Steps

COVID-19 has caused us to rethink everything. Our plans, our goals, mission, vision and purpose. It’s as if they were all a pack of playing cards which have been thrown up in the air lying randomly on the floor, scattered. This can cause us to feel overwhelmed, anxious and concerned about where to start and how to wade through a sea of uncertainty with what type of future lays ahead. However, we must start somewhere and now is the time to start! Step 1: We need to think about what our first goal is for right now. By right now I mean for the next one or two weeks. Focus on how you might action that goal, what you need to do and who might be able to help you. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help, support or advice, whether this is a friend, family, colleague or business

Managing Challenges Whilst Working Remotely

Are you feeling demotivated due to reduced income and lack of work? Are you feeling like a rudderless ship riding a stormy sea? Are you feeling disconnected from others during lockdown? These are some of many remote working challenges that face all of us during these unprecedented times. Creating a clear vision – becoming an optimist: Trying to build in a structure into your days to help you rebuild a new or revised vision of where you see you or your business being in the longer-term. This is a challenge as we are working from a blank canvas with an unknown future, but hanging onto the knowledge that we are all going to require services from each other, and whilst at the moment during lockdown it feels like everything will remain as it is right now, logically we know that things will get better, it will just take time, we

Old Life – New Life

COVID-19 has changed our ‘norm’ as we know it. We feel like we’re living in a ‘limbo’ state, not knowing what the future holds and trying to exist and function in isolation as we keep our social distancing. This can make us feel we have lost our bearings, our compass and our direction. We are steering a rudderless ship in stormy waters not knowing what’s over the crest of the next huge wave coming towards us. How might we try and keep grounded, focused and find some sort of direction and motivate ourselves to creating a new footing in our ‘soon to be’ new world? Find Direction – we need to be clear where we are going; this is hard when we might be struggling to focus and to concentrate, we may feel lost and unable to achieve. Taking small steps considering what are the first actions we might be

Home is where the heart is…

Would you agree that our home isn’t’ just a space or a place, it’s more of a feeling? It’s a feeling of being safe, feeling secure, our sanctuary, a place where we feel we can be comfortable. Normally our home is the first that we see in the morning and the last thing we see at night and is often the centre of our busy lives and always the place we come back to. If we go on holiday, work away or spend long days in work, whether we move to a new house or live with different people, our home is where the heart is. We need to remember this when we are starting to have ‘cabin fever’ or feeling ‘stir crazy’ in that being home, and staying home is our place of safety especially right now. We may feel isolated, emotional, tearful, frustrated or even angry and fearful,

Staying Connected

Who would have thought three months’ ago today (Christmas Day) we would be in total lockdown in New Zealand with people all over the world in social isolation! It’s hard to imagine, just so surreal and so difficult to comprehend! Like you, we are all experiencing so many emotions right now, feeling scared, anxious and worried. With such an uncertain future, we are bound to have good and bad days, concerned about the health of ourselves and our loved ones, uneasy about what the future holds for any of us financially with the potential lack of jobs and struggling businesses. This unclear and unprecedented situation makes us feel like we did in the earthquakes, that the ground beneath us has just shaken us to the core, however, on this occasion its worldwide and will change the world as we know it. With all this in mind, we do need to

Helping Ourselves

We know that stress can affect our bodies and our minds, the way we react, our responses as well as the physical responses that can affect our health and wellbeing. We know the whole concept of fight or flight, and that in the ‘caveman’ days we used this to our advantage to fight or flee from the danger whatever or whoever that was. However, today, we are more civilised, don’t want to upset, or offend. We put on a pretence, ignore the signals our mind and instincts tell us and carry on regardless. When we do this, it affects us in a myriad of ways. But what do we do? Do we listen to our bodies? No, we don’t. We are SO good at giving other people great advice and suggestions but not giving ourselves the same advice. Well, it’s about time we all practice what we preach and apply

The Five Fs

We hear so much about mindset and reframing things to help us see things differently, but it’s still hard to put into practice. We know what we could and should be doing or attempt to do, but the ‘actual’ doing can still be hard, particularly when we’ve done the same thing for a very long time. Old habits die hard as they say! Below are the Five Fs to help you consider those steps you may wish to take to help you rethink what you do, how you do it to achieve the different outcome you desire. Fear – We are likely to be our worst obstacle that holds us back from taking those brave new steps or breaking out of our old habits. Changing our fear into excitement, seeing it as a challenge and not an obstacle is difficult but something which is doable and achievable. Failure – Our

Which lane are you in or are you still signalling to get on!

One thing I’ve come to believe is that no matter where we are on our journey and no matter what we do along the way, we are still learning. When we learn and grow and try new things we feel out of our depth, lose a little confidence and suffer setbacks. It’s almost as if our lives are a road of which we have choices in which direction we go in, which lane we are on and can choose which exits we want to take and when. We do however, need to know where we’re going when we get on the road, otherwise we are going to get lost and possibly end up on a road we can’t exit easily, sometimes because the traffic is just going far too fast. For some of us we slip onto the main road easily, confidently, entering the traffic with skill and ease. We

Time for Change

What is change all about and why do we fear it the way we do? We have two choices to embrace it or resist it! What makes us choose which option and why? Change is a huge part of our lives. They say the most consistent in our lives is change, and yet for most of us we fear it or avoid it like the plague! Change is the constant, although totally unpredictable and can affect us in many ways. I see there are two key categories of change, one where the change is imposed upon us, for example, your job has changed, you are made redundant or you are no longer able to work. The other is that upon which we impose upon ourselves, for example, where we want to personally or professionally improve. We know we must change to keep up with others or stay in business, but

Listening to our bodies

I was mindful of how much mindset is in our lives, with a busy schedule for most of us, deadlines to meet, full days, insufficient downtime and having those goals which we set ourselves often putting pressure on us to achieve even more next time. Whilst having goals are all well and good, so is listening to our bodies. We often ignore what our bodies tell us due to the pressure of work, deadlines and pressure sometimes from our peers or employers. It’s interesting when an animal feels sick, let’s say a dog or cat, it finds somewhere quiet and often dark to rest and recuperate. What do we do? We ignore the signals are bodies tell us, because we see these outside pressures as more important than listening to what our bodies are telling us. This led me to wonder why we might do this. The reasons are ones