There may be a clear need for you to take some physical rest – to enjoy a well-earned break and just stop. You may have noticed that if you don’t build in enough downtime, your body takes charge and forces you into a halt. You may also discover that if you’ve been storming ahead at high speed, you find yourself succumbing to ‘relaxation illness’ – in other words, the moment you stop, you get that cold or flu which was being held at bay whilst on the treadmill.

But ‘resting’ might not necessarily involve a physical stop. When I lived in Australia, I volunteered at a homeless shelter on Christmas Day. It was relatively strenuous – setting up the hall, distributing food, clearing up afterwards – but being there got me away from my own drama and the loneliness I felt from being so far from home. It gave me some sanctuary, a time-out of sorts. It might be that your fortnight ahead is full of physical activity: wrapping, packing, traveling and lots of people. What rest can you find amid all that?

It might be that resting is about letting go of the exhausting old stories that you spin about yourself, stories like: “I’m no good” or “I can’t do this as well as her”. Perhaps now is the perfect time to tell that critical voice to go on holiday and leave you alone. Here is an opportunity to say farewell to old stories about what Christmas is meant to be about – whether that involves dropping a super-woman compulsion to get everything perfect, or releasing the need to purchase in order to show people you love them.

It may be that resting for you is about letting go of the fight. Is there a particular topic which you and your mother always clash over? What would it be like to decide to put being peaceful above being right? What if you decided to give that issue a rest, just for a year? Perhaps you could use this time to enjoy the simple pleasure of company, and the fun and celebration of being with people you love, seeing them for who they really are.

It might be, of course, that now is a time for you to rest in to the sadness of loved ones lost. A few days away from work need not be spent productively or cheerfully; perhaps hiding under the duvet and just being with your broken heart is what’s needed.

How does your spirit, your psyche find rest? What brings you that sense of coming home, to a place where all is well? Here is a link to one of my most treasured personal resources, the practice of Remembrance, generously offered here as a guided audio recording by Mark Silver.

And finally, as the Copenhagen climate negotiations come to a close this week, perhaps there’s a bigger question about what we as a society need to put to rest. Maybe it’s time to let go of continual material growth, perhaps it’s time to put the brakes on and take a breather, and assess full-heartedly where to look for our future progress.

However you relate to this time of year and whatever your plans, may you find the rest that you need.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) What do you want to celebrate that you have done, been and achieved which has brought you here? Find that part of you which can acknowledge that you are allowed a well-earned, well-deserved break.

2) What could you build in that would allow you rest? A twenty minute walk by yourself to have some space from a chaotic family gathering… Allowing yourself to watch a film without it being for personal development… A sign up somewhere saying “You’ve bought enough presents already, now stop”.

3) What old stories are you ready to put to rest? Which are the mantras that go round and round, weighing you down and squashing your joy? Commit to this season being the time to let them go.

4) Leave a comment on this blog post, letting us know how you find ways of resting at this time of year. Is the rest you crave more physical, spiritual, emotional or psychological – or all of the above? When do you feel most restful, and when is it hard to find rest?

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

[Photo © Barrie Gordon]

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Start The New Year As You Mean to Go On

Have you just finished a training course and wondering how you turn your knowledge into action?

Had an idea on the back-burner for ages and now feel it’s time to see it into action?

Then it may be the perfect time to consider the Kickstart Your Venture workshop, next taking place in Cambridge on Saturday 16th January.

Click here for more information.

And if you know that someone’s struggling to think of a meaningful present to get you this Christmas, you could send them this link to the booking form and ask them to put “It’s a present” in the Comment section; they’ll then receive a festive voucher they can either email to you or wrap up and give you.

The BBC2 documentary Future Of Food has been the most recent wake-up call for me. When we discover how unsustainable our food supply is, it can be tempting to hit SNOOZE and roll over. Last week, my SNOOZE button no longer seemed to work. The gravity of the situation hit me the way a wave does – throwing me up and making it hard for me to find ground. In this disorientation, my work felt negligible; my ‘little bit’ washed away in the vastness of the problem, with only one huge question for company: “How on Earth do we remedy a system as dysfunctional as this?”

I’ve returned to ground, thank goodness, with renewed commitment to the Transition Town movement and to local food. As a result of watching this documentary, have we as a nation radically altered our diet and how we source our food? I don’t know. Fascinating studies have been done on how we respond to bad news; specialists like Chris Johnstone explain how our psyche responds to such a threat by turning our heads the other way and sending us into denial and disengagement. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that if we can’t grasp an obvious solution, we don’t wan’t – or can’t bear – to know.

In the archetypal ‘hero’s journey’ (as mapped out by Joseph Campbell), there is The Call and then immediately there is The Refusal Of The Call. Of course, this makes sense – a wake up call, by definition, alerts us to the fact that something must change in our world.

