Monday.  Today I am coaching on the phone.  I am tired after a late night – attending the Teaching Awards’ annual national awards ceremony followed by dinner.  I am grateful for the rapport I have with my clients and for the trust that comes with it:  today I may need to call on that rapport as my desire to contribute balances with my body’s yearning for sleep.  I imagine that it doesn’t do to yawn when rapport and trust are absent.

In truth, the activity of coaching is one I love so that my energies quickly rise to meet the occasion.  I enjoy each call and the added value that comes for the client from working in coaching partnership.  (As I write, I recognise how impersonal the word “client” seems to me right now.  These are real people who place their trust in the process of coaching and in me as their coach as we work together to progress the issues and agendas they are grappling with.  Coaching is anything but impersonal.)

Judy, my sister-in-law is staying, too, and has already asked me if I have time for lunch.  I coach until twelve before walking up to Blackheath where I meet Judy and her son – my nephew – Edward at the Handmade Foods Cafe.  We eat outside in the mild November weather, eating our vegetarian curry which is absolutely divine.

Judy asks me if I’d like to walk down to Greenwich and – since I don’t have any calls until the late afternoon – I am free to say yes.  We walk across the Heath and through Greenwich Park.  It strikes me – as it has done already this year – that the colours of Autumn are particularly intense.  Canary Wharf is beautiful in the low Autumn sunshine.  It really is a beautiful day.

We wander around Greenwich taking in a few shops and stopping at Waterstones (there has to be a bookshop involved) before having tea and (in Edward’s case) beer at the Old Brewery.  I am amused – or perhaps bemused – when I find that our common territory (semantics) combines with my own special interests (emotional intelligence and nonviolent communication) as we discuss the finer differences between embarrassment, shame and guilt.  Is it possible to feel these emotions and still have no regrets?

We walk back through Greenwich Park and I leave Judy and Edward to visit the Royal Observatory as I continue home.  I have time to meditate before they return as well as to catch up with some e-mails so that I can start the day tomorrow with a conscience and an in-tray that are both clear.  I also have time to say goodbye to Judy before she leaves to go back home and I pick up the phone for my next call.

Sometimes it helps to balance forward planning with flexibility in the moment if you are to live in the flow of life and to experience the perfect day.