I don't know!

Staring at the blank page, ever felt your mind go completely empty?  ‘I don’t know’ is actually quite a creative place, a place from which anything is possible.  Seen as an opportunity rather than a problem there are a number of ways forward.  Here are some suggestions….

1. Give up needing to know.  This releases some of the frustration and puts you in a more resourceful place.  What if you’re right where you need to be?
   
   
2. Form some questions.  What exactly do you want to know?  What’s the next step in your ‘knowing’?  Is it to discover a process?  Meet someone who can help?
   
   
3. Share.  Find ways to share your questions with others you meet during your day.  What comments and insights do they have for you?
   
   
4. Look for the payback.  What does not knowing give you?  Is it protecting you from doing something or being someone that makes you feel fearful or hesitant?  Is it a message to someone?  Do you enjoy not having the answers?
   
   
5. Feel your way.  What feelings surround this issue?  How can you look at the situation differently so that you feel better about it?
   
   
6. Adopt a hypothesis.  Find a possible solution and ‘try it on’ for a while.  How does it feel?  Does it fit?  Could you build on this or is there a different solution to try.
   
   
7. Take some action.  Even if you don’t know everything you need to when you start, quite often new insights arrive when you’re on route.  Start the journey, enjoy and trust all the answers will be available to you when the time is right.

What gets measured gets done!

Whenever I hear this expression, I have that sinking feeling- I'd love it not to be true!   It reminds me of charts in toilets and meaningless questionnaires but, in personal development terms, measures are actually very useful.

When we measure something, we face its reality.  We are masters at convincing ourselves that all’s okay and we can continue with the status quo but when we face a situation’s facts and figures it’s harder to deny.  Our intuition might tell us ‘you’ve been spending a bit too much’, your clothes are a bit tight or you haven’t called your friend for a while but it’s when we seek out the evidence that we get a fuller picture.  Maybe our spending is on track but we’re fearful and need to keep an eye on our budget, maybe we’ve strayed from our diet or perhaps even though we called our friend recently, our intuition is telling us to call her again.

When we set a goal or have the idea that we'd like to improve something in our lives, our first step is to find out what our current situation is and how we'll know when we get to where we want to be.  We have to find a way of measuring the situation even if it is rating the intensity of a feeling or getting feedback from a friend.  The closer we can get to measuring the important and critical result, the bettter.

When we measure something regularly, it gets our attention.  Awareness is the first step towards change and the chances are, just by giving our attention to a measure, it’ll improve.  The exception to this is when we build up a story to judge the measurement.  So, on its own, our weight is a neutral number but, with our interpretation, it can become ‘so overweight’, ‘my best weight yet’ or ‘something totally out of my control’.  When measurements prompt these stories and the feelings they bring up, many blame the measurements, yet it’s the stories rather than the measurements that are the problem.  Feel the feelings, change the story and then you can befriend the measurement and work with it.

With the range of aps now, there are hosts of ways to measure the things that are important to us and, when the results start to improve, we’ve added motivation for sticking with our good habits and plans.

Going Where the Day Takes Me

I left the flat we’d staying in in Chelsea with a plan, I was going straight to the internet café I knew to work before my lunch appointment, but a wonderful morning of going with the flow unfolded.  

First my Oyster card didn’t have enough money to get smoothly onto the bus to the tube which set me off walking a little more, exploring a new area.  When I did hop on and off the bus I was deposited outside a department store and decided to go in and use their facilities.  Passing by the sparkling cosmetics counters I remembered I needed a little make up and this turned into one of those pampering product demonstrations.  Feeling very special, I nipped into a café to do a little work before taking a double decker bus to my meeting venue, a very enjoyable ride.

Was this a productive time?  Well I bought the make-up I hadn’t found locally and I achieved the essential tasks I needed to attend to.  I didn’t do everything on my list.  Perhaps you’ve read my article on yin and yang?  This wasn’t a driven, targeted yang morning, but there wasn’t a complete absence of focus, having set my intentions earlier, when I found myself in the right places with the right opportunities, I knew what to do.  I could trust my intuition to guide me.

I’m sharing this every day experience as I believe this is what we’re aiming for in life.  A yin/yang balance orchestrated by our inner wisdom.  When we’ve cleared our fear and guilt of not being tied to our tasks and let go of our insecurities that might keep us small and hiding from action, we are perfectly placed to trust our inner wisdom to lead us through the day towards people and places that, in time, will help us to make our difference and live our purpose.

Are you Being Seduced?

My delight at finding eco cleaning balls for washing clothes reminded me of the challenge of recognising true opportunities verses seduction.  In changing times this is particularly important to master…… 

A true opportunity benefits all parties involved and fits with your values and what is important to you.  Although there may be excitement and fear connected with the opportunity, you will feel an expanded sense of possibility.  A seduction on the other hand usually means you get some benefits temporarily but the party offering it benefits a lot more.  Often the seduction is presented so well the only way to recognise it is through our intuition.  This may come in the form of a warning voice (perhaps saying ‘what’s the catch?’), a picture in your mind or a feeling.  Rather than an urgent panic it is usually more a feeling of unease.

