Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Just out and about needing a little bit of fresh air today.
I had a tiny bit of a headache.
I don't know if maybe the weather is changing or something atmospherically is happening but just feeling a little bit tired today and when I feel tired I have two temptations.
One is just to curl up and do not a lot and the other is to get out for a walk and to breathe in some oxygen and that's what I did today.
Breathing in fresh air which is a delight up here on Dartmoor and my reflection today relates to a coaching client I was talking with today and she was exploring confidence and was saying that she really wanted to be more confident in what she was doing and I know that when somebody reflects on confidence that they are often looking at confidence in the wrong kind of way and certainly I used to look at confidence in this way as well.
So what do I mean by they're looking at it in the wrong kind of way?
Well most people look at confidence as something that's outside of them that they need to get or to develop.
The idea being that if I were to do this I would become more confident.
It's as though if I follow ABC I will get to D and I see something fundamentally different about confidence.
It's much more that we are confident and we have confidence at our essence and core.
That's who we are and when I talk about confidence I don't mean about being showy or speaking loudly or always wanting the limelight.
I mean confidence as in that quiet groundedness of knowing that you feel you're standing on solid ground and you feel free to express what you want to express.
That for me is what confidence is all about and we find that confidence is always there but it gets covered over.
So this was the conversation I started to have with my client.
She's really good now at starting to see when she gets lost in overthinking and she notices it when it arises and that's something we've been exploring together and I feel as though the next stage for her is to now look beyond.
It's been the most enriching and nourishing space that I've explored.
Looking towards spirituality,
Looking towards the energy and essence of life itself and for me that's the direction I want to point her in.
Although it's quite hard because I don't have a lot of words for it.
Often it's hard to articulate but she began to realize that there was something else and I just asked her a few questions and I'll ask them of you,
See what your reflections are and let me know if you want to.
But we started talking about well what was beyond the thinking like or beneath the thinking,
What is what is there that is present when the thinking stops and that was when she started to get an inkling that actually confidence was ever present.
It was always there and then we explored what is when she finds herself in the flow and for her when she runs she often finds that she settles in her thinking mind and experiences a sense of peace of mind and clarity and she loves running because that's often the place that she finds that peace of mind and clarity and so rather than saying oh I must go for a run in order to get that peace of mind and clarity,
I started asking her well what is that flow,
What is it that you're experiencing and we let the questions just rest gently.
I wasn't being clever,
I didn't have any answers up my sleeve that I wanted her to respond with but I did want her to become curious about flow.
What is flow?
And she began to realize that in the absence of unsettled thinking she became more in touch and aligned with that flow of life.
It wasn't something she had to get,
Flow wasn't something that she had to work at,
It was as she settled in her mind she found that it came forth naturally.
So those are the questions to ask yourself,
What is flow?
What am I at my core and essence?
Who am I?
What am I beyond that busy unsettled mind?
What is beyond that?
What is the intelligence that has me experience life?
What is that?
And that's what I want to leave you with today,
What is that for you?
Let me know your reflections,
I always love hearing from you and don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
