It is a Strange Experience to Speak Words but Feel Like it Wasn't You Speaking Them.

First published on May 28, 2021

It is a powerful and strange experience to speak words but feel like it wasn't you speaking them. To write words when it felt like it wasn't you writing them. To sit, and allow work to emerge through you, but not created by you.

Twice, clients have described to me experiences in their life when it felt like they had hands on their back, pushing them along. They were walking, but it was not quite they who were walking, almost.

It is a powerful and strange experience, because mostly it isn't the story we are told about how things are created. Mostly, we hear that things are created by amazing people. But what if, instead, those people are just instruments?

It seems impossible to me how many plays Shakespeare wrote in such a short life. No, that's not what seems impossible, what seems impossible is the jaw-dropping depth of that work. I know that, given how many plays he wrote in such a short time, that he didn't think the depth and texture of those plays, which gives them the wondrous quality that means we are still analysing them at incredible length 500 years later. He can't have. It wouldn't be possible. So, if he didn't think them, were they created by him? Or did the creation simply emerge through him?

I shared two pieces of writing with my coach recently. He said 'I do hope you have lots more of these writings'. And, I don't, really. Well, I do - lots of writings - but not all of the things I write are like those pieces. Sometimes, sometimes I catch a wave. It feels different. It's not smart Robbie sitting down to write something. It's something different.

I could have written a smart-thinking piece today, but I got called to sit, wait and see what was written instead.

It feels uncomfortable to do that. And it doesn't always work. I'm uncomfortably aware right now, that I'm not writing anything as profound as this or this. But that's thinking me again. And what I'm listening for is something different. What I'm listening for today is something beyond me. Is something else to write. Is something else to emerge. That's what I'm listening for in my coaching, too: not the clever thing to say, but the right thing to say. The perfect thing for that moment, that emerges out of me almost before I can stop it. Life isn't always like that and it shouldn't be: sometimes it's the right time to create something. But sometimes it should be like that.

Sometimes you should allow what wants to emerge to emerge through you. At first, you will feel uncomfortable. Not least because: you didn't create it. And who did? But what if, years later, you are sharing it with someone with real pride? Because you know, you know, that something special was happening that day in the coffee shop, that day on the train, that day at your desk.

And it wasn't you.