The other day while sweeping up hedge clippings in my garden which overlooks the front street I inadvertently decimated an entire ecosystem or two. The old rusted and bent rake tines reached into the right angle between the pavement and the wall, scrapping clear the minature jungle of plants and the soil which had collected there. I noticed the mayhem I had just delivered on this small world as I rested to catch my breath and take in my efforts. I realised then that this narrow linear world continued along the entire length of the base of the wall - some 50 or so feet. I was really struck by the gathering of soil in some areas at the very edge of the pavement at the point where the verticle of the wall began. In other parts where soil had been gathering for longer there were the first signs of small sprouts and elsewhere fully established clumps of grasses and the flowerings of other plants. I was so struck by this organic boundary being built and added to - fortified with new networks of roots capturing even more wind-blown soil which in turn builds a stronger foundation for even more growth. The very heavy rains of the recent few days had failed to wash these now well established islands away.
As I looked around the street I noticed more shoring up activity at the edges of cracks, the boundaries between one kind of tarmac and the later repair as well as at the joints in the coping stones at the pavement's edge.
Edges are where it is all happening. The transition of one kind of plant zone and another forms the basis of years of study for botanists in the same way that the junction between the sea and the land does for many marine biologists. It is a specialist area of study.
In coaching a frutiful area of work centres on the saboteur or gremlin voices that we all are affected by in one way or another. These internal voices - seemingly having their own character - are internalised aspects of others, or developed self-talk based on some childhood or later adult learning that end up becoming an unconsious 'rule for life'.
"Your not good enough" and "Don't get above yourself",
are two common versions of this. There is some thinking that the saboteur voice is a psychological lifeguard. We are kept safe by some aspect of ourselves that has become deep rooted: When we are scolded as a child not to run into the busy road we internalise this over time to prevent the very real risk of injury in this situation. When we translate this into a message of anti-risk taking in general it is easy to see how it could become a limiting factor in life and work - holding us back form taking the risks that might lead us into new exhilirating experiences. This very simplistic example does highlight the very human habit of setting up rules - or boundaries - in our lives and although these for sure serve to offer some necessary structure, like all structures they can become set in stone if we inadvertently allow this.
With coaching clients I notice that the closer we get to one of these phycological boundaries - the louder the internal saboteur or gremlin voices become. The work we do together in the coaching relationship deliberately gives character to these voices - focusing on how they might act in certain situations and what they might say in response to particular questions. Doing this work it becomes clear to me that over years these characters have cultivated their own jungles at the boundaries they have created in the psyche. Commonly referred to as comfort zones the edges of these have been so fortified and defined that for some people they feel almost insurmountable: The jungle that has grown there having taken on a deep dark dimension too scary to venture into. Even when the origianl rationale for this boundary was saftey - to prevent harm - it has broadened its sphere of influence to limit and so hold back movement and personal growth.
The lack of attention I had given to my gardening had allowed the boundary between path and wall to become a little overgrown - defined by the increasingly strong growth of wild things. The less attention we give to our own edges, boundaries and borders the more difficult it will be for us to break free of them.
