as long as I could remember was scrapped. It just disappeared. I was no longer someone who hated swimming.

And it left me wondering what other stories might disappear just as quickly?

And this isn’t really about swimming! It may appear like that but in fact you could substitute "swimming" for anything. Anything that you have told yourself about yourself and have believed to be true and which has influenced your behaviour and your choices. You see, we are incredibly talented at creating fictitious stories about ourselves and going through life without editing them, updating them or realising we can actually re-write them. It’s usually not until we find ourselves in a situation where we are faced with our story that we are even aware that it’s running in the background.

What I got to see was that it isn’t swimming that I hate, it is what I have been saying to myself about swimming that has caused the feeling of hate and resulted in my avoidance of it. But, being immersed in nature, feeling the rush of wellbeing from the cold water and being in a wide open space resulted in an entirely different storyline being written – I LOVE SWIMMING!

The thing that changed was my thinking.

In that moment, I re-wrote the story about me and swimming. And that wasn’t all.

In that moment I received a very clear reminder from the universe of how our thinking creates our reality and that we can have a very different experience of reality when we become more conscious of it. When we become aware of the stories that are running in in our mind, some of them for decades or an entire lifetime, we open ourselves up to the possibility of editing and re-writing them which, in turn, opens up a whole new way to experience life.

This moment of awareness or insight, is what happens when we turn our attention inward and start to understand the nature of the mind and how it influences everything we do, how we show up in the world and how the world responds back to us. It is an integral part of the inner work, the journey of discovery, which leads us back to ourselves and invites us to connect with who we are beyond the stories.

So,

What stories have you been believing to be true?
Where have you limited your experience of life by being convinced you do or don’t like something, can or can’t do something? Or by believing yourself to be this kind of person or that kind of person?
What could change in your life if you were willing to edit or re-write that story?

Join me and a small group of intrepid inner work explorers on our first ever Inner Work Summer School and be guided along a pathway to help you answer these and the many other questions that come up when you start looking inwards. With the support and guidance from someone who has walked (and continues to walk) the path you will reveal to yourself how you can radically transform your life and experience it with more enjoyment, ease and freedom.

If you’re interested in finding out more, visit the dedicated page on my website or get in touch and we can have a chat to see if now is the right time and if the Summer School is the right pathway for you.

The Adventure of a Lifetime

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 10:27:03 GMT

Being human doesn’t always feel easy or joyful and yet I have a strong belief that it can.

It has been becoming clearer and clearer to me that that we can create a very different experience for ourselves and others than the one we are living but that it requires a willingness to go on an adventure (an adventure of a lifetime perhaps!).

I have always had this belief. Even as a young child I had a sense that life was about enjoyment and happiness and I didn’t get the perspective that life is hard and something we have to learn to “get through”. Somehow I just knew that it didn’t have to be that way, that it was possible to experience life differently but, as happens with many of us, I got caught up in the collective culture of the West and found myself working hard to be successful, conforming to expectations and seeking validation from others to feel good about myself and my contribution to the world. In effect, I set out to be as good a human being as I could be and to be as effective at “doing” life as I could.

In the pursuit of achieving success and navigating the challenges we encounter at each stage of life it seems many of us lose touch with who we are and what life is really all about. It’s like we become distant pen pals to that part of ourselves. Going from the strong intimate connection that comes with regular honest and vulnerable communication, sharing what is going on in our world, our hopes and dreams and offering a sense of support, understanding and reassurance. To a sporadic and increasingly superficial relationship as life becomes distracting, and maintaining a deeper connection moves down the priority list in favour of wrestling to stay on top of the overwhelm of a busy life.

But maybe, like me, you have felt the intermittent nudge to reconnect and hang out with the carefree, relaxed version of yourself that you remember from an earlier time in your life.

We begin this adventure of a lifetime as wide open, expansive, creative, loving, curious and innately wise little beings full of possibility, potential and optimism. But through our experience of interacting with others and the world around us we, unconsciously, wrap ourselves up in patterns of behaving and thinking which serve to protect us from the perceived risk of following that childlike energy. In doing so we mute the bountiful energy that we come into this world filled with and find ourselves living from an energy born out of a desire to know, to be in control, to fit in to which ever group or tribe we are close to and to succeed at this game of life in ways defined by others. We become like a padded version of our former childlike selves, protected, numbed and out of touch with who we really are, often without even realising this is what’s happened.

Then we hit a point which causes us to start to ask questions of ourselves and the world around us again. It may be the midpoint of life or when there is a transition happening (children leaving home, end of a relationship, retirement, living with an illness) which can cause an existential crisis of some sort. We start to question who we are, why we are here, what our future looks like and what the point of our lives is. When that happens it’s like beginning a game of pass the parcel.

Remember as a child passing that big package around a circle, hoping for the music to stop so you could unwrap it and get closer to the prize in the middle? Peeling back the layers, one by one, seeing what lies beneath and getting more of an impression of the shape of what sits right in the middle. It was fun, exciting and you were totally focused on discovering that prize. In many ways, this adventure of a lifetime is like that game of pass the parcel! Its sole purpose is about rediscovering who lies beneath all the layers of conditioning, programming, habits and identities and in the process of rediscovery we start to show up differently in the world. The beautiful thing about that is……when we show up differently in the world, the world shows up differently for us. It sets in motion a creative transformation which has infinite possibilities for how you can experience life.

The layers of ‘wrapping paper’ are ego programmes , they are ways we have learnt to navigate the world around us. Helpful up to a point but most of us reach a place when we feel the constraining nature of them, we feel so out of touch with the feelings of peace and joy and fulfilment, wonder and awe that were an everyday occurrence as a child and we start to ask why and how to reconnect with that part of ourselves again.

The wonderful thing is it is always, and has always been there, like the gift in the middle of the parcel, and so life is really an experience of rediscovering, reconnecting and unlearning what we think we know.

There is no right way to do this . There is no quick 10 step process or hack which will get you to a place of enlightenment in the next 30 days. It is a journey which requires a willingness to be uncomfortable, to feel disoriented, to see the world and yourself and others differently and the courage to stay on the path when you feel drawn back to the comfort and familiarity of doing things the way you’ve always done them. It also requires a deep desire to be free from all of the layers and old ways of being in order to experience the simplicity and wonder of life again. What you get in return is a sense of inner balance and peace which enables you to face into any and all situations with more confidence, clarity and coherence.

It isn’t an adventure of a lifetime in the sense that it’s a one off, never to be repeated experience. It’s an adventure of a lifetime because (and to quote very famous song lyrics!) every breath you take and every move you make are invitations to journey further into this different way of being .

Are you up for it?

If reading this has resonated and sparked your curiosity about your own adventure of a lifetime, perhaps you might be interested in joining the upcoming Inner Work Summer School - 3 weeks to begin or go deeper on your own adventure of a lifetime. Check out the IWSS page here .

The playful art of experimenting

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 11:44:19 GMT

There is a real freedom in approaching things with an experimental mindset and it can radically transform your experience of life.

Over the past 6 months I have been on a quest to connect with the part of me which is wise, knows what is best for me and wants to guide me on this curious journey we call life. This quest has led me to a sabbatical of sorts, and as such I have pressed pause on almost all of the usual, familiar, routine activities in order to create space in which to connect more with that inner voice.

I have affectionately called this sabbatical – Project Susan!

There will be more to share on Project Susan in the coming months because it has been quite the journey (!) and I feel there is much I can share with those who are also drawn to inner development. For now, there is one thing I have discovered as Project Susan enters its 2 ^nd phase which feels like a game changer and it is.......

.........the playful art of experimenting.

I have begun to shift from a period of non-doing to a place where I feel I want to re-engage with activities again but want to do so in a way which feels different to how I did it before. I had a sense that I wanted to bring more lightness to my life and my work. I have had a tendency to take things very seriously and so what I am discovering now is the joy in play!

Part of me finds that difficult to share because it feels you’ll judge me for being superficial, childish or not worthy of listening to or not having enough gravitas to offer value. But the more important part of me knows that there is enough seriousness in the world and that human beings are inherently curious and childlike and so this is the more attractive way to be in the world.

Experimenting is fundamentally about trying things out and not being attached to a particular outcome. It is about giving things a go and learning from whatever happens. There is a real freedom in approaching things with an experimental mindset and I believe it can be brought to all aspects of our lives.

We can get stuck in familiar habits and patterns very easily and when that happens we lose touch with our creativity and curiosity but it is helpful to know that they are always there and just need to be reignited every so often. We can also fall into the trap of thinking we need to know how things are going to work out and that we can only take action when we have considered all the variables. In my experience, that limits us and keeps us in the “if only….” or “what if….” frame of mind.

It keeps us in the ideas and out of the experience.

My advice on experimenting is to start small, do something manageable and keep checking in with yourself about if and how to expand it. For example, I started sunrise and sunset meditation gatherings earlier this month. I committed to just twice a week for 2 weeks. That gave people who chose to join me clarity on what they could expect, it gave me a timeframe which felt do-able and also was enough to give me some information which would help me decide whether to continue. As it turns out, it has been fun and there is a feeling of wanting it to continue so I have extended the experiment for at least another week and possibly longer.

And that’s the beauty of an experiment – you learn and adjust as you go.

All you need to start your own experiment is:

an idea
a feeling of curiosity
the willingness to take an action
an openness to whatever the outcome is or what emerges from it
an attitude of allowing and non-attachment

The key thing is to keep checking in with yourself, asking "to continue or to stop?" . As long as it feels light and your curiosity is still leading the way, keep doing it! And when it feels heavy and it becomes another task on your to-do list, stop doing it. Often the stopping is the more difficult choice to make, particularly if we feel we've invested ourselves in it and are attached to a particular outcome or if we feel responsibility for others. But the real freedom comes from the willingness to continue but also the willingness to stop and make space for the next experiment. (Note: some experiments last for a minute and some for a lifetime!).

I am currently experimenting with writing, creating resources for my coaching clients, developing workshop ideas and also with what I eat, how I exercise and my relationship with alcohol. It seems there is opportunity to experiment everywhere in our lives!

So, I wonder where you’ll be drawn to creating your own experiments?

Pay attention to the moments of bliss

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 12:14:57 GMT

Life is an experience with the potential to offer many moments of bliss, if we are willing to look in that direction.

Sitting in the morning sun under an awning outside a pasticciera just outside the city walls of Bologna drinking a deliciously frothy cappuccino and nibbling on a slightly sweet and buttery brioche whilst capturing thoughts that come to mind in my journal……. a moment of bliss .

In fact, it turned into quite a few moments as I sat in this wonderful space feeling grateful, joyful and at peace. And it got me thinking about how often I can skip past moments of bliss, barely acknowledging their presence, or be so busy that I just don’t give myself the opportunity to have them.

I wonder if you are the same?

Like me, are you also someone who tends to plan moments of bliss rather than allow them to happen?

Ridiculous as that may sound, I realise that when I am in my familiar environment doing familiar and routine activities I tend to plan for moments like the one I described above to happen sometime in the future, when all of the things I need to do have been done. I decide on a time when I will be free to have a carefully orchestrated experience of something I think will feel really good. It’s the classic “work first, play later” approach to life, which has been my modus operandi for many years. And, let me tell you, more often than not I either don’t get around to the moment of bliss or when I do all the things I thought would make me feel good, it is a bit of a damp squib!

But that has been shifting for some time now and I realise that being in a different environment and having no set routine seems to make it easier for me to open up to the possibility of experiencing moments of bliss at any time and without the preplanning.

Life is an experience with the potential to offer many moments of bliss, if we are willing to look in that direction.

The amazing thing that I am discovering is that the more I tune into these moments of bliss the more of them I seem to discover. Even when I am doing something that one might say is “work” or is boring or difficult or monotonous I can see that it is possible to glimpse moments of bliss – moments when I feel at peace, joyful, grateful and creative.

Perhaps you would use different words to describe what bliss feels like for you and that is cool. What is more important is to become familiar with the feeling or the energy that bliss is for you. Tuning into the moments when all is well, when you feel light and happy, when you feel a connection with something deep inside yourself that you might call home….those are the moments to pay attention to and often you don’t need to make them happen. They are occurring all the time. Your practice is simply to notice and acknowledge them.

