I have been kind of quiet for a few weeks, even though I’ve got several essays and drafts kicking around my desktop. The thing about deep work is, if you want to deliver on it, you can’t move too fast, else you risk losing something meaningful in the process.
When I think of what I’ve been doing, here’s the image that my body gave me about it earlier: my arm right extended, my open hand stretched out wide, and then the movement: of bringing that hand back toward me, the fingers folding back on themselves, almost like a flower closing, as if I'm taking it back, taking it all in, bringing things tightly into focus (visual below).
Last week I spent seven hours across two days with the Op-Ed Project, an extraordinary programme called Write to Change the World, founded by the remarkable Katie Orenstein. I was there as an ambassador this time, which meant that it was my second time doing it, and I held space in smaller rooms, alongside their extraordinary senior facilitators, people I found tremendously humbling. I had a self-worth wobble after the first day.
There I am surrounded by change-makers, innovators, brilliant academic thinkers and activists, all of them willing to put in the hard work (writing) and to create a positive impact on the world. Who am I to sit alongside them, I thought, immediately then catching myself going: ‘oh no!’ We’d spent a part of the day talking about what makes an expert, and there I was, casting myself aside. “I’m no academic.” In my notes: “I don’t have a PhD in Psychology.” Yep, that was my worthiness wobble.
On the second day, the workshop closes with a surprising and extraordinarily effective way to consider how to talk about our niche (yours, mine, anyone's). We watched a recording of Katie explaining how she had explored this topic, through the use of a simple equilateral triangle that was meant to triangulate the meaning of her work and expertise, and this was back when she was working on a book launch quite a few years ago. Now, her expertise originally lived at the granular level of the book topic. At each of the corners of the triangle was an assigned meaning. But when she looked at this, she realized that it was much too narrow and that her work was much bigger than that. And then she saw the PR plan that was being unveiled by her publishing house marketing team, and she had this visceral, "Oh, no! That’s not me at all.”
So she sought out a way to go more meta on her expertise, instead of the narrow view that gave her such discomfort.
In trying to understand how each corner of her triangle fitted into a wider theme, she found the frame she was looking for. It’s not that the narrow frame is wrong, it’s that it only tells a small part of the story. She needed to be able to frame the small within the large, in support of the work, and the book, she was putting out.
After day one, I woke up full of creative energy. After day two, I collapsed, exhausted. Mid-May felt like mid-November, despite the pollen. I developed a mild addiction to K-dramas and stayed horizontal for most of the following three days.
This is where the story takes a turn.
A few days later, on a bank holiday (which I had not correctly calculated was a bank holiday when I signed up for the second day of the programme — another story), I sat down to work. I had a long list of priorities. Clear, urgent, sensible things that needed doing.
But then, something pulled at me yesterday afternoon.
Not a top priority. Something else. A piece of older work, an e-book I had written a while ago that I had been meaning to revisit, to rename, perhaps repackage. It was barely on the list, but I found myself opening Canva with this light query: “hmm, what am I doing here?”
I have written before about following the pull, about those moments when something calls to you for no logical reason. What happens if you honour the invitation: you simply follow it without needing to know where it leads. So I followed it.
What happened next took most of the following day. I went back into that older work. I started asking myself the questions I ask my clients: Why does this matter? Who is it for? What does it really want to be?
And as I sat with those questions, something that had been nagging at me for weeks came up. You, see having developed a methodology like Story of You was suddenly having me describe my expertise only from that lens. And I kept on thinking: but my work is MORE than just Story of You.
The other work, about wayfinding and orientation, came back with a new name. ORIENT. A single verb. After a few hours of focused work, I was ready with a new masterclass, the draft of a web page, and suddenly that next problem emerged.
How do I explain this in the context of what’s currently on my website?
If I equate my work to narrative coaching and storytelling, then where does ORIENT live?
At the back of my mind, there’s another project called Full Cup that was also begging for this question to be answered. If I couldn’t figure out a way to make more sense of this, it was impossible for me to put the work out to you.
It’s like I was showing only a single room of a much larger house and calling it the whole house.
Story of You, my narrative coaching methodology, is real, and I love it, and it works (and god willing, it will be a fabulous best-selling non-fiction book, soon). But it is not the whole of what I do.
