Inspiration

Inspiration causes us to draw in breath and there have been moments this week where I have inhaled deeply — a little through exhaustion but mostly through wonder. And the wonder has come from watching people blossom through adversity and take themselves to places of discomfort in order to build something amazing.

When I decided to change course from being a scientist to being a therapist in my early 20s it was in reaction to seeing adversity first hand and the associated talents borne from that. My job then was to enable individuals to feel accepted enough to work with me and uncomfortable enough to find the change that would enable them to grow and develop. It is strange how my career has come full circle — the difference being that the ‘individuals’ I work with now are teams, organisations and systems.

I have delivered two away days this week — both very different in size and scope but I always ask myself — what would inspire this team? What would get them thinking and open to learning? I often tell people about Halafin’s perceived weirdness index as it beautifully describes my role as someone who needs to be sufficiently weird enough to challenge but not so weird that I am rejected!

I have been inspired by the people who took part on those days — those who were open enough to go with me on some ‘odd’ exercises, those who took a risk and were honest with their colleagues and those who shared something new of themselves not knowing what to expect in response. Hopefully they found some inspiration within the days that were delivered also.

On Wednesday we delivered the first ever Health and Care Summit for Greater Manchester to 300 senior leaders from our NHS, Local Authorities, and Voluntary Sector organisations. I, along with a few others, had worked tirelessly on the event and I felt my role was to search for inspiration which would support our need to work as a whole system for the people of Greater Manchester regardless of our organisation and personal interests.

I could write a whole chapter about the day but in the interests of brevity there were some stand out moments for me…

Art often provides us with moments of inspiration and being someone who processes the world through my ears and feelings, poetry and music inspire me and help me make sense of the world. Tony Walsh (he of the ‘This is the Place’ fame) chaired our event. I often bumped into Tony on the gig circuit over the years — me with my guitar and him with his poems — he is a larger than life fella with a beautiful northern ‘turn of phrase’ in his delivery and he knows how to deliver emotional impact! Tony not only chaired the day and shared a poem at the start, but he built a poem based on the post it note musings of the 300-odd audience to the title We Can… If… He closed the session with that poem — it was an inspiring send off!

During the day, I found myself inspired again and again — not so much by the great and the good (who had some excellent things to say) but by the people who had been through the mill and back again. As the Roman poet Horace said, ‘Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.”

From Charlotte at the start who shared her story of growing up alongside the health system to James in the afternoon who shared the things he liked to do now he was no longer in residential care and had a place of his own. From Jaweeda who had enabled volunteers to do what they wanted to do (rather than what the system demanded) and seen incredible results to Paul who arrived in Manchester and spent his first night homeless. Special mention goes to Ruth Ibegbuna of Reclaim and Elica from Reign who provided a reminder of the lack of diversity in leadership whilst challenging participants to value lived experience. Elica’s personal testimony of setting up Reign was moving beyond words and brought the most ardent round of applause of the day.

That evening I went to Reclaim’s 10th birthday party. Reclaim are a charity based in Greater Manchester who work with working class young people on leadership. I was truly blown away by the passion, energy and positivity of the young people there — inspiring!!! Inspiring because I could delight, not only in the beauty of the butterflies present but also of the changes that they had gone through in order to achieve that beauty, as Maya Angelou once said. Being able to relate to their stories only heightened my emotional response to what they had to say — I know what it’s like to be a working class, northern kid who doesn’t feel he fits in with those of a more eloquent upbringing. The fact that they were proud of their roots and wanted to change the world made me smile…… broadly!

I reached the end of the week somewhat overwhelmed but I have reflected at some length. Inspiration is a wonderful thing and creates a hell of feeling inside of you. It causes people to spontaneously burst into applause, cry and laugh or stare wide eyed and open mouthed. The key, however, is what you do with that inspiration when it comes — for inspiration is often a call to action.

The inspiring thing about those stories which touched me was how people were called to action and overcame the odds — that, in turn, is a call to action for me. They were sufficiently different to offer me a different way of seeing the world, but not so different that I could not relate. And most of all they reminded me of what it means to be human.

My list of actions is as long as my arm now, as a result of my experiences in the last week. I plan to act on them, and that is the challenge for everyone — be wonderfully inspired by others, and make sure that you use that inspiration to power change in yourself and for others.

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Estoy aprovechando estos días raros de aislamiento y coronavirus para actualizar mis plataformas, retomar la escritura personal (no solo de contenidos para clientes), así que por aquí estoy……