Sometimes it can be helpful to give yourself some time and space to really feel into what bliss is like for you so that you can more easily access it in everyday life. I have found one of the most helpful ways to do that is to create an extended period of time when I am out of my usual routine. What seems to happen is the mind quietens down and stops demanding I get through my to do list, the physical body slows down and starts to relax and from there I can hear the voice of joy and happiness just a little bit more clearly and it starts to show me the way towards more bliss.

You don’t have to leave the country (like I have done!) to experience that. Another way is to go on retreat. You can create your own retreat ( message me if you’d like more info on how to do that ) or you can join a retreat run by a trained guide/coach/facilitator. You might choose to go far from home to join a retreat or you could choose to stay more local but to have time in a space which feels different to your usual environment.

If joining a small group of people who, like you, have the desire to be more connected to their experience of bliss, is something you’d like to experience, the weekend retreat I am running in November in stunning countryside of Perthshire could be the perfect opportunity for you. Find out more here or message me for more info.

Whatever you choose, you can’t get it wrong!

The bliss is there waiting for you to experience it.

The dance of surrender

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 13:49:58 GMT

“What will you be doing tonight?”

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t know?”

“Nope, I just turn up and give it a go”

That was an exchange I had with my husband a few weeks ago as I headed out for my weekly dance class. It may not seem that unusual or profound, but it demonstrates such a different approach and perspective than many of us approach life with that I felt it was worth sharing.

It is all about surrender.

In so many places in my life my modus operandi has been to plan, organise, prepare and generally get myself into a position where I feel comfortable that I was clear on what I wanted to happen and had mitigated all factors which would mean something different might occur. Sound familiar? I have discovered that I am not alone! Many of us go through life thinking that the way to succeed is to be in control, to have a clear goal or destination in mind and to work hard to get there.

But there is another way and recently I have been reminded of what is possible and how much more joyful and easy life can be when I approach it differently. When I am willing to surrender.

I have loved dancing since I can remember. There is a picture of me in my mum and dad’s back garden when I was about 3 or 4 years old, I’m wearing a black leotard and pink ballet shoes and am doing my best to stand like a ballerina! Even just bringing that picture to mind now connects me to a feeling of joy and happiness and delight.

Now, on a Wednesday night (and at the age of 47), I experience the same joy and ease that the image of my 4 year old self exudes in that photo. I don’t wear a leotard now and my shoes are not pink ballet shoes, however, I put on my more age-appropriate dancing gear and head off to the local studio with no expectations other than that I will have fun and will learn something new.

And that is the thing that is most curious for me.

How is it that when it comes to dance class on a Wednesday, I am willing to show up and go with the flow but in other areas of my life (like running my business or maintaining my health and fitness) I seem to feel the need to control, manage and force? I have no idea what dance style we will do each week, what steps I will learn or what the overall dance is supposed to look like, but I turn up with an open and curious mind and take each step as it comes. And without exception, it is a great experience. Even on the nights when I can’t seem to get my body to move in the way our teacher is showing us, or I feel more like an elephant than a graceful dancer! It is always fun, uplifting, fulfilling and joyful.

What that brings up for me, and is the thing I offer to you is, how is it that in other areas of my life it feels entirely different?

I observe myself needing to know how things will turn out before I even start, tying myself up in knots trying to work out how to achieve things, judging myself and criticising my efforts and becoming paralysed by indecision or rigid in my perspective of how things should be.

Our dance teacher, Cherysse, doesn’t show us the whole dance at the start, which I used to find strange, but I totally get it now. She starts with the first step. She demonstrates and then invites us to have a go. Once we have practiced it a few times she shows us the next step and so on. So, the journey towards learning a whole dance is simply a series of steps. We don’t know what comes next until we’ve taken the step before it and that feels like such a helpful way to think about anything we do in life.

All we need to do is show up and be open and willing take each step as it comes.

It’s probably helpful to be clear at this point that I’m not saying never plan anything or think about where you are going. If you want to go on holiday, it’s helpful to have an idea of where you want to go or at least a sense of the direction you want to go in. Or if you are working with others, it is helpful to communicate what your purpose is and what you want to achieve together. By sharing my dancing example, what I’m inviting you into is the possibility that how you go about those things could be done with a different energy or perspective and perhaps create a different experience.

Dancing may not be your thing, but I can guarantee there is something in your life that you do now or have done in the past where you have a similar experience; where you get into a flow state and you are not thinking about what to do you just find yourself doing it, being guided by something other than a prearranged plan. That is the energy that you can bring to the areas of your life where there doesn’t feel like so much ease right now.

THIS approach is the path to success. Not the pre-planned, carefully orchestrated, mapped out, neat version I used to think was.

Each week as well as learning a new dance we go over the half dozen dances we have learned over the year and it is incredible to remember what it was like to learn the first step of each of those dances and the points at which I thought, “I’ll never get this”, “This is too hard”, “I don’t get what this is supposed to look like”. Now when “You Can’t Stop the Beat” or “Proud Mary” start to play I find my body moving effortlessly with the rest of the group and I’d say we look pretty good!

And even though that, in itself, feels like success, I was delighted and somewhat surprised to receive the end of term trophy last week which feels like the external recognition of success that I was already feeling inside.

So, my invitation to you is to think about where in your life you feel or have felt effortless joy and ease and to be open to the possibility of experiencing that in the areas of your life where that isn’t the case right now. Ask yourself:

“What would it be like for me if I was more willing to let go of needing to control and allowed myself to be more present to each moment?”
“Where in my life am I currently trying to figure everything out? And, am I willing to take the first step and trust that the next step will be revealed when I need to take it?”
“If I was to create more time and space to do my equivalent of dancing, what difference could that make to how I experience other areas of my life?”

If the ideas I’ve offered here resonate with you but you’re finding these questions difficult to answer, get in touch and we can arrange to have a conversation to help you find your way to more ease in life.

Going inside (aka hanging out with your soul)

Wed, 10 May 2023 14:55:56 GMT

“What are you doing?”, my husband asked.

“I’m going inside”, I replied.

“To do what?”, he asked.

“Nothing”, I said.

It's not that I was outside and now going indoors. My response was about sitting, turning my attention inward and just sitting, doing nothing.

Doing nothing - it’s not something many of us create time for. We feel we are too busy “doing” life to give ourselves the time and space to do nothing. And I get it. There appears to be a lot to do.

And even when an unexpected space opens up in our day, many of us will fill it with more doing! We like to get things off our to-do list and love the dopamine hit we get when we do. So, a cancelled appointment, a delayed train, an internet breakdown or an early finish to a meeting becomes an opportunity to get on with the next thing rather than the space to stop and do nothing.

Doing nothing – it’s not something many of us know how to do!

Even when we physically stop the rushing around and the task completion, our mind is far from quiet. Our mind takes us away from where we are into planning, ruminating or daydreaming. So, we’re still not doing nothing.

But what if doing nothing is actually doing a whole lot more for you than all of the other activity put together?

Doing nothing allows you to go inside and connect with a different part of yourself than the one you are usually in contact with (i.e. the ego mind). Call it your soul, your inner being, your heart or maybe don’t even give it a name. It is the inner presence which is always available to you and is often whispering its guidance to you but is usually drowned out by the constant chattering of the mind.

You may become aware of its whisperings at points when you feel very relaxed or are in flow but for most of us those are fleeting moments and at some point a switch flicks and we are back into the mode of doing, driven by the busy, ego mind.

Consciously choosing to go inside and hang out with that inner presence can open a whole new world of experience to you. You disconnect from the physical world and all its demands, pressures and judgements and connect with the part of you which is actually the whole of who you are – content, peaceful, joyful, wise, loving and compassionate.

Just as our body needs nourishment, so does our soul.

It doesn’t shout or demand your attention but it responds very well to you just hanging out with it. All you need to do is give it the gift of your attention (which really means giving you the gift of your attention). Just sit, close your eyes, say “hi” and see what happens.

If nothing else, your mind and body will appreciate the rest but you may also be introduced to the most powerful, loving and inspiring relationship you’ve ever had.

There is such a simplicity to going inside but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. You might find it helpful to have the support of a guided meditation which you can find on one of the many apps that are now available (my favourite is Insight Timer ) or by joining a meditation group where you can get valuable guidance from an experience teacher (you might like to try my monthly practice group ). Or you can just create a window of time each day to sit, close your eyes and ask your soul to speak to you.

Most of us give 4 minutes a day to brushing our teeth without giving it a second thought. We don’t resent the 30+ minutes we spend washing and taking care of the body so why not bring soul nourishment into your daily self-care routine?

What is the meaning of life?

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 12:09:32 GMT

What is truly important? And, are the things that get most of your time, energy and attention aligned with that?

This isn't as big and philosophical a question as you may think (although it can be if you want it to be!). This is an invitation to check-in with yourself and be really honest about whether you are being guided through life by things that you think should be important or what truly is important to you.

What is truly important?

What if…..

It isn't getting from A to B.
It isn't getting projects finished on time.
it isn't pleasing others.
It isn't conforming.
It isn't receiving accolades.
It isn’t getting things right.
It isn’t being the best.
It isn’t knowing the answers.

So, what is truly important?

What if…..

It is feeling gratitude and appreciation every day.
It is feeling a deep sense of alignment between what you believe and what you do.
It is slowing down and being fully present.
It is being able to trust yourself to choose the right thing in each moment.
It is knowing you are making a positive contribution to the eco-system you are part of.
It is compassionate action towards yourself and others.
It is feeling at peace in any moment.
It is the freedom that comes from the courage to say no.

We can lose touch with what is truly important if we don’t make a conscious decision to check-in with ourselves on a moment by moment basis. And even then, it can feel challenging to stay aligned with what we know to be truly important versus what we are tricked into thinking is important.

It's an inner tussle that more and more people are experiencing and it feels like that's a representation of a bigger shift going on in the world of which our individual contribution is a part. It’s almost like we are finding ourselves hitting up against a glass wall, trying to move forward in life, seeing what’s possible, but not quite being able to step forward into a feeling of true freedom and self-expression.

There is a simplicity that comes from getting really clear on what is important.

No longer do we:

agonise over decisions
waste time and energy getting caught up in other people’s agendas
lose sleep to worrying and ruminating
have peaks and troughs of energy and motivation
feel regret or guilt
question ourselves or our sense of purpose.

Instead, we find ourselves in a place of calm contentment, choosing the right things at the right time, with more time available to us and more energy to invest in the things that bring us a sense of fulfilment.

And, there is a simplicity in accessing this place.

All it really requires is the willingness to develop the inner partnership between the you that is influenced by the outside world for its sense of what’s important and the you that knows what is truly important to you and where you are in your life right now. Discerning the difference takes practice.

And like anything that takes practice it is helpful to have the guidance of someone who has walked that path and the support of others who are walking the path alongside you.

Giving yourself time to pause and step back from your habitual ways of being can be a catalyst for this shift. Being somewhere where you have nothing else to do or think about other than learning to connect with that wise part of yourself is invaluable no matter where you are on this path – starting out or well on your way.

Perhaps you might consider a retreat ( definition - a quiet or secluded place in which one can rest and relax ). I have two retreats available to you this year, one in May and one in November. Both have the theme of simplicity I talked of earlier and both will enable you to connect with the inner guidance system which helps you know what is truly important to you. Head over to my retreats page for more information.

And if a retreat isn't for you right now, simply giving yourself a few minutes each day to pause, close your eyes, breathe and turn your attention inward (perhaps with the help of a guided meditation ) is a great step on the path towards connecting with your inner guidance system and all that is truly important.

Making life's transitions with ease and grace

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 10:48:22 GMT

"It's not the changes that do you in, it's the transitions"

As we transition from summer to autumn and notice the changes that are going on around us – leaves turning from green to red, yellow and orange, the air feeling colder on the skin, the light becoming more muted – there is also an opportunity to notice the changes that are going on in the inner environment too.

No matter what stage of life we are in, we are always experiencing some sort of transition. Sometimes the transitions happen almost undetected, we barely notice them happening until we look in the mirror one day and see that the there are a few more lines appearing on the face or grey in the hair. Other transitions can feel like a tsunami; picking us up, tossing us around, leaving us bereft with no sense of where we find ourselves now.

What transitions are you going through right now?

It may be the beginning or ending of a relationship, a change of career or job, menopause, adjusting to children having left home, caring for those who used to care for you.

What is the experience like for you?

