Deep connections going beyond conventions

“I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so.”

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

As readers can tell from my last few daily posts, right now I’m not feeling my usual ebullient, energised and resilient self. At the same time, and through some very recent conversations, I am reminded of the power of deep connections. I’m also thinking about those that cross the conventional boundaries between business and friendship.

There is a clear convention that we only go so deep with people we know in a business context, and I recognise that this used to be me for many years. However, as I shifted into coaching over a decade ago, several things in me shifted, including allowing my innate curiosity about others to come through more and more, while at the same time dropping my masks and allowing my full self to be visible.

All of that has meant that over the last number of years I have met quite a number of people in a work context that I have since got to know far more deeply than used to feel normal to me. The boundaries and conventions of “work” and “friendship” have been crossed, dismantled over and over, such that I have quite a number of such deep connections that yes, I may speak to in a context of business, and at the same time I consider friends and where we understand each other far more deeply than the usual business relationships.

I’m deeply grateful for those deep connections that come to effortlessly blend business and friendship, they enrich my life in all facets.

Take a moment to consider your business relationships and how deep to some or many of them go.

I leave you with this beautiful moment from one of my favourites novels and films, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, exquisitely reimagined for film by the Wachowskis, with the stunning soundtrack and theme by co-director Tom Tykwer: