There is something about seeing a place through a dreamer’s eyes. Any place, really. But, for me, I discovered this practice with cities.
I have come to think it’s because I could feel the energy of big dreams compounding over generations and all of the people whose paths passed through. The buildings. The streets. The details. The history. The stories. The front doors that open into warm containers of life. The windows that peer into different realities, whether that’s a dress shop decorated with the wardrobe of a hopeful future version of me or the stirring of good friends or family around a glowing hearth. It’s never not activated my imagination.
I’ve since expanded this practice to nature. I wonder at the wisdom of the tree that’s stood tall through generations. Weathering countless storms. Bending, but not breaking. And how they stay so calm and unbothered when our world feels like chaos. I marvel at the moon and the tides. The dance between the shore and the water speaking in a language all its own. The way waves crash and then recede. Or the signs that speak to me where the salt and sand meet my toes. But, the origin story was metropolitan.
I think London was the first place it emerged. At least, it’s the one I remember most vividly. I could wander for days. My favorite thing to do when I lived there was play what I called “let’s get lost”. Pulling on my trusty grey suede and mesh sneakers I wore nearly everywhere and tucking my tube pass into my sports bra along with a credit card for emergencies, I’d wander the winding streets to see where they, and my daydream, would take me.
When there’s nowhere specific we’re trying to “go” and nothing specific we’re trying to “do,” we’re free to let our attention wander far and wide. Open focus, softened gaze, widened aperture, awareness in every direction. When we meet the world like this, we can notice – What catches our eye? And what does it say? What does that stir in us? And what do we learn as a result?
I trace this back to my first full day in the city. I wanted to walk from my dorm in Chelsea to my school near Trafalgar Square and take in everything in between. This was before I had a cell phone and well before the days when there were maps on cell phones anyway, so I did what you did then – I carried a map (as discreetly as I could) and asked the people I passed at the magazine stands and such for directions. Everyone I asked directed me to the tube station. It was right there. But, I’d never been to London and I wanted to see it. Why would I go underground just to “get there” faster?
No one could understand my logic. Nor could I understand theirs.
So, instead, I meandered. Through history. Eaton Square and all the embassies, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. I’d never seen anything like it. Outside of movies and textbooks, at least. I was fascinated. Curious. Dreaming faster than I could grasp individual threads of conscious thought. Romanced completely by my life and the wildness of embarking on this adventure. So grateful to have the opportunity to live this chapter. And live it all. I would go on to walk different scenic routes to and from school nearly every single day for the next nine months, rain or shine, delighting in it all and daydreaming my way into discovering more of myself, my goals and my desires. Then, living into them.
We live in a time of an ever-increasing focus on efficiency and optimization. We want the greatest ROI in the shortest amount of time and we don’t seem open to entertaining the idea that there might be intangibles we miss when we race underground or cram an hour-long agenda into a twenty-five-minute meeting. We multi-task. We cut back. We shrink. We contort. And we measure output and gains, material and otherwise, expecting that they’re maximized by these practices. This all conditions us to take the shortest path from A to Z. And, not just take it. Sprint it.
I prefer the scenic route.
Last week, coaching for the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Annual Meeting in Boston, I realized at a new level of understanding that one of my favorite pastimes is also one of my bedrock mindfulness and self-coaching practices. In addition to long days of back-to-back one-on-one coaching sessions on a wide range of themes arising in the career realm of my integrated life and leadership work, I led Some Days, Sunrise & Stride mindful morning movement immersions. As I walked the routes I’d researched to prepare to lead the experiences, I found myself doing what I do and taking so much inspiration from all I moved through.
I simmered in the way we can explore a place and ourselves at the same time. The way we can be deliberate about it and turn any adventure or experience into a personal growth immersion. We can find opportunities for inspiration and reflection everywhere. Noticing what is mirrored in us by our surroundings. Seeing with the eye of an artist. Paying attention to what it stirs up. Discovering the metaphor within, then working with it. Trusting that the metaphors that arise are coming from an intuitive place, as well as offering a pathway to connect to it. Considering that the things that spark our curiosity often are too.
Reflecting on it now, what I’m coming to is maybe intuition isn’t so different from what I think of a strategic daydreaming. Or, at least, not unrelated.
I have long recognized that daydreaming and strategic planning are essentially the same thing. But I hadn’t quite honed in on the fact that it’s also a gateway intuition for me. I was always the girl that wandered through the city or the seaside or the trail, imagination and possibility overflowing. A movie playing in her mind. A story being written and lived at the same time. I’m seeing now that I use that dreaming to connect to an intuitive place.