At some point each of these is likely to feel confusing, disorienting and destabilising as we find ourselves stuck in limbo between life as it was before and life as it will be now. There is great power in choosing to give ourselves time to step back from the busy day to day activity and reactivity and open up to our inner wisdom on how to navigate whatever we are experiencing with more grace and ease.

I am reminded of a quote from William Bridges:

“It’s not the changes that do you in it’s the transitions”

We experience change all the time and whether we like what the change brings or not, as a human being, we have developed a tremendous capacity to adapt and adjust to the new. Responding to a change is usually done at the level of behaviour change. For example, during the COIVD pandemic the vast majority of us changed our behaviour overnight – staying at home, wearing masks, testing ourselves regularly. (Have you noticed how quickly many have adjusted our behaviour back to how it was before?).

We can change and change again often quite quickly and we can become skillful at doing things differently. However, that is just part of the equation. There is also something that needs to happen on the inside if we are to make true and lasting changes AND if we are do so with more ease. That is what Bridges refers to as the transitions.

“Every transition always starts with an ending. To become something else, you have to stop being what you are now; to start doing things a new way, you have to end the way you are doing them now; and to develop a new attitude or outlook, you have to let go of the old”.

That is the hard part! That is the inner work .

It is about turning attention inwards and allowing ourselves to acknowledge what is really going on in the midst of the external changes. It is about building our inner resources so that we can reconnect with the balance, stability and confidence that will help us navigate the transition. It is about showing ourselves the care, compassion and kindness that we would offer to someone else who was finding things difficult.

The natural world around us is going through a constant cycle of change and renewal and when we slow down enough to really notice, we can take inspiration from it which will support us on our own cycle of renewal. There is no struggle as a leaf falls from the tree, the tree effortlessly lets go . There is no emotional turmoil as the squirrel prepares for hibernation, it devotes to time preparing and doing what it knows it needs to do. The sun doesn’t fight to stay in the sky longer, it allows the moon to appear sooner turning the day to night.

Learning to prepare ourselves, to let go, to allow are all part of making life’s transitions with more ease and grace. Knowing that is what we need to do and actually doing it are two different things and that is why it can be helpful to practice doing so with the support of a kind, compassionate and wise community. Stepping back from the busy-ness, the reactivity, the pressure from others and giving yourself space to really explore what it is you need from yourself in your own transition is perhaps the best act of self-care you can offer yourself.

It is for both of those reasons that I run regular mindfulness based retreats in the nourishing and stunning Perthshire countryside. I hear the impact they have on people who are willing to invest in themselves and put themselves at the top of their priority list for a change!

Whatever transition you are facing or in the middle of, you are invited to join me for my next retreat – 12 ^th & 13 ^th November – at Burmieston Farm & Steading. All of the details are on the here on my website where you can also connect with me to ask any questions or to book your place .

Give yourself the gift of your own attention.

Feeling good on purpose

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 13:51:06 GMT

What if feeling good is not just a nice experience to have every so often.
What if it is the purpose of life?

That is IT. The purpose of life is feeling good. It’s not about making money, saving the planet, being an awesome parent, leaving a legacy. Yours (and mine and everybody else’s) reason for being is to feel good.

It may be that making money, saving the planet, being an awesome parent or leaving a legacy makes you feel good and that is great. Keep doing it! But what I’m getting at here is that there is one underlying principle of life which will help you choose where to focus your time, energy and attention, it will help you navigate challenges in life with more ease and it will bring more joy to you regardless of what you do. And the best bit is……it is REALLY simple.

That principle is that life is not to be enjoyed NOT endured. We are here to discover what feels good and to live create our lives from that energy. That is it.

Sound too good to be true?

Ok, let’s look at what is going on when we don’t feel good.

Fill in the gap in this sentence – “I am upset because ”

It may be that you are not upset in this moment but I feel pretty sure that you have felt upset at some point in the not too distant past so, bring that time back into your awareness and remember what it was that made you feel upset.

Feeling upset sits in the category of feeling bad rather than feeling good. It brings up feelings of disturbance, disruption, discomfort, disappointment and worry. Not good, right?

Now, take a look at what you put in that gap – “I am upset because ” – what have you attributed your upset to?

Something someone else did or didn’t do
Something that didn’t work out the way you hoped or planned
Something someone said or how they acted towards you or someone else
Not being in control or being under the control of others
Being ignored or undervalued

What each of these have in common is that they lie outside of you . The source of your upset sits with someone or something that is external and feels outside of your control. You are not alone. It’s what we all do, until we realise and then choose to refocus on feeling good.

The upset we feel inside is always attributed to something outside of ourselves and what happens is we develop a pattern inside which justifies the emotional disturbance we feel. We find a reason for the discomfort we feel which allows us to feel upset (even to indulge those feelings) because it is someone else’s fault and therefore feeling bad is justified.

Why would we do this?

Well, it gives us a way out. If it is something that is happening to us then we are the victim and we have no power to make it better until and unless someone else does something first. This is how it seems when seen from the ego’s perspective - the ego that wants to be right, wants to be in control and when it finds it isn’t, looks to someone else to blame.

Look at the political situation in most countries around the world, or the climate emergency or the cost of living crisis and you can see macro level challenges that have a lot of bad feeling attached to them right now. At a micro level we get caught in this victim way of being in our everyday life when our partner or children don’t clear up after themselves, when our boss lands yet another pile of work or new deadline on us or when we get so busy we stop looking ourselves as well as we need to.

There is an alternative perspective to this. A perspective which shifts us away from the bad feeling and points us back to feeling good.

Feeling good is our natural default state. Look at small children, they know this, and they are always finding ways to get back to a state of feeling good. They are in tune with and listen much more closely to this alternative (non-ego) perspective and they are willing to say no to that which makes them feel bad in favour of that which makes them feel good.

(Take a look at the video mini series I’ve made to remind you what it’s like to be connected with that part of yourself).

As we become adults we seem to lose connection with this part of ourselves but (this the best part!), we can rediscover that connection and it’s not as difficult as it might seem. It’s a bit like learning to use a different technology than the one you’ve become used to, and that new technology makes it faster and easier than the old fashioned, long hand version (a bit like using a calculator to do maths when you are used to doing long division!!!)

So, what does feeling good feel like for you?

Take a moment to pause and sense into the feelings of feeling good. Where do you feel it in the body? What emotions does it evoke? What images come to mind? Are there sounds that come with the experience?

Imagine feeling like that whenever you want to.

Imagine if you could call that to yourself at any time, regardless of what was going on around you. How would your life be if your only job was to notice when you didn’t feel like that and then switch perspective so you could?

That might sound a bit fanciful and I appreciate that you have a job or other responsibilities. But just consider how different those would be when done from a place of feeling good rather than tired, frustrated, angry, overwhelmed or frightened.

So, this is my invitation to you …….to experiment with consciously bringing your awareness inside and to feeling good. Start by committing to doing it for an hour. Set a timer so you can forget about the time and go about your usual activities just keeping asking yourself “how could this feel good?” and then “what feels good about this?” and so on with each thing you do over that hour.

Once you’ve done it for an hour you can extend it to a couple of hours, or from getting up to lunch time and then to a whole day. The key is to make it timebound so it doesn’t feel impossible and also to approach it with a childlike curiosity, as a game. You can’t get this wrong!

Notice what you notice. What surprised you, what felt different than it usually does, when was it easier to do than at other times? It would be great to read your reflections so pop them into the comments below.

This is all about bringing awareness back inside and shifting from victim mode to owner. Being the owner of your experience and choosing how you’d like to feel in each moment rather than being at the mercy of someone or something else.

As Eleanor Roosevelt said:

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

I’m curious to hear how you get on and so I’d like to offer you a second invitation and that is to have a 30 minute conversation with me about what you noticed. We can’t always see the treasure in our experience ourselves and so it really helps to hear it reflected back by someone else and that’s what I can do. So, drop me an email and we’ll arrange a time to get on a call for a half hour conversation to rediscover your power to feel good..

Working on the Inside

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Mon, 02 May 2022 14:16:41 GMT

How much time, energy and attention do you give to your inner work?

And, what if the most important "job" we have is the one where we are not doing anything?

Work is synonymous with money, effort and outputs. It is something we do and our effort in doing it can be measured through outputs. It can be physical, intellectual or technical and is often experienced as hard or time consuming.

But what if there is a different perspective on work?

I was having a conversation with a friend recently and I found myself talking about doing inner work. The quizzical look on her face told me that what I was saying was not landing with her so I tried to explain what I meant, with little success!

So, it got me thinking - what did I really mean and why did it feel important to me?

It is REALLY important to me. I have devoted a huge proportion of my life to inner work and know that has contributed positively to my experience of life. When I am with a client, we are exclusively focused on inner work. Their work (their job) is on the periphery of our conversation it is not our focus and yet, I see the impact it has when they point their attention in a different direction and how they then approach their work (their job) in a more empowered and creative way.

And so, what is inner work? And why does it matter?

Inner work is what happens when we accept that our experience of the world around us comes from what we are experiencing on the inside, not from the outside, and we consciously choose to explore how that could be different, and better, for us.

Imagine that regardless of what shit happens in your life (relationship breakdown, losing a job, illness, financial challenges) you could maintain a sense of balance and stability which would enable you to respond in a powerful and creative way. Imagine not being at the mercy of someone or something else for the situation to resolve itself. Imagine being ok with whatever happens and being able to transform your experience from the inside out.

What could that mean for you?

There is no shortage of training courses you can go on to learn about anything you want and there is a whole internet with infinite information for you to devour in the quest to know more about any subject. And yet people still find themselves in situations where there is no “how to” and no amount of knowledge helps them work out what to do.

That is where the inner work trumps all!

Turning attention inwards and getting to know the mind, the body and the heart more intimately is where real power and freedom lies. It’s where true empowerment comes from. With a greater sense of awareness of the inner landscape we can choose in any moment how we want to experience it. And I mean literally any moment.

I wrote in a previous blog about going for investigations and treatment last year for pre-cancerous cells following a smear test. That experience showed me the value in doing the inner work because instead of being worrying, painful and disruptive I experienced it with ease and a curiosity which surprised and delighted me!

Inner work isn’t done to the exclusion of the outer world, it is done in partnership with it and “work” in the traditional sense (the things we do that we receive money for) can be a great source of material for the inner work (or put another way - it offers endless gifts in the form of learning). The tasks we do, projects we work on, the people we work alongside, the experienced we have and the way we feel are all rich opportunities for us to turn our attention inward and get to know ourselves at a different (and deeper) level.

And don’t get me wrong about training and learning! I was a corporate trainer for many years, I have been on many courses myself, I have 3 degrees and I LOVE reading. So, I still value gaining knowledge and understanding how things work and exploring different perspectives on the world. It’s just that I know with every cell in my body that unless I also explore the inner perspective the value is limited .

We can connect with that inner perspective in many ways – meditation, journaling, painting, drawing, music and anything we do which relaxes us and gets us out of our head - the key point is that we need to invest energy, attention and effort in it in the same way as we do with traditional “work”. The rewards of doing so are worth so much more than the money we get at the end of each month, the promotion, the extra responsibility. The rewards are freedom, fulfilment, joy and peacefulness.

If you are curious about doing some inner work all you need to do to get started is commit to giving yourself 5 minutes each day to stop, sit quietly, close your eyes and be open to noticing what comes into your awareness. Doing that regularly will start to give you a whole new sense of yourself and that is where the work begins. I also recommend checking out the short video series I have made to support people dive into the world of inner work.

(If you have already started the inner work and want to go further, get in touch and we can book in time for a conversation about what that might look like for you).

A curious and delightful experience

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 14:13:53 GMT

......when decision making becomes simply making a choice.

Am I alone or has this happened to you too?

Things are going well in life, you feel like you are on an even keel, all is well. And then, along comes a situation which puts you at a crossroad. You could go left of you could go right, there are pros and cons for each option, but the more you think about it the more you find yourself spinning and the balance you felt is replaced with oscillating between yes and no and back again.

This is how I have often felt about making decisions in the past. Whether it was around work opportunities, investing money, buying a house, a night out with friends or what to have for dinner, I (more often than not) found myself in this inner turmoil called making a decision.

Until now.

Right at this moment my husband and I are sitting with a work opportunity he has been presented with and it is a strangely curious and delightful experience!

It is exactly one of those crossroad moments where he could say yes or he could say no and down each of those roads there are, what appear to be, pros and cons. The thing that is curious and delightful is that we both feel very relaxed about it. It doesn’t feel like the “big decision” that it might have felt just a few months ago.

