Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
It's a grey day,
It's a blowy day,
The wind is threatening to roll in some more rain clouds and I'm huddled down the slope beside a beautifully thick green mossy granite wall that's between me,
The moorland and the little woodland copse and I'm just looking at the oak tree which is holding on to the last handful of brown leaves that have managed to stay on its twigs and branches despite the gales we've had recently.
And today I want to reflect on the power of a journey rather than the outcome or what you're heading to.
It's something I really saw when I walked my pilgrimage back in March and April where I knew day in day out that whilst I thought I was going to walk to the end of this pilgrimage and I thought I was going to reach the end point,
The truth is I didn't know.
I didn't know why I was being called to walk the pilgrimage.
I didn't know whether it was something I was going to see on the way or a person I might meet and once that interaction had happened the job was done and suddenly the pilgrimage no longer had the power for me to walk it.
As it was I walked the whole distance but I really felt freedom in not getting lost in the outcome of the pilgrimage and it's something I feel in my life so much is I engage with things and it's a real sense of freedom for me to realize that it looks like I'm meant to get to a particular destination but I don't know if that's the reason I'm drawn in that direction.
I tried to talk to a coaching client about this today and it didn't quite land but she's quite lost in a very busy demanding job and feeling a bit wobbly in where she is at the moment and for me it's really clear that she might be in this job and it was absolutely the right job for her to take and it might be exactly the job that she is in for the moment because there's something for her to see,
Something for her to see personally,
A gift or a learning or something,
A habitual thought pattern that is being offered for her to see.
So it might look as though for her she needs to stay on to complete this job and to do a good job and on one level I can see that but on another level I'm much more curious about what is it that she is being asked to learn in this situation and I offered that to her today and she just didn't really get it and that's fine,
It was fine,
It was just something that wanted to be said through me and and it didn't land and it's like okay maybe that's not for her to learn at the moment.
And it came into sharp focus with me again on a conversation with a colleague this time where we are both working on a project together and we've agreed to sort of experiment for a few weeks to see whether or not the project we have in mind might come to fruition and for me this period is a time of experimentation,
Of trying things out,
Of sharing feedback,
Of doing things differently,
It's a sense of a bit of a playground for me but for my colleague what I hadn't realized but I realized now because we had a conversation about it is that she feels really fixed on the outcome,
She is really determined to complete the project,
For her it's a really important thing to do and it was really helpful for me to realize that we are approaching the project differently,
It had taken a little bit of uncomfortable communication,
All from the right place,
All from a good,
Kind,
Loving place but we both had very different senses of what this project was about.
For me,
Yeah,
I mean it might be that we work together and produce something but equally I'm kind of aware that the journey with her might be the thing I'm meant to engage with,
Might be the thing I'm meant to learn,
Maybe it's for her to learn,
Maybe I'm just a bit player in something for her to learn.
So I'm just really tuned in at the moment to this sense of the journey,
The journey is the learning,
Not the destination and I would love to know your reflections on this as well.
If you feel that you're going through a little bit of a sticky patch,
Maybe it's just for you to see what there is for you to learn in this sticky patch,
What personal learning is there for you to see and once you've seen it,
It might be that what you think you're meant to do or get to dissolves once you see the learning,
Suddenly the destination seems to change of its own accord.
What is the learning for you on your journey of life?
Don't worry about the destination,
Focus on the journey,
Be curious about the journey.
I'd love to hear from you.
