What if your life did not have to stay organised the way it is now?

This is a reflective workshop for people who are considering a significant change — or who simply sense that something in their life may need to be reimagined.

Not necessarily a dramatic leap.

Sometimes the first change is simply allowing yourself to think differently about what might be possible.

Over two hours, using some of Pete’s stimulating imagery, we’ll create some space away from the usual pressures, expectations and practicalities.

We may explore:

• your relationship with time and the feeling that it is running out

• uncertainty, ambiguity and not-knowing

• the assumptions and beliefs that keep us rooted in familiar territory

• what you might need to let go of

• what a different future might actually look and feel like

• how you may begin moving towards it

There will be time to think, write, talk and listen.

You won’t be pushed towards a decision.

You won’t be given a formula.

The intention is simply to help you see your own landscape more clearly.

By the end, you’ll have begun to create a personal map of possibility — something that helps you notice what is calling you, what may be holding you back, and what deserves further exploration.

Who is this for?

People who find themselves asking questions like:

• Is this still the life I want?

• What would I change if I gave myself permission?

• What am I waiting for?

• What might become possible if I stopped needing certainty first?

You do not need to arrive with a plan.

Curiosity is enough.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/imagine-a-life-lived-differently-tickets-1999018452002?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true

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The fear of ageing and losing relevance is a scary thought.

And yet, when we think of it in terms of our lived experience (our cognitive, emotional, somatic and spiritual engagement with life) this can be reframed not just as restricted to later life but instead as a series of periods of liminality in the arc of the whole of our lives, steps in the ever-changing storyline of our sense of self.

Who hasn’t asked the question, ‘Who am I, what am I doing here?’ at many different ages and stages.

We might experience this as a series of tremors, like the way the atmosphere becomes charged before a storm, followed by crisis and release as we let go of an old version of ourselves and awaken in a new one.

Whenever these liminal stages arrive, they can feel:

🪴Deeply ambiguous.

🪴Puzzling and disorienting.

🪴Rich with possibility.

Because we construct identity as a story it feels like our narrative no longer holds or it needs rewriting. People describe this as feeling lost. Rudderless. Having lost their sense of direction.

Questions arise:

❓Who am I?

❓Who might I become?

❓Who am I scared of becoming?

Something loosens. Uncertainty appears. Meaning is re-examined. A new pathway appears.

These liminal stages are unavoidable. Any idea of an abiding sense of certainty is an illusion. Curiosity is a far more useful state.

The lesson for me is this. The better we become at embracing change, uncertainty, ambiguity and, critically - acceptance - the more easeful life becomes.

Where do these observations land for you?

Do you find a comfort in the rhythm of the seasons? Or a sense of panic or disappointment that another year has passed and not enough has been achieved?

What is your mental model of time - and how did you acquire it? How often do you question the model that you work within?

More often than not we grow up with a model of time as a scarce commodity. That we mustn’t waste it. That we get things done in time. Key life events are tied to a chronological framework that we should adhere to or be judged.

The problem is - the structure we work with doesn’t work for us. It creates stress and self-criticism.

We also live with constant reminders of mortality. Your time, my time, in this form, on this journey - however we frame it - could end tomorrow. We’ll never know.

We’re terrified, aren’t we, of the relentless passing of time and the inevitability of death. There’s a guilt that we carry also - what mess will I leave behind?

This fear has been commodified. Endless urging to spend money on slowing the ageing process, on modifying our looks, on insuring against the worst. The constant reminders to put one’s affairs in order…

Or we can reframe.

There is an opportunity if you choose to take it. The opportunity to reappraise your personal attachment to time and the way your attitude to time is inextricably linked to other people’s expectations. By mentally rewriting your contract with time, you may start to discover fresh freedoms. What could life be like if the calendar is not the measure of it?

In truth, we have all the time in the world - until we don’t.

To quote Rupert Spira, ‘Now is the everpresent not the everlasting. Now is not a moment that travels along a timeline from the past to the future. Now is eternity.’

The knowledge of one’s own mortality need not be a burden. We can choose to hold it lightly. We can choose to be in the world differently. To choose peace over conflict. To replace fear with loving kindness and a light step.

This acceptance - that the end and the beginning are in the same moment - is the key to living a life infused with joy and energy.

#flow #inspiration #noticing #ripple

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The fear of ageing and losing relevance is a scary thought.

And yet, when we think of it in terms of our lived experience (our cognitive, emotional, somatic and spiritual engagement with life) this can be reframed not just as restricted to later life but instead as a series of periods of liminality in the arc of the whole of our lives, steps in the ever changing storyline of our sense of self.