So, what’s different?

The truth is there is nothing fundamentally different. Our circumstances have not changed; our financial position is no different, our family situation is stable, we are both well and our relationship is in a good place. And yet it feels very, very different to be sitting in this space of not knowing which way to go and to be enjoying the experience at the same time.

Let’s slow down for a moment. What is really going on here?

What if this is not actually about making the decision?
What if it really doesn’t matter whether he says yes or no?
What is there is something else going on?

Making a decision has often felt like a onetime deal to me, something to commit to and to get right.

I remember many hours weighing up the benefits and consequences of moving to London, of becoming self-employed, of ending a relationship and many other decisions over the years. Yes, there have been some decisions that have been easy to make and where there was very little thought required such as buying my first flat and getting married. Sometimes there is no crossroad there is just the path ahead. But more often than not being faced with decisions has activated a part of me that feels it needs to have all the variables worked out and have a plan mapped out leading to a clear outcome that I could visualise.

With this opportunity Dan has been presented with we find ourselves at a crossroad and whilst (unlike saying yes to his proposal!) there isn’t a clear yes at this moment, the key difference is that we have a deep sense of peace that whatever decision he makes, all will be well. And that feels liberating!

It feels so light and joyful to be free from the pressure to make the right decision and to enjoy being in the experience of choosing.

That is the key difference - b eing in the experience of choosing.

Being with the possibilities and the potential of each option without needing to work anything out. Being ok with not knowing how things will unfold. Being willing to make a choice with something other than reason, logic and rationale. (I didn’t make the decision to marry Dan with reason, logic and rationale and that has worked out pretty well for us over the past 16 years!).

When it comes to this work opportunity, and frankly it could be any decision, we are not trying to work it all out in our head or on paper. Past experience has shown that this is futile because the factors that influence a decision made today may be entirely different tomorrow as the world around us changes moment by moment. Instead, we are sitting in the feeling of what it would be like to say yes and what it would be like to say no. We are allowing ourselves to be guided by the deep sense of what is important to us and how we want to experience life.

Instead of fixating on the details (i.e. what the job looks like, where it is, what Dan will be doing) we are paying more attention to the experience we want to have (i.e. will it be enjoyable, will it give him/us freedom, will it be fulfilling?). It’s all about looking in a different direction. Instead of looking for the clear picture of perfection we are turning towards a sense of the feeling of the experience.

It's like when you have a day off and you the experience you want is to feel relaxed and switched off from work. What you do, how that day looks, could take so many different forms from sitting reading a book, to socialising with friends, to going for a run or cooking a nice meal. The physical form doesn’t really matter the choice of what you do is based on how you want to feel .

It’s about getting curious about how you want to feel first. Asking - do I want to feel challenged, inspired, relaxed, happy, peaceful, energised, liberated or something else……? A nd then, from a sense of that feeling, looking at the opportunity and noticing if it aligns with the feeling or not. The choice then becomes easy.

Will Dan accept the work opportunity or not? I don’t know but what I do know is that this has offered us a curious and delightful opportunity to let go of the belief that making decisions is hard and to discover what it is like to be ok with making a choice based on something other than logic and fact. And let’s face it, the biggest disappointments in life come when our plan and our expectations don’t deliver what we thought they would.

So, I’ll leave you with a question to reflect on:

Where in your life are you holding yourself hostage to making the “right” decision and what would it be like if you could let go of needing to know and simply chose the experience you want to have?

The Inner Battle of Wills, and how to find Peace

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 12:14:56 GMT

"I don’t want to"

"I don’t feel like it"

"You can’t tell me what to do"

"I don’t what this, I want that"

Who do you imagine is saying this?

You’ll be forgiven for saying a three year old child or a surly teenager. In fact, this is what goes on inside the head of most adults at some point and, for many of us, on a daily basis. Sometimes it is very loud and obvious, a bit like a three year old having a tantrum. At other times it is quiet, subtle and almost imperceptible, like a teenager who has learned that the tantrum doesn’t get them the outcome they want and so they've developed some covert means to still get their way.

When I woke up this morning I was immediately aware that I didn’t feel as rested as I’d like to have felt. I’d been awake a few times in the night and had some pretty weird dreams so I felt the physical effects of a broken night’s sleep. What I also noticed was the stirrings of my inner teenager as it said “What! It can’t be morning already, I’m still tired. I don’t want to get up yet, I’m going to stay in bed”.

I lay there for a few minutes noticing the inner battle between the part of me that knew once I got up and started my morning routine I’d feel much better and the part of me that couldn’t be bothered and wanted to indulge in the warmth of my cosy bed.

This is just one example of when that inner battle of wills strikes. For you it may be the opposite and your inner teenager or three year old doesn’t want to go to bed and the battle is to convince it that sleep is good for it. Or maybe it is around exercise, eating healthily, drinking alcohol or perhaps it is around confronting a difficult person at work, starting a challenging piece of work or saying no to the constant barrage of demands on your time.

Whatever it is for you, there will be times when you can become aware that there is more than one voice in your head telling you want to do. One is willing you on and the other is pulling you back . The thing is, we aren’t always aware what is going on and we can get consumed by one dominant perspective and completely lose sight (or refuse to see) the other perspectives.

The curious thing is that we can almost always see other perspectives when we are on the outside looking in. We can hear when someone else is caught up in their inner child or teenager and we can see the self-imposed difficulties that creates for them.

The key point is that we CAN become more aware of which perspective is the dominant one in our own thinking and we CAN practice seeing our situation from another perspective. To do it takes three things:

An acceptance that there are different perspectives available to us in every situation
A willingness to pause and try on a different perspective
Practice

There is something powerful in recognising that in any situation it is possible to switch perspectives and see things in a completely different light . The inner child doesn’t always see it that way and may resist at first, digging its heals in and refusing to shift. But I’ve found it helpful to reassure it that we’re just trying the other perspective on, we don’t have to believe it for now.

Space opens up, mentally and physically, within us when we are willing to step back and listen to another perspective. And the wonderful thing is that we can access all of the different perspectives ourselves, we don’t need someone else to give them to us, we just need to remember to slow down and allow them to be heard .

I don’t know about you but very often the perspective which points me in the right direction is less of a voice in my head and more of a sense somewhere in my body. It’s difficult to describe but it’s like a knowing, like a wisdom that sits quietly watching all the drama unfolding and if I just remember to pause, breathe, allow my mind to become quiet it whispers the exact thing I need to know at the exact time I need to hear it.

So, this morning I heard the whispered reminder that I have a choice in every moment and I could choose to indulge the tiredness or I could choose to bring some energy to my body and mind and so I got up, did my Tai Chi practice and meditation and as I sit here writing this I feel great!

My invitation to you is to explore this for yourself around something where you feel that inner battle of wills and use these questions to help you:

Can I accept that there are different perspectives available to me in this situation?
Am I willing to pause and try on a different perspective?

And then practice saying or writing down all of the possible perspectives on this situation you are facing.

Remember, you don’t have to buy into any of them or change your current perspective, but the practice is to notice how it feels as you start to see alternative ways to see and experience the situation. It may be that you choose to act differently as a result or maybe not, but the point is to notice how things open up for you and the tension dissipates when you step back from the inner battle of wills and allow a fresh perspective to surface .

“If you change the way you look at things the things you look at change”
Wayne Dyer

It only takes a moment, for everything to change

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 15:13:31 GMT

"Nothing changes, yet everything changes in a single moment of realisation"

(from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior)

It is that simple.

A single moment.

Many of us spend years and years, or even a lifetime, trying to change things. We live in the illusion that change requires force and effort and the bigger the change the harder we need to push. When in fact the opposite is how it really works.

It's an upside down perspective and, I don't know about you, but it is not the way I thought the world worked for a very long time!

"Surely, if I don't try hard nothing will happen?"

"If we don't DO something nothing will change"

Our desire to control combined with our fear of not being in control drives this urge to put in more and more effort to creating things the way we want them to be. We strive, we fight, we work hard, we put in lots of hours, we sacrifice.....

Until one day, when we run out of energy, or we hit up against yet another brick wall and we find ourselves back at square one. At that point we start to see that our approach isn't working.

And in that moment, everything changes.

That moment of realisation, epiphany, insight, moment of clarity, the aha moment, when things drop into place – whatever you choose to call it – happens in an instant and it happens when we stop efforting (not sure that's a real word but you get my meaning!).

The reason many of us don't believe it is that simple is that we believe change comes from what we do, when in fact change comes from who we're being . We look for the change to show up in some way on the outside as a result of our actions. We want the world to look different, the people in it to be different, the shape and form of our surroundings to be different. But the realisation that our efforting is not bringing us the outcome we want is a moment when things really start to change, and it happens on the inside first.

However, many of us miss it. We are so busy looking outside and caught up in our heads trying to work everything out.

When we need to be doing the exact opposite.

Like Archimedes and his Eureka! moment, a problem, question or challenge that we’ve been battling with for a long time can suddenly shift and the answer, the way forward becomes clear. (Perhaps taking a bath is the way to go!).

Wherever it happens for you, it is about creating the conditions to enable it to happen more often:

Being open to seeing the world differently and willing to accept you don't know
Going at a slower speed so that you can allow the connections you hadn’t seen before to show themselves
Being less in the head, trying to figure everything out, and more in the body, feeling your way
Doing what makes you feel good (we are more open and receptive when we feel good!).

The answer you are looking for to whatever question you are asking is there, you already know it.

What if the next moment is the moment you realise it?

How would that change your world?

You can't get this wrong

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 17:31:52 GMT

So much of what stops us experiencing the breadth and depth of what life has to offer is wrapped up in fear.

Why is it that most of us have a deeply held fear of getting things wrong?

What is it that we think will happen if something doesn’t work out the way we hoped it would?

And what is the significance we place on that?

We worry we’ll lose face, money, status, time, energy, relationships, our job and myriad of other things. The common theme is loss. We fear we will lose something and so we feel safer sticking with the status quo, with the familiar, with what we already know rather than stepping over the threshold and into this space of unknown potential.

And yet, we all know people who throw themselves over that threshold and launch themselves towards the unknown and experience great success, pleasure and freedom in doing so. In fact..….we have all been that person! Have you ever watched a 3 year old??

So, it is possible.

We all have it within us to try something new we simply need to acknowledge the fear and bring it on the journey. The fear is coming from a part of ourselves we could call the ego. It’s the part that likes to stay in control, thinks it knows how things work and at its core is driven by fear, lack and scarcity. In my experience trying to override that part – “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” style – can create all kinds of internal conflict and unnecessary stress. What I have come to realise is that when I acknowledge the part of myself that is fearful and trying to control the uncontrollable, and reassure it, much like a scared 3 year old, it is much more compliant!

The approach that has worked well for me and many of the people I work with is to see trying something new as an experiment. The definition of experiment is “to test and trial in order to learn if something works or is true” , which means we don’t know in advance if our hypothesis (how we think or hope this new thing will work out) is true and so we can’t get it wrong.

Experimenting is a wonderful way to overcome the fear of loss because experiments by their very nature are about gaining something new – new data, learning, evidence, experience. Seen from that perspective makes it easier for the ego to get on board.

I have experimented in many ways from; taking cold showers in the morning (my most recent experiment which I am yet to draw a conclusion on!) to intermittent fasting (I’ve been doing this for 2 years now) and being self-employed (which I have been doing for nearly 16 years so it's been a pretty successful one!). I have also worked with people who have experimented with;

a setting up a new business
changing the direction of their business
working a 3-day week
living off grid
saying no
increasing their fees
abstaining from social media
meditating every day

The point about experimenting is you don’t have to commit your life (or life savings) to it. The approach that works best is to be very clear and succinct and to give yourself a timescale that feels do-able. The ego likes timescales so it helps to have a clear end point to the experiment. It also has to feel exciting, that’s the bit that tells you it is just outside your comfort zone. The excitement tells you it is something that, if it does work out, is something you know will feel good and that is an important motivator.

Take my recent experiment as an example. I have been reading a lot about the benefits of cold water on the immune system , stress levels as well as alterness and mental health benefits and so I decided to experiment with having a cold shower each morning for the first 2 weeks of January. I am beginning my experiment by turning the water to cold for just 20 seconds at the end of my “usual” shower. (The thought of going into a cold shower and standing there for 10 minutes whilst I washed was too much for the ego!). There may be a part 2 where I have my whole showering experience in cold water but for now I’m testing and trialling at 20 seconds. And that’s the beauty of an experiment. You call the shots and you can start small and go bigger.

