Testimonials
It helped develop our conversation, teased out issues and enabled our discussion to move to a deeper level. A very powerful tool.
Cheryl Campsie, Communications Consultant
Pete Middleton
The Boring Stuff
A SenseAble Friend, together with other business and personal development products, has been developed by Pete Middleton, who established SenseAble Solutions Ltd in October 2004.
- The intention in establishing the company was to help people enhance their own ability to affect positive and profound change.
- The limited company was set up following five years research into creative and innovative thinking with particular reference to business development, followed by several years in running training programmes for organisations such as The Pensions Service and Siemens plc.
- Pete has spoken at business conferences in both the UK and USA, run innovative workshops in both countries, and most recently been working with international biotechnology group, Avecia, and the national charity, Addaction.
Previous experience includes being Operations Director and major shareholder of a UK construction company, as a senior manager within blue chip company, Booker Plc, in Forestry Investment, as a consultant in the Far East, and in Local Government.
Maybe Not So Boring
Just over nine years ago I was physically and mentally exhausted. I had little time for my family and my working life was exceptionally demanding. I hated it. My children hardly knew me, yet I was able to convince myself that I had no alternative and was dependent upon my job because I had dependents.
My self-esteem and confidence were so low that if I stood in the middle of London they would be somewhere south of Sydney harbour in the southern hemisphere. So all in all it was not a most enjoyable time of my life! Many people imagined I was successful. Ha! I should have nominated myself for an Oscar for a performance that hid it all so well.
Then fortune stepped in and due to a downturn in the construction industry we were forced to sell the company, and I lost my job. It was the one thing I feared all my ambitious working life. Undoubtedly, it saved my life, but it also presented me with one of the most difficult decisions ever; "What was it that I wanted? Really and truly wanted?"
That's where I began, from a point in time where there was a feeling of complete hopelessness, fear, lack of direction and at times blind panic.
Definitely Fascinating
Fabulous! With reflection, it was simply a fabulous gift that forced me to wake up to a very different reality - quite different from the one that I had inherited through cultural pressures and for so many years lived out. This was a reality in which I discovered some natural truths that I have tested to extremes and found are solid and eminently practical.
In the last nine years as a family we have endured severe financial and psychological challenges - but that is almost irrelevant as we all do from time to time. What is relevant is that we have not fallen off some mythical ‘edge', and that it is possible to live and work in a very different manner from the one that appears to dominate people's lives today, and certainly did mine for over twenty five years.
Fear is learned and can be unlearned, indecision is simply a process and not a weakness, and stress is an experience that can be eliminated.
We unconsciously inherit beliefs that are limiting. Creating and experiencing a work / life balance that brings happiness does not happen by trying to understand "How to achieve it", but by recognising "what really matters, and why". That may appear to be easier said than done; but that is not so.
A SenseAble Friend is just one tool that evolved intuitively from a decision to find alternatives and solutions to a stressful and unhappy personal and family life. It is a tool that engages mind, heart and soul, and has stood up to rigorous logical scrutiny. It is one way for each of us to touch upon the margins of how naturally creative and fascinating we are. Once we become consciously aware of what we sense, we think and feel and begin to notice our intuitive ideas - "fascinating" cannot begin to properly describe who we are, or what we can achieve. The reality we observe changes immediately, as does our experience and our decisions.
