I can still feel the river so that I am stillness and the banks move past me on either side. My eyes still search for that silver line, thick as mercury, where the river turns a corner, and drops to get ever closer to the sea.

I search all along that line for a quickening, for a break in which to steer my boat, for a place of smooth passage.

And all the time I’m searching, I’m sitting straighter in my boat and tightening my sunglasses because I will only really know when I ‘m there, when I’m right in it, and I can also see white waves splashing up. And always, as the river hastens closer to the drop, I hear that voice calling out in the whole wide sky through white geometric clouds: “There is plenty of time.”

Then we are together again, River and I, pouring beside a shiny black rock, bouncing through giant waves, coasting through speeding water. And we feel the stillness again as the banks move past so fast.

(Photograph by Paul Marais, Orange River 2016)

What do I really want? I want more of the vibe I experienced at Westlake Toastmasters this morning. I just got back on a high of good feeling from good people and I think it boils down to this:

• Everyone is welcomed and everyone counts
• Everyone is invited to show up as they are and with more of themselves
• Everyone is invited to make mistakes, to learn, and to laugh

Christmas and the festive season seem a good time to take this forward. Onward to less of me and more of us.

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.” BRIAN TRACY

Fulfillment is about being fully alive. Fulfillment is the state of fully expressing who we are doing what is right for us. Clients have a sense of that feeling. They describe it as wholeness, satisfaction, a sense of rightness and harmony. A word we use for this feeling is “resonance.” Life is vibrating at a frequency at which everything we most value is in alignment. We feel it in the choices we make. The vibration in the moment may be very dramatic, thunderous, exciting, edgy. Or it may be still, serene, pastel, intimate. It might be a unique combination of all of those qualities — defying physics and our metaphors. But the client will feel the resonance. The pieces of their lives or careers come together in a very personal sense of wholeness and of feeling very alive. It may be experienced through doing meaningful work, feeling well used, contributing, giving and receiving, playing to win, being in the flow, creative, expressed. It is an experience of being complete.

From Co-Active Coaching by WHITWORTH ET AL

The Bailey Group, which work with organizational transformation in the US, acknowledge that it’s difficult to measure the direct impact of coaching on sales and profits but suggest looking at a chain of impact: “Research shows that the chain of impact from coaching leads to improved leadership effectiveness which in turn leads to tangible business impacts such as increased productivity, higher quality of work, retention of key employees and improved customer service. The less tangible, but equally important, business impacts include improved relationships and team work, higher job satisfaction, and reduced conflict (McGovern, Lindemann, Vergara, Murphy, Barker, Warrenfeltz, 2001). (accessed 30/10/15 at http://thebaileygroup.com/.”)