I’ve recently finished listening to a book called The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. One of the chapters focuses on acts of self-kindness, along with kind words and actions and self-kind talk. As I always do when I read or listen to books, I takeaway some gold nuggets which I can use either personally or professionally for my business to pass onto clients. This one was a great one for me because, in my experience personally and working with so many clients over a lot of years, I hear mostly self-flagellation, being over self-critical and dwelling on the negative or what’s gone wrong or not so well rather than the opposite. Whilst pretty much we know and understand this appears to be a common default system built into us which originally was meant to be something that would protect us and make us more aware to deal with the ‘cave
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I’ve been listening to a book which talked about what success is and how we might get it. This led me to thinking more about what success really is, and that this is so different for us all. Success might be monetary, or status, fitness or career. So how do we go about achieving success when it is so hard to define, particularly when what we do determine as being successful either isn’t achievable or when we get it, that wasn’t it! I read a book ages ago about a man whose definition of success was to have $1m in the bank. He worked so hard doing every job possible to earn the money he missed out on lots of things. However, many years later he achieved his success, he had his $1m in the bank. Did he feel successful? Did he feel he had accomplished his dream and aim
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As some of you will know, last year, I had a major health event (Vestibular Neuritis) in October, which stopped me in my tracks literally. Also earlier on last year I also had a knee issue called Chondrocalcinosis which also made an impact on my ability to keep up my fitness. The reason I am sharing this is not to make this all about me, but to share the thoughts that I had when I did the Pegasus parkrun on Saturday, the first time for nearly a year. I was a late start to running and hated it, and eventually began to enjoy it by applying positive mindset and thinking about the end result and the goal. When Chondrocalcinosis was diagnosed, the only thing I wasn't able to do was high impact sports which meant no more running. Because of this, I never returned to the Pegasus parkrun even although
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Haven't you ever thought about the things that make your life beautiful? I read something very recently that had four different things to look at. The first one was to look back, the second one, look forward, the third one look around and the fourth one to look within. When I go through these, they tell me something. It's a good thing to look back because when we do, we can look back on what we've done. Whether this was a positive experience or a negative experience, whether it helped us or not, whether it’s become baggage or whether it's taught us a really good lesson that's helped us to build strategies to help us going forward. Looking back can be a really positive thing. But it can also be a negative thing. So if we do look back, let's use our experience as a learning. We are learning every
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What have you got planned to start doing in 2023? Did you set goals or resolutions for the year and are they written down? Do you have any idea what goals or resolutions you want to set, or are you stuck? Are you ‘over’ setting goals or making resolutions because it’s never been successful so far? Whether it’s any of the above or not there are things we can start doing to help ourselves in 2023 or any year for that matter, but at the beginning of the year at least it can start us off on the right foot. Starting from a place of feeling grateful for what we have, where we are, job or business we have, family and friends, health etc. If we use this as a starting point of gratitude rather than starting from a place of wanting or needing more or being dissatisfied with what
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As we work through the beginning of the year, I thought it would be good to talk about clarifying what we can control and what we can’t. What’s the saying? “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Let’s look at what is out of our control for a minute. The past and the future – all we can be in control of is our present. What’s gone has gone and whilst we can plan for our future in the present, we can’t control the future. Actions and opinions of others – we can spend so much time trying to manage situations with others and when bad feeling, conflict, misunderstandings or upset occur, we can try so hard to control this often without success, which can affect our wellbeing. What others think of
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Welcome to the beginning of a new year, 2023. How can we start the new year, 2023 on the right foot? Did you do the reflections from last week’s Wednesday Wake-Up!? To be able to start on a good note we need to know what to let go of, what to take forward and determine if and when we need to change direction, whether this is a slight change or a drastic change of course altogether. What do we need to start or stop doing? What do we need to do more of or less of? Remember we all have choices, and we should use them well and positively. Consider what those choices are and put them into practice by changing them into goals, SMART goals that will keep us on track, measure our progress, motivate and encourage us and help us when we are likely to procrastinate or go
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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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