Read more

I adore pomegranates. The tree in my street is full of these little beauties evolving from flower to fruit. My experience of this growth lifts me up. Inspires me.

Where are you carried by the surprise of your own unfolding?

#growth #unfolding #perpetualchange

The Atlas of Quiet Change is a growing collection of illustrated maps for navigating life’s quieter transitions.

It isn’t designed to be read from beginning to end. There is no first map, no final destination.

Open it whenever you need, stay as long as you like. Return when life changes.

The landscape will still be here.

The first map is coming soon.

The more compulsively one searches for meaning, mastery, certainty, or spiritual attainment, the more artificial life becomes.

The restless search itself can become the obstacle, because what is being sought is not “out there” but already present, obscured, forgotten, or misidentified.

We’ve lost something, collectively, over the last few hundred years. The groundedness, the connection - lost in the fog of ‘too muchness’. Life throws too much at us for true clarity and connection to be found in what is now considered to be a normal life.

Information overload. Social media dragging us daily away from our true selves. Replacing the thoughts we would have been graced with in our quiet ponderings with agendas not of our own making.

Marshall McCluhan warned of the dangers of electronic information in his book Understanding Media (1964).

His thoughts on the confusion between medium and message were prescient.

Plato, in Phaedrus, (370 BCE) worried that people might confuse information with meaning.

Both mourned what was lost when people stopped having proper discussion and debate. As the oral tradition declined deep meaning got obscured.

No wonder we have become obsessed with the need to seek for real meaning - and to miss the simple fact that it is already there - but blanketed, obscured by the outpourings of the modern world.

My grandmother made poultices for my wounds, mixed sulphur and treacle for my brother’s acne, wore amber beads for her arthritis. She was ancient and awesome, the matriarch of the village I grew up in.

As a child I thought her a little odd. Now I feel blessed to really understand and value her influence.

She possessed the spirit of the ancients, and passed some of that to me - the new old soul of the family.

When the usual projects of becoming a man - an adult by others measures - began to lose credibility for me, I began sensing that my search may have been organised around a misunderstanding.

I realised the the self I was being encouraged to cultivate was not me, but a curated version of myself instead.

I chose early, like Bert Hellinger’s black sheep, to reject the family conventions.

I’m sure there are many out there, and some of you, who recognise that sense of separateness, felt it was wrong, and started your own version of the search, knowing that you had something unique. Maybe you put your finger on the truth quite early in life, maybe you came to the path later.

Then the next dilemma arrives - it’s one thing to believe a truth - an entirely different thing simply to know it.

Why do some of us arrive on this path, but not others? Why do some arrive on the path early, and some later? What triggered the search? That’s where I’m going next.

#change #intergenerationalthinking #existentialshift #secularspirituality

Image: Heavily prompted AI summary of the article.

It suggests a natural, positive developmental process that leads to wisdom and a new appreciation for life.

This shift occurs across spiritual, personal and social dimensions. 

It’s a reorientation of attention from:

🪴Doing to being.

🪴Needing to prove oneself towards seeking understanding.

🪴Superficiality towards real depth.

🪴A need for validation towards grounded appreciation of one’s sense of place.

One develops a different relationship with time, more comfort with solitude and

reconciliation with one’s mortality.

(Lars Tornstam 2005)

🪷

There are many different theories around ageing. I find this model quite freeing and optimistic.

For a lot of folk, a sense of oneself as a spiritual being creeps in along the way. I feel this way of looking at things helps break down the resistance to acknowledging that.

🪷

There comes a point where playing by the rules becomes more exhausting than stepping outside them.

This refinement changes the way that a person moves through the world, and changes the way that others perceive them.

There’s a freedom here that comes with stepping away from the exhausting game of needing to matter.

🪷

A note on my use of the term spirituality.

Secular spirituality is the pursuit of meaning, purpose, and inner peace without religious dogma, supernatural beliefs, or institutional affiliation. It focuses on human connection, self-transcendence, appreciation of nature, and awe through mindfulness and daily rituals. It prioritizes exploring the human spirit and ethical living.

🪷

I’m interested to know - how does this land for you?

#change #intergenerationalthinking #existentialshift #secularspirituality

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Image: original drawing with AI assist.

There comes in life a moment when the fear of becoming irrelevant appears. Not because we are fading but because the world we learned to matter in is no longer the one we are living in.

Some people get caught up in the fear and drift into the sidelines.

Others relax into a kind of earned authority and don’t see this as a problem.

What if this moment isn’t some kind of decline, but rather a repositioning?