You can’t get this wrong.

There is nothing to lose and a whole heap of learning, data, evidence and experience to gain.

Last year I experimented with not planning in my business. Yes, I stopped planning. My experiment was to be more responsive to what was happening within me (in terms of where I felt drawn to) and around me (in terms of what opportunities were presenting themselves to me) on each day. This was a big deal for me as my default setting for pretty much everything in life is to plan and organise so that there are no surprises and I get what I (think) I want.

Guess what happened......

.........nothing bad! That's the first thing to say and in fact, so much good came from that experiment. I was surprised, a lot! The thing that surprised me the most was that I ended up having my most profitable and enjoyable year in the 16 years of running my own business. I also took a lot of learning about how uncomfortable it can feel to do something different but that it's possible to ease into that discomfort until it becomes comfortable (a bit like standing under a cold shower in the morning!).

So, I invite you to choose an area of your life that you’d like to invigorate or revitalise – your business or work, a relationship, your health or fitness, a room in your house, your finances or something else.

What would you love to be different about that area of your life?
Start by writing down exactly how you’d like it to be with no filtering. Notice how it feels to read it back to yourself, imagine your life in that way.
Ok now, what would be an experiment you could do for 2 weeks that would take you a step towards that experience?
Choose something you can commit to trying out in just 2 weeks with the intention to discover something new about how to create that difference in your life.
Make sure it is clear, succinct and exciting.
Put a reminder in your calendar to check back in with yourself in 2 weeks to see how your experiment has gone.

Remember - you can’t get this wrong.

Whatever happens gives you more information about what is possible for you and it may be you choose to continue with your experiment for longer, maybe you evolve it and expand it or maybe you stop. It is your choice but you can’t get it wrong.

Are you willing to give it a go?

I am so sure that this approach to experimenting really works that I will set up a complimentary 121 call with you to coach you through this if you are willing to share with me what your experiment is. If that sounds like something that would help get over your fear and get you into action send me an email – susan@susangrandfield.com – and we’ll set up a time.

Let go of effort and embrace ease

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 11:25:39 GMT

Something I have come to realise in many aspects of my life is that the more I try to make something happen the less likely it is to do so.

It’s like the force and effort I am putting into it pushes the very think I want further away.

That’s what happened yesterday…..

It took me half a day to write this blog! That may not sound like a long time but I can often sit down and get a blog written and on my website in just over an hour. So, what was different yesterday?

I had a whole afternoon with no client calls and no other work commitments so I decided I’d use the time productively and write a blog to put in my next A Moment of Insight newsletter . I had a couple of topics in mind but nothing clear, my intention was just to write a blog and so I sat down in my sunroom with my laptop and started to tap away on the keyboard.

Now, if I had been working on a typewriter I would have run out of Tippex or paper! I wrote and deleted and rewrote and deleted more times than I can count. And the more I started with a new blank page the more frustrated I became. The words were just not flowing and in fact the ideas were just not flowing either. I was in force mode!

I know this place, it is familiar to me and it comes from wanting things to be a certain way. Wanting things to happen when I want, how I want and with the outcome I want. (Do you see how much “I wanting” is in there?!). So, today I had decided I wanted to write a blog and, in an arrogant way, I just expected everything to fall into place.

Is that a place you are familiar with too?

You’ll know it if it is because it feels frustrating. You find yourself using more and more effort and force, a bit like trying to squeeze a duvet back into the bag you bought it in. You get one side to fit in and the other side pops out. You kind of know it’s not going to fit but you keep pushing anyway!

It could be a simple task like writing a blog or a report, or doing the gardening or fixing something around the house. Or it could be something that feels more significant like a relationship, a job or running a business. The common theme is we are trying to make something fit our ideal when our experience is showing us that it’s not working out that way.

We all have places in our lives where we push and force and try to control the outcome. And what we see over time is that the more we push the less we get what we want, we just end up bent out of shape from trying and pissed off in the process.

But there is another way.

What I did (to finally get a blog published for you to read) was close my laptop, make a cup of tea and I sit and look out of the window. I did that for 45 minutes or so and then I felt the energy change. There was a loosening and a softening in the body and the mind. It felt like I relaxed and let go of the need to have the blog written today. Ahh, the relief!

And that is the key point…… letting go of the need to have things as we want them to be. When we let ourselves off the hook of "need" and "want" and "control" we create the space for the energy to shift. The energy moves from force and effort to ease and allowing . And let me tell you it feels SO much better!

I didn’t finish the blog yesterday but when I came back to it today I felt so much lighter. It has been a wonderful reminder for me that when I feel force, effort, control and single minded determination that something WILL work out the way I want it to, I need to step back and give myself some space. And that is my invitation to you. It doesn’t really matter what you DO in that space it is simply about letting your energy shift.

The forceful energy can dissipate if you are not continuing to push. A new energy can emerge, one which is more easeful and often more creative. It is something about letting go of the need to make things happen that allows things to happen in their own way (which is quite frankly often a much better way than the way we have imagined!).

So here I am at the end of the blog which wrote itself!

I wonder where you can ease off on the force and effort and create the space for something new and wonderful to emerge?

When the mind can't explain something.....

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 15:22:30 GMT

.....we have the opportunity to get curious and (possibly) transform our experience.

Picture the scene:-

Undressed from the waist down
Legs in stirrups
Watching a doctor pick up what looked like a metal medieval instrument of torture
And the words “pre-cancerous” in my mind

That was me a few weeks ago when I went for a gynaecological procedure at the hospital.

Why am I sharing this with you, you may ask??

And I’d say that is a very good question!

My answer is that this experience offered me so much wisdom about how I create my own reality and how I can shape my own experience, even in the face of what might be described as a frightening situation, that I had a sense it may help others in whatever their own difficult situations.

I won’t go into graphic detail but allow me to offer a bit more context…..

The scene I set out at the start described my return to the hospital for a procedure following a biopsy which had found abnormal cells on my cervix. That is not an unusual situation and (if you are a female reading this) you may have experienced this yourself. If you have, you’ll probably be able to relate to the feelings that arise when you read about “high grade pre-cancerous cells” and “significant changes detected”. If, like me, you find yourself unable to fight the urge to Google what “CIN3” means you’d find out that this means the cells (undetected or without treatment) can develop into cervical cancer.

I was in panic mode. The C word had been mentioned and now I had to go and have bits of my cervix cut out! Eek! My mind was showing me images of a horrible, painful, embarrassing and frightening procedure. I was aware that I had been hi-jacked by my fear response and was visualising the worst possible experience and the worst possible outcome. Understandable you could say but not very helpful. This lasted for a couple of days.

And then something shifted.

I can’t explain what it happened. I was like another part of me woke up and showed me that there was a different experience available to me, that I could choose to have a different perspective on the situation.

What happened over the days and weeks until my appointment was a growing sense of allowing, acceptance, surrender and connecting with the part of me that knew it would be ok. I can’t explain how this happened and even with the years of mindfulness meditation I had done and all the personal development I’ve done on getting to know my mind better. Something different was going on here.

It was like a sense of calm and peace arose from within me and I was able to step out of the disaster movie and into a space of ease and relaxation. As the day of the appointment came closer I found myself more relaxed rather than less and, strangely, I became quite curious about what the experience would be like.

On the day itself it didn’t go perfectly, and that is an important point. This wasn’t a case of thinking positively and everything will ok, there was something else going on which my mind couldn’t explain.

I had to wait for 40 minutes to be called for my appointment and instead of getting worked up or irritated I was able to just sit there. I felt relaxed and at ease. Then, when I was up on the couch, legs akimbo, the doctor spent at least 20 minutes trying various pieces of equipment before she found one that “fitted”. What followed was a comedy moment when the doctor and nurse were both fiddling around between my legs trying to get the suction to work!! Instead of getting frustrated, angry or more tense I found myself smiling and laughing inside at the comedy of it. Such a different way to experience the situation.

And the post-op experience was also very different to how the mind in panic mode had imagined. It had believed the guidance that said there could be significant discomfort for up to 2 weeks. What actually happened was that I woke up the next day I had no discomfort at all and I haven’t since.

The rational mind can’t explain it . Something that it would label as painful, distressing, worrying, embarrassing, even terrifying was at worst neutral and at best a curiously interesting experience.

It showed me that the mind has a tendency to run away into worst case scenario planning, it’s what it has been programmed to do. But by pausing and asking “how would I like to experience this?” I was able to shift mode and move into a space of curiosity, choice and freedom from that programme.

The mind is more malleable than we might think. Whatever we point it towards we get more of, so pain and worry brings pain and worry, ease and relaxation brings ease and relaxation.

Will my experience and this different perspective change the outcome? I don’t know and there are still a few weeks until I get the results. I do believe that all the abnormal cells are gone but if not yet, then it means I have more opportunity to practice allowing, accepting and surrendering to enable the body to heal itself.

What I DO know is that by not fighting against the situation and trying to control it I was able to be with the experience as it unfolded without expectation of how good or bad it would be (and I ended up being very pleasantly surprised!).

So, how do you want to experience the situation you are in?

The Art of Surrender (and how to do it gracefully)

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 10:24:54 GMT

“It’s 3 am and I should be asleep”
“I’m exhausted, why oh why am I still awake?”

“I’ve been meditating for years, why can’t relax enough to sleep?”

These are words you will never hear my husband utter because he is one of the lucky people who falls asleep the instant his head touches the pillow. I have spent many a restless night cursing his natural ability to surrender to sleep over the years and secretly resenting him for it.

I am very happy to say that the cursing and resenting has eased off and there is now peace in our house at night! And it’s in part because I have been practicing the graceful art of surrender.

Let me be honest, it hasn’t felt very graceful a lot of the time. There have been tears, frustration, internal battles and a lot of self-criticism! But my desire to be able to experience more of the ease and letting go my husband experiences in the sleep department that I have been prepared to put in the effort to discover how to surrender.

Surrender can sound like giving up, throwing in the towel, walking away. And to a great extent that is true. Surrender is about putting down our (metaphorical) weapons, letting go of the fight and giving in .

After all, who are we fighting with? Ourselves!

What would we be giving in to? Sleep!

When put in the context of sleep, surrender makes a lot of sense. When put in another context it might not feel so logical, for example, a broken relationship, a difficult boss, worries about our finances, an illness.

We are programmed to fight in these situations. To put more effort in to making them the way we want them to be but that is just like trying really really really hard to sleep and finding ourselves more and more awake. The effort, push and force gives us the exact opposite of what we desire .

Where do you experience that happening in your life?

Maybe you are working really hard to be who you feel you need to be to make a relationship work only to find yourself more unhappy and disconnected in the process. Maybe you are bending over backwards to please a demanding boss or customer and finding that they just become more demanding. Or it be may that you are sticking with a job that you hate, not spending money on things you enjoy and keep looking at your bank balance hoping to feel less worried about your finance and instead of feeling reassured you feel fear and dread.

In these and countless other situations the human mind is programmed to “fix the problem”, to be strategic in tackling the situation so that we feel in control and most of all it drives us to DO SOMETHING!

And therein lies the real problem.

The paradox of life is that it is when we stop trying to control things and allow life to unfold, we uncover the wisdom that leads us to the experience we are seeking .

Just as when we stop trying to get to sleep and stop focusing on being awake that sleep washes over us. This is the art of surrender and what makes it graceful is if we stop the struggle, get out of the way and allow nature to take its course in ALL things.

It is that simple.

It is not necessarily that easy, but it is simple.

So, where can you surrender in your life to create the space for things to unfold naturally?

The Joy of Pottering

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 15:11:21 GMT

The simple act of doing stuff with no particular agenda in mind

I don’t know anything about pottery but I know a lot about pottering and I know it is one of the most satisfying, joyful and productive things we can do. Yet, for many of us it is a luxury that we only get to do once in a while.

So......I am here advocating for more Pottering!

Are you with me?

