I’ve not long finished reading Sebastian Faulks’ novel ‘Engleby’. Though the novel’s eponymous narrator is rather unreliable, he does have some gorgeous reflective passages. This one in particular impressed me so much I wanted to share it on the blog:

A  lot of time has passed.

Is that good? I never know. I haven’t stopped to reflect and write, and that suggests I’ve been busy.

Busy is good, isn’t it? Busy means we’re hard at it, achieving our ends or ‘goals’. Haven’t had time to stop, or look around or think. That’s considered the sign of a life well lived. Although people complain of it – another year gone, where did that one go? – tacitly, they’re proud. Otherwise they wouldn’t do it: you put your time where your priority is.

Suppose, though, you’re not sure that what you’re doing is at all worthwhile. Suppose you blundered into it over a spoonful of lime pickle. It’s easy, it pays quite well. But really it’s a distraction. It stops you thinking about what you ought to be doing.

Because what you really ought to be doing is weighing up the facts. If the history of Homo sapiens so far were represented as a single day, an average human lifespan would represent a little over half a second. That’s your lot, that’s all you have of living, then you return to the unconscious eternity that came before and will close back over you – over your half-second. If the whole history of the earth (not just the brief Homo sap era) were represented as one day then your existence would be too small to measure. No sufficiently imaginative chronometer exists.

So what you must do – being an intelligent, thinking creature – is make a very careful, well-informed judgement about how best you can spend your one and only half-second. You analyse yourself and your abilities; you match them to the world, its ways and possibilities, and you make a solemn decision to do what would most contribute to the well-being of the world and of yourself.

Except you’ve got a deadline, Friday at noon. And your lover coming round on Tuesday. And there’s football on.

This ‘busy’ thing isn’t a commitment, it’s an evasion.

And what are we avoiding? Facing the problem of the one half-second. Because if that’s really how it is, if that’s time, then nothing is worthwhile and nothing makes sense.

If time is not really like that, then all might yet work out. And in fact – good news – we do believe time is not linear. The trouble is – bad news – that our brains can only think of it as linear, therefore we’re doomed to see our lives as pointless.

It’s funny, really. The most intelligent creature that’s evolved so far (we think) has a design flaw at the heart of its superior intelligence. It can’t grasp one of the dimensions it inhabits.

It’s as though we had longtitude, but no latitude. How then would we navigate or reckon our position on the earth?

We’re deaf men working as musicians; we play the music but we can’t hear it.

How does this passage make you feel? Do you use ‘busyness’ as an evasion tactic? What are you evading? If you could grasp the non-linear nature of time, as Faulks suggests,  what would it “working out” mean to you?

The kids are back to school and therefore it’s a return to the 6.30am alarm that I’d been free from for six blissful weeks. Two weeks in, and we’re starting to notice that, whilst not dark, it’s not exactly light out there at that time now either. This is always a blow to the Bradford family. Between us all, we’ve had 85 years’ experience of it getting darker in the winter yet it somehow takes us by surprise every autumn.

We are prone to getting a bit glum as the light leaves, so we’ve worked on a ‘lovely list’ on the theme of the colder months. Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

• that lovely misty light in the morning that picks out enormously fat-bodied spiders sitting on their vast webs (although not so good when you walk through the aforesaid webs on your way to feed the chickens in the morning…)
• it being cold enough at night to snuggle under the duvet without wanting to kick it off five minutes later
• open fires
• coming in from the cold and warming up with a good cuppa (or, even better, a hot chocolate)
• tights and boots (this was obviously just the female members of the family…)
• satsumas and clementines
• frost – we love to examine all the pretty patterns on the windscreens of the cars parked on the route to school
• red wine really comes into its own when the weather gets colder
• the leaves turning – achingly beautiful
• bonfire night
• hallowe’en
• Christmas
• soup
• being inside and warm with nowhere we have to go to when it’s dark/cold/raining outside
• seeing the sunrise when you’re making your morning cuppa
• kicking up leaves
• conkers
• snuggly jumpers
• porridge for breakfast
• board games and books
• snow (a very rare treat round these parts!)

Any more? Please add your thoughts!

I was recently approached by a journalist from Prima magazine, to contribute to an article on saying ‘no’. She asked me what life coachy things I had to say about when friends want to borrow something that you don’t want to lend.