🌱 There’s no need to measure things in the same way.

🌱 It’s no longer about being seen, but about seeing clearly.

🌱 You become a person who notices rather than needing to perform.

🌱 The need to prove yourself fades.

This shift is quiet but deeply meaningful. It is the beginning of a different kind of usefulness.

It’s not a loss of value, rather a shift in the kind of value we offer.

These are not signs of fading. It’s the arrival of a more refined version of yourself.

Where do these observations land for you?

#agesandstages #change #beingnotdoing #existentialshift

Image: Gathering storm, Pachna, Cyprus

“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”

-Marcus Aurelius

Calm isn’t accidental. It’s a choice. It is within our locus of control. It’s not necessarily something we have to travel to find. We each have the power to create a reservoir of calm within ourselves.

We can rewire ourselves. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. As a child, I used to have terrible panic attacks. I resisted every attempt that was made to placate me. That resistance created pain and disorientation.

Trauma, stress, grief, physical and mental injury took over my system. Locked me up inside.

Acceptance on the other hand - the ability to allow pain, distress and the terrible uncertainties of life to wash through and over you - to turn and walk with these things rather than bracing against them - eventually leads to the arrival of equanimity. That’s the still calm centre of awareness that lays at the core of us all that must be uncovered in order to find the peace we need.

It’s not an easy journey. But it can be broken down into achievable steps.

🌱 Find someone who will listen to you in the way you need to be listened to.

🌱 Start talking. Don’t stop. Therapy works.

🌱 Connect - fully and intentionally - with the people who really matter.

🌱 Play. Revisit your childhood passions. They matter.

🌱 Learn the skills of emotional regulation.

🌱 Breathe intentionally.

🌱 Move in whatever way works for you.

🌱 Don’t over-identify with your thoughts.

🌱Learn how to stop thinking when you need to. Learn about cognitive defusion.

🌱 Do the work. Don’t get lost in bypassing.

🌱 Don’t let other people live in your head.

Above all choose your identity - don’t simply wear what life has thrown at you. I hear too many stories of people receiving ‘advice’ from those who are simply projecting the solutions to their own unresolved deficits.

If you aspire to being a skilled helper learn your skills well enough so that you are available to help with a steady hand from a place of self-knowledge - not helping because your efforts are driven by your own internal needs.

Do the work that’s necessary to distinguish between the two. You may slip back - this vigilance can be a lifetime’s work. You’ll forget, you’ll get distracted. Such is life. Start again wherever you left off.

Find the still spot. Base your effectiveness on that firm foundation.

#stillness #calm #equanimity #coaching #selfknowledge #acceptance #magnumopus

Image: Flat calm, Pissouri, Cyprus.

‘When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.

This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.’

John O’Donohue - Divine Beauty

#contemplation #solitude #nature #retreat #beauty #awe #interbeing

Image: Stark beauty, after the wildfire. Vasa, Cyprus.

No pseudoprofundity from this man. Just the real deal.

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.”

Shakespeare. Measure for Measure.

#jfdi

Image: Vasa Twilight.

This week has challenged my inner peace somewhat.

Wednesday brought not one but two earthquakes within a couple of hours of each other. No damage in the village, but it certainly brought on a feeling of deep existential dread which lingered as the aftershocks continued into the wee small hours of the next day.

My best friend summed it up nicely.

‘I think living in a zone of shifting geological plates like that instills a healthy sense of the temporal nature of our existence on the planet. It’s not surprising the innate stoicism in eastern Mediterranean and Levantine thinking.’

Stoicism centres on virtue, reason, and living a flourishing life by focusing on what is within one’s control—such as one’s thoughts and actions—rather than external events. Challenges are viewed as opportunities for personal growth.

Stoicism teaches that you cannot control external events, but you can control your reactions to them. You have the power to choose your attitude and actions in any situation.

As coaches, of course, this is our daily bread. There is also a lesson in the need to coach on many levels - not just listening to the story - our lunchtime legends - but helping strip away surface pretensions to deal with the invisible. Thoughts yes, but also the emotional, somatic and spiritual.

We can’t think straight when our hearts race and our guts are churning.

I lay down to breathe my way through and was quietly congratulating myself on my ability to self regulate when the second shake happened. Took me a bit longer to breathe back into my belly that time. Humbled.

Meanwhile, I have to be honest here, my neighbours sat in their yards, paused while their teacups rattled, checked on each other and returned to their daily doings.

Sentient beings practising acceptance.

How can you not understand your deep connection to everyone and everything when the universe lifts you and shakes you violently?

