Tag: transition

Practical tips, Self-help and coaching

A year in review

Well, what a year it has been.

Whilst I don’t generally worry about arbitrary demarcations in the timeline – I will happily set myself new resolutions in the middle of a June and fall asleep around 11pm on New Year’s Eve – I do think there is value in reflection and a spot of planning. And the end of a calendar year feels as good a time as any.

I’ve previously written about planning for the day, week, or fortnight ahead, using a format that helps me articulate the values that feel most relevant, as well as what feelings I crave to feel and what goals I have. Laying these out in black and white help me also see the contradictions – do I want to feel peaceful but I have set myself ambitious goals that add weight to my shoulders? Do what I want to do and how I want to feel align to my values?

But in addition to the more day-to-day and week-to-week planning, I find it helpful to reflect more broadly, more vaguely, at any transition point.

Continue reading “A year in review” →
Personal story and reflections

When life feels insignificant

In the past couple of weeks I have left a job I loved – really loved – but felt I needed to leave for various reasons. I’m fortunate to have moved into a job I think I will love equally well, all early signs being promising, but nonetheless I felt rather emotional saying goodbye to a place I hadn’t expected to leave yet.

But as I gave the fairly standard leaving speech, which was completely genuine and heartfelt but could easily sound familiar, even cliche, and watched people nibble some cake and snacks before heading off, I could easily imagine the same time next week, no one even remembering what it was like when I was there.

And this was a big part of my life. So what is the point of any of it?

I then read a short essay by Bertrand Russell (“How to Grow Old”), in which he says:

If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact if the number of years already lived, still less of the probably shortness of your future…

The best way to overcome [the fear of death] – so at least it seems to me – is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.

Continue reading “When life feels insignificant” →

Practical tips

Returning to workforce

As I write this, I have just wrapped up my first week back at work after a year’s maternity leave with my second (and last) baby.

And it’s been great.

It’s been great seeing my colleagues and getting myself reacquainted with all the work that’s happening. It’s been great being myself again, and actually having time by myself on the train or on my lunch break. Even having some time to focus on work without also keeping an eye on the kids so the baby doesn’t eat a book (a real possibility) has felt like a luxury.

It’s also been great seeing my 5-year-old excited about going to the childminder’s after school and playing with other children, eating new foods, and then buzzing about his day as we walk home together. It’s been great seeing my one-year-old bonding with other babies and the staff at his nursery, and then coming to pick him up and give him loads of kisses and cuddles, all the sweeter for the time we spent apart.

And I’ve thought, “This is how a return to work should be.”

But it is a million miles away from my first return to work, which was a disaster that marked the beginning of one of my unhappiest periods of work life.

So what’s made the difference? There’s some luck involved, but there’s also a few things I can’t help but think have made the difference between miserably job hunting after work and looking forward to Monday. Continue reading “Returning to workforce” →

Personal story and reflections

Transformational pain

Today I’ve been feeling the full weight of endings.

The weather here in London has taken a sudden turn towards autumn, breaking crisp and cool this morning. As I walked my son to school, holding his hand in one hand and his bags in the other, with my baby in the carrier, it hit me: this is my last full week of a typical maternity leave. Next week, the baby (probably more a toddler now) starts settling in at nursery. Continue reading “Transformational pain” →

Personal story and reflections, Practical tips, Self-help and coaching

Do as I say, not as I do

There have been several times when I’ve caught myself telling my five year old something and feeling like a hypocrite. Like when I tell him to calm down and yet I know how much I struggle to contain my emotions at times (a work-in-progress I write about here frequently).

It got me thinking about all of the lessons I (try to) teach my son regularly that I could do with following myself. A bit like the popular Everything I Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. And the more I thought about it, the more things sprang to mind. Here are a few of my favourites. Continue reading “Do as I say, not as I do” →