The Wave

Yesterday, for mental health awareness week, I shared a story about condor.

Today’s subject is The Wave - because we all have mental health.

The Wave

Love was a wave and she was a very lonely wave. She had traveled the globe in search of something more than the life she had. Surely there must be more to life than rising and falling and being dictated to by the bright glowing circle in the sky. She’d tried to ask other waves if they felt the same as her, but they never stayed around long enough to give her an answer. From watching them she thought they looked satisfied enough.The sounds they made when the wind whipped them against the cliffs in far flung places certainly sounded like enjoyment to her. Although she did wonder about that having never had the courage to actually have a go herself. Instead she chose to hang back and watch as other waves moved forward and took the momentum. She had tried to change her shape like some waves in order that she may take the surfers into her very centre and yet she hung back scared of hurting them. She’d also tried to do that thing with the air to make her very edges all white and foamy. But she withdrew fearing she’d not be able to go back to how she was. She envied those waves who had the confidence to carry large ships towards their destination in their wake.

It was on one such day when she’d really had enough with herself. She really was useless she felt and couldn’t do anything all the other waves could. Either she didn’t have the courage, the experience, or the expertise. She also didn’t have any wave to ask questions and share it all with. 

It was in this heavy and depressing mood that she felt herself dragged down. Dragged deeper than she’d ever been before. Deeper, darker, colder. If she had felt fear in the past it was nothing to how she felt now. Down and down she went, deeper, darker, colder. Her thoughts slowed right down, as if time itself was starting to move into slow motion. Deeper, darker, colder.

Until she finally came to a stop. She couldn’t see anything; she couldn’t feel anything, and she was struggling to think anything. She realised she was very tense and tried very hard to relax and allow some space between every fiber of her being. As she did this, she realised that she felt a little better. As a result she continued trying this type of relaxing for the next few … well she didn’t really know what they were really …they could have been seconds, minutes, hours, days or even weeks, all we can say is that as time passed, she felt lighter. She practised very hard allowing space in between every fibre of her being. She couldn’t do it all at once. She had to pick some part of her and concentrate very hard on that part and just breath and allow space inside. It was as if, part by part, she was getting lighter and brighter and...was it her imagination or was she feeling a little warmer too?

What she found, however, was as soon as she started to wonder about what was happening, how it was happening, and try to make it go quicker, she started to feel the cold, she started to emanate less light. Each time she then had to take a breath and start all over again. Slowly working her away around each part of herself. Over time she was able to hold on to this lighter and brighter state for longer. She found she didn’t have to concentrate quite so hard and could still manage to maintain this lighter and brighter state.

Finally, she managed to be the lighter and brighter state. It was as if she had changed. It was if she was no longer the wave trying to be brighter, trying to be lighter she was simply a bright and light wave. She puzzled over this for some time. She still felt like she was still herself, but she somehow knew she was different. The added brightness and added lightness had in some way changed her.

Of course, what she had failed to notice was that once she was this different state she had also started to rise. Until finally when she neared the surface and noticed her own lightness reflected in the water around her. She came to the surface and took a deep breath and allowed the rays of the sun to warm her. She looked around her and could see many waves all with the same lightness and same brightness as her. She felt an acceptance from them that she had never felt before. An acceptance for who she was and not what she could or couldn’t do.

She stayed with the other waves for many moons. She did many things she’d never tried before.  She especially enjoyed the rushing into caves and being dragged back out with the momentum of those around her. She even had time to perfect the tender holding of surfers as they danced within her very self.

One day after such an exciting day she started to feel different. She started to feel even brighter and even lighter. As if even the very binds that were holding every part of her together were being pulled gently apart. Having been in the deep, dark and cold place before she didn’t consider this scary and even felt some excitement about what was happening. Consequently, she simply allowed the transformation to take place. Until it was as if she was everything and everywhere all at the same time. There was certainly more ease, even more light and bright just wasn’t the word for it. She just was and realised of course that she had always been all that there is: LOVE.

Alison Smith

Landscaping Your Life

My first Landscaping Your Life book, Can't see the wood for the trees, has been described by one reader on Amazon as "first aid kit for the brain".  To find out more about the book see this post, you can buy it from all online stockists all listed here.

The Right Path

We ALL have mental health, not just on bad days, not just when we’re feeling down, not just when we’re off work.

Every minute of every day of every year we have mental health - 100% of the time, 100% of us.

