@mhsutton

heart.head.work.life

Tag: hope

  • There is no room here for your anger.

    By: John – CC BY 2.0

    I had a funny experience last night. Not funny “hahaha”, more funny “wow that’s deep!”

    Here is what happened.

    I had put my sons to bed and a few hours later, I went to sleep also. Then, at about 3am I was woken up by my older son, Ruben , falling out of bed.  I went in and lifted him back in, made sure he wasn’t hurt, gave him a cuddle and tucked him in.

    Fifteen minutes later, as I was drifting back to sleep, Ruben calls out and I go in because he needs his nose blowing (he’s got pretty bad hayfever).  I blow his nose, give him  a cuddle and head back to bed.

    Before long, I’m about to totally start snoring when I hear a sound, I wake up and notice Ruben’s light come on and then off.  By this point, sleep deprivation has kicked in and I’m properly irritated.  I call out in my deep, stern “this is your father speaking’ voice and ask him what he is doing. (damn it, it’s nearly 4am I need to get to sleep!). Ruben replies ‘Nothing’ and goes quiet.

    Then something really weird happens.

    As I lay in bed – totally irritated and getting so totally wound up by having my sleep disturbed repeatedly, I heard this voice inside my body.  I mean  inside my entire body, not just my head.  This voice (which I still don’t recognise) spoke loudly and matter-of-factly (but not angrily).  It said “Listen, I know you’re angry but I’m telling you there is no room in here for your anger. There is only space here for love”.

    What!?

    The voice went on, and I could hear it as loud and as clear as though I was the only person in the audience at a stadium performance. It said again “there is no room here for your anger, there is only room for love. So, forget your anger and just let love in”.  What struck me was how resolved and reassured it sounded. Like an OccupyNewYork style activist who had occupied my heart and was refusing to let anger share the space.

    At this point, I am physically super-tense and the voice coaxed me : ‘You’re tense, look at what anger is doing to you – shake it out and let it go on its way, there is no room here for anger”.
    So that is what I did.  At 4am in the morning, I did a shimmy shimmy electric boogaloo breakdance move in bed to shake out the tension in my body.  I instantly felt the tension ease off. And that is when I thought I was having a heart attack.

    But not really – what was happening was that my heart muscle had been so  tensed up and then very suddenly relaxed and the resulting sensation felt like your hand feels when it has been clenched in a fist for a while and you suddenly relax it.  It wasn’t painful – just weird.

    A deep sense of calm came over me and the voice had gone. Slowly I get up from my bed and walk quietly into Ruben’s room , he is still awake (but barely) and I cuddle him, speaking gentle and soothing words to help him fall back to sleep. I stroke his hair and kiss his forehead, then I went back to bed and got some sleep.

    When I woke at 8am, I thought it was all a dream and to be honest I have no explanation about what happened beyond what I share here.

    I do know that as this voice was speaking, I was filled with a deep sense of love for my son and my family and an intuitive acceptance that it was speaking an undeniable truth (well as undeniable as you can get at four in the morning) – I don’t have space in my heart for anything but love. Not anger, not irritation and certainly not hate. I could reason with it, that anger is part of life, as is grief and as is love, but this voice wouldn’t engage me in whether those where valid, inappropriate, right or wrong. It simply insisted that I had no space in my heart for anything but love.

    I am deeply grateful to this voice, from wherever it came. Its message was fully and gratefully received.

    As ever on this blog and especially on this post, I want to share what you think? Have you had a similar weird but beautiful experience.

    I do not have space in my heart for anger. Do you?

     

  • June 20 – Mikey's back!

    By: Elliott Brown – CC BY 2.0

    The last 13 days

    Q: Does a daily blog have to be done every day?
    A: Not when it’s @mhsutton’s blog – obviously.

    So much has happened in the last 13 days, I don’t really know where to start. I’ve been away because I’ve been a little discouraged with the progress of ServiceChat (no, I haven’t been in rehab – just nose down trying to move it forward!) – So I took a break from writing and the routine, to focus 100% of my time on completing my customer discovery experiments. It was an ineffective move, what may have been more useful might have been to talk to my @saintsal sooner and continue with my routine but with differently prioritised work.  Most things suffered in this hiatus – I ended up being able to do less pushups for example!

