A decade ago this Summer, I was navigating the space between having written my first book and figuring out what was to come next.
It was the Summer of 2015 and I was 36 years old. The 160,000 word book was titled Wild Zen: An Inner Roadmap to Humanity, and it came with a shorter work book titled Wild Zen Journeys. I had spent 5 months writing both.
Writing a book was on my distant wish list but somehow, one set of circumstances led to another. I had left employment with the United Nations (UN) in the Summer of 2014 and set up an executive coaching practice, consulting for UN bodies and NGOs, and taking on private practice clients from all walks of life.
I had also been writing a couple of blogs, back when blogs were popular, to process over a decade of working in war zones, refugee camps, and prisons. That was my line of work and violence was the subject of my first Masters degree back in 2004. I was a humanitarian driven by meaning and purpose, and I wanted to translate that spirit into my executive coaching practice. Only I got distracted by writing along the way.
The intention had been to write a journaling workbook on how to journey beyond violence, conflict, stress, trauma, and adversity. One word led to another and before I knew it, I was writing a book of 60,000 words. At that point, I decided to just write it all, everything that needed to be said, framing my words around Jungian archetypes and interviews with survivors of cancer, war, poverty, and homelessness. All of the interviewees came from my network, as that was the world I lived in at the time.
160,000 words and a short workbook later, I clicked “publish” on Kindle. I hadn’t thought about what would come after. The whole project had been a labour of love, intrinsically motivated, and I had no promotion plan or desire to speak more of this little project that had taken over my life. Everything had been said for now and I was, looking back, embodying the state beyond flow that Csikszentmihalyi conceptualised. I had created for the act of creation, not the bit that came after.
Needing a different outlet and channel for creativity, I joined a CrossFit box. I didn’t’ get very far with that but it did the trick of shaking me up. By early 20216 I saw another book on the horizon, Cherry Blossom Dojo: The Way of Inner Strength. This was was written over 2 years with the guidance of a writing coach, a retired professor of English Literature who had published multiple books on the Tao. The book intended to unpack Gichin Funakoshi’s 20 Guiding Principles of Karate and as part of writing this book, I took up judo to remember what it was like to be a white belt.
This book became the journey that led me to compete in judo, winning a gold medal at a national tournament a couple of years later. It unleashed my competitive side and reminded me just how much fun competition could be, until it wasn’t. I injured my shoulder at that tournament due to foul play and the recovery period took 5 long months. This unfortunate experience and a dose of creativity led me to my second Masters degree in Exercise & Sport Psychology, just as I turned 40, and that led me to research motivation. First, the motivation to teach self-defence and/or martial arts and then, the motivation to practice a form of movement, exercise, and/or sport and how that changes over time (the person, the practice). This second study led me to my PhD research on decisive action under pressure, specifically in karate but also life in general, which is becoming a dominant theme in my life today.
There is a parallel and overlapping storyline where Cherry Blossom Dojo also led me to train as a self-defence instructor and from there, as a Positive Psychology Practitioner. That storyline has led me to what I do today, running a company and training Positive Psychology Practitioners and Researchers. It is the circle within the circle, a spiralling of sorts.
None of this was planned. There was certainly no goal setting. All of it unfolded because I sat down to write and listen to myself then act decisively, in each moment, seizing opportunities while creating others along the way.
Amidst all of this was a quieter third storyline, another spiral of sports. The first thing I did when leaving employment with the UN and becoming self-employed was attend an Arabic calligraphy workshop with an Omani calligrapher. I hadn’t practiced Arabic calligraphy since my early twenties, when the intensity of humanitarian work took over. I still remember my palms sweating and hands shaking as I brought brush to canvas to pain the word “dream” in Arabic, hulm, as a way to return. It was the only word I could think of at the time that motivated me to create.
Within weeks, I was back to practice, using my reed pens and ink, and transferring my designs with acrylic onto white canvases that now hang in my stairway, where the Arabic calligraphy desk is set up. I went on to sell and exhibit my creations and like my book writing, it was all intrinsically motivated by my inner strengths. The strengths of creativity, spirituality, curiosity, and perseverance. I cared very little for any applause or outcomes at the end. The joy was in the doing, in the practice.
All that stopped with the move to the UK some 7 years ago. I lost the heart to create when cultural shock ripped through the foundation of my life, but writing Empty Quarter over the past year has started to bring that back. First, it gave me a chance to document the experiences of being a third culture kid, all grown up (these posts were deleted after a thematic analysis that I’ll hopefully share one day). For Arabic calligraphy, it’s just a letter here and there, a remembering of sorts, and an energy I just can’t force. Once more goal setting just isn’t the way. Intrinsic motivation just doesn’t work that way. If anything, goals can send it off course.
Writing is a companion and way to step back and see what is surfacing in my life. I find it much more effective than conversations with others, simply as a two-way conversation will naturally contain influence from the other person. Sometimes that is a good thing but when it comes to my creative self, it isn’t helpful at all. I reach my creative self when I disconnect from people and immerse myself in a point of interest. That state of interest intensifies and leads to frequencies of inspiration. At that point, I’m in flow and the last thing I need or want is an interruption or guidance.
A decade later, I sit back and take stock of all of this. Writing as a reflective practice is a way to listen to self, the deeper impulses of self that come like heartbeats, offering bursts of life as I close in on my fifties. I contrast this with the need for human connection, which I find through family and sport. It’s like an inhale and an exhale, contraction and expansion, the two balancing points of being alive.
Listening quietly today, I sense the wisdom of turning away from the world as it is right now, at least the world that I see around me. Not because I don’t care, for I certainly do, but I understand that life comes in waves, it ebbs and flows and we can’t always position ourselves on the frontlines, keeping up with it all.
Wild Zen was framed around 4 steps: Turn Inwards, Transform Chaos, Extract Wisdom, Live Truth. It was a transformative journey through healing towards authenticity, although I wouldn’t have described it as such back then. In the decade since I’ve become a psychologist and researcher, and I see the script differently.
These days, the turning inwards is about practice. We cannot practice when we are busy looking at and listening to everything around us, be the practice a game of tennis or a spiritual form. There is a need to narrow the gaze, nazar bar qadam, as the Naqshbandia Mujaddadia Sufi order advises - to watch where you’re going. In a game of tennis it is about attention control, of focusing on the game at hand. In spiritual practice, it is about retreat, a withdrawal of the senses, becoming still and calm, and then a reawakening of the senses to that which is pure and true. Both forms of practice require presence as a gateway, and both kinds matter to me.
I pause to step back, to become quiet and still, to bring focus to my life as I turn inwards. I know this needs to be balanced with work, the family, the house errands. The householder responsibilities. I know that a full retreat is impossible but somewhere between practice, attention control, and retreat offers a direction.
It takes courage to step back in this way. Courage and awareness. Awareness of the breath, of habits that get in the way of being and becoming present. The practice for now is the stepping back and in doing so, I am coming full circle.