First.
Things are gearing up for the fall season.
Also when it comes to training, people seem to be hungry for direct personal interaction. As a consequence, many clients are looking to plan and accommodate in-person events. At the same time, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the Covid situation once life moves back inside, so everybody seems to be somewhat on their toes. I hear all sorts of variations of the discussion whether it makes sense to do a lot of planning for physical presence (whether stand-alone or as part of hybrid solutions) – or whether one should just resign to one more winter of digital-only training with all the up- and downsides.
What are you seeing? What are your thoughts about this? What’s your preference?
Then.
I love the music of Edith Piaf, that just 147cm tall French powerhouse. She was not uncontroversial, but had an incredibly expressive chanson voice, was ready to sing her heart out in front of an audience and was an absolute superstar (here’s her biography and here her signature „Je ne regrette rien“).
A well-known part of Piaf’s repertoire, often covered by other artists and included in more than one soundtrack, is the perennial „La vie en rose“.
Here is a rather new, surprisingly ragtimy version of it, sung by the great Cyrille Aimée and accompanied by a band in top shape. Not that much to do with the original (save for main musical structure), but what a joy to listen to and watch!
Finally.
When we learn something (anything) new, we are confronted with things we don’t know about or cannot do yet. Aspects we can’t control yet. Possible consequences we cannot oversee, categorize and assess yet.
In hindsight, the main word of it all is „yet“. It turned out we were able to learn, control and predict. We realized that taking the training wheels off and riding that bike was actually neither impossible nor lethal, even though it certainly seemed that way at some point.
And yet, up front the key word very much is „not“. It’s what induces all the discomfort or even anxiety associated with the situation. It’s what stalls or delays progress, what keeps us on the sidelines and makes things much harder (and slower) than they need to be. We can’t do it, and for the time being that’s that.
The goal then is to move from „not“ to „yet“ more quickly. We can take any „not“ related to a skill as a cue to look for the „yet“. To lean into the perceived uncertainty even more decisively, knowing and trusting that also the last couple of times at some point „yet“ replaced „not“.
It’s not always comfortable, but then nobody promised that.
I’d love to hear from you.
If you see this for the first time and like it, please consider subscribing.
And if you know somebody else, who might also be interested, please share.
All the best,
Malte