Reflective Space - Waking Up

My youngest daughter was asked by her form teacher this morning to go outside into the garden for a few mindful minutes before the school day began. This is what she noticed.

There was and is a strong risk of stumbling into 2021 in a similar way that I staggered into the ‘holidays’ at the end of 2020. A mild word to describe this would be ‘distracted’. But this word needs explanation before the mind concludes ‘oh yeah, distracted. Got it’ before skipping quickly onto to something else…

In the groundhog days of lockdown, I’m still busy being busy. My mind lands on a ‘to do’ and then my body and emotions follow until, very quickly, my mind skids onto another one taking me with it. Flittering, constant narrative subsumed with many things that will never happen and multiple small ‘shoulds’. ‘The kids should be stepping outside at some point during their home-schooling day’. ‘I should make sure I exercise’. ‘The house should be cleaner’. ‘I should be setting myself up to achieve more than last year’. And then the wonderfully ironic ‘I should be more present and calmer’. 

That last one doesn’t help.

I sometimes have the sense that I’m in the sea fighting my way towards the surface for a breath of air – some quality of space where I am able to just pause, look around, realise what is important. But I’m too often dragged downwards by a vortex of busyness, targets and constant preoccupation with the future and what might, could, should or shouldn’t happen there. 

Which to me describes many people’s experiences of organisational life. A hamster wheel of activity, targets, performance with a stunning absence of reflective space. Space to breathe. To look around. To reconnect with what is meaningful. To encounter another person in moments which blow you away with their possibilities for dialogue. 

So, with a smile full of mirth, I realise I enter 2021 with the ‘target’ of ensuring I open up more reflective space. 

A question is how? 

Swimming around in my swamp of short-term worries and ambitions, I did a ‘walk and talk’ with my co-researcher John Higgins a few days ago. In lockdown this consists of me walking down the canal in Berkhamsted with my headphones, on the phone to John who is navigating his local territory in London. 

We settle in for about an hour and a half where we have some stuff on a list to talk about, but we don’t bother looking at it until right at the end because by that stage we’ve normally realised what is actually important and talked through it, leaving the to-do list either blindingly obvious or irrelevant.

An hour and a half.

And at the end I have a distinct sense that my path for 2021 has not only become clearer, it has become infinitely more meaningful. Because we gave ourselves time. We asked questions with real care and curiosity. We listened alongside one another’s thinking. 

So just to repeat. An hour and a half has probably significantly changed what I will do this year.

So, I am turning my attention towards those who are willing and able to be my thinking partners – and meeting them regularly. Stepping away from the computer whenever feasibly possible to go outside. Having conversations whilst walking. Routinising practices that help the mind and body. My meditation practice happens at a set time every day (before the kids get up). 

And, if it doesn’t take long, why is space like this so absent for many in their workplaces? We know it can be ‘transformational’ (put in quotation marks because I shudder using a word which has been so co-opted into the change agenda of the powerful). 

In my sights this year is deepening my inquiry into the instrumental life many of us experience in our organisations that dampens or extinguishes the possibilities of our flourishing – of waking up and feeling truly alive.