    So here is my check in:

    • Glad that I spoke with @saintsal – who very kindly listened to my challenges and offered his honest appraisal based on what I communicated. Sal was gracious but honest – I have been coding an awful lot with real focus on business building and validation. I knew this, but it was hard to accept from myself.
    • Glad that my funding strategy is sorted. I’m taking a consulting gig in August that will help me fund the next 7 months from 6 weeks work. Ha, the joys of living a lean life.
    • Sad that whilst I’m doing the language study, the practical experience is not really happening. I feel less capable of speaking Spanish now than I did in January!
    • Glad that my intercambio is starting on Monday – an hour talking in Spanish, hopefully twice a week.
    • Sad to hear of the sudden death of James Gandolfini – who played Tony Soprano on the Sopranos. That show was a large part of my rehabilitation during my divorce.
    • Sad/mad that my collaboration with FounderSync fizzled out after one blog, it was actually none existent. A thoroughly poor set up. Chalk it up to experience, I guess.
    • Glad I got to talk with @scottcrowther about ServiceChat and he was lovely and kind enough to share more than 20 ideas for improvement and growth with me (including moving back to the midlands!)
    • Glad I feel more engaged and more present.
    • I’m grateful for saints who pop up with truth and grace.

    I’m good and getting better. The future is less dark and almost entirely my own making. I’m  in.

    Improve On…

    Blogging consistently – this and other non-coding things are the highest priority items I have to do now. I basically need to drum up interest in what ServiceChat does. BizBuzz was part of that effort and now that I have gifted it to the public to search , I would like to see more interest in how businesses engage their customers on Twitter.

    Today

    Start my ‘insights’ series on the ServiceChat blog – where I share what the data from bizbuzz is telling me (and has told me).  The first is a summary description of the types of support behaviours I have observed and I’ll try and evangelise with best groups for the topic on LinkedIn.
    Reach out to Huffington post and explore how to become a huffblogger.
    Reach out to my top 5 ideal customers and get a dialogue going about using ServiceChat
    Blog, blog, blog.

     

    The Trello board…

    Screenshot_20_06_2013_14_22

     

    Seek beyond what you know. It is dangerous. Most things worth anything are.

  • Invictus

    Out of the night that covers me,
    Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul.

    In the fell clutch of circumstance
    I have not winced nor cried aloud.
    Under the bludgeonings of chance
    My head is bloody, but unbowed.

    Beyond this place of wrath and tears
    Looms but the Horror of the shade,
    And yet the menace of the years
    Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

    It matters not how strait the gate,
    How charged with punishments the scroll.
    I am the master of my fate:
    I am the captain of my soul.

    – William Ernest Henley

    Why I Love This Poem

    Often when I get physically/mentally/emotionally overwhelmed, the next thing that comes along can just tip me into total exhaustion.
    When this happens, I feel defeated by everything, unable to rise to the challenge before me. I want to just be alone, to lick my wounds and be still, to be silent and be unnoticed. I want to rest and recover.
    All of which are sometimes hard to do in a bustling house and running a startup.

    At these times, I read Invictus and I am emotionally renewed, almost immediately. I may not physically be stronger, but mentally and emotionally, Invictus recharges me.

    Invictus acknowledges how bloody hard life can be, for some and sometimes, downright brutal. It recognises that life is unpredictable and , truly, we control very little that affects us. Yet, like a rock on a tumultuous coast, one remains determined and independent, shaped by life but not be conquered by it.

    Despite being very descriptive about the brutality of life and a little short on the joys that life can also bring, Invictus, for me, is about courage.

    The courage to take responsibility for what one can, to do it humbly yet defiantly. Courage to be unshakeable even in the face of terrors of life – whatever they may be.

    This courage feeds my hope and self belief that in the end I shall triumph against anything that life throws at me.

    And that is why I love Invictus.

    You?

    What do you think of Invictus?

    What do you take shelter in when life’s winds get stormy?

    What are your favorite poems and why do you love them?

    I would really love to share them. (and if you don’t currently read poetry, this is a perfect time to start)