Finding my centre

My work is in the field of Management Training. I am a training consultant with primary interest in working with organisations on valuing their diverse staff. The broad field is equality and I have been doing this work since the mid-19880's.

Today I ran a course for an organisation I have been working with for almost 5 years. I designed the programme and have delivered the majority of the training. I have also trained a colleague to deliver this work and so far I have worked with 3500-4000 staff. Quite remarkable!

Having just come home I now have a few moments to reflect on what I do and how I do it.  Today's training was more challenging than usual.  Fifteen participants, one of whom was a loud, unreconstructed comedian whose idea of humour was to make politically incorrect double entendre jokes throughout the day.  If I had encountered someone like him on my courses ten years ago I would have felt the need to 'change' his views and challenge everything he said.  I for sure would have felt my temper rising and come across quite rigidly aggressive.  I am delighted to acknowledge how much I have changed and moved on from my knee-jerk reaction. I was happy to let the group deal with this joker and when I did give him the platform he wanted, I was light-hearted and uninvolved.  The result was that the power I might have given him by reacting negatively was defused and he was not taken seriously by any of the participants.  I have indeed moved forward.

This may not sound like a big step, but for me, at this time of the year, it certainly is.  Every time I have lost my temper, blown a fuse, flipped my lid, gone bananas, in relation to my work, it's been in the winter. It is usually a pattern for me and part of the winter madness.  This year it's different. I am much more able to laugh about things and not to take myself too seriously. I don't have the super highs or the extreme lows I have had before. It's great that I take the time to notice these small steps towards finding a calmer, more centred me. 

As part of this new found awareness, I am also going to do a workshop with an old teacher of mine who teaches spiritual practice. It's time I bring a regular meditation practice into my life again - not from a space of crisis, but from a point or moment of clarity and strength.  Wow, I like this a lot. Watch this space.