What’s your beanstalk?…….

It’s still Pantomime season and I got to see Newcastle’s (best in the country) show at the beautiful and majestic Theatre Royal. This year its Jack and the Beanstalk and like every year it was brilliant, the show a complete sell out even though we are well into January.

Watching our funny Jack ( a very talented fella called Danny) take on the challenge of saving his family’s farm from the overdue taxes and the Princess from the scary Giant (who lived up in the clouds) got me thinking (yes in 2014 I am still thinking). I mean what is this story all about???

Stay with me, Jack (or a version of ourselves) who all have our own beanstalk to climb. Even from the beginning when Jack is given the charge of saving the family business – is just like most days when we hit that problem we have to sort out, the stuff life throws at us, then just as Jack did we are off to market to sell the cow, only in our real world its usually about making decisions. The problem with decisions you can’t tell if they are right, until well after you have made them. Jacks decisions to sell old Moo Moo for a bag of magic beans, made sense to him just like lots of times I have made decisions that seemed perfectly suited to the problem/situation. Then just like his parents I have others in my life questioning the validity of these decisions. Yes Jacks parents are no different from those in my life who love me and doubt my sanity at times. I would like to say that their doubt is often misplaced but sometimes, its well founded, my decisions would have only worked out if magic had been a possibility!

That said people have dreams (magic bean – stay with me) that others do put down as flights of fantasy or worse stupid, often it leads people to give up on them. As its the beginning of a new year I revisit with the team their personal goals and challenges as part of a personal development day (aka our company team build) being planned for the end of this month I am now officially in panic mode, as I try and write a interesting and uplifting day for these intelligent and inspiring people (sometimes I wish they were not so intelligent and inspiring – it might not be so hard!!!). However as part of this day I do ask what are their goals/dreams, do they have any. So much of life means we accept surviving as sufficient but dreams drive imagination and imagination drives fulfilment of things that we might never had considered possible. And the possible is within every ones potential which is part of personal development, my job on the day is to remind myself and the team NOW is the time to do what we need to do, get out the magic beans and plant them.

After planting magic beans I also remind them of the next stage, the climbing the beanstalk, deciding to plant the beans is merely a decision to do something about a situation (the first and very important stage) but its climbing of the beanstalk that get the dream achieved. Doing something means making a plan of how to achieve it (the climb plan) then it’s getting started, putting one first foot on the journey and going for it. Then comes the biggest challenge – NOT GIVING UP!

Novelist James Thom wrote about an honest man who said “I got to the top the hard way – fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way”

Yes not giving up is the biggest challenge, consistently moving forward and accepting that sometimes you fail, amending your ways and keep going forward, to reach where you want to be. Unlike our panto Jack who got a helicopter and took a shortcut, I find they never really work in real life.

Then when you get to the top there still the giant to conquer, only in real life it’s the ability to face the truth, that real success was getting here in the first place. Yep the realisation that it was actually the climb that give you the buzz. The feeling of staying with that healthy eating, that making the effort to make your loved one happy, the study and the people you are going to miss not just having the qualification or the job you always wanted just find that you want to look for the next one.

Perhaps I am alone in this that getting there is enough, most people do settle and live off the goose that lays the golden egg, they found the first time. As I look around I see myself and everyone else still climbing sometimes with ease, sometimes with excitement, sometimes with fear, but we are all still climbing, its life. Each time we conquer a giant we start again and mostly we welcome the climbs.

Yes – welcome to ‘Jacks and the beanstalks’ our life journeys where we sometimes look up and lose heart on how far things seem from us, and sometimes looking down to see how far we have come, but mostly we just realise that at least we are holding fast to the beanstalk and hoping that we don’t fall off in the process but happy that we are not alone, plenty of other Jacks climbing around us to that place in the sky, which I reckon can’t be too bad if they have gold eggs for breakfast – “OH NO THEY DON’T – OH YES THEY DO………

The Long Road…….

A Preacher once gave a sermon about how life sometimes seems unfair, why do some people seem to get everything they need so easily and quickly, while other people take forever to get where they need to be in life.The Preacher said sometimes you have to just take the long way around or what shes says is the Long Road to some things. Perhaps those Long Roads to where we are going (places in life, people etc) teach us more along the way because some of us need it, I don’t know, I just know something’s take longer to get there.

I found this photo of Death Valley it reminded me of the ‘long road’ sermon but unlike the Long Road in life we cant see where we are going. I figure on these Roads, we often stop, or stall, some of us may even go backwards, such are the difficulties in life. One of my friends took years on her long road to having children, overcoming lots of problems to finally having two beautiful babies.

But I guess the best of taking a Long Road is the people we meet along it, that is, if we stop to spend time with them or letting them join us on the journey, or better still getting to support them on their long roads. Some people who travel with us are not only special but what I call Soul Mates, my belief being that we have more than one Soul Mate (it’s not a romantic term in my understanding) no its men and women who just know us (or we think they do) stand with us through the stops and stalls and help us be who we were meant to be. Put just in the right place to make our lives better and less lonely.

I read a few suggestions of what Soul Mates are and these are the ones that spoke to me, “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life” Yes frightening as this is I think its true.

Another said “A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave”.

But the best one for me came from another favourite book of mine ‘Eat, Pray and Love’, by Elizabeth Gilbert she said “A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…” phew and I thought the road was difficult alone, seems that its difficult with Soul Mates too. But growing and learning how to navigate these Long Roads is education in itself. .

The education like the road takes time, which doesn’t fit with my impatient personality, I should have learnt how to walk/run these roads at school but didn’t. Neil Gaiman said “I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.” well said Neil!

So perhaps the education is life itself, with the support is our Soul Mates and my missing patience? Well that may never be achievable, not even on a Long Road…….