Taking inspiration from Nature

This week’s issue of The Week That Was follows a slightly different format from previous ones. There’s the usual insightful and thought provoking article (we like to think they are!) and then some other items of interest after the article. Things that we’ve done or are a part of that you may also enjoy exploring. And now onto the article.

We like using Nature for inspiration. Nature offers us many insights and lessons into a variety of topics that we, as human beings, would do well to take notice of. Take the obvious one, diversity. Ever see rows upon rows of the same neat little plants and flowers when Nature is driving the sowing and seeding process? It never happens. And why not? It’s simple really, there is strength in diversity. The environment needs diversity.

If you have ever taken the time to watch a documentary or even just observed a space where plants grow wild, you will notice two things. The wide array of plants that exist to ensure that the space can thrive and how this diversity makes for resilience in the face of a threat. After all, if a blight or pest showed up, there’d be very little for it to attack or munch on. And there may be some plants that would discourage the intruder.

A simple example, maybe but it illustrates how we need the rich diversity that makes up this large and beautiful human family of ours.

Consistency

Another favourite aspect of Nature and the primary theme for this issue of The Week That Was is consistency. Consistency to keep going in the face of many challenges and rejections to get our Work out there into the big wide world.

Nature patiently and consistently keeps going. If the soil needs weeds to draw nutrients up from below, the weeds are provided. Pull the weed out, Nature will supply another one. Nature follows the cycles one after the other, each one in turn and in right time. Consistently and regularly things are born, they live, they decay and they die to be renewed again. And again. And again.

Watching our latest trailer (more on that below) made us realise how far we have journeyed since 2017. We started out visiting the dusty school playgrounds and stark buildings of the under-resourced school space and set-out to solve a problem. At the time we had no idea of the scale of the problem or even if it was possible to achieve what we envisaged. All we had was a deep desire, dream and vision to make the world of these school children a better place.

“Go bigger”

We thought we would be doing the Work in schools but it had other ideas. And so our initial vision and dream went stale and died only to be replaced by a new more vibrant and bigger one. “Go bigger”, said the Work.

So we explored more spaces and groups of people looking for new answers to the tired old and worn out questions of “how to change the way I feel”. This took us into other schools, business spaces and even the desert. We met success here and there, meeting lovely light-shing people along the way, but more often it was rejection. Words like “We’re too busy”, “This isn’t for us” or “Can you do it cheaper?” were commonplace.

We boggled at the lack of interest in attending to oneself. We marvelled incredulously at how many organisations paid lip-service to the idea of real, impactful, employee wellbeing. Afterall, if you want a more productive and engaged workforce, enable them to build their mental health and emotional fitness.

We were asked to keep going

And yet we were asked to keep going. We took the Work online. Before Zoom was a thing we were running Emotional Fitness Classes for people across our beautiful country and for a few around the world.

We consistently lived the cycles of birth, life, decay and death. We were learning. Coming up with new ideas and making notes about the application of the Work, how to language it, who to market it to and the scale of the problem (hint: it’s bigger than we ever conceived!)

Shape of Emotion is an amazing, powerful and simple tool that is wildly transformative (we have the stories and the testimonials) and yet very gentle and safe to use. It’s supported by a broad and deep body of knowledge. Together these two elements offer a solution to the mirky and homogeneous place that we as the human race have arrived at.

Being ahead of the curve

A few weeks ago Matthew had yet another opportunity to talk about our Work in an interview that spanned multiple time zones. These are commonplace now. At the end of the chat, the interviewer remarked that “…you are ahead of the curve…” with what we can do.

Matthew laughed and said: “If you think we are ahead of the curve now, imagine how we felt four years ago!”

This week it feels like the consistency has paid off. The first rays of a new dawn have arrived, tentatively creeping up and over the horizon. All the pieces of the puzzle seem to be on the table, the words to describe what we do are there. We are connecting with more and more people – every day. We’ve been here before, many, many times. Will it be a true dawn or another empty promise?

Only time will tell and in the meantime, we will consistently come back and show up to do what is needed – again and again and again…

Where can you take a leaf out of Nature’s book?

We invite you to take some time out and go be in Nature. This will do wonders for you, your outlook and your body. While you are outside, notice how diverse Nature is, marvel at how consistently she works to paint her canvas and then consider where you can make some shifts in your life to match her.

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Have you watched our trailer yet?

We’ve a beautiful shiny new trailer to support and promote our podcast, Emotions Matter. Really! Matthew went on a deep dive last week to improve his video editing. He’s not quite in the same league as Gerald B. Greenberg or Thelma Schoonmaker yet, but we think he’s done a darn good job of putting visuals to our words. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Do you BAN?

We also cracked the nod and have finally made it onto Apple Podcasts, (yay!) If Apple isn’t your thing, remember you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify, Google, TuneIn and Amazon.

In this week’s podcast episode of Emotions Matter. Really! we are look at what we mean by the acronym BAN, and what it has to do with emotions. We explore the multitude of ways we BAN as well as some of the more resourceful ways we deal with the way we feel. Enjoy!

Happy Parents Happy Kids Summit update

Stefanie and Chirag, the co-conveners of the Happy Parents Happy Kids Summit, the online parenting seminar, felt like things weren’t quite connecting. So they took some time out to reflect on what would make the summit the best possible event. As a result the summit has been pushed out by a couple of weeks. Here’s what they had to say:

The summit is our heart project and we want to touch as many families as possible with its wonderful messages and energies. We connected with the spirit of the summit and intuitively received the information to push the start out so it could be birthed in joy!

What a wonderful sentiment. And also a beautiful way to make sure that all aspects of the creative process are taken into account.