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Learning to fly is like balancing a stone stack
July 14th, 2022 in Blog
The more I have learnt about what it takes to fly, the more I have been surprised to discover that it relies on creating a sense of groundedness and balance.
Throughout our life we have experiences that validate our self-belief (positive) and inevitably, those that chip away at it (negative). If our self-belief is entrenched, through strong foundations, we will have the resilience to react constructively to the negatives. Helping our children learn to fly means continuing to develop and maintain strong foundations for ourselves and support our children to do the same.
Flying isn’t about the wow factor, it seems to be about a gentle shift in our being that means, over time, we find ourselves flying without purposefully trying to. In fact, the more we try and make it happen, the less likely we are to fly.
It can feel accidental, and we might assume it is just luck; perhaps we happened to find the right team, the right person to love, the opportunity that changed us etc. However, in my experience, luck only happens if we keep showing up and we focus our effort on the right things. Then one day, without us realising it, we will find ourselves flying.
So how do we show up and where do we focus our effort if we want to learn to fly?We can orchestrate this shift for ourselves if we are open to exploring the core elements that I think help us fly.
Learning to fly might be like balancing a stone stack.
When I came across the art of stone stacking, I was fascinated to see each stack apparently teetering on the verge of collapse, and yet somehow managing to find a way of balancing that holds it in place despite its environment. That’s just what it feels like when we are learning to fly. We are seeking an inner strength that comes from being both fragile and daring.
In the last 20 years, I have learnt so much from coaching a wide range of people in different contexts, and it appears that the art of flying is directly linked to the art of balancing 5 five key stones, each one essential to learning to fly and each one worth showing up for in its own right.
When we spend time with each one and learn how to place them all together in our unique way, we create the energy we need to find our balance, stand tall and fly.
Learning to fly is essentially developing the skills we need to maintain this balance as we change and grow.
We will each find balance in our own unique way.
It is our difference that creates our own balance.
Being in balance doesn’t mean being still, we are evolving all the time, as are our children, it means making constant small adjustments and always learning. Our balance shifts to take into account our life experiences. Something may knock us off balance. Our ability to adjust and reconstruct the stack in response, lies in our resilience, nurtured in the stone stack.
As a parent, we will be learning how to balance our own stone stack whilst helping our children to do the same.
The trick to continuing to fly is to keep finding our balance.
This is a constant act throughout our lives, as we learn to find our balance, we will be building courage and confidence. The more we are nurtured and the younger we learn some of the tools, the easier we will find learning to fly as we grow up.