I want to explore this concept of ‘engagement’ a little today. What I’m talking about are the points or places where we ‘engage’ with some other part of the world in some way; where we meet it, interact with it, shape it and are shaped by it.

And I was going to say where we engage with humanity, but my friend who is a hill farmer came to mind and I recall how thoroughly he also engages with the natural and animal worlds. I think that needs to be included here.

A couple of things have brought this to mind over the last few months. First, it’s something which my clients have been bringing to our coaching again and again – this sense that getting out and being involved with the world in some more presenceful, vigorous, complete way was somehow very important to their success and fulfilment.

Second, I’ve noticed it come up for me several times. Like yesterday, I went for an interview for a non-executive position in a charity. I’m a smart guy and I know lots of really useful stuff, but at interview what most interested the panel were the times when I was actively engaged in those things with others. Not just knowing or thinking about them (and not necessarily ‘doing’ them, either) but really being part of a board, being part of a change-team, being a leader in tough times. And I think I’d select like that too. Like what you know, how smart you are, that’s what gets you invited to the party. But what you’ve been involved in, engaged in, that’s what’ll make you somebody I’d like to dance with.

I’ve heard it said that we are “constituted by our community” – meaning that we only become real or tangible when we are heard or seen or felt by others in some way.

And in some ways, this is a tough one for me, because I love my own space, I love silence, time to contemplate, slow-time in solitude, fast-time in my one-man bubble of high-speed activity. And yet…

… without involvement, without that engagement with the world, I have that dreamy, smoke-like quality.

I’m a trekkie and I recently discovered that a client also loves Star Trek – and she reminded me of how Captain Jean-Luc Picard sends his crew of gallant explorers off to save the galaxy.
Click the picture to hear him say it…!

So, how about you:

• Where or when do you need to be more engaged with some part of the world?
• How do you need to become more “constituted by your community” – to become much more real and tangible by being heard or seen or felt by others in some way?

One of the themes for me this year has been ‘Allies’. Actually, to be more accurate, the theme has really been about waking up to the fact that there truly are people who can and want to help me – and I just need to let them!

I’m trying to work out what it is that has shifted. Partly it’s been a sense of touching bottom; a lot of things have felt quite hard and I simply got completely fed-up with trying to do everything on my own. And I also notice that other themes have helped, especially being more comfortable with ambiguity around collaborations – I’m much less concerned about who is in charge, whether I and others are 100% committed or not. It’s just a little bit more like I’m going along for the ride rather than always trying to drive a prize-winning Grand Prix.

I also used to be a lot more cautious about saying “Yes” to helping others: unless I knew I could deliver, I wouldn’t offer. Now, I’m saying “Yes” more often and worrying less about whether or not I deliver. And I reckon if you added up all my actual ‘deliveries’ of help, it’d probably be more now overall, even if I no longer always deliver.

So I’m thinking that my new-found allies were probably always there but that these shifts have somehow made it easier – easier for people to step up and offer to help me (and I know that has often been a tough thing to do!), easier for me to see them not as time-wasters or threats but as potential allies, and easier to accept what is offered.

Last year I wrote an article about Allies for our Hero’s Journey workshop [click here to download a copy] and I also notice that I’m feeling much less like a cartoon hero these days and much more engaged with my own journey.

Sun Tzu said:
“If you do not seek out allies and helpers then you will become isolated and weak”
– but I wonder also if you can be so good at deluding yourself that you’re already strong that no allies will bother to come your way?

We went to see the Anthony Gormley sculptures on Crosby beach at the weekend. Called “Another Place” it comprises 100 life-size cast-iron figures stretched out along 3km of shore.

[click here for visitor info]

It’s only there now until Nov 2006 when it’ll go over to New York, so this summer is a good time to go see it again or for the first time.

Make of it what you will. My 4 year-old son thought it was great and just responded to what a fun idea it is to have all these figures on the beach. I know that Gormley’s work often starts with some bodily feeling and in the act of producing it he also has either an intent about or a reaction to something that his body is telling him. So I like to get reminded of a strong link between my physical body and what you might call the ‘inner landscape’ of thoughts, feelings and beliefs, and the actual landscape, hills, buildings, beach or whatever.

There’s something very fulfilling, grounding, calming and energising for me about reconnecting my body to my feelings and thoughts and the outside world all at once – what I call my Jedi knight space, “feel the force, Luke”!!

