'Yes, sir, I can boogie...'

Apologies if I've been silent for a while. It's not because things have been quiet for me and there's been nothing to write about. Infact, just the opposite! It's actually been one of my most overwhelmingly busy periods for some time.Overwhelming in a good way, of course! And I don't think it would probably have even been overwhelming if everything that I was being overwhelmed by hadn't been so beyond my previous experience, ie, so 'out of my comfort zone'.But then, don't we need to be slightly out of our comfort zones, sometimes - in what, in coaching circles, people call our 'stretch zone' - in order to change and grow? And I'd say that this is one of the challenges - and the gifts - of the time we're in at the moment. Do you know one person for whom life is not challenging a wee bit, and encouraging to 'raise their game'?As German philosopher Friedrich Nietschze once said, 'We must learn to dance on a shifting carpet' - and I couldn't put it a better way myself (one reason why I keep repeating his quotation, in every other blog - sorry!!). And it's not just about adapting to change and embracing new experiences wholeheartedly and without judgement- it's about going a step further than that - and learning to boogie-oogie with abandon while doing it! And when you can do that, oh boy, then you'll have mastered a big part of life!So what, I hear you say, has been challenging me so much since you last heard from me? Well, I've been giving talks and running workshops and away days for larger audiences than ever before. I've been really enjoying it and, don't get me wrong, the reception - and the feedback - has been great! But that's just what has been so overwhelming about it! Sometimes, when things go really well and you're thrust 'into the limelight', as it were - it can actually be more challenging than when things stay the same. Sometimes it brings up subconscious or even unconscious material within our psyche and we suddenly find we have some inner adjustments to make, ie, in a word, we get 'more than we bargained for'. And that's what's been happening to me.But that's the challenge - and the wonderful gift - of life. It's like it brings up these things specifically so we have the opportunity to deal with them - and become brighter, clearer, more expanded beings than we were before. It is when we forget this - and start interpreting it in a different way, in a 'victim' way, that it starts to become less joyful.One case in point was a talk I gave on Laughter for well-being in Epsom last month. The tickets sold out the day before the event and when the organiser, anticipating that more people might turn up on the night asked me, 'what's your upper limit?' I told her 'I don't have one!' (groups of people are all the same to me - whether there are 20 of them or a thousand). So in the event, I got what, in a way, I asked for: people just kept streaming in - and in the end we had about four times as many people as we'd ever bargained for (some people were even sitting on the floor, as I remember: in the organiser's words 'I've never run an event that was so over-subscribed!') And what was remarkable was that all sectors of the audience - whether male or female, old or young, seemed to participate fully - and as a result we had a lot of fun.Out of the event have come more talk and workshop bookings - and a potential sponsor for my regular Joy Club in Guildford. And more adjustments for my inner psyche to make! But you can count on one thing... that I'm going to dance while I'm doing it!An Introduction to the Joy Club runs November 8th in central Guildford - please see Events page