The whole article is out in this month’s issue (August 2009) – on p54, if you’re interested – but space dictated that my contribution had to be heavily edited. However, for you lovely readers of O&U, here is my contribution in full:

• Many people (myself included until quite recently) labour under the impression that there is a need to explain yourself when saying no. It’s fantastically liberating when you realise that you really don’t have to explain. Not at all. Of course, if pressed, you can choose to explain yourself, but it’s still not an obligation. Armed with this knowledge, you transform yourself overnight from a stuttering, embarrassed person with a tendency to fib for England into a cool, assertive and confident chick – ‘oh, er, um, I can’t lend you that dress, er, because, um, my sister’s borrowing that night and, er, for the next fortnight’ [exits backwards, red-faced], becomes ‘I hope you understand, but I’d really rather not.’ [flash of charming smile and a swift change of subject]

• If you find that you do want to explain, keep it general and not personal. My friend Tess, a props maker, found herself continually lending tools out and having them returned in a less-than-perfect condition. Eventually, she decided on a ‘no-lend’ policy and, when pressed, would explain that she’d had a few problems in the past with lending items which had sometimes compromised her friendship with the borrowers so now she prefers not to lend at all. No names named, and it does the job perfectly.

• Check in with yourself before responding, if you have the opportunity. What’s that irritation actually about? Has this friend let you down before when she borrowed something, or are you tarring her with the same brush as your less reliable acquaintances? Is it that she wants to borrow something very precious to you? You can say no! Or maybe this is about you feeling that you’re always bailing people out or that you’re rather unfairly being leant on? Maybe this is a symptom then of your friendship, or of your own view of yourself, both of which are issues that you can work on. It might be that, on reflection, you decide that the lend is not as much of a problem as you first thought (but if it is still a source of irritation and you decide not to do it, that’s ok too!)

•  You could attach conditions for the lend, if it makes it more acceptable to you e.g that the item is dry-cleaned / returned by Tuesday / that any ‘consumables’ used are replaced (like tape in video cameras or similar). Similarly, you could try reciprocation e.g ‘of course you can borrow my camera – could I ask a favour in return and borrow that novel you were raving about last week?’, or ‘yes, you can borrow my necklace – any chance of a few of your chickens’ eggs?

• Flattery and/or distraction can work e.g ‘well it’s true that you’d look great in my new dress, but that blue Jigsaw one of yours really makes you look fantastic – have you thought about wearing that?’ or ‘you know, rather annoyingly, that dress is on sale now at Whistles. As you like it so much, why don’t you get one too, so long as we promise not to wear it to the same party…’

• Finally, if all else fails, a white lie to wriggle out of a lend is better than complying under pressure and then carrying a big grudge. But do work on becoming more assertive – the more you flex that muscle the stronger it gets and the easier it is to say no confidently and with a clear conscience.

Wordle is my new favourite online toy.  Here is some ‘art’ it created from the text on my website homepage about life coaching. Have a play and let me know how you get on!

Out for a run yesterday morning, I spotted the slogan ‘my other body is a temple’ scrawled on a passer-by’s t-shirt.

Now I’m sure there must be a coachy link here, but for now I just wanted to share it with you because it tickled me.

(Anyone who does think of a fantastic coachy link gets a prize and I’ll stick it up on here…!)

A good few years ago, I had the pleasure of teaching English to a really motivated and positive Chinese student. This young man was a lover of new words and their nuances as well as the customs and general quirks of his new surroundings.

It was Shrove Tuesday and he came in, full of wonder and questions about pancakes. The discussion led on to Lent and its religious meaning and tradition of giving something up for the 40 day period and how it was commonplace to do this, even in the most secular circles.

Now, this student was almost surgically attached to his electronic Chinese-English dictionary, which he insisted on consulting, even when having apparently understood the explanation of new words. It had become a joke between us that he was addicted to his dictionary, so I was surprised and delighted when he announced that he would give up using it in lessons for Lent. He promptly placed the dictionary in his bag and we got on with the rest of our lesson.