I don’t want to intellectualise this too much, because what I want to say about it is really something that my whole body knows much better than the words in my head can describe – so you’ll just have to go experience the work for yourself.

And I also got a strong sense of longing for somewhere else and regret at leaving ‘here’ from the sculptures themselves. So, it was weird to be experiencing longing, regret and being reminded of how to be really present to what’s here and now all at the same time. And it’s free – good value that!

I’m making a major moving-on type decision this month – and this is a particularly relevant time to announce it.

Each year in the second week of June the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants holds its membership exams. For five years in my twenties, May and June were all about exams and revision (and trying to deflect the criticisms of work colleagues: “you’re always taking exams, never here – what a lark this part-time study must be”).

Even now that time between the French Open and the start of the Tour de France is a funny one for me; waking up thinking about exams and what it meant to achieve that membership- and then fellowship- status.

And I enjoyed the challenge as well as the achievement. Even enjoyed the exams; one time I remember having more time to answer a company-valuation question than I would normally have got to do the same task at work – and without my boss breathing down my neck!

So it feels especially poignant now to have decided to resign my accountancy membership.

I kept hold of this when I first started my own business: “always good to have something to fall back on if it doesn’t work out”, I told myself. I even kept it later when I moved into coaching: “handy to have some business-credibility in a world of very ‘soft’ skills”, I reasoned.

Now, it’s time to move on. Time to let go of that particular safety net.

And it feels good; like a very positive commitment; a beginning more than an end.

I’m curious about what might come along now that the accountancy ‘space’ in my life and work is no longer required. What might come my way? And where will the energy go, that I was previously using to hold on to that? – where might I choose to direct that now?

[click here for a clip of Curtis Mayfield singing about how this feels - needs Real Player]

I had a harrowing four days last week as a really basic fear surfaced – one that I’d known was there but, I guess, had previously dismissed.

First, some background. My eldest two sisters were diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in their twenties and my brother-in-law died from it. Since his late twenties my dad has experienced debilitating pain and loss of strength in his back, arm and leg. And some current thinking about the cause of the disease points to what I’ve heard described as “a genetic pre-disposition combined with an environmental trigger”.

What happened to me last week was that I got an absolutely crippling pain in my back. At first I thought it was a pulled muscle – but really I knew that had healed a few week’s previously – this was something different. And the pain seemed to come and go but each time it left me just a little bit more twisted and scrunched up.

On the second day I woke up in a real cold sweat; a dread fear.
I knew what this was – it was my turn to get MS.

And what I did over those three days was to begin planning how I’d live with it. Of course, the last thing I’d do was get it diagnosed – after all, there’s no real treatment, nothing that doesn’t leave you worse than before and the one thing you can guarantee is that, once diagnosed, it becomes a certainty; downhill from there. I felt I’d nothing to gain and everything to lose.

But by day four the pain was so bad, the twisting scrunching so pronounced that even my best plans for dealing with it alone wouldn’t work – even my new tactic for wiping my bum with a “Toilet Duck” gripper thing was no longer possible.

Even if it meant getting diagnosed with MS, I had to get help.

In that moment of acceptance, of having to look straight into that fear, I experienced this amazing sense of calm and peace. I think for the first time, I really understood what it means to not fight or deny something I’m afraid of.

45 minutes with an Osteopath and the two little pointy bits of vertebrae that I’d somehow managed to get locked together were freed and the “Severe Protective Reaction” began to subside. As I write this, most movement has returned, the muscles are relaxing and most of the pain has gone.

Will I get MS? – unlikely, as it would probably have shown by 35 and I’m now 43 – but that’s kind of not the point.

I’ve been asking some of my clients this week what this means for them and it’s been fascinating to learn how many smart, motivated people share at least something of this (and it’s not just the men) - the denial of something that’s wrong from a fear of what it might be. Even from a fear of being ridiculed about the fear itself.

I realise this has been lurking there for a long time for me. And keeping me frozen: not acting, not reasoning, just fearing.

Check it out for yourself – what’s lurking away back there in the dim, dark corners?

