This piece was from an assignment in a group coaching course I attended between September 2018 and March 2019.  I thought the self-exploration was worth sharing.  This was my response to group feedback after my first piece fell flat ~ Scott

I love food. And I love eating.  And I’m one of those strange people that enjoy spicy foods.

While there is nothing like a good curry at the local Indian restaurant, I find pleasure in experimentation and cooking my own dishes.

There’s something to be said for finding a recipe, grinding the spices, then roasting them until the aroma fills the kitchen.  Then creating a sauce and slow cooking everything until the meat is fall-apart tender.

So when it comes to writing, surely there must be a recipe to follow.  Or so I thought.

Two cups of practical sprinkled in with a teaspoon of spirit, add a tablespoon of masculine and half a teaspoon of quirky humour and blend into a smooth consistency.

That may well be the recipe.  But if you’ve ever tried to bake a cake, it doesn’t always come out like the picture in the book.  Perhaps I didn’t read the recipe properly because my mixture came out lumpy.

The upshot of this is I’ve realised, I’m not 100% sure how to go about being me.

I thought I did.  But I seemed to be struggling when it comes to this new venture.  I want to find a way to express myself, but when you’ve spent your life projecting an image of who you think you should be, who am I when the shades come down?

And to be fair, it probably explains why writing was a struggle for a long time.  The ideas didn’t flow and neither did the words, I was always running everything through a filter.

What occurred to me today is, how do you express something you’re unfamiliar with.

I’ve read the feedback forms from today’s writing, and I’m grateful.  I want to report that as far as I can tell, the system works.  The consistency in the feedback I received from you all give me something I can work with.

In the past I would have taken any feedback to heart (or perhaps that should be taken to ego) and then spent the next wee while churning it over in my head.  And when I mean wee while, it could last for days.

I figured the piece I had written wasn’t that great, but didn’t feel the need to change it, or to try and make it pristine to avoid any criticism.  I don’t think it was arrogance, rather I’m open to the learning in a way I’ve not experienced before.

I wasn’t free from nerves by any stretch of the imagination as I sat up front.  But I am ready to learn and open to new possibilities and see this as part of the process.  Even the feedback is welcome, because without it, I’m blind to myself.

Overall, I found my day very positive, even though I managed to lose, then find my sunglasses and earbuds all in the course of a day.  I’m not someone that regularly loses stuff.  I have a carefully nurtured case of OCD, and my Grandmothers words of ‘everything has a place and everything in its place’ rings true to me today as it did when I first heard it more than 40 years ago.

However, by the time I realised I’d lost my earbuds shortly after getting back to my hotel room, I was either going to lose my mind or lose my shit, or perhaps both.  It was just a case of which one would go first.  I’m particularly thankful that I stopped fretting long enough to remember to check the bin in my room to see if they had been scooped up with some rubbish that I’d thrown out.  They had.

I was compelled to write this for no other reason than it seemed to be a good way to introduce myself to myself, and at the same time take baby steps towards a new way of expression.

There were plenty of positives to come from today.  I realised how I appear in my current work is a useful way to move forward in other work.  Ground yourself in the fundamentals, turn up, then play what’s in front of me.  Even as I write this it seems so obvious.  It’s exactly what my beloved New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team do, and they have a 92% winning record since 2010!

I know that whatever happens I’m going to be fine.  Like most of us that have insights that change our worlds, I too get lost in my own head and lose my way.  But I know there is a deeper part of me, waiting patiently to pick up the pieces and carry the burden, if only I relax, take the time, turn inward and let it.