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Mobius Leadership

The Mobius Centre Story – Part II

Posted on: June 9th, 2016 by mobiusleadership No Comments

Mobius Centre

Last time I ended my Mobius Centre story by touching on our dreams and I will start where I ended.  

Monday 5th September 2011 arrived. This was the day we had been waiting for with some trepidation. The day the builders moved in. David, the builder and ‘digger Pat’, who could move a digger around with such grace, certainty and precision, it became a joy to watch him.

To arrive at this day, months of work and a few hurdles had to be overcome. Planning permission for a building that was a bit different to the one’s that had gone before. Larry our architect had been thoughtful and imaginative and we wanted to see his design come to fruition. An environmental impact study was required, where did that come from? This we soon discovered is an EU directive, perhaps the first that had been asked for in West Cork, maybe even in Ireland, and of course, the logistics of building on an island.

But we all know inside of us that nothing worth having comes easy.

Mobius Centre

I guess one of the most challenging aspects of this was the decision to ‘knock down’ the original house on the site. A typical dry stone building, part of which, was semi-derelict. It was unusual in that it had 3 parts to it.  The main room – the only room where a family of 16 children was raised. They all lived in this room, cooking there, eating their meals, and sleeping there at night.  On bad weather days, they would have even have milked the cow in there.

The other two small sections, which were joined to make the rectangular building, were a dairy for making butter, and possibly cheese, and the final section was the abattoir.

This was history and, of course, there was a sentimental attachment. We considered trying to utilize the building for our venture, however, there we no foundations of any note, door areas were much lower, the walls were not straight and overall it was too low. The decision was made.

The building came down quickly. A pile of stones just lying there.  Those stones would be reused later to create beautiful ‘dry’ stonewalls.

I think the only regret I have is that I did not set up a time-lapse camera, however, we do have a good photographic record of the build.

Not long after work started, and for the next 4 years, my work took me on a journey to many different countries. This was a wonderful experience for me; I received great learning and meet so many delightful people.

What I did realize is that the issues people have are so similar. I appreciate we are complex beings however, I realized that we do make things so difficult for ourselves, which it would seem in all cases is how we keep ourselves safe, to do that we actually play small and truncate our world.

Interestingly the paradox of playing safe is high risk.

Around one year later the building was complete.

Paul Matthews is Director of Mobius Coaching and Development and works with clients at his purpose built centre on Heir Island, West Cork, Ireland. For further details, contact Paul at 028 38834 or info@mobiusleadership.co.uk
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