Welcome to Little Red Elephant Personal Development

Hi. I’m Floyd Blades and I’ll be your guide for this adventure. Welcome to Story Coaching.

I want to welcome you to my blog. If you are here for the first time, “just visiting” so to speak, welcome.

I hope that you like what you will come across here.

Just a warning though.

I’m sort of like an archer. While there is always a target, a hope, a lesson, or a new edge, the arrow doesn’t always hit the gold. I’m looking for proficiency and then excellence. Perfect is a bad story.

So, some of my content, my product, my arrows, the story, though not intended to, will bother some folks. Some of it may even offend. Some of it will anger some folks. Some of it, if folks are honest, may actually be frightening, enlightening, even enlivening. Some of it might make folks laugh their butts off. Yea!! Most folks don’t laugh enough, anyway. Or maybe for some, shed a tear. Most of us don’t do enough of that either.

Regardless of folks reactions I’m ok with them, as people. We are all on the same path, some of us see different scenery, that’s all.  My hope in my work is for good learning and expanded experiences. For ALL of us.

When one views the world as an expanding lens of experiences, a world view that looks for lessons and new learnings, one tends to bump up against edges, my own included.

It’s all good.

How we meet the arrow of an idea is often different in many ways from its release.

The challenge of being a writer, coach, teacher, and helper is that, often, it is only in hindsight and the space resting between here and there that our intention shifts our reality in some new, maybe unexpected way. The benefit of the new idea, tool, skill, or belief often appears downstream of the event.

The arrow, my message, tool, or teaching, is sent without certainty or really knowing where or how it’s going to be received. That is why my end of it, the offerings outwards, requires as much clarity, as much proficiency, as much care as I can bring to the mix.

Let’s set the stage

So. If you have been here before, welcome back. I hope that your last visit was a good one and that something good came out of it for you or someone you care for. If not, maybe this time. Thanks for another chance.

And, like I said, I’m not sure how this material will land for folks. My intention with what I’m offering, in all areas of Little Red Elephant, is that it will challenge folks to reality check the old stories of their perceived reality, their “reasons” behind, maybe beneath, their/our world view, in a good and curious way. In a good way, that is deeply connected to and informed by our creative and abundant curiosity, that allows each of us, supports each of us to be more than we were a few minutes, days, months, or years, ago.

Also, it is my hope (I got buckets of it) that by the time folks finish: reading a blog, checking out my website, booking a session, buying a course, joining a group program, downloading a chapter of my new book, or one of my presentations, however they come to be in my neighbourhood, they come away thinking, maybe even feeling, about themselves, their job, their partners, their family, their challenges, their strengths, perceived “lacks/shortfalls/flaws”, or whatever it is that challenges them inside of themselves and outside of themselves, changes in some way.

If I do my job right, which is being creative and expansive in helping people find ways of changing that actually work, for them, for their lives and loves, the good stuff, the shift away from the old stuff happens in a different, hopefully, mostly positive, way. If I offer them proven solid skills, tools, ideas for resolving their challenges, the internal, maybe “not true”, obstacles can be removed or repurposed. Some of them might look good in the garden.

To accomplish that objective, supporting folks in learning how to get out of their own way, in my work as a human, and because I take my job very seriously, I’ve done my homework. I’m infinitely curious about most everything that involves how we “connect” to ourselves and each other as humans. And I’ve been busy.

Where I’m coming from

The list below covers a lot of my background.

It is the foundation of the skills, information and practices I bring to my work with folks of all kinds. To be more than who/what we are, we must learn to step beyond the edges of who/what we think, feel or believe we are. I help folks create safe physical, mental and emotional containers for that kind of internal work.

My goal is that my blog is one of those safe, creative spaces where folks can hang with me and check out some stuff just beyond the edges.

Because this type of work, learning to live and love beyond the seen and unseen edges of here/now, is a big part of my personal life, what I call “the work” has ALWAYS drawn me and my curiosity. And, because while we humans have stuff in common, end of the day, how we discover and move beyond our edges will be unique to each of us. So, when I was a kid, with the help of my parents, I turned my curiosity loose.

I went out and learned stuff!

I have broad experience in personal and relationship coaching, counselling, and I’m familiar with many psychological and motivational approaches and modalities, cross cultural history, spirituality and mythology, martial arts, yoga, theatre, diversity and equity, politics, philosophy, art, music, social activism, personal and professional ethics, mindfulness, embodiment, finding/evoking personal beliefs, personal and professional meaning, values and ethics, applied non-violence, shifting gender and relationship rules, roles and expectations, and a lot of other stuff. All of it revolves around being a better me, so that we can be a better us.

I didn’t learn all this stuff to claim some weird type of status in the world. I learned it because I am a world changer, and I wanted to change the world in a different way. No fists, no guns, no violence, no manipulation. Change. Good change. Healing change. Permanent change. Maybe even For Ever Change.

I got into this work, Change Agent, as an environmental activist when I was a teenager. My folks always taught me “you can be part of the problem, or, you can be part of the solution. Your choice.” This work is my choice in action.

Like I said, infinitely curious, and deeply committed to changing things for the better. I also have a mission that requires MAD SKILLS. More on that later.

My point, always!

This is why the stuff that comes next matters to me, to you, and to all the folks we love.

