As I am onboarding a new leader at work and mentoring two other new employees, I’ve been thinking a lot about beginner’s mind and the resistance to change.
I’ve been thinking about where I’m doing things in my life “the way I’ve always done them” and where I’m open to new possibilities.
What would happen if I put all of my assumptions away and looked at my life with fresh eyes? Is that even possible?
What if I wrote down my goals and then had to think of 6 different ways to get there? Would that help me realize that there is no one right way? Would that help me be open to ways that I can’t brainstorm by myself?
As we talk about going “back” to “normal” life the way things were, I’m wondering if this is the perfect time to revisit some assumptions and challenge myself to be more open minded. More creative and resourceful.
Yes to shifting perspective and yes to questioning assumptions.
We are one week away from being halfway through this year.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the first half of this year went and what I would like from the second half of this year.
At work, we usually do second half planning. I was thinking today that this practice doesn’t have to be reserved for work only.
It’s a perfect time to do my own personal H2 planning.
What are my list of start-stop-continue items I would like do? Where are things working where I want to invest more and where are things working just right and what things are not working and I just don’t want to try to continue them and where do I want to pivot? What if anything do I want to add to my list for the next six months? And does that mean there are things I would need to stop to be able to make room for that?
Life is not a straight journey. It meanders all over the place and from a distance it can look like a linear path but day by day, it’s anything but.
So is learning.
A few months ago, I got a coach at work. She and I have been meeting weekly and the topics have been all over place (much like my life lately) and sometimes I’ll end a session anxious that I’m not covering what I should or that I meandered too much or that I am not “progressing” at the right pace.
I’ve made a lot of progress in a lot of areas of my life this year. But in my mind I’d reached out for a career coach for a specific reason and I wasn’t actively working on that in our sessions and I felt guilty about that each time.
And yet today as we started talking and I was sharing some of the updates from my week and some of my learnings and in seemingly unrelated areas I was able to take a step back and have a very clear point of view and direction about all the things I was intending to talk to her about.
And I clearly articulated that I want to do this, this, and this over the next couple of weeks to help towards my goal. It was well thought out, precise, and intentional.
Interestingly enough I had no idea that I was going to say any of that before the session started so it wasn’t planned. And yet it came together anyway.
This, in my experience, is the gift of unstructured talking time or the meandering nature of life. It looks like it’s all over the place but it’s actually converging and you’re actually progressing. It’s just hard to see when you’re in the middle of it because the messy middle is messy by definition.
It also reminded me that I have to give myself permission to wander. Permission to get messy. Permission to not know what’s coming next or where I want to get next. Permission and space.
It was a good day.
Yes to the messy middle.
And on a side note today’s my dad’s 78th birthday. I love and adore you, daddy. I am grateful for you and your kindness every single day.
We’ve been going climbing three times a week for the last six months. And even though they are finally fully open, the gyms are not back to their setting schedule. This means when we go to the gym, there are 5-8 new routes since last time. Generally at least half of those are outside my ability range.
So not a lot of new routes for me to climb.
But here’s the thing: because I’m climbing so frequently I am able to do harder things every couple of weeks.
That means I can go back to the same gym and to the same routes but now new opportunities are available to me. A route that I had evaluated and wasn’t able to do Is it within the range of possibility now.
This has made me think a lot about my life lately. What might be something that I maybe wrote off at one point in my life thinking I can’t do it but now if I were just to revisit it, it might actually be possible or might create a new opportunity for me. Unlike the gym the routes are not always there and visible in my life and I’m not regularly going back and revisiting them.
I wonder if there’s a way to actually make them more visible. And this way I could rethink or retry them.
And just like that the ranunculus are gone. As I was bemoaning this fact to the flower people at the farmer’s market, the farmer said: “Yep they are gone now it’s the season for sunflowers and dahlias and we will move on and enjoy them.”
It was a good reminder and perspective shift for me.
I love ranunculus the most and I will not enjoy dahlias as much but I still enjoy them and many other flowers (peonies, man they are exquisite!) and if I spend all my energy complaining about how It’s no longer ranunculus season, I miss out on all the joy I can get from the millions of other flowers whose turn is right now.
And of course this made me think about work as well. There are definitely some changes and new seasons happening at work. And part of being able to show up for that and lean into it is noticing the beauty and the joys that I can extract from this particular season.
Paying attention to what is here now in leaning into it and really being present with it is a major part of my word. So I really appreciate it this good reminder.
Yes to being here now and yes to appreciating what’s here in this season.
I made a mistake tonight at work. It wasn’t a big mistake but it still made me trigger when it was pointed out. I took extra long being careful with every word I used in my email reply. And of course I thought about it for a while after and felt shame.
But now I am sitting here and deciding that I am ok with it.
We have a lot of change at work and there are new work dynamics, people dynamics and I am working hard to learn to grow to pivot.
That means that I will make mistakes. Because it’s hard to learn without making some mistakes. The only way to not make any mistakes is to do nothing.
So I made one today. I will learn from it and not make this one again. Next time I make a different one, I will hopefully learn from that one, too. And if I do it well, I the distance between mistakes will get wider and wider.
Here’s hoping.
Yes to releasing the shame and yes to learning from my mistakes.
I was journaling about my word today and when I looked it up, the dictionary said we can use yes as an opening to ask for more details, to be more curious, and we can use it as an affirmative as a response to something.
Yes as a beginning to a conversation and yes as an ending to a conversation. Yes to enthusiastically doing something and yes to accepting what is here now.
I love how this one small word can be used to create completely different possibilities.
I also love that I get to choose which yes I want to use in each moment. I can be intentional.
Ranunculus season is almost over and I already miss these flowers that make me so happy.
I have a lot on my mind today. We had a two-hour educational session for Juneteenth which was inspiring and thought-provoking. I also did some learning on my own. And as always, it reminded me how much more I have to learn.
Then I had some vulnerable conversations at work. That were good but then comes the vulnerability hangover that brene brown talks about so I am feeling some of that right now.
And i am trying to sit with it all and be present to what is instead of doing something like I often want to.
One of my goals around picking the word ‘yes’ was saying yes to what is. Being present to what’s here.
Being vs doing.
Being is really hard for me. I’d much rather do. I like to help, serve and make things better. But some things take time, other things are completely out of my control, and yet other things will not get better and it’s just life.
So instead of fighting it or beating myself up for not fixing it, I am trying to be here, feel my feelings and do the best I can when it’s possible.
Some days I do better than others but it’s always hard. So here I am today sitting with it all and working on being.
Yes to being. Yes to leaning in to what is. Yes to learning.
We’ve had a lot of changes at work lately and my day to day conversations and meetings and interactions have changed quite a bit.
Even though I am spending time with many people I’ve known for quite some time, the substance and interaction models we have changed.
As a result, I am trying hard to not walk into these meetings with preset ideology on who they are and how they will show up. I am trying to be open and keep a beginner’s mind mindset.
And I’m noticing how hard that is.
It’s so hard to shift how we see people once we’ve made up our mind about them.
It requires a concerted effort and an intentional mindset. And then I try to remember that everyone else likely feels that way about each other too.
Human interaction is so complex and interesting.
Yes to learning and growing and trying to hold on to that beginner’s mind thinking.