Mental health, that just like our physical health shifts up and down a continuum. Which means there’s different strategies needed to support our mental health dependent on where we’re at in any moment. Sometimes the strategy involves visiting the doctor, other times medication, other times talking, a walk, painting, the gym, time with friends or in nature, writing 😉 and so on. As many different strategies for mental health as there are for physical health.

Mental health awareness week is an opportunity for us ALL to consider what we can do to support our own, friends’, family’s, and colleagues’ mental health.

In previous years I’ve shared here insight from Headtorch’s conferences, explored what we can do to support suppliers’ mental health over on the Purchasing Coach blog, and written about strategies for taking care of my own mental health, and even the menopause, a time that significantly impacted my mental health.

This year I thought I’d share some short stories I’ve written. Short stories that explore different aspects of our own mental well being. Not at the very edges of the mental health continuum but of the every day thoughts and beliefs that impact our mental health. They're short stories I originally wrote as a means of reminding myself of the need to support my own mental health.

Short stories I hope you’ll enjoy.

The Right Path

One day Condor was flying high, well above the clouds. Alone with their great strong and powerful wings, with brown feathers so light and yet able to carry them on their journey.

You can see, can you not, how Condor soars in slow spiralling circles, and notice how they use their truthful and piercing vision to seek the right place and seize the right moment to land.

As Condor flies silently through the air they hear the noise of the wind as they float between green and warm valleys and the lofty snow-capped mountains.

You may notice while Condor’s attention is focused on finding a landing in the green valleys or the snowy mountains, what they do not, that they are moving into a cloud. A cloud which is dark, grey and foreboding.

As they float down into a lower level, first on the inside and then lower and lower Condor becomes frightened as they have no vision of what is beyond – only of what is inside.

On the inside Condor has no sense of where they are, where they are going. Condor feels very lonely and afraid. On the inside they even start to doubt their own skills of flight. Their wings no longer feel infallible, their heart no longer so certain.

Yet, as you may already know: the world is big, and clouds are small, and finally Condor drifts up and emerges out into the bright clear sunshine and their vision is once more clear and insightful.

The choices begin to leap into Condor’s imagination as the colours become brighter and brighter. They begin to descend knowing now exactly where they are going to land – which is the right place.

You can already recognise that Condor will never be alone, no matter which choice they make.  Knowing that it’s the journey not the destination that provides all of life’s lessons.

Alison Smith

Landscaping Your Life

My first Landscaping Your Life book, Can't see the wood for the trees, has been described by one reader on Amazon as "first aid kit for the brain". To find out more about the book see this post - you can buy it from all online stockists all listed here.

Our Mental Health is like the Sea

As Mental Health Awareness Week comes round again the above video shares insight from the sea relating to our mental health.

As those at Headtorch remind everyone at their conferences, workshops and elearning the answer to "How many of us have mental health" is

Yes, we ALL have mental health, not just on bad days, not just when we’re feeling down, not just when we’re off work.

Every minute of every day of every year we have mental health - 100% of the time, 100% of us.

Mental health, that just like our physical health shifts up and down a continuum. Which means there’s different strategies needed to support our mental health dependent on where we’re at in any moment. Sometimes the strategy involves visiting the doctor, other times medication, other times talking, a walk, painting, the gym, time with friends or in nature, writing 😉 and so on. As many different strategies for mental health as there are for physical health.

Mental health awareness week is an opportunity for us ALL to consider what we can do to support our own, friends’, family’s, and colleagues’ mental health.

In previous years I’ve shared here insight from Headtorch’s conferences, explored what we can do to support suppliers’ mental health over on the Purchasing Coach blog, and written about strategies for taking care of my own mental health, and even the menopause, a time that significantly impacted my mental health.

This year I thought I’d share some short stories I’ve written. Short stories that explore different aspects of our own mental well being. Not at the very edges of the mental health continuum but of the every day thoughts and beliefs that impact our mental health. They're short stories I originally wrote as a means of reminding myself of the need to support my own mental health.

Short stories I hope you’ll enjoy - catch them when they start here tomorrow.

And just a reminder - save the date - 19th May  

The Transformation Game - and body image

I intend to choose a positive body image

The Mental Health Foundation’s theme for Mental Health Awareness Week is body image.

As I reflected on what I could write on body image I read a Daily Mail article on the resurgence of the use of the Transformation Game®, a wonderful self development tool I’ve used for over 20 years for myself and with coaching clients.