Picture the scene……

You find yourself with an unexpected afternoon alone and you have nothing in particular that needs to be done. You have 4 hours of time and space in which to do (or not do) whatever you want. You make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and sit down on the sofa with a satisfied sigh and think to yourself “what will I do now?” Something catches your eye – a bookshelf that is piled high and higglety pigglety, a drawer that is overflowing with “stuff”, swatches of fabric or paint samples for the room you are thinking of decorating, a pile of clothes on the stairs, a magazine open at a page with a new recipe you would like to try. Next thing you know you are drawn towards it and are happily begin sorting, tidying, designing, baking or whatever. As you finish that activity you find yourself moving towards something else that has popped into your awareness and before you know it, the 4 hours have passed and you realise you are feeling happier, satisfied, more relaxed than before AND you have also done a whole bunch of stuff!

This is the joy of pottering.

The pottering is “doing” without anything really needing to be “done”. It is engaging in activity in a relaxed, unhurried and pleasant manner (according to Oxford Dictionary). The joy comes from the sense of achievement WITHOUT the usual pressure of deadlines or other people’s expectations. It is not planned, it happens organically, you seem to find yourself drawn towards things without thinking too much about them. And it feels REALLY GOOD!

Why does it feel so good?

The sense of achievement releases dopamine into our system which gives us a boost and satisfies the part of us that really likes to see an output from our efforts.
Because we are doing it in a relaxed way our stress levels are low and we are not at the mercy of spikes of adrenaline or cortisol the way we might be in the midst of a busy, scheduled day.
We are using our brain and often engaging it in a more creative and relaxed way which means we feel focused but also able to let the mind wander.
And we are doing it on our own and so there is no comparison, judgement, expectations or concessions being made. It’s just you and the task.

We are guided by how we feel not what we think and we are very much in the moment and asking “what now?” rather than “what next?”. In fact, sometimes we’re not even asking what now, we are simply following the energy of what we’re drawn to in that moment.

There are 4 things pottering offers you (and these are the reasons to do it more often):

Freedom
A change of pace
A sense of achievement
Surprise and delight

Freedom

You are not at the mercy of someone else’s timescales or demands, you get to choose in each moment what to do or not do. There is no right way to potter and so you can’t get it wrong! You are completely free to do it how you want.

Change of pace

By its very nature, pottering is unhurried and therefore slower than how we are in our lives generally. Most of us operate in the higher gears as we try to keep up with the pace of life (and those around us) until we have to disengage into neutral through sheer exhaustion at the end of the day or week. Pottering is like a gentle Sunday morning drive in the countryside rather than a Formula 1 race around Silverstone!

Sense of achievement

When we look back on a period of pottering we get an immediate reward. The tidying, the sorting, the creating, the experimenting all give us something tangible we can see, feel, taste or touch and that plays to the part of us that likes to feel we are not wasting time.

Surprise and delight

This is the one I love the most! Unlike most things we do in life, when we start to potter we have no idea where we will end up. We don’t know where our pottering might take us or what we will achieve as a result. Most of us live our lives like we need to control as much as we can and as a result we miss out on the surprises that life can offer us. The joy of pottering is that we have no plan and we are not in control, we are allowing ourselves to be guided by the moment.

Who doesn’t want more of all of that in their lives?

Pottering can be a joy for people who like getting things done and find the idea of doing nothing excruciating and it can be equally joyful for people who like to go with the flow.

So, I am advocating for more pottering. I encourage you to see the value in it and give it the priority it deserves in your life. It is not indulgent, it is not a luxury to experience once in a blue moon and when everything else is done, it is something that reconnects you with what it means to be a human being.

Are you in?

Who are your unexpected teachers?

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 15:52:16 GMT

(and what treasure do they have for you?)

Who have been your teachers?

You might notice your mind taking you back to school and recalling the slightly eccentric maths teacher, the strict French teacher or the good looking art teacher (perhaps just me!) you had years ago. Or perhaps your piano teacher, football coach, dance teacher or driving instructor comes to mind.

They have all taught you something, for sure. But what about all the other teachers in your life?

The many, many other people who have offered you the opportunity to learn something new or see things from a different perspective. Whether you took that opportunity and gained that new perspective is a different matter but the point is they appeared in your life at a time when there was something new for you to discover.

Treasure.

That’s what was yours to discover - the treasure, the gold, the gifts of life that have the potential to transform or change the course of your life.

Treasure comes in so many different forms and mostly not in a big wooden chest with a large bass padlock! Sometimes the treasure is subtle . So subtle that you miss it if you are not looking for it but it is no less powerful than the big bars of gold.

I would like to suggest to you that the treasure that means the most and has the most transformative effect is the treasure that we miss or that we catch a glimpse of and then disregard. That treasure often comes from the most surprising sources.

Everyone can teach us something about ourselves. How people respond to us, how people behaviour around us, what people expect of us and how we feel around them are all offers of wonderful treasure.

In my experience, the people who we find most frustrating or who irritate us are often our best teachers! They are mirroring back to us something that we can learn about ourselves .

Here are some examples you may recognise in yourself:

Someone who is opinionated and always needs to have the last word in an argument may be mirroring back your need to be heard more.
Someone who sees the worst case scenario and brings a pessimistic tone to a conversation may be mirroring back your fears about the future.
Someone who wants to be the leader and makes plans on everyone’s behalf may be mirroring back your desire to step up more and take control.
Someone who sits quietly and doesn’t engage with the group may be mirroring back your longing for solitude.

Do any of these resonate?

Can you identify your own version of these?

Choose someone in your life that you have a difficult relationship with or who has ways of being that rub you up the wrong way and bring to mind what it is that irritates you or frustrates you about them. Now turn that around and look at yourself through that lens. When do you do that? How does that show up in your behaviour or thinking?

At first you might not notice it (or accept it!) but if you are willing to see it, it is highly likely that the thing you see in someone else is something that is present in you as well and THAT is the treasure. They have been your teacher. They have mirrored back to you in such a beautiful way something that you may not have seen in yourself . It is not always easy to accept but all you need to do right now is take this first step to see that there is treasure there for you.

Noticing that has allowed me to be more accepting of others and to allow them to be exactly as they are. I used to want people to be different so that I would feel better around them but I realise that would mean I miss out on so much wonderful treasure. So now, I am grateful and appreciative of them and understand why they are in my life.

They are all my teachers.

Get more of what you want (not just what you need)

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 17:02:57 GMT

"I want doesn't get"

Do you remember being told that as a child?

Even now I can hear my mum’s voice in my head as my wishes, desires or hopes were snatched away.

Ok, that is perhaps a little dramatic, but there is an impact of repeatedly hearing something like “I want doesn’t get”. It tends to start to seem true and, particularly when we hear it as a child, it tends to influence and shape how we see ourselves and the world.

“I want doesn’t get” creates a sense that it’s not ok to want things or that the things we want lie somewhere beyond our reach. But, human beings are driven by wants and desires . Wanting something creates an energy and a motivation and often comes from a deep place within us.

Somehow needing something is much more acceptable (or at least that’s how it felt to me as a child). If I needed new school shoes I’d get them pretty quickly. If I needed a drink I’d get that and usually there was a choice about what drink I could have. Even as a teenager if I needed a lift somewhere one of my parents would be my chauffeur.

Why is it that needing seems to take priority over wanting ?

Needing has an energy of importance, significance and perhaps even criticality. If we need something but we don’t get it there are consequences. Those consequences may be real or perceived but either way there is a sense of requiring the need to be met for us to be ok.

Yet, wanting has a different energy .

It is more about the experience we want to have as a result of the thing we want being present in our lives and less about the consequences. There is a curiosity and an anticipation that comes from wanting, it can often take us into our imagination as we “try out” the experience of having our wants fulfilled.

The crucial difference is that if we don’t get what we want we are still ok. When we don’t get what we need we are not ok.

This takes practice, after all, that mantra of “I want doesn’t get” is deeply ingrained! For a couple of years I have been practicing by allowing myself to pay more attention to what I want - what I really, really want (to quote a song lyric from the 1990’s!) - and what I’m noticing is that the more I do that the more I experience what I want.

For example, at the start of the year I decided I wanted to work fewer days and to have Monday’s and Friday’s free from client work so that I could indulge my passions of reading, writing and walking. I didn’t need that to happen and so I was quite relaxed about it but as it turns out the key clients I am working with right now also didn’t want to book in work with me on a Monday or a Friday and so I now work a 3 day week!

The key for me in this, and which is the point I want to share with you, is that it is not about the thing you want or need it is about the energy that sits behind it . If the energy is coming from need and there is fear or concern about consequences it will have a different impact on the outcome than if the energy comes from being open to experiencing it and being curious about if and how it might appear.

When you say you need something then the mind goes into problem solving mode and tries to work out how to fulfil that need. When you say you want something the mind is programmed to know it might not happen and so it tends not to get so involved in the process. The result….. more of what you want starts to show up.

It’s not something to understand with your head! This is something to feel into and practice with. But what I’ve found is the first step is simply shifting from thinking about I need to happen and feeling into the energy of what I want to happen.

Give it a go and let me know what you start to notice.

(The answer.....) it's not out there

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 12:58:46 GMT

What should I do?

How will I manage this?

How is this going to work?

Is this even possible?

What is the answer?

We experience life through the questions we ask ourselves.

Whether we are embarking on a new relationship, changing careers, starting a business, buying a house, making financial investments or balancing working from home with home schooling children, we face many questions.

That, in itself isn’t a problem. The questions aren’t the issue, in fact they are a helpful part of the process of making decisions and taking action however…..it can become a problem when we look for the answers somewhere “out there”.

In times of uncertainty we (quite naturally and understandably) seek out answers which will give us a feeling of confidence and reassurance about what is the right or best thing to do. So, we turn towards the people who we perceive to have the experience, data or wisdom that we think we lack.

And that is where it goes wrong!

We give our power over to someone else. We seek answers “out there”.

In doing so, we disempower ourselves by thinking that someone else knows more about what is best for us than we do. We diminish our capacity for creativity by following someone else’s approach. We create a dependency on others which means when things go wrong we have someone else we can blame.

I am not saying we do this consciously. That is precisely the point, we do it unconsciously.

There are many (an increasing number of) people in the world who claim to be experts or who are in positions that society has deemed expert and as a result we have essentially become programmed to seek out the “experts” when we are faced with life’s decisions and new situations. There is nothing wrong with that either.

Seeking out experts is the conscious part, but the unconscious part is that we are often in so much of a rush to get the answer and take action to solve our problem that we don’t allow our own wisdom to take a seat at the table as well. We turn all of our attention and energy towards enacting what the experts say.

Whatever you are facing right now there are likely to be many experts you could turn to for advice or guidance. There may even be people who are telling you how to deal with your situation without you even asking them (be they public figures or closer to home in the form or friends and family).

A word of caution when anyone is telling you what you should do is that you remind yourself that you are the ONLY AND BEST expert in your life and what is right for you. No-one else can know what will be right for you so it is about you slowing down, turning your attention inward and listening to your inner guidance.

When you are asking yourself “how do I do this?” listen inside for the answer . It will always be the best answer for you.

Want to explore this a bit further? Take a look at one of my earlier blogs "How can I trust myself?"

What do you need help with?

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 10:06:53 GMT

And what's stopping you asking for it?

It never occurred to me to ask for help when I was set out in business on my own. It seems crazy to admit that now but I look back and see that there was a sense that somehow I needed to figure it out all on my own!

When I noticed that (just the other day) it got me thinking – where else in my life do I not ask for help?

My husband would probably tell you that when I start a task (such as building IKEA furniture or painting a room in the house) I become frustratingly stubborn and even when he can see me struggling my response to his offer of help is “I am fine! I’ll manage it on my own”.

In both cases asking for help just wasn’t on my radar. It didn’t occur to me to ask for it or accept it when offered.

What’s that all about?

It’s got me wondering why we don’t ask for help even when that is exactly what we need. Here are some of the conclusions I’ve come to:

We worry what it says about our capabilities
We are conditioned to persevere no matter how tough something gets
We worry what other people will think or how we will be judged
We think it means something about our character or personality or self-identity
We have never done it and so don’t know how to ask

The common theme in all of these is fear and the fear comes from a made-up story we create in our own mind about what asking for help means. We make asking for help so significant that we back away from it. It feel safer and easier to carry on ourselves.

Look at children (always such a rich source of learning for us adults!). They ask for help all the time. (Ok, sometimes they wait until they are super frustrated but they do eventually ask). They realise they can’t do everything themselves.

Where would you be today if no one had ever helped you get up and start walking, tie your shoe laces, learn to drive, make decisions for yourself…..?

