It has been years since I did this ritual and had my annual encounter with the embankment across the Thames river in London. It used to be a yearly tradition for me to walk down the Embankment when I was a student studying in Coventry, in the Midlands in England. I used to be on my way home from London Euston and I used to stop half way and go  to the Embankment pier then walk down to Waterloo and take the London Underground back to Tooting Broadway.

My parents lived near Tooting Broadway station and so I used to walk across the Embankment. I didn’t have a mobile phone back then it was the late 1980s but I had my Walkman and I used to listen to Fairground Attraction and the songs about The Embankment and London and then I used to sit and write poetry sitting on the bench looking across at the Houses of Parliament.

In the late eighties the Embankment was not as noisy and touristy as it is now.

Just now it is teaming with tourists.

Writing poetry seems like an impossible task.

I am 55 in 2024.

Back then I was 19, then I returned every year when I was 20, 21, 22, 23, 34, 25 and then I think I returned when I was in my thirties but not every year. I had children and a social work job. Life got in the way. However on my fourieth birthday in 2009 I came here and sat and wrote poetry. It is this ritual I have a meeting with myself at the Embankment. A ritual I made myself for myself

Today I was at The Ministry of Justice for a course for my social work job and my gut pulled me to the Embankment this afternoon.

The ritual of going to the Embankment every year or every decade helps me measure how much I have changed and how much nothing has changed and how much everything around me has changed and how much everything has stayed the same.

And I know I have grown so much in the last six years ever since I started my online coaching business.

Entrepreneurship has transformed me so much that I hardly recognise myself yet those around me still treat me in the same manner. Not everyone but a few do.

There are those who say how entrepreneurship has made me let go of so much that was holding me back. There are my friends who say how it has helped me become full of boundaries and focussed, laser focussed. A very close friend of mine said she thought when I first started my business, that I would not succeed and I would give up very soon because I am so disorganised and chaotic.

She said she was pleasantly surprised to see how fulfilled I am and that I have become more organised.

I said to her that there is a method to my madness. I have developed a system to park social work tasks and responsibilities at the office. So when I leave the office, I don’t tend to think about them and it is easy to do that for me unlike before when I used to think about the young people during the weekend.

I said to her with my job it is easy to let go because I know I have a team around me who look after my cases whilst I am off sick or on leave.

I said that I don’t stress about things that are not my pay grade. As a practitioner there’s only so much I can do.

I used to stress so much. Working in the evenings. Long Hours. Since I started my business I tend to work the hours I am paid for. ONLY in rare cases of having to write a court report or a young person being arrested for a serious offence, I then work long hours.

This is different to how I approach my business. Being a Solopreneur I find it hard to switch off from my business mentally.

I don’t have a team to do the accounts yes and  an accountant does my tax return but the book keeping I need to do myself..I don’t have a social media marketing strategist, I have to do it myself. I don’t have a virtual assistant right now. I employ them now and again to do certain tasks but mostly I am doing the marketing and selling and content strategy and the coaching myself.

Whilst being a Solopreneur has it’s advantages it has its disadvantages as you are having to motivate yourself with no team to rely on if you fall sick or are away on holiday.

In the first few years of my business I really felt this absence of a team.

This is because I didn’t have many Entrepreneur friends. Most of my family are Employees like me.

Slowly I started making friendships with other Entrepreneurs and I have now developed a small circle of Entrepreneur friends who have Online businesses or Brick and mortar businesses that I approach if I need to vent.

I also have mornings or afternoons where I just want to spend it by myself. Wander around Central London like I am doing right now by myself and just do whatever I want to do.

I find spending company by myself, sitting in silence or just walking along noisy roads and even crowds, comforting and calming.

The freedom that I don’t have to engage with anybody is extremely soothing.

You see when most of your life is coaching or counselling individuals, assessing young people with complex trauma, like mine has been for thirty three years and in the last six years also coaching High Performing LEADERS, sometimes you need to re-centre and be by yourself.

Having dates with yourself  is what I encourage during the emotional alchemy journey, which is the last part of the spiritual alchemy quest. The evaluation stage of the virtual adventure most individuals who have hired me complete.

Evaluating who they have become, what they want to focus on, how they have changed, evolved, grown and how they have not, is integral to this part of the Quest or in other words this Virtual Adventure that they embark on when they hire me. Yes when individuals hire me that is what they experience an adventure that changes them, their relationship.

It is an adventure to the depths of their unconscious, soul, spirit, self.  They enter The Reflective Space where they can measure who they are, how much they have changed and how much they have stayed the same.

We don’t often take the time out to reflect. We don’t often go on adventures.

We don’t often go inwards.

We don’t often re centre.

We don’t often take time out from the hustle and bustle.

We put constant pressure on ourselves to succeed, to achieve and this can be so draining.

I love working with individuals and doing what I do but I love my own company too.I have ever since I was a child.

Wondering do you like your own company or do you hate it?

Wondering have you ever gone on an adventure or quest?

Also wondering do you have a ritual where you meet yourself?

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