Conversations with Georgie #14: Rose, Bud, Thorn 💐🌹🔥

Disappointing Others. The Importance of Beginnings. The Anti-Library.

Oct 22, 2021

READ THIS FIRST. 👋 This email is sometimes short and sometimes long. It’s an opportunity for me to reflect on now, articulate my experience of life and make sense of what it is to be a human and journey through life. It is my hope that it might speak to you - help you think about your own life, spark a thought or a feeling of connection. Or simply provide you with a nourishing way to spend your 5-10 mins break. I’m always curious to hear how this lands and what is in your world. So please do reply!

👋Hello Friends,

How are you right now? Actually?

You might be feeling disappointed to read this question and shivering at the idea that even I, a lover of deep non-mundane questions, sometimes go for the basics.

And yet, you don’t have to answer it basically.

I was recently asked this question and checking in with myself before I answered it, I noticed I was bored of the list of things I was going to reel off in response. I do love a list, but sometimes less is more. And less with more meaning or depth, even better.

So I created a constraint to make my answer more meaningful: Rose, Bud, Thorn.

(Yes, you can do that - creating rules for yourself makes things a lot more fun. Both in conversation and life!)

First introduced to me by Graham (thanks!), it is a beautiful framework for human connection that I have been loving and using for the last few years in 1-1s and with groups to cut through the somewhat superficial list of things happening in our lives, create focus on sharing the real things and get to something deep… fast.

I recommend you steal it too. So, what does it mean?

💐Rose - Something beautiful in your life right now that you are enjoying, celebrating, grateful for.

🌹Bud - A new opportunity you are looking forward to.

🔥Thorn - Something in your life that is challenging you right now.

So, here’s my Rose, Bud, Thorn below.

👉 What is yours?*

Sending (Virtual) Hugs, Smiles & Love,

Georgie 🤗❤️

* Sincere question that I am highly curious about - hit me your 3 high level bullet points!

ROSE 💐

👩‍🏫 Transforming Individuals & Their Interactions Virtually

Teaching. Guiding. Training. Facilitating Change and Growth. I really love it all.

At the moment I’m teaching 3+ classes to 35+ clients across 20+ cities every week.

The best part is after an exercise (in class or homework) when someone gains an insight about themselves that changes the way they experience the world. This week’s workshop on deep listening helped a few people recognise that their curiosity is constrained to factual questions (who, when, what) and not questions about the human experience (emotions, motivations, what something was like etc). This week was also the mid-way mark for the 6 week virtual programmes so a chance to reflect on the wider journey of who they are becoming. Some answers: more kind and open (to self and others), less censoring and needing to get it ‘right’, more curious (about ourselves, others and the world) and more aware of what is happening in an any given moment and the choice about whether we break our own patterns. Patterns like the kinds of questions we ask, who we choose to engage with or not, how goal-oriented or relational we are, how much we let fear dictate action…

It is so meaningful and fulfilling to see and experience this kind of change and a great reminder of the importance of including work that ‘tops you up’ each week.

🌍 Nomadic Intentions

Hello from beautiful lake Geneva in Switzerland, where I am writing some of this letter, sitting on a bench with a stunning view in the glorious sunshine. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to have the opportunities to travel and be elsewhere.

Being elsewhere is like a system reset. A change in stimuli, normal routine, people and scenery forces our body, mind and spirit to do something different. Travel can therefore be incredibly freeing - allowing us to expand our sense of identity (by behaving differently we form new senses of who we are), inspire creative connections and form new ideas, and cultivate new or deeper relationships. You have more time plus we tend to allow ourselves to be more curious and spontaneous when travelling, bringing out the sides of ourselves that are conducive to deeply relating.

BUD 🌹

🎓 New Beginnings: Starting the PhD @ Imperial College.

2 weeks ago, I became a (part-time) student again!

