Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm right beside a Scottish castle,
Not Stirling Castle,
We visited that yesterday.
It's called Campbell Castle and it's a castle ruin in the town of,
Or the village I should say,
Of Dollar,
Which is very close to where we are staying.
And we cycled here today on these wonderful cycle tracks and the ruin of Campbell Castle is right high on a hill so we slowly cycled up to the hill here.
And we had an idea that we were then going to cycle back and climb one of the hills near the campsite.
But when we got here to the castle and we'd found our way to the top of the hill and we'd kind of looked around the outskirts of the castle,
We thought,
Why don't we just go for a walk?
And there is an extraordinary walk where we followed the gorge of a stream,
Or they call it a burn here in Scotland,
That was cascading down the rocks.
Spectacular walk on a rough path it was quite slippery with the slippy stones and then we came out onto what looked like an open expanse of moorland high high up and we saw a hill and we thought let's climb to the top of that hill and we climbed to the top of the hill and as we were there looking out trying to work out what we could see in the distance and we could see the Firth of Forth and it was a bit hazy and we were trying to work out the direction that Edinburgh was in Another walker joined us,
He climbed up the hill,
He lived locally and we had this wonderful,
Almost like a tour guide from this local pointing out the different places that we could see around us.
And we've just come back down now to the castle so it was quite a high climb walking up the hill and then down to the castle we're going to cycle back now to our campsite but I'm actually telling you all of this because it's so easy sometimes for me in particular my propensity is to over plan is to go we need to do this this and this today and to have an idea of the itinerary and one of the things that I'm really learning and I really feel is pertinent for my journey in life is that there is a balance,
It seems to me,
Between a direction of travel and then the space for things to happen.
It's,
For me,
It's really useful to know a direction of travel and,
You know,
I'm talking about it today just as a,
As a,
An outing that we've gone on as we've been on holiday.
But of course you could look at this as a metaphor for life particularly for me,
Which is it's good to have a direction of travel and Then it's really good not though to over plan Because when I over plan I miss those opportunities where my intuition arises and points out things for me to explore and do And so it just feels like today's journey has been a great illustration of what's going on with me in life having a direction of travel but equally not laying down a plan that's so rigid that it means that I rule out any chances of spontaneity in seeing what happens in the moment.
So today's reflection,
Maybe today's reflection for you is around this area,
The balance between planning,
Overplanning,
Giving space for spontaneous things to happen,
Allowing things to arise in the moment.
Where are you on that spectrum?
What works for you?
Do you allow your intuition to nudge you and guide you along the way?
Are you the kind of person who finds it really hard to let go of planning and trying to work out all the different scenarios that may or may not happen in the future?
For me,
My learning is this,
And today really represents it well.
Have a direction of travel,
Have a sense of where you're going.
And then a little bit like today,
Rather than be rigid and thinking,
Right,
We've been here,
We now need to go back and do something else.
It's like being open to what opens up in front of me and taking those opportunities and seeing where my heart guides me.
Let me know your reflections on this.
To join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
