Extremes...

Today was a day of incredible extremes.

First of all, I had the indescribable honour of being a guest at the lecture of His Holiness The Dalai Lama at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. It was amazing - powerful, moving, hilarious, warm, authentic, so so gentle and full of compassion and love.

From there, I went into a meeting to hear the outcome of our HMIE Review - for those not in the know, basically a deep and intensive independent audit across all of your work to ensure you are delivering impact as a charity etc. It has been a tough but constructive process, and we have focussed on the value it gives us (almost a kind of free consultancy!), but we were all still very anxious about the outcome.

But it was very good - more than that in fact - and it was so wonderful to see the delight on the faces of my amazing staff team. I'm so proud of every single one of them for what we have built together and the difference we are trying to make in the world.

So - a morning of compassion, an afternoon of inspection and audit - but maybe they came together in some way? What we are doing is trying to exercise compassion and love for our young people through our work, and the good news is, we measure up!

Mind you - my plan of hearing the Dalai Lama putting me in a zen-like state for the review meeting may have been a serious miscalculation - he was so amazing that when I came out my emotions were all over the place - I was like a cracked eggshell! :)

Happy weekends all - Namaste! _/\_