Jung, later in life, was asked if he believed in god. He smiled wryly and answered ‘I don’t believe. I know.’

I’m not a believer either. But my experience says that awe opens a portal to a deep and essential understanding of connectedness.

*The blue dot is my house. The reference to the United Kingdom is to the sovereign army base. Despite independence, the UK still control part of the island.

#awe #mortality #stoicism #coaching #challenge #learning #acceptance #peace #happiness #earthquake

As autumn matures and winter approaches, where does your mind take you?

Do you find a comfort in the rhythm of the seasons? Or a sense of panic or disappointment that another year has passed and not enough has been achieved?

What is your mental model of time - and how did you acquire it? How often do you question the model that you work within?

More often than not we grow up with a model of time as a scarce commodity. That we mustn’t waste it. That we get things done in time. Key life events are tied to a chronological framework that we should adhere to or be judged.

The problem is - the structure we work with doesn’t work for us. It creates stress and self-criticism.

We also live with constant reminders of mortality. Your time, my time, in this form, on this journey - however we frame it - could end tomorrow. We’ll never know.

We’re terrified, aren’t we, of the relentless passing of time and the inevitability of death. There’s a guilt that we carry also - what mess will I leave behind?

This fear has been commodified. Endless urging to spend money on slowing the ageing process, on modifying our looks, on insuring against the worst. The constant reminders to put one’s affairs in order…

Or we can reframe.

There is an opportunity if you choose to take it. The opportunity to reappraise your personal attachment to time and the way your attitude to time is inextricably linked to other people’s expectations. By mentally rewriting your contract with time, you may start to discover fresh freedoms.

What could life be like if the calendar is not the measure of it?

In truth, we have all the time in the world - until we don’t.

To quote Rupert Spira, ‘Now is the everpresent not the everlasting. Now is not a moment that travels along a timeline from the past to the future. Now is eternity.’

The knowledge of one’s own mortality need not be a burden. We can choose to hold it lightly. We can choose to be in the world differently. To choose peace over conflict. To replace fear with loving kindness and a light step.

This acceptance - that the end and the beginning are in the same moment - is the key to living a life infused with joy and energy.

#time #mortality #onlynow #innerpeace #walkingeachotherhome #ageingfearlessly #awakening #secularspirituality #nondualism

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The opposite of sleepwalking.

‘You cannot sleepwalk your way into your destiny. You must wake up and pay attention’.

David Whyte.

Find a way of being in the world that relies on knowing truths rather than believing them.

When you walk, walk to connect rather than to reach a destination.

When you walk, walk slowly and give yourself permission to stop completely. Come to rest - and when you do take time to note the things previously hidden from you in your haste.

Notice how you feel connected to everything. It is no longer about going out to walk in nature. It becomes the dawning that you and nature are one. You begin to walk as nature. The awkward feeling of separation, of the solitary self, falls away.

This is awareness via direct experience. It requires no belief, no practice.

You are - and always have been - a part of the thing you have believed yourself to be separate from.

In these times, discovering awareness and growing towards a life lived with gentleness and compassion seems to me to be a political act.

#knowing #awareness #compassion #selflessness #spirituality #zen #interbeing #greeningoftheself

Bear with.

Aristophanes offered up the myth that we were originally created as twins - either male/male, female/male, or female/female.

This was an immensely powerful set of combinations - fun on the one hand and politically potent on the other. These creatures challenged the gods.

Zeus hated these freedoms, and in a fit of revenge, ordered us to be cleaved from our natural twin, and in doing so created the eternal craving - to find our other half - the ‘one’. He ordered Apollo to stitch us up - literally, to create the two armed, two legged beasts that we are(the navel being the vestige of the separational wound)

So now, like Schopenhauer’s porcupines, we shuffle around in a constant dance of exquisite pain. We get close and then can’t bear the closeness.

We encounter the tips of the spines of the other, and they ours, and we are again forced to shuffle apart.

Intimacy and independence dancing in circles. (Esther Perel and David Whyte produced a wonderful webinar on this theme).

So what to do?

There’s always the possibility of adventurous platonic love - the twin flame, the Anam Cara. Very high levels of emotional intimacy, well boundaried. Stopping short, for good reason, of tipping into physicality.

…

In the 17th century, French philosopher Blaise Pascal claimed that the source of our sins and vices lay in our inability to sit still, be alone with ourselves, and ponder the unknowable.

Buddhism too offers up the notion of ‘sitting on your cushion’ first - coming to yourself, breathing through your heart, developing the capacity to be peacefully alone.

‘True love = equanimity’ Thich Nhat Hanh.