The Transformation Game® is not for the faint hearted, and I think Jane Alexander’s description of the game being like “Spiritual monopoly” and even "Bonkers" says it all. This description certainly conveys the challenges facilitators like myself might have for encouraging people to “play the game” on an area of their life they’d like more clarity on. Certainly the first time anyway. Many once smitten, like Jane, return often to help kick-start or realign an area of their lives.

“Ouch” says Jane Alexander - something those who play the game can relate to.

Whatever your belief about the cards you choose they certainly help you get to the crux of an issue. For it to be effective you do have to be prepared to go there in the first instance, and accept the odd “ouch” or two when it hits the nail on the head, and perhaps gets a little too close to comfort about what’s going on. Although it can be equally gentle if needed too - ie it gives you what you can cope with and need at any moment in the same way a coach flexes their styles to suit the coachee. 

Having recently had a photo shoot I have certainly had my body image brought to the fore as I struggled with what I saw in the images of me. I’m wondering, therefore, what the game will offer if I play it with the intention of me embracing a positive body image.

That’s where the challenge started, even before the first dice had been rolled and any cards chosen. My intention changed a few times as I reflected on the difference for me of

• 'Having' a positive body image
• 'Embracing' a positive body image
• 'Holding' a positive body image
• 'Accepting' my body image

And settled on

• I intend to 'choose' to have a positive body image

Which firmly put the ball in my court about my body image being a choice I have, and one that is a permanent fixture rather than something I could put down or let go of when the fancy takes me.

As I set out playing the game alone I failed to roll the required number on the dice to land on the appropriate square to start my game. A sign perhaps of my resistance to change in this area?

The first card of the game was the guardian angel of ‘communication’ – a mentor if you will for my whole game. A mentor who I thought reminded me to communicate lovingly and non judgmentally with myself.

The game involved 23 rolls of the dice, moving up 4 levels (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) and landing on squares with names such as: insight, setback, intuitive flash, free will, blessings, service, miracle, appreciation, transformation, angels and depression. With awareness gathered along the way.

I’m not going to mention every move here, and instead share the patterns I observed, and key insights I got from the squares I landed on.

Intuitive flash

I landed on this square 5 times, and feedback from the game suggested my intuition on what to do next was faulty more often than not.

Which feels about right – for me my body image is one of those areas where I look for the facts and data to support my belief. There’s no room for whispers from intuition or inner wisdom. No room for self love. Just (faulty?) data that I use to abuse.

An interesting observation as my intuition is usually very easy to hear – and a wonderful example that every game, and the way we play it is unique to the intention we’re working on. It’s as if the game brings our ways of behaving and thinking into our conscious awareness and out in front of us in order for us to transform or transmute them before putting them back.

Free will

I landed on this square 3 times and the feedback from the game was that I never used it well.

Reflecting on that pattern as I write it feels like I was avoiding what I know I should be doing. Choosing instead to be distracted by all that glitters (a world often portrayed by celebrities) – perhaps reflecting the pattern of having my head turned by what everyone else is doing and looks like, and trying to emulate them rather than focusing on being me.

Angels 

I had many of these join me:

• Trust & Delight
• Expectancy & Beauty
• Purification & Flexibility
• Responsibility & Freedom

Whilst playing I explored the connection with each card in turn. Interesting on reflection though to see a pattern emerge from these as a whole ie that delight, beauty, flexibility and freedom are only achieved with a dose of hard work whether that’s in the form of trust, expectancy, purification or responsibility. 

Hmmm ...as ever food for thought from the game that will continue over weeks to come.

Or perhaps it’s about having the flexibility to take responsibility to trust and delight in my own beauty giving me freedom from, and purification of my current thinking. Leading to an expectancy for a acceptance of me :-).

A great reminder that it’s our intention, our game and our inner wisdom that nudges us to see the insights we need to understand via the patterns and beliefs we notice in the game.

Setbacks

An “ouch”y setback was:

I’d rather change the outside world rather than do the inner work of altering my response to it.

As I reflect on this I can hear my outrage at advertising and glamour magazines telling us what perfect looks like, and even my resistance to the expectation of wearing make up. And yet, why am I even allowing those expectations to impact me, why the wasted energy when it’s me taking on other people’s beliefs.

Hmmm ….  instead of pointing the finger at others perhaps pointing at me will help shift this belief.

