Lush hangers on

Looking out in the garden today, the juicy colours of Autumn merge with with hangers on from summer. Deep, dark claret geraniums and petunias still flower while the fuschias hang pinky white heads over the pots like stragglers from last night's party, reluctant to say their farewells and sleep.

Lush terracotta pots full of winter pansies hold the tulip bulbs under cover from enquiring squirrels. Piano sounds deepen in the background; the soundtrack in tune with the dripping of rain coming through the kitchen ceiling once more.

Perhaps next Spring, we'll finally fix this roof. Meanwhile it steadily re-assures me that nature will always win over our efforts to get the world in order.

Finding the muse

Scribble ends and writing really begins when I get in touch with the core of who I am, and relate to the world in a clear, non-judgmental way. Then I find the 'muse', a relationship to explore. It can be an abstract concept like freedom, or specific, tangible objects like the white hollyhock flowers braving out the Autumn weather that I see today from my window.

Last night I listened to some words from the author of 'The Artist's Way' Julia Cameron. It reminded me that creativity is a spiritual pursuit. When we take time for our creative exploration, we get in touch with our 'spirit' and that powerful, broader connection that makes the world a joined up place of similar souls.

Yet how easy it is to feel guilty about taking the creative time out. Julia has three guiding principles, her core tools that permeate her works.
1. Morning pages - where you write three pages of 'stream of consciousness' writing each day. This is relatively easy to do.
2. The Artist's Date - where you take yourself off on a solo, fun date each week. Time with yourself to explore an art gallery, a creative shop to buy sticky gold stars, anything that calls to you. This is where guilt sets in. 'Should I do this?'
3. Walk - a daily walk in the park, garden, beach, nature.

To Julia's ideas I would add my own muses- the discipline of a regular yoga practice, facing the blank mat like the blank page and allowing the movement to come from within. Contact with damp soil in the garden energises me as does the dynamic of the game of tennis.

As you allow yourself creative disciplines, make them personal rituals, so you find your muse.

Fiona's new novel

Many people I speak to never get round to reading fiction except on holiday, so it's good news that Fiona Robyn is going to blog her next novel, Thaw, starting on the 1st of March next year. The novel follows 32 year old Ruth?s diary over three months as she decides whether or not to carry on living.



To help spread the word she?s organising a Blogsplash, where blogs will publish the first page of Ruth?s diary simultaneously (and a link to the blog).



She?s aiming to get 1000 blogs involved ? if you?d be interested in joining in, email her at fiona@fionarobyn.com

Bid for freedom

Over the last couple of weeks I've been interviewing dozens of people for the new book: 'Live Life. Love Work.' All,,without exception, have stated the need for space in their lives. However content and motivated with work, they still need gaps to refresh and re-generate in whatever form that takes.

Underneath the most succesful career, there's still a human being that craves personal freedom. Without that space to breathe, I believe that our lives are not sustainable.

Monday morning

When things are all darting around in my head, if I can take 30 minutes to walk in the woods, they shape up in new ways. How fortunate am I to have a small lake and woodland just around the corner from my home. So in minutes, I can shift from this tapping into my laptop to feeling the soft, peaty forest floor creeping into my walking shoes. There's a timeless quality at the lake which reminds me that I'll be long gone when others are striding out on those paths.

On Monday mornings, with things to do and places to go, it's easy to forget this. Now I go back to work from a contented place.

Reverting to type

It's been a few weeks since my standing and staring has arrived on the page. The hollyhocks I nurtured were once all shades of ruby and peachy pink. They've gone all white now, in strong contrast to the Stipa Gigantea.

Under pressure, I too revert to type. Once calm and collected, next anxious and snappy. Sorry folks. I like humans to join harmoniously, form connections and have fun - rather like my plants do.

Confidence tips from an Olympic Champion

Strawberries and Pimms. Boaters and blazers. The entertainment and gazebos on the banks of the River Thames at Henley this week mask the tough challenges of Olympic-level competition.

Over tea with Steve Williams, Captain of the world-renowned Leander Rowing Club and holder of gold medals in the coxless four from the Athens and Beijing Olympics, I learn Steve’s take on building self-confidence.

“The start line is the most powerful place to be. This is where you need to be in control of your confidence,” Steve tells me. Of all the skills to race at this level, he highlights mental resilience as number one.

“The moment when you’re drowning in your thoughts is when you need to make sense of the mess.”

Steve’s journey from school and university teams to the glory of the Olympic honours as part of Team GB is not for the faint-hearted. His graphic tales of the physical pain to all parts of the body, the daily 5.30am alarm calls to a cold boathouse, and just one day off a month from training demonstrate the tough regime.

As much as Steve always desperately wanted and trained extremely hard to become Olympic Champion, he now sees that, in the early years, self doubt was eating away at his confidence and holding him back from achieving his dream. "I could see how Steve Redgrave and Matt Pinsent, with long arms and legs and big heart and lungs were 'born winners' but I'm just a normal guy. Even though it was just tiny, that self doubt was there".

Steve's first Olympic experience was missing out on selection for the Sydney 2000 team and instead he had to go as only a 'travelling spare'. A very painful time even now; Steve's lowest point was also the turning point for his career. He spent the time on the sidelines watching and learning from those that were winning Olympic Golds. "The most important thing I took away from Sydney was that not all Olympic Champions had superhuman physiologies - some were even smaller than me!" Steve came home with the mantra "Even normal people win Gold Medals" and all the barriers were gone. Nothing could stop him now.

Steve’s first major lesson in building his mental resilience was to truly believe in himself. “You need to be able remind yourself of how good you are, your personal best, when it gets really tough.”

Fast forward a few years. Steve was picked and succeeded in Athens (the medal is beautiful). Yet a few years later he realised that self-belief is not enough to continue to win. In the run up to Beijing, the competitors were catching the British team up until by 2007 they were dropping to 4th place in the world. “We could easily have lost all confidence.”

The plan was good; the execution of the plan wasn’t paying enough attention to detail – a second learning in building confidence. So the team re-aligned itself to one big, shared purpose: everything they did was geared to ‘make the boat go faster’. Instead of focusing on the massive end goal of winning at the finish line, the team set smaller milestones and measures until it could consistently race to half-way mark in record time – achieving its personal best of 1000 metres in 2 minutes 47 seconds.

Another key change encouraged all in the team to give positive, critical feedback. “Anything could be said, so long as it focused on our shared purpose – to make the boat go faster.”

Steve says that you can’t afford to have good days and bad days; every day, you need to be ready to receive the medal. By now, the team had bullet-proof confidence at the start of every race. “We focused on our personal best and went out to perform it like any other regular day on the river, the only difference was that, in competition, the stakes were a mile higher.”

Steve’s top tips for building self-confidence that we can all apply are:

• Develop your mental resilience through believing in yourself, knowing that you are good enough.
• Have a strong plan to win, yet execute it with attention to the smallest details.
• Get regular, critical feedback.
• Start every day focusing on being the very best you can be.