Healing the Whole ...

I have come to the realisation that I have a sensitive heart. If you met me, sensitive is not the word that would spring to mind I admit. I did some DISC profiling on a leadership course today and I am, as always, a high D with elements of C. D is for dominance. I am assertive, forceful, results-driven. But that is my mind. These profiles rarely give you an opportunity to delve into your heart. And my mind is strong as I have already mentioned in this blog. I am not surprised as I have spent years and years strengthening it. Being clever was my thing from an early age. I remember being 4 or 5 years old and being able to name every member of Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet as my party piece. I wasn't particularly pretty as a child (or teenager for that matter!) and although I liked athletics I was consistent rather than exemplary. I also wasn't creative in anything valued like art or music. As a child I shut myself in my room and read books and as a teenager I wrote dark poetr...

I have been thinking a lot about this recently. How hard the first step is for those around me to take. Is it because, like Martin Luther King predicted, we want to see the whole staircase? I take a lot of first steps. I seem to be good at doing it. And then I grow frustrated when the climb starts to look tough and I turn around and no one else is there. No one else seems to have been brave enough to make the leap with me. In their defence, I may not see the whole staircase but I certainly see the top. I see what it could be like if I make it there. Where I fail is I don't see all the hard work in between. I have a real thing for men that are physically fit and strong. I used to think it was an evolutionary thing. And while I still think that is partly true, whilst talking about this recently with a girlfriend over a glass or two of gin, I realised something else is also at play. You have to have tenacity and drive to maintain strength and fitness. And I admire that immensel...

I have already confessed my anxiety to this blog. I suffer from what has recently been described as high-performing or high-functioning anxiety. The more I feel I am losing control of the world around me, the more anxious I am, the more desperately I struggle to regain control. Often I can't and so it can quickly become a spiral of helplessness dragging me down into a pit of despair. I used to spend days in this pit of despair. Often in bed unable to face the world. I wonder writing this how many meetings I have cancelled by email too petrified to lift the phone. I wonder how many people suspected the real reason behind my last minute change of plans. My business mind starts to calculate the money lost. The productivity hours wasted while I lay in bed mentally paralysed. I am managing it far better now. Five years of hard work on every aspect of my personal development. Physical. Mental. Emotional. I can't neglect any part of my whole else I will end up back in the pit. It...

Recently I was approached by a friend for advice about his ex wife. He asked for my help and yet when I told him what I thought he fought it. Telling me that what I was telling him to do wasn't fair. My heart was firm. Love her. Care for her. Do what is best for her. She needs you to put her first. "I won't get it back", he says, "it's always me that has to flex." Yes. And it will be over and over and over again. Because that's what love is. It keeps no record of wrongs. He messaged me later to tell me what I had said felt like an attack. As if I was saying his relationship with his ex-wife and his children was transactional. I wanted to say that was because in parts it was. If his focus is the well-being of his children then loving their mother is just as much his responsibility as financially providing for them. The mental well-being of children is so dependent on the mental well-being of their parents. I speak from painful painful experience w...