In the game setbacks come with pain to represent that they slow us down, and even cause pain in our lives. We can however have pain free setbacks in the game that invite us to consider how we may already have released or relate differently to a setback.

In my game a pain free setback was: 

I stubbornly refuse to approve of my own unique process of growth.

A great reminder and nudge that we’re all different and not homogenised like some factory processed snack that’s the same whenever and wherever it’s made. We’re all unique, with different intentions for our lives, different aspirations, and different passions. So why would we look the same?!?

Insights

Insights can come with “ouch”s too - well they did for me with this one

I successfully resisted the temptation to gossip.

Yep it’s too easy to join friends and have a gossip party about all that we don’t love about ourselves. I’m not sure I can ever remember having a conversation about what we love about ourselves. It’s no wonder my body image gets a battering when there’s nothing in my memory to counter the negativity.

This insight invited me to resist the temptation to gossip, and change the focus of conversations with friends when we start to beat ourselves up.

Another insight congratulates me, with the words:

Thank you for demonstrating joyous, conscious human living.

Which aligned well with another insight earlier in the game that said:

I express honesty and truthfulness in each moment, claiming my power with love.

Which feels like a great end to the game – a reminder to stay conscious to love and joy, and perhaps not spending time or energy on things that take me away from that.

How might my experience of the Transformation Game nudge you to choose to think differently about your body image?

The challenge now of course is to take action, and do what I committed to do during the game. One action of which is to revisit one of the stories I wrote some time ago to support my own mental health that I'm sharing next week - the wave was written at a time where that desire to be like others was not helping me mental health at all.

There were other squares and other cards and actions to undertake during my game but the full extent of the transformative quality of the game is very hard to convey in just words on a page. You can buy the Transformation Game® (available from Amazon amongst others) and play alone or with friends, or be facilitated by people such as myself  who are trained facilitators of the game.

Notes from another game on life balance can we found here.

Please note I played a solo game – games such as the one Jane Alexander played in the Daily Mail article will have up to 4 players playing, and the relationship with other players and their games adds another dimension to the insight available.

The process, the insight, setback and angel cards used here are from the Transformation Game © Innerlinks - www.innerlinks.com. ANGEL ® CARDS (a registered trademark of InnerLinks, Asheville NC, USA) © 1981 Drake and Tyler; produced by Narada Media, 4650 N. Port Washington Rd, Milwaukee, WI 53212 USA. Use by permission.

Connect to Nature for Mental Health

Many of our holidays, weekends, lunch breaks and even the odd meeting are spent in nature. I'd suggest, because unconsciously we know it brings us back into balance, and provides peace of mind.

For Mental Health Awareness Week I'd therefore like to invite you to consider what landscape gives you peace of mind? 

For me it's this beach - a beach I moved home to be near, and a beach that has certainly kept me saner over the 14 years I've lived here. 

A beach with a view of Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth that I fell in love with.

A beach I can see from my bedroom and office windows:

A beach that is less than 5 minutes walk away from those very windows:

The beach - with its many seasons - busy in the summer and deserted except for the hardy dog walkers in the winter.

A beach I've regularly eaten breakfast, dinner and tea on:

A beach I've exercised on:

A beach I've declared my love for my profession on:

A beach that has inspired many a Landscaping Your Life video blog (you may want to turn your sound down first):

And many a blog too (this on standing in other people's shoes):

A beach I've gone to when I've had my head in the sand - mostly metaphorically it has to be said!

A beach to help me turn a corner:

A beach I've paddled all year round on:

And now a beach to swim from!

Last year, I realised the sea really wasn't all that cold (only 5 in winter and up to a toasty 15 in the summer), and have now added the benefit of cold water swimming to my mental health prescription.

This was taken for sunrise at 0730 in November when Frost was on the ground and water was still at a warmish 8/9 degrees. 

Another 0730 swim much more recently when the water was still 5/6 degrees and air temperature about the same.

A beach that keeps my mind, body and soul in health, and is somewhere I go to when struggling to mind the mental and physical balance I need to get up every day and do what I need to do.

Thank you mother nature for giving me this beach, and allowing me to connect daily to your nurturing presence through it's beauty - whatever the season and what ever the weather.

Where is your place in nature that brings you peace of mind? When will you commit to going there next? 

Alison Smith

Landscaping your Life

Using nature as a metaphor to find balance in your life