Time to suppress your gag reflex - I just came across this and can’t believe I never heard it before:

T   together

E   everybody

A   accomplishes

M   more

I actually like this kind of stuf, even the old ‘no “I” in team’ saying. What makes these phrases hackneyed is not over-use, but mis-use. So come on, let’s reclaim all the corny sayings, take them back from the desparate organisations who use them but don’t mean them and enjoy running them up the flagpole to see who salutes.

By the way, am I the only one who hadn’t come across this one before?!

What about that title, good eh? – a bowdlerising of the Kenny Rogers’ song used in the movie The Big Lebowski.

[click here for a clip of the song]

One of my colleagues gave me what us coaches term a ‘calling forth’ just recently about my blog, along the lines of – “I know you’re an intuitive person, Nick, and that you know how to use it – so can we have more of it in your blog?”.

It was a good call – and I thought I’d respond (“step up” in the jargon) by just typing and see what came out.

Interestingly and annoyingly, I have a bad back at the moment, and I’m sitting in an open-plan, drop-in office surrounded by people having meetings, in-between meetings myself, watching the clock and the door for my next appointment and desperately trying to sit so my back isn’t really in pain.

Bottom-line, it’s hard to think of a time when I felt less connected to my intuition!!

So there’s a few things I know about my intuition:

1. it’s very strongly connected to my body  - and of course, that’s why people say stuff like “it’s just a gut feeling” – body is the best source of intuition
2. I’m curious about whether my back ache has an intuitive message for me – almost certainly one of taking better care of myself, but maybe a bigger message for me, like “if it hurts – stop” – a useful corollary to my great skill of never knowing when to give up!
3. Distraction, distraction, distraction – wow, is this what it’s like for people who have a regular office environment?! It’s so long since I worked in open plan, or even since I had my own office with an ‘open door’ policy, I really can’t remember. If you work somewhere like this, how on earth do you get enough focus and quiet to hear anything of your intuition? I can’t and I’m going to sign-off now and pick-up again in more conducive surroundings!

Taking a few days out from my blog every so often has been a strange experience.

I started the blog to build on the learning and results I’d been getting in my life and work from keeping a daily journal. I figured that actually putting it out here for anybody to read would give it an extra significance – for example, make it obvious to myself when I was ducking issues or kidding myself about stuff.

And what I’m finding (especially when I’m away for a few days) is that there’s a kind of extra observer there with me, like a cub reporter making notes, commenting on my work and my life, trying to decide what to publish in the blog. Sometimes it’s been helpful, because I’ve had insights that shift something or bring up a solution – and other times I can’t help feeling that it’s been getting in the way of experiencing what is actually happening in that moment.

Overall, I’m not sure that I like having this reporter hanging around all the time. Maybe that’s just the discomfort that comes from some new awareness, or maybe it really is getting between me and the full experience of my life and work.

And I’m not sure what to do with this for now, other than keep noticing what’s coming up. I’ll maybe play around with the frequency of the blog and stuff like that – or maybe just change nothing and see if it’s something else that needs to shift.

Oh X@#X! – I’ve just noticed that the title of this entry has now given my internal reporter a tortured Geordie accent a-la Big Brother.

Watch this space for more navel-gazing!

I promised on Tuesday I’d say more about this. Before I do, I wondered if I could find a few simple traits that you might recognise in yourself. See if any of these strike a chord with you:

• do you frequently end up as the leader wherever you go or whatever you do?
• have you often needed to come top or first in what you do – and if that’s not possible, do you notice that you’re no longer interested in it?
• do you get energised and feel powerful when there’s a challenge to be met or something ‘bad’ to be resisted?

I get all of those (and more) and it’s been a fascinating experience to understand what’s driving them. I realised that I have always experienced myself as strong and capable. I used to come top of all I could at school, athlete of the year, top in all the exams, head boy. In my first proper job, I even entered and won a Krypton-factor type of competition to get fast-track promotion. Then I couldn’t live without being head of my department etc.

Useful traits on the one hand, because they can lead to success and they can enable me to help others.

And what’s really driving me is a desire to protect myself, and those I care for, and to be free to determine my own course of action in life. Like the message I picked up for my life is “I’m OK if I’m strong and in control”.

This makes it really difficult to “submit” (notice that word?!) to stuff like interviews, where it feels like I’m not in control, in a situation where I might be hurt or rejected and when I probably really know best anyway!!

And it also makes it tough to accept help, to work in collaboration with others and to take a stand for something, rather than against something.