Coping with Disappointment

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There’s a saying “The measure of success is how we cope with disappointment” which made me wonder how true this is. I know there have been times when I’ve been bitterly disappointed with things that haven’t materialised or something that I’ve missed out on. However, did I feel how I dealt with it was a measure of my success or not? For me, how we deal with any setbacks in life reflects on what our outlook is, whether we take the optimistic view that everything will be okay, or whether we take the pessimistic view of, this is really bad news and will affect me badly. You could argue that always having a positive outlook, not only is healthy, but by reflecting on this with a good attitude will surely start us in the direction of thinking of options on how we can fix this, or what we can change

Choices, Chances, Changes

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There’s a saying ‘The 3 Cs of life’: Choices, Chances, Changes – you must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change. I came across this again recently, and it got me thinking about how these 3 Cs are woven into our everyday lives without us really thinking about it. For some, this might come easy and seem almost unrecognisable, whilst for others it is obvious these three things need to happen but are avoided due to fear or lack of confidence. We can often feel that we don’t have any choice sometimes, but if we are honest with ourselves we always have choices with everything we do. The trouble is we often don’t see them because we are focused more on the problems than the opportunities, or if we do see we have a few choices, we offer good reasons why we can’t make

Get Ready – Get MIND Set – Get Go PACE

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Do you often feel like you’re in a race, or that the race is the wrong one for you, or you’ve started the race on the backfoot, or the race is never-ending and can’t find the finish line? I have! Have you? I have recently undertaken to participate in a local Park Run. The Park Run is 5kms and I am not a runner, I don’t particularly like running; walking YES, running, NO! I part jogged, part ran on my first race. For the second race, I decided to use a different strategy. I would jog faster, with fast walks in between. My time was no faster, in fact slower, ending up finishing completely out of breath and more tired than the first time, as I was unable to sustain the fast walks between jogs. I decided yet another strategy was called for in my third race. This time I

Is Your Success Based on Results OR Efforts?

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There is a well-known saying “Success does not lie in ‘results’ but in ‘efforts, ‘being’ the best is not so important, ‘doing’ the best is all that matters.” What’s your view? To measure success, we need to determine our current situation and our desired situation, and what value we put on the need to reach our destination. Let’s use a metaphor to describe this. I want to climb a mountain. This is going to be the highest and toughest mountain I’ve ever climbed before. Now I’ve had some experience climbing mountains and am reasonably fit (although could be fitter) and am already doubting my ability in being able to reach the summit. Let’s say, I have made every effort possible to train, by regular walking, tramping, running and building up my stamina to ensure I am able to climb this mountain. However, on the day, despite every effort to conquer

Where Are You?

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Where do you see you in your life right now? Have you done everything you said you would? Did you think you would be further on than you are? Do you feel you’re going one step forwards and one step backwards? Where are YOU? There is a great quote by C S Lewis “You can’t go back to the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending”. I just love this quote because it almost gives us permission to say where we are is the GO position, the beginning, and we can think differently about where we want to be. But sometimes we are too fearful of trying new things and taking those steps into the unknown, or into areas we don’t feel so confident in. This reminds me of the other quote which I also like by John Shedd “Ships in harbour are safe, but

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

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What are we most afraid of? Making the wrong decision OR not making the right decision OR not making a decision at all! Tom Robbins is quoted as saying “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach” But as the saying goes “indecision becomes decision with time” – but what’s the consequences of lack of action or wrong action? Often the truth is we are afraid of making a decision that will backfire on us. To help us make a decision we need to be methodical in our approach. Here are 6 steps you might want to consider: Write down all the options you have and what the expected outcomes are likely to be – this helps you feel more comfortable with making the decision as well as helping you decide on which is the best option Focus on a positive outcome - whatever the outcome it’s

We’re Going On a Bear Hunt!

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I was recently made aware of a children’s book called ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ by Michael Rossen, and this made me think about how this relates to us in our adult lives. The children’s book is portrayed as an exciting and thrilling adventure with a success of sorts at the end, which is scary and frightening but exhilarating at the same time. This made me think that this is what we do all the time in our personal or professional lives. In the book, the challenges are getting through long grass, a big river, thick mud, deep forest, cold snowstorm and a dark cave before the bear is seen! What I particularly loved about the challenges in the book, was how they were portrayed in overcoming such ‘obstacles’. There were 3 choices to go over it, under it or through it! And of course, none of the above

How Determined Are You?

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You might have your own business, or you might work for an organisation. You might be retired or just starting out in your career. You might be embarking on a new venture in your life. BUT! How determined are you to do it and how do you keep being determined? Are you determined? Let’s look at what determined means. The dictionary says it’s about being strong-minded, unwavering, untiring, firm and resolute. Would you say this is you, or is this you sometimes, or only with certain things in your life? I bet you are like most of us in that you might be determined some of the time with some of the things and not with others, or that determination wavers from time to time due to other factors in our lives. There are two sayings about determination that I really like: “You’ve got what it takes – but it

Life is 10% – Reaction 90%

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You’ve probably heard the saying “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it” by Charles R Swindoll? However, have you ever really thought about this in depth and how we can and do apply this in our everyday lives? I am sure you can all relate to the fact that we are made up of our experiences and those people who influenced us in our early and informative years; those people who were our role models, and those whom we thought were ‘right’! We all have good and bad days, and on the good days, if you’re like me then you might be more patient and understanding than on those real ‘bad’ days when you might feel everything has gone wrong, and you have that ‘can’t be bothered’ mindset. We might have something thing happen to us on a good day and react to