In my work with Contribution Footprints, I see us not as cowards who simply resist change, but rather as people who initially (a) don’t know how to change, and (b) don’t believe we are significant enough for our change to make a difference. This is why I believe so much in the Contribution Footprint model, whereby we acknowledge a real and present problem, acknowledge simultaneously that we ARE significant, and find ways of being effective, thereby finding our ground once more. Then… we can get to work.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Inquiry: What have been your most powerful wake-up calls to date? How did you initially respond to the call? What helped you over the resistance?

2) Inquiry: What calls are you hearing now? What resources would help you now in responding powerfully?

3) Action: Use what you discover to decide on a way of acknowledging and dealing with the resistance… and then taking the next action step.

4) Leave a comment on this blog post, letting us know what you discover.

Found this post challenging? Helpful? Inspiring? Irritating? Leave a comment and let us know.

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

Kickstart Your Venture – A Community Workshop

Have you got an idea for a venture which could make a difference?

Do you keep hearing the call, and keep resisting?!

Then please – for your sake and ours! – book your place on the Kickstart Your Venture workshop on Sat 10th October. Join with others to combat resistance and take the first steps with what is probably a much-needed solution for our world. For more information and to book, click here.

Heart of Business Momentum – Free Teleclass

Are you already in business but it all feels rather tough and clunky?

I’m delighted to announce that my business guru Mark Silver is offering a FREE telecall to help make bringing in clients and income a smoother affair. What I love about Mark is that he shows that being in business isn’t a trade-off: “earn good money” versus “do good work”. Instead, he brings his years of solid business experience AND his solid spiritual practice to help us create truly sustainable ventures. He rarely does these free calls so do register for this one!

Tues 8th Sept, 1pm Pacific Time, 60-90 minutes, registration essential – do so here.

(And I plan to attend so you never know, you may hear my voice piping up in the Q&A section!)

I generally find train travel very pleasant and I was so looking forward to saying it was worth it.

I can’t. This was the height-of-summer busyness, both my partner and I had just come to the end of intense working periods and we just wanted to be ON holiday, not getting there. This was the third time we’d opted for the slow-travel route, following my pledge not to fly. Sam doesn’t travel well and despite dosing herself up with nausea tablets, was nearly physically sick. As I looked at her, enduring rather than enjoying, it hit me: Is this who I want to be? Someone who clings stubbornly to a moral position, ignoring the negative impact it’s having on my loved one?

In my article, From Carbon Footprint to Contribution Footprint (published in the July issue of The Ecologist), I wrote that creating a sustainable society is not just about creating a world we want to live in. It’s also about us becoming the kind of people we want to live with. Our ‘environment’ isn’t only trees, oceans, carbon dioxide; it’s also our relationships, our thoughts, the atmosphere that our actions create. Profound environmental contribution does not involve being ‘right’ and judging others for being ‘wrong’, nor is it about who is the biggest martyr.

We bought two flights home. Sam didn’t dread the return journey, nor did she experience nausea, and I discovered a deep appreciation for air travel. It went from being a black-and-white climate evil to being an incredibly rare and precious gift. How privileged was I that I could be that far up from our beautiful Earth, in awe of the twinkling European cities below me and the dark expanses of the English Channel. The whole journey I spent with my nose literally against the window, full of gratitude.

As women who care passionately about our world, we can feel overwhelmed. We want to help everyone and we want to do everything 100%. When this simply isn’t possible without a detrimental impact somewhere else, can we let ourselves off the hook? Can we hold on to an ideal AND make a hard decision?

As we make our positive contributions to the world, let’s help each other be loving and compassionate – with ourselves and the people around us.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Inquiry: Take a good honest look. What actions do you judge yourself for? Beat yourself up over? What does that inner critic say you ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ do? Where are you holding stubbornly to a principle or standpoint when there’s a kinder, more loving option you could take?

2) Action: Once you’ve identified where it’s hurting you or someone else, take a deep breath and let yourself make that hard decision. Really notice the result.

3) Let us know what you discover..

Found this post challenging? Helpful? Inspiring? Irritating? – Leave a comment and let us know.

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

* Ready To Move Forward With Your Contribution Footprint? *

Come and kickstart your venture on Sat 10th October; this community workshop is the place to go with that idea of yours that just won’t go away. Click here for more information and to book your place.

I used to believe I wasn’t competitive. Growing up, my three siblings would race to play Monopoly; I would groan and drag myself over to join them. I dropped out of swimming lessons as a child because I hated how geared they were towards racing, and I dreaded Sports Day. So I was overjoyed to find, through my involvement with the sustainability movement, that there was support for this position. I would often encounter polarised, black and white lists which laid out: old paradigm = competition, new paradigm = co-operation. I felt such relief to be on the side where competition was no longer relevant.

