I didn't know what to do. I was tired, and deflated, and miserable in my work. But I didn't know how to choose anything else.It was Davina who first showed me that it might be possible to open to something new.I thought for a while about studying law. But my friend Jonny, who I first met on a summer camp when we were sixteen, had been grappling with his own choices and suggested I speak to his friend Jane, who worked as an organisation development consultant - a field I'd been interested in for years.Jane told me about a personal development course that she thought would help but I couldn't make the dates. I remember how disappointed I felt, but I asked around about alternatives and Zahavit, who I knew from another part of my life, introduced me to Cheryl, who pointed me in the direction of Sue's wonderful programme on the same topic.And at Sue's programme I met Susan, who I happened to tell me over lunch that she thought I'd really enjoy the programmes at Roffey Park. And so within a couple of months I was there, beginning a Master's Degree in Organisation Development, and where I met Paul, who ended up in the same programme design group as me. Paul invited a colleague of his, Deborah, to speak to us, and Deborah introduced me to a book that would change so much - James Flaherty's "Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others".Two years later, I was a student on James' programme in integral coaching, half-way across the world, hardly even really knowing how I'd ended up there. And James, seeing a possibility in me that I was only just starting to see in myself, invited me to become a leader-in-training for the extraordinary programmes that I now teach in London and which are among my greatest joys.Had any link in the Davina-Jonny-Jane-Zahavit-Cheryl-Sue-Susan-Paul-Deborah-James chain not happened - and so many of them came from purely chance conversations - who knows what I would be doing now, and with whom?And these are merely the chances that I know about. How many must be the other, unseen, coincidences that made what I have described here possible - the chances that brought people together, into the path of each others' lives, so that any of what I've described here could come about.This is the way life always is, even though so much of it is invisible to us.It occurs to me on remembering this how illusory is any idea that I'm really in control of what happens in my life. And I'm humbled, and grateful, that life so often seems to have a way of bringing what needs to be brought, even when I can't see it, fail to appreciate it, or fight it away.
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As we encounter each of life’s difficulties, we get to choose:Consider ourselves cursed or mistreated, as if we are owed freedom from hurt, pain or confusion. As if life owes us happiness. As if we are meant to be in control of everything. This is, essentially, a fight against life as it is.Or draw on difficulty as part of life’s path, an opportunity to turn more deeply into life rather than away from it.And while, with each successive difficulty or joy, we find that we understand life’s movement less and less, perhaps this way we learn to live it more and more.
We are rather less a single, unitary 'I' than a system or community of parts, each in relationship with one another. And it can be so very revealing, and practically useful, to get to know the parts - their intelligence, their blind-spots, and the very particular projects they've each taken up in our lives.I've written before here about shame, a familiar background mood for me, as it is for so many people. It turns out that there are at least two parts of me that are actively involved in protecting me from shaming by others - one which pre-emptively shames me, and one which more directly defends me from shame. Each has its own form of good intention, and each often causes me difficulty.The first part is an inner critic part. It's so dedicated to me not being shamed by other people that it will frequently take pre-emptive action by shaming me itself. The logic is clear, and compelling: if I can be made to feel sufficient shame beforehand, then perhaps I'll hold back from acting in a way that would cause others to shame me. It's a simple exchange - the lesser pain of my own internally generated shame to protect against the more soul-searing shame that comes from the disapproval of other people.This is the part which would have me hold back from speaking my mind, from becoming angry with other people, from showing too much love, from being a surprise or a disappointment or a bother or mystery. This is the part which, for years, held me back from dancing, having me be ashamed of myself even before I begin. It's dedicated to forever scanning the horizon and keeping me within very tightly contained boundaries so as to avoid the kind of pain it knows I could, once, not tolerate. It is willing to exact quite a price in order to do this: the inner price of feeling some level of shame at all times, and the outer price of holding back what is, most truly, mine to bring.The second part is a protector part. Should the antics of the inner critic fail, so that I actually get shamed by someone else, it throws itself into action. It's not interested in waiting, nor does it have any time for curiosity or learning. What it most wants is the shame to go away. The protector part brings forward my defensiveness, my justifications, my denial. Insincere apologies, pretence, lengthy justifications for my actions, tuning out, disconnecting from people, freezing, abandoning my commitments, bending myself out of shape - all these are the order of the day for the protector part.The protector part is also willing to pay a price to protect me from shame, most notably having me act at odds with myself, with a relationship I care about, or with my deepest, most sincere commitments.And while both these parts have honourable and noble intentions, they are way out of date, having swung into action when I was very small and really needed some protection. They don't take into account that I am an adult now, and that there is another part of me, more akin to the me-myself that exists over the entire span of my life, that no longer needs their help. This part, which could be called essence or self, is really quite able to be in the world alongside shame, and anger, and hate, and disappointment. It is vast enough, deep enough, alive enough, and quite strong enough to experience whatever comes its way. It is curious, open, timeless, and willing to learn.Naming the parts has power. When I see that I am had by the inner critic or inner protector, I am increasingly able to ask them to relax, to step aside - to reassure them that I'm quite fine, whatever happens, and that I do not need them to protect me any more. And, in the space that this affords, I'm more able to step, willingly and without panic or rush, towards genuine relationship and inquiry, and into the world as it is rather than the world as smaller parts of me imagine it to be.