Here/Now, in 21st century North America, many of us regardless of our age or any other factor, seem to have forgotten that, being connected to ourselves and each other is essential to our well-being on all levels of human functioning. Equally tragic for me is seeing the cost folks, especially marginalized folks, are forced to pay because many of the rest of us have forgotten the whole “connected/connection” thing I was just mentioning. This is why much of my work focuses on offering folks safe opportunities to learn and practice or “receive training” in a wide range of life skills.  

Stuff like skills for building emotional intelligence, non-violent conflict skills, responsive communication practices, skills and practices for rewriting self-esteem stories, and other “soft skills” many of us simply don’t have, yet. Because, at the end of the day, creating and integrating new, 21st century” personal and relationship perspectives and offering connected, supported and relevant info, requires that we learn new stuff. Even if it’s uncomfortable.

More than anything else, the “work” we do, the new skills we develop, new ideas we integrate, and the new stories we discover and create are designed to make our human connections, to ourselves and each other, more gently strong, more richly genuine, more trust and nurture based, more fully human than what folks might have experienced or are experiencing in their lives, relationships and work at this point in their lives.

Also, I LIKE metaphors

For most of us, the process of discovering for ourselves the stuff that REALLY matters to us, has become ever more complicated and complex. It’s hard to tune in a signal when there is SO much noise. Right now, while the lines that are being drawn might be very black and white, the black and white lines are NOT clear by any means. Shades of grey, right?

The struggle we all face about who to, what to, how to, why to, when to, be connected to something, be it person, place or idea has become a fairly high stakes game. Without a map and a good compass, finding that inner Shamballa is ever more complicated.

And, like those Russian Dolls, we tend to open up in layers, Dah? Open one doll and find another smaller doll nested within. Each doll holding another within itself, guarding, guiding, hiding? Our choice.

So, here’s my point with the writing, coaching, speaking, teaching and the rest of the stuff I’m presenting in my offers.

If we really want to find that littlest doll, the tiny one that sits at the very center of us, if we really want to see what our littlest doll actually looks like, to hear what it’s actually saying to us, we need to check out ALL the layers as we work inwards.

Checking out what the doll holds inside, actually experiencing the different layers, learning what’s armour or concealment and what’s not, is where we learn to start appreciating the good stuff the doll is holding for us, and the not so good stuff the doll is also holding for us.

What story does the doll tell you with this new layer? What story does it hold, of your past, your present, your future? Is the STORY true?

That’s where I come in. My job is to shine a light into the shadowy questions the doll holds. My role is to hold the compass while we redraw the map. That’s my hope anyway.

Because when you actually learn how to see what you are really looking at, beyond the story, you start to discover what “all the stuff” inside the doll, all the unknown ground in the empty places on the map, might actually mean for you, to you.

My intention, my hope with the blogs and such, is to get folks to look at how we connect to ourselves, to each other, to what we love, to what we believe, and how we live that story of connection.

And then, ask the hard questions.

Is The Story, really my story?

Am I ok with that story, even if it’s not true?

Thus, my posts will cover a broad palette of topics and use a wide range of imagery in offering my perspective.

Story Coaching and What I KNOW

Over the years (40+) I’ve learned that most of us, myself included, in one way or another, struggle with three core questions. They can appear in all kinds of ways. It largely depends on the person and how their personal story unfolds. Kinda like origami in reverse.  

The questions are:

• Who do I perceive myself to be? The answers are complex and interwoven with The Story. Not all the perceptions are accurate. Nor are the necessarily true.

• What matters to me? Not an easy path in that so much of what matters to us is about The Story we were told about what should matter to us. That story may not be accurate either. Nor true.

• What do I deserve from, create out of the first two? The story, good or bad, right or wrong that gets written out of the ideas held in the first two questions defines and limits the quality and content of The Story we build next.

The answer to the third question flows out of the conscious and unconscious lived practices we create to answer, fulfill the first two. What makes things complicated is that, “HOW” we answer the 1st two are largely responsible for how we create our lives, our relationships and our world view.

There are other, more or less subtle, ideas and beliefs in all of us and these three ideas; perception, meaning, and mission, in particular become the story we tell ourselves and the world we create. That’s the “world view” part.

That is what my approach, Story Coaching is all about. Humans, quite literally, are hard wired for “story”. Watch a great play, listen to a great song, read a great book, experience a great romance. It is the story that gets us, every time. This is also true of us on an individual and relational level as well.

What you and I look at in the process of coaching is how you are perceiving and interpreting, your world and your place in that world view. Then you and I reality check the hell out of the story.

Is your perception or your interpretation of the story true? What meaning, what values are you making from the story? Is the perception and the meaning of it really what the story means to you? What am I, or maybe we, building out of the personal and shared stories? Is that story really what, who I am or want to be? That is what the skills I offer are about. They are alternate pathways to understanding our “why”. A better compass for drawing a new map.  

This work I do is also valuable for folks who want to be able to be a fully participant life partner, parent, or simply, a friend, the work of transition from there to here is the same.

Look at your story. Ask your questions. Do something with your answers.

That’s the whole point of my work, maybe the only point. Working with folks who are creating maps and finding paths for coming to a place where it’s actually their story, their questions, and THEIR answers. It is your life after all.

Enjoy, share, converse. Please share your thoughts in the comment section and/or within the community. And, once again, welcome. See ya next time.