As we near the end of another year, it’s a time of reflection which can mean celebration and achievement, or regret and remorse. To enable us to review, reflect 2022 and what’s it’s meant to us we should structure how we look at our achievements and challenges in a way that can help us move into 2023 in a positive way. What did you learn about your business, or you as a business owner? What did you learn about yourself in work or as a parent, manager or leader? What positive relationships did you make; and did you make the best of these? What negative relationships did you make that you can perhaps avoid making again? What was your best idea, creation or achievement that made the biggest impact or difference this year? Review and Celebrate – Answering the questions above by writing them down so you can see the
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I heard a quote recently from an unknown source which said “I didn't come this far to come this far”. This represents so much doesn’t it, in that it depicts we’ve tried so hard to get where we’re at and we can’t stop now. This quote and the book I’m reading for the second time Atomic Habits by James Clear reminded me of how hard it is to break habits and to start habits and to understand the behaviour that sits behind this. One of the things James Clear talks about is how we can make a big difference by making small changes. For example, if we make just 1% change with something, in the short term it’s hardly noticeable, however, in the longer term it will make a big difference. The other book that goes well with Atomic Habits is Tiny Habits by B J Fogg. He has some
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I read a post recently by an unknown source which read “Focus on the step in front of you, not the whole staircase”. I love this quote because it depicts an image to help us take one step at a time, not feel too overwhelmed of the huge task ahead and break a huge goal or aspiration down into small bites or steps in this case. I use driving analogies a great deal with clients, and one example of this is explaining that our journey is like driving a car. We decide on our destination and drive to our destination. At night we put our dipped headlights on. This enables us to see a short way ahead. However, by putting on the full beam headlights we can see much farther than before, noticing the bends, obstacles in the road and any signs that may spell danger or beware. This quote
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This week I wanted to talk about the words we use and how words, especially self-talk, affects how we come across to others and feel about the world. Isn’t it true that as humans we often beat ourselves up verbally? We might make a mistake, and all we can do is to keep playing that mistake over and over again. Negative self-talk like this is very harmful and detrimental to our health and wellbeing. Purposeful and planned self-reflection or self-appraisal is a helpful and productive thing to help keep the negative self-talk at bay, as this is self-sabotage and self-destructive. Trying to stop negative self-talk may feel impossible, however, with the right strategies in place we can turn this around and flip it on its head and start focusing on the positive self-talk. Here are some tips to follow: Reframing – Changing our habits, playing a new record with different
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