Navigating Life’s Potholes
Right now, I am supporting several people going through a particularly difficult time, they feel stuck and uncertain. As a Coach and an Occupational Therapist that’s often the sort of work I get and enjoy. Of course I don’t enjoy their suffering, but I do enjoy being able to offer a safe space for people to explore what’s really going on for them.
Often is about helping them to find a glimmer of hope and a sense of accomplishment when they take action over the things they can control. Mostly they know what they need to do, often something is holding them back, they stay in the same cycle of thought.
We can all be forgiven for losing perspective and thinking we don’t have any control when we hit an unexpected pothole in life, most of us know what that’s like don’t we?
Increasingly I find I’m working with younger adults too. So early in their lives they are feeling overwhelmed, trapped, anxious and lacking in confidence.
It’s a pleasure to do such meaningful work and share the tools and techniques that I wish I had known when I was their age. I am sure it would have saved me many nights of lost sleep and too many glasses of wine to distract myself from what was going on in my head at the time.
It’s an area of my business I wasn’t expecting but of course I am grateful, it’s rewarding and I love seeing the positive results.
Alongside I am running some pro bono sessions for NHS and ICB colleagues at the moment too. These sessions are informal and specifically aimed at colleagues in an uncertain time. Themes we cover are developed from feedback on what matters to people right now.
If you have been passed this newsletter and you are interested in joining me for those events and want to get notified of future sessions you can sign up HERE, new dates coming out soon.
Back to our potholes, as we know they can be very damaging. Perhaps the steering wheel is wrenched from our hands, maybe we find ourselves flying over the handlebars of our bikes, possibly our eggs get cracked in the boot when the potatoes topple and land on them, or worse case, we burst a tyre and find ourselves stranded.
Hitting that pothole brings a sense of dread doesn’t it and yet potholes have become a way of life, certainly in Chelmsford they have, I navigate them as best I can, but I am ever conscious that one is lurking.
Mostly it’s not about avoiding the potholes; they are there and sometimes they catch us out —it’s about learning how to get to where we are heading without breaking down.
We talk about the importance of resilience when we face tough times, dealing with the knocks, those potholes, as best we can. Resilience is our ability to recover, adapt to change, keep going despite the challenges.
Thinking about our dreaded pothole as a metaphor for life’s challenges that are inevitable, we need to recognise the obstacle, adjust our path, bounce back without letting the bump slow us down too much and for too long, embrace the challenge, learn from it and try to keep moving forward. Often easier said than done.
Through my learning and my own experience, I have discovered that resilience isn’t something that people have or lack, which was news to me. In fact, resilience is a creative capability that anyone can cultivate and grow involving behaviours, thoughts, and actions. We can all work on those can’t we?
Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash
So even if we don’t feel the need to be particularly resilient right now, it’s worth investing in your self-development. What are those behaviours, thoughts and actions that you already have that you can call upon or develop?
A bit like a winter health check for your car, you might never need it but its probably a good idea just in case.
Here is a great tool I use to get people thinking about the resources they already have in their tool kit and its ideal if you are going through a challenging time.
Sadly, this tool is no help with pothole avoidance, but it could help with the consequences of hitting one. Perhaps you are waiting for your tyre to be repaired right now.
Grab a coffee and download for free -Let’s Unpack it – discover YOUR power within.