It’s a theme, right now, is it not? To find peace first with yourself in order to find peace with an intimate other. Or not. Both beautiful and bleak.

All this leaves me with more questions than answers. If you are a person that thrives on solitude, but wants intimacy - sans porcupines - what’s the model? Where does one begin?

Does this resonate with any other quiet souls out there?

#coaching #relationships #intronauts #fellowtravellers #union #companionship #walkingeachotherhome #metanoia

Illustration: 2022 life plan

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The acceptance of suffering is prerequisite to the emergence of joy.

If we try to put our suffering in a box - to contain or deny it - it becomes a powderkeg. It eat us up from inside, messes with our immune system, and makes us ill or insufferable, or both. Worse still, we explode into anger or seethe with repressed rage.

Instead, we must allow suffering to flow through us, to wash over us, along with the ebb and flow of physical and emotional pain that accompany it.

Then, we have a chance.

Our largely cognitive approach to this life can trick and misdirect us. We tell ourselves stories that are not always true. We get stuck in the gravitational pull of intrusive thinking.

Be open to the multidimensional nature of experience - cognitive, emotional, somatic and spiritual. These cues are often better aligned.

It’s the blend that opens the doors.

Listen to the whole, and not just with your ears. Then let go. As soon as you let go, you notice the joy that’s always been there, obscured by your need for control.

#suffering #perpetualchange #clinging #lettinggo #breathe #letgo

Wednesday 23rd, 2.43pm. I noticed a growing pall of smoke to the south of my village. It was 35 degrees, very windy and everything was tinder dry. My heart sank. I walked to the car park at the southern fringe. Fire. A 500 metre wall of flame was running rapidly towards us. It cut off the southern access road. Then, firstly to the east and then to the west, it cut off the entire village. We were trapped until 5.30 by which time both access roads were clear because there was nothing left to burn. The police and civil defence started evacuating the elderly and vulnerable. Then others started to leave because the fire was licking around and encroaching on the buildings on the edges. In the space of the next 12 hours an estimated 170 sq kilometres of countryside was destroyed. By then, a multinational force of firefighting helicopters and planes had appeared. These machines, the pilots who fly them, the local fire teams, the volunteers with their own fire trucks, the villagers acting in fast reacting teams, contained and eventually quenched the worst of the fires.

I have no words for the bravery of these men and women.

A handful of homes were destroyed. Vineyards obliterated. Landscape turned to moonscape. Vasa, in relative terms, remains intact. Many villages fared much worse.

The land will regenerate, there have always been fires in Cyprus and there always will be.

As usual, social media came alive with a mix of documentary photos and videos - a lot of useful reference material for those that needed to know what was happening.

Alas, it also came alive with blame and anger. Conspiracy theories including: Alleged corruption. Property developers torching agricultural land in order to develop it. Immigrants being paid to commit arson. An eighty year old man was using an angle grinder and the sparks caught the tinder dry vegetation nearby. He immediately called the authorities. In the 12 minutes it took for first responders to arrive the fire had become uncontrollable.

Be careful what you read. Become aware of how media - mainstream and social - is used to shape the narratives around these terrible events. The reporting is designed to create conflict.

What I saw in front of my eyes was very different. Communities acting in concord. Selflessness. Mutual aid. Food, water and resources being rapidly assembled and distributed. Shelter being provided. Local fundraising creating tangible effects already.

Blame is useless. We are all responsible. By that I mean we need to act with love. Events like this show just how connected we are to each other, to the environment, to nature.

The myth of separateness is laid bare in the face of force of circumstance.

#wildfire #community #resilience #nature #selfhelp #selflessness #strength #mutualaid

PS. I am safe and even more committed to creating a space for quiet contemplation and retreat. The villages of Cyprus, and their people, are remarkable.

Anthony Hopkins once said: “I am fully aware of my mortality, but at 87 years old, I still wake up every morning with the desire to misbehave. Age is not a barrier when you find passion in what you do. The real secret lies in keeping your curiosity alive, continuing to learn, and not letting the fear of time stop you from enjoying life. Every day is a new opportunity to create, to laugh, and to show that it is never too late to move forward with enthusiasm and joy."

…

If you ever hear yourself say ‘I’m too old to embrace change.’ - flip the sentence. ‘If I don’t keep exploring new and exciting stuff I will get old and fade away.’

The secret to staying truly alive in later life is to actively seek out new experiences, to make new connections and to be purposefully creative in a way that impacts the lives of others.

#stayingalive #righthererightnow #legacy #donotgogentle

Photo: Sea Fig, Limassol shoreline.