Hello from Lockdown in Portugal
Today, I celebrate 5 years of freelance life. The world has changed more in the last few weeks than the previous 5 years. And now we are entering truly uncharted waters.
Being self-employed has never been so precarious. Would I change a thing? hell no! My sense of being in the right life doing the right work is very strong just now.
When you work internationally, you don’t expect factors to arise so powerful and far-reaching that they impact the whole lot.
Coronavirus has a scope hitherto unprecedented. But scope to do what? To play havoc with our lives? To face us unequivocally with the present we are in, and the future we are bringing about? To take our eyes off money and success, and focus our gaze vividly on people, health, interdependence and survival?
I am under no illusions about this menace. I am privileged to have suffered so lightly to date from it.
The biggest shift for me has been in how effortlessly and spontaneously I appreciate the life and people that surround me. I’m suffering a surfeit of gratitude.
The final module of the Ignatian Leadership Programme in January in Northern Ireland stands out in my memory for a whole host of reasons.
An intense, multi-stage learning experience like that changes you. I learnt a great deal about leadership and about facilitation, but possibly even more about myself; what brings out the best and worst in me (some things I do really well; some useful discomfort around my relationship with my ego…), and how to deploy myself better. And it’s also some of the nicest feedback I’ve ever received.
E.g. “This is the single best piece of professional and personal development I have ever participated in.” That one gave me a glow for days!
Coaching has again been one of the big life-givers. I’ve got a great smorgasbord of ongoing and new, frequent and infrequent, experienced leaders and bright millennials encountering coaching for the first time.
I started as an Executive Group Coach with Experiential Insight in November, and it’s been fascinating working within someone else’s structured model.
My in-house coaching work in Edinburgh continued, as did some long-standing private clients, and I’m in the final stages of another online coaching company’s recruitment process.
For those who are not struggling or afraid, i.e. for people like me who are privileged, this crisis can be a special time. We must say this humbly: those who can remain peaceful in mind throughout will not have earned the privilege.
It’s only a special time if we are not afraid for our livelihoods, not watching beloved people suffer and even die, and not living in an environment that is hard to endure during lockdown. Here’s what I’m noticing:
How strong our assumptions can be around roughly what the future looks like. How silly that looks now! I have lost some work due to Coronavirus, but to my surprise I have also gained some. Certainly my move towards online work, which was happening already partly to reduce my carbon footprint, has accelerated sharply.
So my tentative plans are these. Lots of coaching (and I start pro bono coaching for the NHS next week 😊). Keep recording poems. I’m running a private online retreat from tomorrow. I’ve got quite a lot of leadership work and planning, including individual coaching debriefs, a leadership Module in Portugal in October, and a new UK leadership programme beginning 2021. But who knows…?!
Thank you for reading!