After a year of slightly faffing around trying to work out how I would be able to start my PhD in Human Connectivity Design without full-time funding, I decided I just needed to start despite the imperfect circumstances.

It has been an interesting few weeks experiencing all the emotions being back ‘at school’. I’ve felt delighted and excited giving myself the permission to read papers that fulfil my intellectual curiosity, highly intimidated and humbled by the dense papers that despite reading three time over, I still don’t quite understand. There is a slight concern about the 2028 end date (yes, really! I am going to do my best to bring forward by at least 2 years), nervousness at being part of an institution again and not knowing how anything works, and pressure to get the beginning right…

Right might not be the right word. But the idea I am alluding to is that beginnings are super important. When we land in a new and unfamiliar context, we don’t have many established habits, patterns and behavioural norms. Our first initial steps become new habits as we repeat them over time. So beginnings can be a wonderful opportunity to start afresh or a terrible way to start new deconstructive behaviours.

Here are some other examples of how to use new starts to create good habits:

Moving House: When I moved into my flat, I signed up to gym classes, set up an online grocery order and cooked meals from scratch from week 1.
New Laptop: When I got a new laptop this year when my old one broke, I only uploaded the applications I needed, setup chrome accounts with extensions (moving away from safari) and moved everything onto the cloud.

Here are the behaviours I’m hoping to reinforce at university:

Having (a) set days I attend university in person & working from a set place where others can find and bump into me
Scheduling weekly exercise classes so they happen regardless of my location
Doing deep work in the morning when I am most alert and focused
Creating an orderly inbox, filing and note-taking system (I’ve just started using Zotero & Roam Research)
Talking to people wherever I go and prioritising attending in person meets (knowing that most opportunities come through people and doing a PhD is a lonely endeavour)

THORN 🔥

Living with the feeling of disappointment. Disappointing self or others.

I still consider myself an introvert who has found her way into a somewhat extroverted job and lifestyle…. which means that I need to be super intentional about creating breaks where I am alone to recharge and create new insights.

I’ve come to the realisation that whatever I do, I can’t make everyone happy. I simply don’t have the resources - time or energy - to give to everyone. Even though a part of me wants to. Even though I have extended my days, I’m still running out of time. Learning to say no to both myself (new projects, fun activities, socials etc.) and others (calls, events, projects) etc. is a longtime practice I think, for many. There is so much happening in the world, available to us, that we need to be careful about where we put our attention.

And learning to sit with the natural disappointment that arises without then trying to change it… that is the hard part.

Articles on Conversation (I’m featured in):

Five Ways to Get Better at Small Talk - Associations Now
The Power of Strangers - Next Big Idea Club
An Introvert’s Guide to Socialising in a Partially Vaccinated World - Everyday Health

Interesting & Useful Nuggets:

💻 Online Community-Based Courses: Maven - The future of learning might be virtually in a community, where you have accountability, inspiration and live sessions to learn directly from the teacher. I’ve joined their platform and course on being a creator this month, and am excited to see so many great programmes arising that I now really want to do!

🗒️ Note-Taking Tool: Roam Research - my brother and friend Sebastian are obsessed with this note-taking tool that allows you to create a network of your thoughts, so with all the reading I’m going to be doing in PhD land I thought I had better create a better way to capture my thoughts than Apple notes or Google docs!

📚 Unread-Books and the Anti-library. I’ve noticed I have been buying more this month and feeling guilty about not creating the time to read them all. I’ve enjoying this video by Anne-Laure on why it’s okay to be building a library of books you haven’t yet read. The classic question I get asked when anyone sees my bookshelves - ‘How many of them have you actually read?’. According to the writer Umberto Eco, a private library is not there for ego-boosting (‘here is what I have read’), but a research tool. The library should contain books about what you don’t know and are curious about learning. Phew! Feeling better already. Now I need to create time to dip into these books more. Thanks Jonny for sharing this video. 🙏

A Parting Poem 📖

Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

- T.S. Eliot