In all of our optimizing and efficiency, though, we’ve squeezed out the long scenic walks (figuratively and literally) and the big sky space for daydreaming. One of the many things we tend to miss in all of this is that, when we can connect our dreams and our strategies to our intuition, we can usually leapfrog and end up someplace far beyond the place we would get to toiling on Slack and screens or trying to “figure it out.” Why don’t we do this more? Why don’t we embrace it? Why are we so insistent on squeezing out the human part? The soul part? I’m convinced those are the parts. The scenic path is the path.
There is a way that our environment and the touchpoints we bump up against can be our greatest guides and can spark something in our intuition or our knowing that no amount of books, PowerPoints or meetings ever could on their own. We can be open to that and explore. We can be intentional about that and weave it in. It’s a way of living that can beautifully support us stepping into our biggest dreams.
What this looked like in practice for the groups I led last week was a meandering walk from the Seaport to the South Boston Waterfront basking in the city’s East Coast charm, seasonal splendor and surprising sandy seaside sunrises, tapping into the following themes:
*Our sometimes impatience to “get to the good part” and what’s actually available to us in those moments if we shift our perspective. We can ask: How is this the good part? What do we notice, particularly if we open our aperture?
*How quickly the “view” or “scenery” can change. We tend to think the place we are right now is the place we are in forever or that something different is so far off but, some days, it is just a few baby steps to a whole new experience.
*The changing of the seasons and the ways we can work with it, including noticing what it’s mirroring in our lives. In our case, the splendor of the leaves changing and then falling stems from the trees beginning the process of letting go of what’s not essential so they are resourced for the winter and have what they need for new growth and thriving come spring. We can look for places we might need to let go or at least relax our grip. We can also hold the vision of the spring and what letting go might make space for.
*Water as the element of feeling and the way we often think we’re supposed to keep emotion out of it. Especially when it comes to our professional lives (especially in corporate or law). But, as we can see with Boston, the water is such an essential part of the city. So, maybe it’s not about eliminating water/feeling. Maybe it’s about working with it. We got a calm, sunny morning. How can we savor those days? And, when it feels stormy, how can we resource ourselves? Maybe taking inspiration from those cozy doorways and call in more care and compassion?
*Perspective and the way you can walk the same path and see new things. All you have to do is notice.
Then, another whimsical wander through the Fort Point Channel and Revolutionary History Loop soaking in Boston’s history, revolutionary spirit and legacy of transformation and the following themes:
*Fort Point’s story of transformation and the metaphors it can mirror in our own life. From marshland to manufacturing, abandoned buildings to artist enclave, history to today’s industry. We are never just one thing. And, some days, we outgrow an identity that once made us successful. Or that we might even feel made us who we are. And so much is possible when we allow evolution and invite creativity.
*Looking at life and opportunity through the eyes of an artist. Noticing. Finding inspiration everywhere. Seeing something others miss. The willingness to look at what’s shifting and find opportunities and possibility, including in a repurpose or reframe.
*Old and new…Brave and bold… The revolutionary history of the Boston Tea Party and the backdrop of modern buildings and industry. Calling in the courage to go your own way. To call out what doesn’t seem right. To believe that something different is possible, even when you’ve never seen it and you don’t know what it is. To believe you can build it. To trust yourself to figure it out.
*The railway, industrial architecture and welding. The way we soften hard material to create and then firm it back up in a new form. The bonding in the softening. The soaring heights of buildings and span of railway made possible from this simple, elemental act of softening first. What became possible with that kind of connecting.
*Water (again) as the element of feeling and an essential part of making Boston what it is and its history and its courage and its grit. So, it can’t be about eliminating or avoiding water/feeling, as we often think we’re supposed to. Boston works with the water. There are bridges. Boats. Docks. Support structures and tools to allow life and industry to exist alongside and around the water. We can intentionally create the same.
And, you can absolutely embrace this practice on your own. Some entry points to this way of moving through the world you can try are: seasons, memories, history, intentions, surprises, mirrors, metaphors, possibility, synchronicity and signs. You can also try stepping outside of yourself and imagining it all as a movie. Intentionally calling in the romance and possibility of life. The wonder of your path bringing you to the place you’re in. The wonder of the place itself. Of life itself.
It’s very easy to go through lives either in our heads or heads down. We have an opportunity to engage with life in a different way. Take in the view. Tap into our intuition. Possibility too. And I find that when I connect to it that way, I get the most out of it.
So, meet me in the meandering mindspace. Where the thoughts run free, the dreams have wings and the possibility is endless. To the scenic route.