As an adult you get to choose what form help comes in. It could be advice, guidance, reassurance, someone doing something for you, showing you the way or helping you find your own way. Whatever you choose it is about you stepping out of fear and into your power. People who are empowered are not afraid to ask for what they need.

And here is the best thing about it all……when you ask someone to help you they benefit too! Helping is a mutual gift between two people. The giver feels great knowing that they have something to offer others and the receiver gets unstuck. It’s a WIN/WIN.

I wonder how many hours of wasted energy I could have saved when I first started my business if only I’d had the courage to ask for help.

So, where in your life could you ask for help?

Stop criticising and start acknowledging yourself

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 12:11:35 GMT

When did you last acknowledge yourself?

How often do you stop and recognise all that you do each day?

I am pretty sure I am not alone in admitting that I don’t do this very often. In fact, up until recently I didn’t do it at all!

I am really good at acknowledging others and recognising their efforts, no matter how small. I am like a cheerleader for all the people around me who I see doing great things everyday, I am awesome at encouraging and supporting others to see their achievements and yet, I rarely cheer myself on!

Being totally honest with you……I used to do the opposite.

If I had 5 things to do in my day and I did 4 of them (and did them to a phenomenally high standard I might add!) I was likely to go to bed thinking about the one thing I didn’t do. It’s like my mind couldn’t allow me to recognise the achievements whilst there was something left undone.

On another day, maybe I didn’t achieve anything at all! You know the kind of day when you are busy, doing a lot of things but never really feeling like you’ve achievement anything or have anything to show for it at the end of the day? On those kinds of days I would be even harder on myself. I would give myself a hard time for not producing or delivering anything tangible.

Having coached many people over the years I know for a fact that I am not alone. Maybe the reason you are still reading this is because you know exactly what I am talking about. Or maybe you know someone who is great at bigging other people up and putting themselves down.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

The answer is habit, cultural norms, conditioning, beliefs about praising ourselves, fear of becoming complacent or “too big for our boots”, not realising there is another way to be or something else.

I am not so interested in “why”, I am more interested in the effect of shifting the balance and becoming our own cheerleader!

Since I listened to a webinar in which the wonderful coach, Carolyn Freyer-Jones , was coaching a lady called Sandra on this very topic, I have started to do exactly what Carolyn suggested Sandra do. Each evening I write down at least one thing that I acknowledge myself for.

At first I noticed a whole heap of judgement about what was “worthy” of my acknowledgement but quickly I began to realise that when I took a more objective perspective there were lots of things I could recognise myself as having achieved.

Some days it was the small stuff like; doing the ironing, getting out for a walk even when I am really busy, doing the filing I’ve been putting off or sending a message to someone I haven’t contacted for a while. On other days there was some bigger stuff that I could acknowledge such as; finishing an important proposal for a client, creating a new resource for my website, doing a weights session in the garden or planning the weekly meals for myself and my husband.

The point is…..it doesn’t matter what it is, simply acknowledge SOMETHING.

(Getting out of bed is a good starting point!)

I have noticed that since I have been doing this I have gone to bed feeling lighter and with a sense of kindness towards myself. Clients that I have introduced this too have said that they now feel happier, more confident and more optimistic about themselves and the future. Instead of focusing on worries and concerns about what they are not doing they are enjoying the feeling of noticing what they are doing and that feels so good!

So, what do you think…..are you willing to give it a go?

How do I know if I can trust myself?

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 14:18:00 GMT

Is it enough to trust your intuition?

How do you know if your intuition is going to guide you towards the right path?

I am beginning to see that it is not really about trusting yourself, and it’s not even really about trusting your intuition. It is about trusting the part of life that is way bigger than you, or me or any of us.

Ok, that might sound a bit “out there” or a bit spiritual or religious, but it really isn’t. It is about recognising that when it comes to making decisions there is way more intelligence available to guide us than we are led to believe.

We are educated to trust our intellect, the knowledge stored in our brain and the experience we have of applying it. We are encouraged to gain more knowledge and build this intellect if we want to make better, more complex decisions and navigate the world.

However, that is a limited view of what is possible.

There are many stories of people who averted a disaster because they had a feeling that something bad was going to happen and took action and countless examples of people coming up with new and creative ways to do things because they were following the energy of an idea for an invention rather than conventional thinking.

It is not just the preserve of superheroes or inventors. The capacity for you to “know” beyond what is stored in your brain is huge. It is simply a case of being open to learning and discovering in a different way.

I have been exploring this for myself for some time now and it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that my experience of life is really a partnership with life itself. There is an ongoing flow of life that is happening all around me (in nature) and within me (the biological and physical systems which keep the body alive) and I am simply one element in that.

I don’t control it. It happens in spite of me!

The brain that we revere and defer to is often what gets in the way of making the right decision or taking the right course of action. If you’ve ever found yourself caught up in over-thinking you’ll know what I mean! Having too much knowledge and exercising the capacity to analyse, imagine the future, weigh up options and consider consequences can be paralysing.

There is a more expansive view of what it means to trust yourself and it is really about trusting life itself. Trusting that at a deep level you are attuned to the natural flow of life and that life always has your survival and best interests at heart. In fact it has more than just survival at heart, it wants you to thrive!

Pause for a moment and consider that.

Life always has your survival and best interests at heart. Life wants you to thrive.

Letting go of needing to “know” with your head and opening up to “knowing” through your heart, your intuition, your wisdom, your inner being….whatever you choose to call it, that is where the key to effective, powerful and wise decision making sits.

This take practice. It is not easy to let go of the reliance on evidence and data to back up our choices and actions but it is simple.

I have recorded a short video in which I share a few simple steps you can take to practice this. Take a look over on youtube to discover them and start to experience the power of knowing for yourself.

The key point in all of this is that there is a infinite intelligence that lies way beyond what we think we know and when we want to learn to trust ourselves we are really asking life to partner with us so we can trust together.

What is your experience?

When have you surrendered to a deeper knowing and you got a good result?

When have you stuck with a "traditional" way of know and it didn't turn out so well?

Leave your comments below.....

What's your story?

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 11:08:20 GMT

“The most telling choice of all may well be the story we live from and see ourselves participating in. It sets the context of our lives in a way that influences all our other decisions.”

Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

Whether we are aware of it or not we are all living our lives based on a story.

That story influences the way we see the world and our place within it.

For most of my 40+ years on this planet my story has been based around a plot to ensure my happiness, health and financial security. The subplots have included working hard to have a good quality of life, playing by the rules not , pissing people off and having a sense of needing to be in control of my life.

What is wrong with that you may ask?

It’s true, there are elements of that storyline which have served me well and have enabled me to have a wonderful life so far. However…..I have come to realise that the storyline I took on when I was younger is not the only one available. There are myriad of other storylines to choose from and the same is true for you.

So…..what is your story?

Many of us are living our lives based on a story we have unconsciously adopted. Often, we pick up our story from our family or the people we grew up around, sometimes we take on someone else’s story and for others it evolves through circumstances and life experiences. It really doesn’t matter where it came from the crucial point is whether we are aware of it and how we allow it to shape our lives.

Imagine how differently life will play out in these different scenarios:

seeing ourselves as the victim in the story versus someone who has the potential to create their future
having a sense of hope and the ability to overcome adversity versus a feeling of despair at the state of the world
living in fear and working hard to protect yourself from it versus actively seeking out the good and stepping fully into the experience of living
feeling empowered to make things better versus feeling powerless to affect change
rushing through our life feeling that there is so much to do versus slowing down to the speed of life and truly experiencing it.

Which of those sounds most like the story you are living by?

Remember, your story is a representation of how you see the world, the people you interact with and your place in all of that and so a helpful starting point is to check in and recognise the overall tone of your story.

Here are some words to try out and see which resonates:

hope
creativity
safety
individuality
community
change
stability
courage
fear
abundance
scarcity
or something else that resonates more with you.

Whatever the tone has been for your life so far you get to choose whether to keep living from that story or whether you want to embark on a new story, a new adventure.

If your story is serving you well great! If you have a sense that it is holding you back, limiting you, causing harm to you or others, too safe, not energising you, depleting your energy or not sustainable ……pause and open up to the fact that you can choose something new. You can do it right now. That is the beauty of this!

The story isn’t real, it is just a story and you are the author and creator. You don’t need to adopt someone else’s story. Write your own.

Here are some questions to get you started:

What is your heart’s deepest wish?
What is so important to you it keeps showing up in your life in different ways?
What fills your whole body with energy when you think about it?
What do you feel called to do?
What is a recurring theme in your thinking or your dreams?

Sit with those questions to see what emerges for you and if it would be helpful, get in touch with me and we can explore this together.

“Recognising that we can choose the story we live from can be liberating”

You are ready..... for anything!

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:59:01 GMT

Whether you realise it or not, you are a different person now and you are ready for anything!

Take yourself back to February of this year. If someone had told you what the next 3 months of your life were going to be like, what would you have said?

Perhaps something along the lines - “That sounds like the script for a movie!” or “Ha ha, very funny!” or “That sounds like the stuff of nightmares”!

Go forward one month to March when lockdown was first announced. How did you feel? What was going through your mind? How did you respond?

Many people, including myself, thought (and hoped) it would be relatively short lived and we’d be “back to normal” in a week or two. There was a mix of fear, confusion, anger, anxiety, curiosity and even a bit of excitement as people tried to make sense of what lockdown meant for them and the implications of it.

Bring yourself back to today.......

What is different for you now than it was back in February?
What is better?
What have you achieved that surprises you?
What has shifted or changed in ways you want to continue?

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase about hindsight being a wonderful thing and it really is!

The point is that human beings have a remarkable ability to adapt and adjust and make the best of a situation. When forced into a set of circumstances that strip us of our familiar patterns, habits and ways of doing things we somehow find a way to adapt. When the rules of the game change and the fog descends, we have to find new ways to navigate our way through each day. And that is what you have done.

Have you paused to notice that yet?

There are things that you have been doing over the past 3 months which have enhanced your life, your relationships, your wellbeing and your perspective on life. In amongst the challenges (and let’s face it there have been plenty of those!) you have found ways to keep yourself, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your community connected, happy, engaged and nourished.

Take a moment to acknowledge that.

Now, take yourself into the future. I don’t know how far into the future, it may be a month, a year or 10 years, but at some point there will be another crisis for you to deal with. It may not be a global pandemic and it may not have the same implications nor affect as many people as Covid-19 has, however, in your life there will be something else that happens which has the potential to turn your world upside down.

But it doesn’t have to.

You have lived through something which you will tell your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews about for years to come and yes, you’ll talk about the difficulties and the challenges (who could forget the international toilet roll shortage!) but you will also talk about how you coped, how you adapted and the good things that you experienced.

So…..I urge you to acknowledge how your resilience and ability to adapt to challenges has grown and strengthened over the past few months. Stop right now. Take a few moments to appreciate what good has come out of the lockdown for you and commit to something you will take forward as a significant and important change you will continue as a gift from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Please share your stories, experiences and learning in the comments below.

10 things in 10 years

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 10:23:29 GMT

Today - the 8th February 2020* - is the day that my business turns 10!

It’s not particularly significant for anyone other than me and, to be honest, I was quite prepared to let the day pass without any celebration. But, as I sat on a plane heading to Phoenix, Arizona for a weekend of personal and business development I found myself marvelling at how my business has not only survived the last 10 years but it has thrived and is set to become even more successful over the next decade.

So, this blog is my way of celebrating 10 years in business. It is an acknowledgement of the insights I have gained along the way, and my intention in sharing them with you is to reassure you, inspire you or motivate you to take the next step towards creating the kind of life and/or business you want to have.

Maybe you are self-employed, thinking of starting your own business or at a point in your life where you want to make a change but there is fear, worry or doubt stopping you from taking the first step. I know how that feels. I also know how it feels to take first step and to start to feel the fear, worry and doubt drop away.

Take advantage of my learning and see what starts to shift for you as you read my 10 things in 10 years:

There is no destination

For so long I was striving to get to a place where I’d feel like I’d made it or I at least had it all figured out. That place doesn’t exist! I realise more and more that it’s the experience of the journey that’s important. That is the point of it all.

Nurturing connections is THE most important thing

Business and life is all about people and relationships and as such they need your time and attention. When I think about the clients I work with today they have all come from a connection I have created with someone else in the past, sometimes quite far back in the past. But that is the thing nurturing relationships is about playing the long game.