How long do you hold on to the hurt you feel when criticised, or judged, or when you don't feel seen?I know that I, first and most habitually, can interpret slights and hurts as a sign of the unravelling of a relationship, the beginning of the end. And so perhaps it's little wonder that I have over time developed the kind of body and mind that easily holds onto them, feeling 'the end' again and again when I meet the people (usually those I love most) around whom I got hurt in the first place.It was a revelation to discover that the world simply isn't this way for everyone else. That there are people, close in, who care for me deeply and who have moved on within hours - and quite often within minutes - from the original intensity of encounter. For them, fierceness is just fierceness, disappointment just disappointment, anger just anger, gone when it's gone and certainly not the end.And so I'm learning, gradually, to pay better attention to what's actually happening now and over time in a relationship rather than taking as true the story that my body and emotions - conditioned by years of practice and habit - hold on to.
In the Jewish tradition, as in other religious and spiritual traditions, there is a blessing that can be said for pretty much anything. A blessing for waking up, and a blessing for going to sleep. A blessing for sunsets and for lightning. Blessings for food and for rainbows. Blessings for new clothes, for reaching special days, and for anniversaries. Blessings for the bathroom. Blessings for encountering others. Blessings, even, for bad news and for dying.The simplest way to understand blessings is as an act of thanks. But they’re also a practice in remembering what is so easily forgotten – that even the humdrum and mundane is neither humdrum nor mundane. And they’re a practice in noticing all those phenomena and entities which are often in the background for us but upon which all of life is standing. In this sense blessings require no belief in a deity but simply a commitment to marvel at life’s sheer beauty and complexity. They are a practice in staying awake. They are an invitation to live in a state of what Abraham Joshua Heschel called a state of ‘radical amazement’.The rabbinic tradition invites people to say at least a hundred blessings a day. What would become possible, I wonder, if just now and again we each started to look at what’s become most ordinary and most unremarkable in our lives, perhaps even that which we’ve come to resent, and turned to wonder at the blessing within?
In one way or another, my writing here in 'On Living and Working' is always about 
It’s easy to relate to the objects which fill our world as if they were just there – a taken for granted, already existing feature of human life.But the materials in everything you own or use – everything – had to either be grown by somebody or dug out of the ground first. Even the most synthetic and complex of products start out this way. Growing and mining, the source of it all.That’s quite a thought to consider. Take any object around you, from the smallest bolt to the tallest building, and imagine back through the long and complex chain of people and interlocking processes to the raw materials that came from the earth itself.Remembering the source of everything, and the commitment and ingenuity that makes it all possible, can be a way of cultivating deep gratitude and wonder that any of it is available to you in the first place.These must be more possibility-filled moods than the resentment or frustration we can so readily feel at all the products that don’t work as expected, at the chaos of the world, at the sheer everyday humdrum repetitive ordinariness of things. And gratitude, for this aspect of life’s many wonders, can go a long way to awakening the sense of possibility, responsibility and focussed commitment we need in order to do our best work and inspire others.
Our tools shape us. I've argued this here before, most notably 
It seems common sense to think of will-power - our capacity to do or not do the things that matter to us - as coming only from within us. If I can't start something or stop something, develop a new habit or take up a project, if I find myself procrastinating, then it must all be down to me, and me alone. And, if that's the case then pushing harder, or harsh self-criticism, or both, seem to be the way to go in order to get myself started.But self-punishing is hardly life giving, and barely supports our capacity to flourish and get up to what matters in a sustained way. And it's based on a profound misunderstanding, deeply rooted in our culture, that we are essentially separate from the world. If I'm separate, if the world is essentially divided into me (my mind, my thinking) and everything out there which I have to move or push against, then when I find myself not moving or not pushing what other conclusion can I come to than (1) I'm not trying hard enough and (2) there's something wrong with me?But there is another way to look at this that takes into account how open to the world, how indivisible from the world, we are. When we see this we also start to see how much we are affected by who and what is around us. We discover that the world is an affordance for certain things - that different places and people draw out of us different kinds of action and inaction, and that this is often a better description of what's happening than 'I willed it'.Chairs beckon me to sit, paths beckon me to walk, people who are open and receptive beckon me to speak, others beckon me to keep quiet. Place a stack of chocolate biscuits on my desk, and I am drawn to eat. Place a phone in my pocket, filled with incoming messages, tweets, emails, voicemail - and I am drawn to check.Our whole physical and social world acts as a scaffold or a pathway for our action and inaction.The startling corollary of this is that how we are in the world is not brought about by inner will alone. It is also, in large part, brought about by what and who we choose to surround ourselves with in our homes and work spaces. In this way the worlds we build for ourselves also make us.And just as the road layout and road signs here in the UK are an affordance for driving on the left (they call for left-of-the-road driving), and those in mainland Europe or the US are an affordance for driving on the right, we can begin to lay out - with our choice of possessions, tools, spaces and relationships - paths that are an affordance for distraction and delay, or for doing what matters most to us.