Simplifying

I took last week off from writing on the?blog. In fact, i took it off to get married. And i have to say, i feel both tired and refreshed from that break! Slightly to my surprise, i found it hard to restart on Monday, and hence here we are today. Writing every day has been part of my own?practice?since 2010, and is central to how i form, shape, fracture, and evolve my ideas. So the sense of sheltering from my own practice was an odd one. But i realise that this may be part of a cyclical relationship with complexity.

At times i find that my ideas, and hence my work, become divergent, and at others (as recently) they converge. At this convergence i often discover new language, and leave other things behind.

My work recently has been busy, both in terms of research, of writing (on two books) and in terms of actual client facing work. Hence i have felt slightly out of balance with all of it.

So i am now focussed on simplicity: this week i have generally been presenting without slides, keeping conversations simple, and giving myself permission (as here) to just narrative what is going on in my head.

Sometimes i talk about holding our certainty lightly: when i facilitate sessions i can find that our greatest insights come not from grand and distant ideas, but rather from looking at the things most closely beneath our feet. Things that we are certain about, but which, on closer inspection, turn out to be deeper concepts that we can usefully unpack further.

In this sense, simplifying may not be easy, but may connect us more deeply into our practice.