A couple of days later, I met up with a good friend for lunch. He happens to be an eminent clergyman who sits on the Bishops Council (as well as a very good conversationalist with an unrivalled stock of rude jokes). We chatted away as we ate lunch, which culminated in two large slices of a decadent chocolate cake. As we were finishing the last mouthfuls of the cake, I laughingly confessed that I’d given up chocolate for Lent, to which he replied that he had too and we had a conspiratorial giggle.

After lunch, I had another lesson with my Chinese student. At one point, I was struggling to come up with an understandable explanation of a tricky word he’d come across, so I suggested he look it up in his dictionary. He looked at me, rather puzzled, and simply said ‘but I’ve given up using the dictionary for Lent’. The taste of the chocolate cake was still in my mouth.

It really struck me that day that the person with the least obvious  ’investment’ in the Lenten tradition was the one who was the most committed. This isn’t meant to be a post about austerity or religious values - it’s about commitment to a decision and making it yours. My reasons for giving something up for Lent were vaguely churchy, but mostly because people had asked me what I was going to give up for Lent this year so I picked one of the usuals. My friend had more religious reasons, but still the ‘giving up’ is more a tradition than an obligation within the Church. Both of us had decided to give something up in an ‘I suppose I should’ sort of a way. In short, we were obviously not committed!

My student had decided to give up using his dictionary, despite being non-Christian and not having been brought up in a Christian-ised secular society which observes the pancakes-and-giving-something-up tradition. There was no ’should’ with him – he made his decision out of a desire to embrace the culture in his host country. He wanted to do it.

Sometimes, the very fact you have done something before, maybe time and again, seems like a reason to do it again. Look at your decision to do something – be it giving something up for Lent, embarking on a new exercise regime or going for a promotion - and take a fresh angle on it. Are there any ’shoulds’ in play here? Where do they come from? What would make you genuinely want to take this action? Find your motivation – whatever it may be – and really feel it before committing. Watch your results change!

Having trouble committing to something? Call me!

At this time of year, there’s always a slew of magazine articles, telly programmes and the like, telling people how to change their lives in big or small ways – giving up smoking, losing weight, getting more exercise or whatever. All very admirable, but the ‘joke’ is that many of these good intentions have flown out of the window by about January 3rd, leaving the resolver frustrated and disappointed in themselves.

Some of the better articles or programmes of the ‘Happy New You’ ilk will include advice on how to make these resolutions stick, and often quote life coaches (indeed, I have contributed to this sort of article for the Brighton Argus and the TES in the past), giving tips on how to make your goals SMART, and how to make sure they’re in line with your values etc. As a coach, I can and I do help people with their goals in this way, and if you do want help and support with changing your life, please contact me.

I was having a conversation with my six-year-old daughter yesterday about New Year’s resolutions and what they were, and I asked her what she would resolve for 2009. We had a piece of paper we were doodling on, and she immediately wrote on it ‘dance more’.

She has recently started a dance class after school and is very enthusiastic about it, so that’s what she had in mind, but it struck me that it would be a wonderful metaphor for how I’d like to live my life in 2009. There’s nothing specific, measurable or time-bound about it, and as a goal it’s about as nebulous as you can get, but ‘dance more’ has really stuck with me in the last 24 hours as a wonderfully freeing philosophy for life, and it’s made it to the front of my diary for the New Year – to remind me I’m going to take 2009 by the hand and lead it in my own dance.

Where could you dance more with your life? What would that be like? Will your dance be a sexy salsa, a brooding tango or will you hop balletically towards the spring? Email me – I’d love to know!

ex-batts have bald necks from reaching over bars to their food troughs

Eggatha tries her wings out for the first time

Trinity, bonding with the chickens

There’s great excitement in the Bradford household at the moment, as we’ve recently taken on four new members of the family by the names of Cluck, Eggatha, Bobob and Staggerpole (some rather adventurous names there – that’s what you get when there’s a six-year-old input!) and they’re ex-battery chickens.

which way are you heading today?

 I love this picture!  It was taken when we were staying at the fantastically-named Sandy Balls holiday resort, by the New Forest.  

I have it as the wallpaper on my laptop to remind me to make the decision every day as to which way I’m choosing to go – are actions such as procrastination, avoidance, or not looking after myself taking me to Stuckton, or am I ‘in flow’, creative, productive and heading for Blissford?

Which way are you pointing right now?