Open sesame
I’m doing more childminding than coaching nowadays but there are so many similarities that I feel as if writing here is appropriate. I’m also paying Squarespace you know, so might as well crack on, haha.
Looking after small children is very slow and very fast. In the slow parts I have a lot of time to think and observe and those are the bits that I am in love with- how time becomes somewhat meaningless and play is the only thing. I get to watch these incredible creatures move through the world, completely authentic in their happiness and I am lucky- my job is love and joy.
It gets hard too of course, because the flipside to these prettier moments is like the worst comedown in the world. More and more I find myself monitoring my own responses, my own difficult emotions. Childcare is a constant revision of your own emotional capability- keeping balance in high stress situations, being aware that you’re the adult. There can only be one person feeling overwhelmed at a time or it all crumbles and the castle disappears into the sea.
It’s never been easy for me to see myself as a grown up but I’m getting better at it. I see now that being a leader is not always an egotistical thing. Allergic to hierarchy I have always dismissed the idea, even as a parent. I like being on a level with people, but I’ve realised that this is a part of what leading is. We all have to be going in the same direction for things to work. I am not sure I have been given direction very much in my life and perhaps I would have figured things out a bit sooner if I had.
However, I truly believe that I have benefited from the diversions and difficulties that I have experienced and that things have happened in exactly the right way. I was a single mother for a long time and I struggled with it. At that point I was not at all grown up. I let my overwhelm take primacy and was not grateful for the miraculousness of this little person in front of me. You can’t parent properly when you don’t have confidence in yourself, it’s like the blind leading the blind.
In every area of life you have to believe in your own legitimacy. A lot of people might not like how you live (being a ‘benefits scrounger’ is a blow to your self-worth for example) or may question your sincerity etc- perhaps they will think that you are self satisfied if you are brave enough to share the things you make (or think- like this!). But you can only really live within your own vision for yourself. Deep inside yourself you have to believe that you and your ideas are worth something.
Cultivating this in other people is the most important thing that one can do. The question should be- how can I make space for those around me? So often we don’t have room for it- there is so much clutter in our minds that we become energy hoarders, like Smaug on his pile of gold. It’s so easy to be mean, exasperated, tribalistic- it takes so much less energy.
Giving the people around you the space to be totally themselves- grumpy, vain, hilarious, bizarre, inept, self-righteous- is an act of total love. Just as we strive to accept our children as they bicker and scream, this ideal of total love must be fought for. There has to be space for it all or everything stops working. Magnanimity, the silver bullet.
Perhaps I am coming from a place of privilege when I say this. It’s easy to be generous when you have the mental capacity and a decent level of security. But many of the people who have helped me the most in my life have experienced struggle, are a little bit weather-beaten. What’s kept them going is having an open heart, and the ability to forgive others. Being human is allowed. And this is what I try to keep at the forefront of my mind in my job. People have goodness running through them like letters in a stick of rock. You just have to believe it.