It’s ok not to know how

If I’d waited to be sure how I was going to tackle a project before I said yes I would probably still be waiting to start! Something I learned very early on is to say yes, get stuck in and the “how” will work itself out. The clearer you are on why you are saying yes the easier it is to work out how.

There is no wrong decision

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It is easy to look back when something doesn’t turn out the way you expected it to and see that you could have chosen something different. However, I have developed a strong guiding principle that we will always make the best decision we can in that moment. Things change and we gain new perspectives but that happens after the fact. There is no wrong decision you can make if you make it fully present in this moment.

Learn but don’t imitate

I am all for learning from people you respect and whose work you admire, I do that a lot. But I have realised that by focusing so much on how others were doing what they were doing I was often avoiding stepping into my own space in the world and doing my work my way. The world is a richer place when we each contribute our in own unique way.

The power in saying no

Wanting to please others, wanting to be liked, wanting to get more clients all led me to say yes even when my gut was telling me it wasn’t for me. I have discovered that there is far more power in saying no. The more I say no to the stuff that isn’t for me the more the stuff that is seems to show up!

Trust yourself and the universe

Every time I have felt as though I was standing on the edge of a void whilst staring at my empty diary a new project, opportunity or client has shown up. Always at just the right time. I have learned to trust that this is how things happen so my advice is to stay open and receptive and new opportunities will find their way to you.

Be patient

Undoubtedly, my biggest learning has come from realising the value in slowing down. Everything is so much clearer when I slow down – my mind is clearer, the world around me looks clearer and I make far better decisions. It has taken practice but practicing patience pays dividends.

Love the quiet times

It is super scary to be facing an empty diary. And yet, over the years I have begun to love the space and time it offers me. A packed diary means no time for creativity, no time to develop ideas and not enough quality time on nurturing relationships. I now proactively put empty time into my diary because I know if I don’t I’ll regret it when things get busy again.

Comparison is a waste of effort

It’s really hard not to compare yourself to other people when you are running a business. I have spent many wasted hours comparing myself to others and ending up feeling inadequate, a fraud or an imposter. The thing I have realised is no one can do what I do the way I do it and it is a far better investment of my energy to focus on doing what I do really well than worrying how other people are doing it.

So there you have it…..10 things in 10 years.

What has resonated most with you?
Which of these 10 are you willing to try out for yourself?
How would your 10 things in 10 years blog read?

If you’d like to explore where you are in your life and/or business get in touch and we can arrange a conversation to help you get where you want to get to.

* this post originally featured on my previous website and was published on 8th February 2020.

There is no right answer (only the best one in that moment)

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 13:03:18 GMT

(Only the best one in that moment)

We can really tie ourselves in knots when it comes to decision making and the truth is it’s really not as difficult as we allow it to be.

How much time and energy do you waste mulling over options, gathering information, seeking others’ opinions, writing pros and cons lists and asking Google what the right answer is? You’d be amazed and probably shocked if you sat down and worked it out. At a guess I would say we waste around between 1-3 hours per day (depending on how indecisive you are!).

What is it that gets in the way?

One of the key factors in decision making is being paralysed by the feeling that we need to find the right answer. It’s like in How Wants to be a Millionaire and Chris Tarrant asks “is that your final answer?”. In that moment doubt creeps in and you second guess yourself. The thing is, it’s unlikely that the stakes are as high as winning or losing £1 million, and yet, even with the smallest decision we can find ourselves caught up in a spiral of indecision.

This need to get it right, or more importantly, not get it wrong, comes with an underlying fear about the consequences.

Whatever the real consequences of a decision I can guarantee you that your mind will fabricate something much worse. The mind has a habit of shooting straight for the worst-case scenario. It may be that the worst-case scenario comes in the form of public embarrassment or loss of face or it may have wider reaching consequences financially or for other people. Either way, it is helpful to remember that the mind will make whatever might happen into something BIG that will happen.

The need to get it right also comes from protecting our sense of self-esteem. When we make the right decision we feel good about ourselves. It reassures us that we can trust ourselves and feel that other people are more likely to trust our judgement too. However, allowing our sense of worth to be dependent on our need to get things right is precarious.

The truth of the matter is that what constitutes the right decision will change.

Every aspect of life is shifting and changing every moment and so what we know right now, how the world around us looks today, is different to how it will be tomorrow next week, next year. All we can do is make a decision based on now, otherwise we are effectively crystal ball gazing!

Bring to mind a time when you made a decision and later regretted it or when you put off making a decision one day then came back to it the next and were able to decide immediately. Things change. The variables and factors which we get caught up in when trying to decide what is the “right answer” are constantly in flow and so all you can do is take what you known now and decide based on that.

(Or…..if you genuinely can’t decide in that moment, stop agonising and step away).

You can’t get the answer wrong if you base your decision on the information available to you right now. It is highly possible that some of that information is intuitive and often our intuition is the most powerful source of knowing.

So, here is the thing to remember; when you find yourself saying “I don’t know what is the right thing to do”, pause and remind yourself that there is no right or wrong thing to do. You can’t get it wrong. All you can do is make the best choice available to you in that moment.

Feel how much easier it is to decide.

Where will you go?

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 13:03:16 GMT

When you feel like you've lost your freedom

“I feel like a caged tiger” said my husband the other day.

We were reflecting on how the past few weeks have felt for us as we have been in lockdown together and he talked about how he felt given that (in his words) “our freedom has been taken away from us”.

In that moment I realised that I didn’t feel like that. I understood what he meant but I just didn’t feel the same.

Whilst there are limitations on where I can go, what I can do and who I can be with right now I still feel free. I certainly don’t feel like a caged tiger!

I should say at this point that I have had moments over the past few weeks when I have felt a deep desire to get in my car, drive more than 5 minutes away and spend time with the people I love and can’t be with right now. I recognise that could be me experiencing having had my freedom taken away.

I have also had moments when I’ve felt like I am in that wonderful film “Groundhog Day” and have found myself replaying a similar routine and set of activities to the day before and wishing for more variety in my life. I recognise that could be experience as being like being caged in a life not of my choosing.

However, in the moment when my husband said those two phrases I realised that my sense of freedom comes from my state of mind. No matter what is going on on the outside, I can always feel free on the inside.

Our minds are incredible! If you take time to notice, they are creative, free spirited and expansive with the capacity to take you anywhere you want to go.

I can travel anywhere in the world through my memories of places I have been or to places I have yet to visit through my imagination. And all from the comfort of my own home. I don’t need to go anywhere or be with anyone else I can do it all right here where I am now.

How wonderful it is that my freedom and all that comes with it (sense of happiness, connection, inspiration, creativity, joy) is right here all the time. I don’t need to wait until lockdown is over to experience it. I don’t need to wait for the government to tell me it’s ok. I can go there right now and so can you.

So, where will you go?

What do you not want others to see about you?

susan@sgdevelopmentsolutions.com (Susan Grandfield) — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 13:03:14 GMT

I was recently asked this question and it stopped me in my tracks

What does it mean?

Does it mean to say I am hiding something from others?

How would you answer this question?

It’s ok not to know the answer straight away, it took me some time. Then, once I saw where it took me, I was shocked but at the same time unsurprised.

You see it took me to a place that is, at a deep level, very familiar to me. It surfaced a story that I have been subtly aware of for most of my life but which I rarely allow myself to acknowledge. The story that surfaced was about not wanting others to see my vulnerabilities, my self-doubt, my fears about making a fool of myself or being wrong. That to do so shows my weaknesses and leaves me feeling exposed.

Maybe you have a similar story or maybe yours is different. But you DO have a story. We all do.

The second question I was asked, immediately after that first one, shed even more light on what is going. The second question was:

“What is the risk to you if people saw that about you?”

The answer to this question shows us why we work hard to disguise what is really going on for us and what it is that gives energy to the stories we create around that.

For me the risk of people seeing me as I really am – vulnerable, lacking in self-confidence, scared of standing out from the crowd – is that I will lose respect and credibility and will alienate myself from others. We could go into the psychology of where this comes from, but I don’t think that is necessary. The point is that I have been presenting this persona to the world for so long now that to drop that and show up differently feels really scary!

It is irrational, I can see that, but that is the point. We unconsciously hide who we really are in a bid to be who we think others expect us to be and in doing so we are doing a dis-service to ourselves and others.

We do it to keep ourselves safe, but in the process we are actually making ourselves more fragile.

When faced with the challenges of life it is so much more difficult to be there to support others if we are not able to be fully grounded and comfortable in our own skin.

What these two questions have lead me to see is that building our inner strength and our resilience comes from facing our fears, acknowledging them and accepting that we have the choice. A choice about whether to allow those fears to turn into unhelpful stories or to be the driving force behind the positive contribution we can make to the people around us.

What do you need help with?

An idealistic awakening:Part 4

Part 4 - the way forward

And then comes the struggle!

We are born with all the potential in the world.

The more we can act from a place of inner wisdom, the more we will contribute to the kind of world we want to live in.

An idealistic awakening:Part 3

Part 3 - the acceptance

An idealistic awakening:Part 2

Part 2 - the struggle

Idealist: “Someone who believes that very good things can be achieved, often when this does not seem likely to others”

The idealists have your back!

An idealistic awakening:Part 1

Part 1 - the realisation

Idealist: “Someone who believes that very good things can be achieved, often when this does not seem likely to others”

It turns out that I am the very definition of an idealist!

Find your way back to your comfort zone

Why has the concept of our comfort zone become demonised?

Would it really be such a bad thing to live life more from within our comfort zone?

I have leaned into the experience with curiosity and asked “what is this discomfort here for?”.

Imagine a life lived from that perspective!

The lighter way to uncover wisdom

Our ability to approach this human experience with humour makes the journey so much easier.

Irony – a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.

And this is the reality of life.

It's time to re-write the story of you

Who could you become if you were willing to re-write the story?

In that moment, I re-wrote the story of who I am.

And it left me wondering what other stories might disappear just as quickly?

The thing that changed was my thinking.

The Adventure of a Lifetime

Being human doesn’t always feel easy or joyful and yet I have a strong belief that it can.

Are you up for it?

The playful art of experimenting

There is a real freedom in approaching things with an experimental mindset and it can radically transform your experience of life.

Pay attention to the moments of bliss

Life is an experience with the potential to offer many moments of bliss, if we are willing to look in that direction.

Like me, are you also someone who tends to plan moments of bliss rather than allow them to happen?

Life is an experience with the potential to offer many moments of bliss, if we are willing to look in that direction.

Whatever you choose, you can’t get it wrong!

The bliss is there waiting for you to experience it.

The dance of surrender

“What will you be doing tonight?”

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t know?”

“Nope, I just turn up and give it a go”

It is all about surrender.

And that is the thing that is most curious for me.

All we need to do is show up and be open and willing take each step as it comes.

THIS approach is the path to success. Not the pre-planned, carefully orchestrated, mapped out, neat version I used to think was.

Going inside (aka hanging out with your soul)

“What are you doing?”, my husband asked.

“I’m going inside”, I replied.

“To do what?”, he asked.

“Nothing”, I said.

Doing nothing – it’s not something many of us know how to do!

Just as our body needs nourishment, so does our soul.

What is the meaning of life?

What is truly important? And, are the things that get most of your time, energy and attention aligned with that?

Making life's transitions with ease and grace

"It's not the changes that do you in, it's the transitions"

“It’s not the changes that do you in it’s the transitions”

Give yourself the gift of your own attention.

Feeling good on purpose

What if feeling good is not just a nice experience to have every so often. What if it is the purpose of life?

Imagine feeling like that whenever you want to.

Working on the Inside

How much time, energy and attention do you give to your inner work?

And, what if the most important "job" we have is the one where we are not doing anything?

That is where the inner work trumps all!

A curious and delightful experience

......when decision making becomes simply making a choice.

Am I alone or has this happened to you too?

The Inner Battle of Wills, and how to find Peace

"I don’t want to"

"I don’t feel like it"

"You can’t tell me what to do"

"I don’t what this, I want that"

Who do you imagine is saying this?

It only takes a moment, for everything to change

What if feeling good is not just a nice experience to have every so often.
What if it is the purpose of life?

“It’s 3 am and I should be asleep”
“I’m exhausted, why oh why am I still awake?”

“I’ve been meditating for years, why can’t relax enough to sleep?”

What should I do?

How will I manage this?

How is this going to work?

Is this even possible?

What is the answer?