Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and it's a bit of a blowy day today for June.
It's been overcast and grey and we've had a bit of rain which is lovely because we need the rain and I've just come up to an area in the village where there are a few trees.
It's a grassy area,
You might hear some cars go by.
I can just about hear some horses clip-clopping on the road just below me and in this grassy area there are lots and lots of buttercups.
It's beautiful and also little white daisies poking through and just a few leaves that have been torn off the trees with the blowy wind that we've the countryside and I wander in my mind.
I'm reflecting on something which I feel is really helpful.
It's really,
Really helpful and it's something that often comes up with clients when I coach people.
They tell me that they've got,
For example,
Something coming up that's going to be a bit worrying,
Like maybe they're a leader and they say I've got a challenging conversation that I've got to take part in.
This next week there's going to be this piece of news that I need to tell a member of my team and it's going to be challenging.
I always find it really helpful when somebody says that to just pause.
You've got a challenging conversation.
Now,
If we don't challenge that,
If I don't challenge that use of language,
Then it becomes rock solid and it becomes a thing.
Because the question really and the challenge I often give is,
Is it really a challenging conversation?
Is there such a thing as a challenging conversation?
Just think about it.
Don't get me wrong,
I know that there are conversations that I have in my life that I also would term as a challenging conversation.
But is that true?
And you see if you just kind of look at it and reflect on it a little bit more,
Then what becomes apparent is that actually there is a conversation that you need to have with somebody and there's a lot of thinking about it.
So there's a piece of news that you maybe need to deliver and then there's a lot of thinking.
And what causes a challenge or what appears to be the challenge is not the piece of news that needs to be delivered.
It's actually all the thinking.
It's the stories that we tell ourselves.
It's the what ifs that we get lost in.
It appears to be a challenging conversation because what happens is we can get lost in our heads,
Worrying and getting concerned about all the things that might go wrong with that conversation.
And it's so useful to almost,
It's like looking through a window that's grubby and then you wipe it clean and you can see through it and you can see how grubby it was.
When you start to see through the power of thinking,
When you start to see through how thinking and stories can create imaginings that feel frightening,
Then actually what happens is you begin to stop becoming frightened of your imaginings,
And they are just imaginings,
They're not real,
And instead just focus on what needs to be done.
So for example with a client that I've been working with,
She was about to move on in her job,
She wanted to hand in a notice and find a different job and she said she had a challenging conversation because she needed a conversation with her boss to let the boss know that she was moving on.
And again,
Is it a challenging conversation?
Or is it just a conversation that you need to have to deliver some information and a lot of thinking?
And in the absence of all that thinking,
All you've got left is a conversation.
So today is just a reflection on some of the challenges that you feel that you've got coming up in your life,
Maybe conversations,
Meetings,
Events,
Circumstances.
The question to ask is,
Are they intrinsically challenging?
Or is it just something that has to be done with a lot of thinking attached to it?
And in the absence of the thinking,
All you've got to do is take the action.