To be more precise, it is one point of my triangle.
Excited, I started to ramble in my voice notes. If ORIENT is to take its space in my work, where does it sit vs Story of You? What do these things have in common?
And bit by bit, the structure emerged. I had been circling around them for a long time, so it wasn’t like I had to go far. It was like peeling away one more layer.
I looked at my notes and then decided to draw this quickly. There was my triangle, and keywords popped up.
Orient — Being home in yourself and the world. Taking a 4D approach (body, mind, heart, soul), reclaiming our full selves and taking up space / strides in the world. Your sensations, your longings, your intuitions, your dreams. The practices that help you attune — contemplative, somatic, reflective — what the Buddhist traditions call skillful means.
Voice — the discovery of your irreducible instrument. Tone. Uniqueness. Texture. Resonance. Musicality. Mastery. Artistry. Connecting tool.
Meaning — the zoomed out view of where Story of You lives. The craft of taking all that orientation, all that discovered voice, and making it into something that can be felt, from within and without. A story that is true. A narrative that holds. Moreover, something we all have inside of us.
At the heart of the triangle, an eye that opens. (Don’t mind my drawing!) A new experience of seeing and feeling value.
The triangle is the territory I work in. The name (it felt like it needed one) comes from Sanskrit.
Mūlya (मूल्य) Worth, value, from mūla, which means root. So mūlya is literally root-worth. The value that comes from what is most fundamental in you. What you're worth at the root.
For those of you who listen to the Mettā Interview on a regular basis, you’ll know that I love nothing more than to elicit an alive question from my guests. I think the question that my work answers is both : how do I help people find connection (in themselves, with others and with the natural world), but also how do I help people see the inherent value that lives within them.
At the top of my triangle, Orient contains the many tools and practices I’ve been gathering for years. I’ve been ‘orienting’ hard for ten years now, ever since I noticed I was lost in what felt like the wrong life.
Voice touches my early years as a singer and musician, what I learned or cared about when it comes to being on stage, of using and developing our own instrument, of appreciating the unique texture of the spoken and written voice. The tone I get to take on the page. The podcasts. Public speaking. The facilitation. The guiding meditation.
Meaning is what I’ve been trying to draw out of my own life and experience, what I’ve learned to ease into the world for others who find it hard to access. Meaning that can take the shape of stories, narratives, values, and many other things.
Within the larger triangle, is a smaller one. The Story of You triangle. It exists between attunement, resonance and narrative, and in the middle is not an eye but a heart. I believe this methodology powers connection. That’s my objective anyway.
And underneath all of it, a core belief.
All that life asks of us is to be the most ourselves we can be.
I believe it’s what we are called to do, to experience. Not just be a cog in the machine. Not to stand above others. To be our most unique self. To express this uniqueness through our life, and our work, and our families, and our pursuits.
I was thinking how everything I do and have done in terms of projects, content, work experience, and earlier passions even, can claim their space in this territory. Somehow, this got me thinking of a video game I used to love as a kid. Do you remember Arkanoid? The ‘classic’ brick buster game. I always found it so addictive.
Next thing you know, I built a moving diagram (with the help of Claude AI) with my double triangle, with a ball that bounces through the territory, lighting up whichever concept it passes through. Offers, practices, prior experiences, it all has its place. It also is visible. And by being visible, it informs the whole.
Click the link to see it on your screen or click play below to see the snippet recording.
(FYI the ball seems to be going a bit fast... attempting to fix the code)
So I’ve been deep into my own methodology, exploring the territory, the triangle, to make sure I could bring this new expression out with a satisfying sense of clarity, of full ownership. I had NO idea it would get me to an Arkanoid-inspired triangle game. But I love it. I hope you do too.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it’s all well and good that separated my coaching and brand strategy from Le Trente, but in building a new website, and working on Story of You, things moved internally, which I needed to make sense of.
That’s a big part of the work I do with others, because I know just how alive it feels when we can shift the outer expression along with the inner understanding.
Following this, expect a flurry (I may be exaggerating) of emails, some new offers, a couple of new live workshops (including some free offerings).
I'd love to know: when was the last time you followed the pull of your energy and got pleasantly surprised by where it took you?
Drop me a line, I'd love to hear from you.