4 min read

Tiny Weekend Roundup #4

Tiny Weekend Roundup #4
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 / Unsplash

Welcome to the Tiny Weekend roundup.

This is where I share links and ideas inspired by the themes in my letter to my daughters. It includes books I'm reading, stuff I'm learning, changes I'm making at home and work, and things you can try yourself.

May's theme has been about having the courage to share your true self. In case you missed it, you can catch up here:

Last weekend, I was in Wales at the Big Retreat Festival. I've been going there for a few years with my family. But this year, I had been asked to give a talk. It would be my first ever public talk outside of my place of work.

I felt strangely anxious. I wanted to tell my personal story about getting into the work I do and how learning about Regenerative Leadership has changed the way I see things, but I felt unsure how much to say. I felt vulnerable. I was going to stand up and talk about what I believed in…and it scared the crap out of me.

And then I recalled the very words I had written only a few weeks ago. Nothing in nature hides what it is. And here I was, wondering how to best censor what I wanted to say and conform to imagined expectations.

So I took a big breath and said what was in my heart.

The process of putting the talk together offered me the opportunity to sit down and reflect on what matters to me. I got to consider where I've come from and where I'm going. I will write this up as an article and share it with you all soon!

After the talk, I got the best feedback I could have wished for: somebody said, “Thank you for being you". This is how I knew that I had succeeded in sharing something real. It wasn't "thank you for your talk" or “thanks for the information”. Somebody had listened to what I had to say and received me. I don't think I could have asked for more than that.

In the week since, I've been thinking about the areas in my life where I've been watering myself down. I’ve decided that I want to stand more strongly in what I believe in because every time I do, I remember it is okay. It's more than okay. It actually feels good and necessary.

I think there may even be a few changes coming to this newsletter as a result…more on that soon.

📚 Reading

Books I’ve been reading this month
  • I attended a quiet day recently and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the theme for our reflection was living an undivided life. It was inspired by the work of Parker J. Palmer and his classic book: A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. It seemed to appear at the perfect time in my life, as I begin to recognise (and close) the gaps between my inner and outer life.
  • Two other books that I’ve added to my reading list around this topic are The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, and Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.

🌱 Noticing

What’s catching my attention
  • How Yancey Stickler, co-founder of Kickstarter, hasn’t had to make a ‘fork in the road’ decision for a few years by embracing the wiggle.

    “When you come at things loose enough, there’s never a T-intersection of go right or left. You just wiggle along in your direction, carving your path.”- Yancey Strickler
  • When researching how to embrace authenticity in the workplace, I came across this article on authenticity from the Greater Good Magazine. It looks at what drives conformity and reminded me of Brene Brown’s insight that the opposite of belonging is fitting in. “If you are going to be authentic, that requires you to be accepting of the authenticity of others.”

💡 Switching

Small changes I’m making at home

🤓 Working

Things I’m trying out at work
  • You can’t have authenticity at work without psychological safety. I’ve been revisiting this important topic and diving deeper into how to support better psychological safety in the teams I work with. These 10 ideas felt like a helpful place to start. This is the real work, people.

🤸‍♀️ May’s tiny challenge

An invitation to practice
  • In his brilliant newsletter, The Imperfectionist, Oliver Burkeman recently proposed to his readers that they should: ‘set the intention to disappoint at least one person, in some real way, over the next 24 hours. Try it!’. I want to refer this good advice onto you whilst recognising how painfully hard it may be to carry it out. The point is, when you stop trying to please everyone else, you can liberate energy to focus on (and even discern) what feels meaningful to you. Note: It’s not an excuse to be dismissive or selfish towards others.
  • One of the ways I like to sense into a request is to ask myself, does this make me feel expanded or contracted? This can help point me to the opportunities to engage with or politely decline. Give it a try.
    Love, Lucy

Published by:

Lucy Hardy