Readybrek is a famous and popular breakfast cereal in the UK.

It is a porridge type substance which I remember being marketed for children as a warm start for the day.

TV Adverts in the 1970’s, when I was a child, showed children leaving their homes for school on cold, dark mornings with a readybrek glow around them  – like an invisible heating system around their outline from head to toe to protect them from the cold.

As a child, I used to associate the readybrek glow with what it would be like to see your own soul.

The soul, I was taught in my Catholic Education, is the essence of God in my body, which has been wiped clean from the stain of original sin by virtue of my baptism.

It is the part of us, unseen, which transcends death and is therefore the part of us which survives in heaven for eternity.

I have been reminded recently of my old associations of the readybrek glow and my understanding of soul, by my reaction to some uncertainty which has arisen in my life at work.

My fabulous boss has announced that she will be leaving later this year and I have felt unsettled by her announcement.

In the past, before I found a way of living my life in the present, I had no way of deflecting concerns about what might or might not happen in the future. It was a feeling that I had of dread, brought about by an understanding that the world was happening to me and that I was powerless to do anything about it, and my life as a result was going to implode.

Through my development, through Integral Coaching and my own onward reflections and study following the guidance I receive, I have become aware again of my readybrek glow and I feel that I have a certain level of protection/resilience, which I have not experienced for many, many years.

This readybrek glow, my soul now re-claimed within me, tells me that I do not have to react to news that my boss is leaving as if the world is about to end, but instead to be curious, perhaps even excited about what the future will bring.

In other words, my readybrek glow is protecting my soul from spoiling this moment, my life today because of what may or may not happen tomorrow.

My next blog will be: Olympics

William Defoe