And then I won the Ooffoo Laureate 2008 award. Throughout the process – entering, promoting the competition, waiting to hear – I’ve found myself having to think anew about how I feel about competition. How could I square my lifelong disdain of competition with how delighted I was to be involved, and then to have won?

I wondered this aloud and my partner, a teacher, gave me an alternative perspective whereby co-operation and competition happily co-exist. Her students enter a nationwide competition, submitting creative work which represents their personal response to a philosophical question. The project spans a number of weeks, during which time the students support and bounce ideas off each other in order to improve their work. Even though their work ultimately will be judged against each other, they don’t seem to feel any need to hoard or conceal their ideas.

In this example, I see the true spirit of competition. I see how crucial the set up of the task is – how my partner emphasises the process, not the winning; how the experience is presented not as a cut-throat venture with just one prize to aim for, but rather one that they can share and enjoy with their classmates. I also see a pervasive trust in the uniqueness of each individual and their ideas. It reminds me of a jigsaw. When we seek to put pieces in position, we’re not assessing which ones are ‘better’ than others, we’re simply noticing the right fit for the right gap.

I’ve been wondering: did I make up this story that I hated competition…. because I was a bad loser? My siblings always beat me at Monopoly, my short-sight meant I couldn’t see where I was going in the swimming races, and I was a slow runner. Had I shied away from competition because I hadn’t always succeeded?

We need to investigate the stories we tell ourselves about what losing, failure and rejection mean. As we compete for jobs, contracts, prizes or places on training courses, there will be those instances where we fit… and those where we do not. Our role, then, is to put ourselves out there, to play the game. By doing so, we’re not asking: “Am I worthy? Am I a good person? Am I valid and allowed to be on this Earth?” We’re simply stating: “I’m here. Am I needed for this?” Competition can be uplifting and part of what moves us forward IF losing is just as valid and bearable an outcome as winning. As long as we ensure that losing won’t destroy us, I’m coming to believe that competition has its place.

The World Needs Your Passion, so…

1) Inquiry: How healthy is your relationship with competition? What story do you tell yourself when you win, and what story do you tell yourself when you lose?

2) Action: Scan your To Do list for those actions which always seem to get put aside. Would they involve competing in some way? If they do and you notice that your perspective on losing, failing or rejection is what’s keeping you stuck, take action to get a new perspective on these possibilities [see below for my upcoming workshop].

3) Comment on this post, letting us know how you perceive competition and how that perspective helps or hinders you. Also, what doYOU think about the place of competition in a sustainable society?

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

** Fail Is NOT A Four Letter Word **

Are you a bad loser? Do you hold back because the idea of failure is horrific? If seeing life in terms of success or failure is stopping you from playing the game and claiming your place, join us for a Fail Is Not A Four Letter Word workshop. Click here for next dates and locations and to book your place.

In the documentary, Rebecca Hosking takes a thorough and honest look at our food chain and how the end of cheap, abundant oil will affect what we eat. Her explorations take her to peak oil experts, a Soil Association conference, and permaculture-designed small-holdings.

I found it very accessible because she doesn’t set out to preach or convert. In fact, it’s a tale of her conversion. She’s a very regular woman coming from a family of farmers and yet doesn’t cling stubbornly to ‘the way things are done’. Instead, she’s willing to look anew and investigate her (our) inherited assumptions about how we feed ourselves. She acknowledges with deep respect and gratitude what her family have passed on to her AND is brave and humble enough to explore doing things differently. She doesn’t know if alternative ways of managing her land will work but she recognises that the current way is unsustainable and so other options must be found.

As she takes in the alarming facts and statistics about our imported food and fossil-fuel-dependent system, we can see her fear and yet rather than going into denial – as we all so easily could – she keeps her eyes open so that she can find genuine solutions.

Here is a living, breathing example for all of us of how to compassionately challenge the status quo in the area of life most close to our hearts. Whether it be food production, medicine, or our education, housing or transport systems, the message is: Another way is possible. It might take courage and hard work but perhaps what’s at stake makes it worth it.

The World Needs Your Passion, so…

1) Inquiry: What’s the area you’re most passionate about? What other ways are possible there?

2) Action: What’s one step you could take to find new solutions for this area? Is it getting together with like-minded people or doing research? Or is there a big project you’re just on the verge of starting already? Take a deep breath, gather your courage, and just get started. Let the passionate urgency of Rebecca’s work inspire you.

3) Inquiry: Where in your life do you need to swallow your pride, acknowledge that things aren’t working, and go back to the drawing board or seek support?

©  Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

** What’s it like to have a goal you’re passionate about, but keep feeling it slip away from you? **

How important does it feel to see it through this time? Jump on to the New Way Resolutions e-course. At £7.50, this offers a super-affordable way of staying focused on what you want to achieve. See the E-Products section of this website to read how the e-course works, how it has helped others and subscribe now. No more excuses. Resolutions are not just for January 1st.