The river flowed past our office windows, glittering, swirling on the march morning. A day to be happy, a day to feel the energy of spring, except I had just lost my job, made redundant, told to go.

Not immediately, I still had half a year full time, after that on assignment. Even so, the yarns, the threads, the strings and bits and pieces of my life suddenly felt all tangled. I was unable to find the one loose end to untangle it and start a new project.  I walked home that day, worrying and pondering, vexed by all the optimistic quotes about diversity I remembered. Lemons and lemonade and all that stuff.

Then one of my own sayings came back to me. When my children wanted to quit, I always told them, “Ok, I agree that this looks pretty hopeless, but let’s just try ten times, and see what happens.”

Not for ever, not never, just ten times or ten things. Sit at the piano for ten minutes. Get on the bike ten times. Pick up ten toys from the floor. Do ten sentences of your assignment. Find ten interesting things around you. Get it? It works!

So what should be my ten things to do? What was the ten things my friends did? My clients?

How did everyone untangle their lives and get going?

Lucky me, it was all mine for the listening. So I did that, listened and asked my clients and friends. When life is really messy, what do you do?

Most of all I stopped fretting and asked my self, where are your own tools, remember what works and do that!

Together we put together The Untangling Tens. There were others, lots of others, yours may be different. The trick is to listen to what your experience tell you.

What does not work? Why? Why do you keep doing it? What did work? do it again!

This is my list- how is yours?