As Master Life Coach Laura Berman Fortgang points out, the more you listen to your intuition, the easier your life will become.  When you can feel the difference between opportunity and seduction, you can prevent yourself from using your energy in pursuit of disappointing rewards, save yourself from getting into problems and keep yourself free for the real opportunities.

From my own experience and that of my clients, it is rare to find a negative situation that has arisen where the client had no awareness of their intuition warning them what was ahead.  Unfortunately it is often easier to ignore the intuition.  You may not want to believe it as the seduction sounds so perfect and it may be hard to find tangible evidence you can use to justify your decision to others.

Trusting your intuition is easier when….

*  You make time to ‘tune in’, listen and be open to your intuition, a daily practice for this is a great idea.

*  You understand how your body and subconscious communicates.  It is different for different people and could involve voices, symbols, emotions and body sensations.

*  You honestly review the intuition you’ve received in the past and the consequences of acting or not acting on it. 

Looking forward to hearing your experiences of working with this.

We've got balls!

http://www.nigelsecostore.com/acatalog/EcoBalls_150.html

 

Have you heard of these?  Yes they sound too good to be true but I thought I’d try and we’ve been amazed!  You just pop them in the washing machine instead of soap.  Great cleaning, no smell, no alergic reactions, no bad smell when the washing’s been left in the machine and this is continuing wash after wash!  No I’m not on commission, I just want to share the good news! :-)

Nine Essential Life Ingredients

Working with clients from all walks of life, I’m in the privileged position of being able to identify the ingredients that really make a difference to happiness and authentic success.  Rather than thinking of the physical things- money, a comfortable home and healthy relationships you might want in your life, I prefer to consider the ingredients as being the methods of gaining these things.  Life Coaching is often about expanding and refining these methods and they stay with clients to enhance their lives as they evolve further……

 

1.  Regular Quiet time – Finding out what works best for you (such as meditation, being in nature, prayer, free dancing, singing or running) and fitting it snugly and consistently into your day is a critical ingredient.  This isn’t necessarily ‘quiet’ time because there’s no noise, it is more that these times are about taking attention away from mind chatter and towards your intuition.  The quicker and easier you can get into a ‘quiet’ state, the better! 
   
2. Decision Making- From the quiet time above flows effective decision making.  It is easy to go round in circles when you haven’t all the necessary information and this is about logical research (your head) and tuning into your intuition (your heart).  You might use handy processes for narrowing down options, trying them on and making your selection, but once chosen you need to fully commit.  With commitment, decisions take the shape of goals and plans.  You can achieve and feel you’re progressing towards the life of your dreams, one great choice at a time.
   
3.     Connection.  Fully connecting with yourself within a spiritual context comes from point 1 (above) and from this place you can connect with others from the heart using tools to developing rapport, build relationship, define boundaries and increase trust. Exploring different groups to find your ‘tribe’, the people who share your values and priorities, and networking to build a circle of people with different skills and knowledge that you can draw on, are both important to our wellbeing.  As is deciding who to trust for more intimate relationships.  We grow through our connection with others and finding a special love connection is also about our own development.  What’s happening on the inside is key to attracting healthy relationships.
   
   
   4.  Managing conflict.  Inevitably some of the contacts you make will be problematic.  We are all different with different experiences and values and sometimes our needs conflict.  Taking a spiritual view of conflict means there is something to be worked through that will be rewarding to both once resolved.  This gives impetus for tackling the issue rather than avoiding it.  Understanding Transactional Analysis helps view the situation clearly and then it is important to have assertiveness skills to make your case and the ability to tap into your courage to move forward even when fear shows up.
   
   
   5.  Emotional Clearing.  When we see negative traits in others, it is likely we are projecting onto them what we don’t want to see in ourselves.  We need to take responsibility for all our feelings in order to move forward.  There may be strong evidence that we are an innocent victim but that view will not help us progress.  Once we have taken responsibility, we need to find ways of making sense of our feelings, accepting them and letting them go.  This is where emotional clearing techniques come in.  Emotional Freedom Technique, Byron Katie’s The Work and Colin Tippin’s Radical Forgiveness Process are ones I regularly recommend.  As you work with these, you begin to develop your own variations and it’s important to find what works best for you.
   
   
   6.  Self Nurturing.  Sometimes we might be tempted to ‘squash’ our feelings with food, drink or other addictive substances/behaviours.  We need to learn how to best take care of ourselves, what things nurture us and what harms us.  This can be different for different people but it includes our diet, what we need when we’re stressed, appropriate exercise etc.  When we value the quality of our energy sufficiently, feelings of guilt or unworthiness are set aside and we can take great care of ourselves.
   
   
   7.  Managing yourself and your time.  After a while we realise that we cannot rely on any parent or boss to consistently manage, inspire and encourage us and it’s better that we claim this role for ourselves.  We know what triggers our interest, ambitions and desires.  Finding out how to inspire ourselves and what to do when we get stuck are important for our personal productivity.  Getting the balance of yin and yang to move forward with intuition and drive will help us not only to get things done but also to be doing the right things.  Once we master this for ourselves, we are in a position to lead others to do the same.
   
   
   8.  Seeing the big picture.  It is easy to get involved in the drama of life’s ups and downs and for your emotions to be at the mercy of your environment.  Stepping back to see whole situations in the context of whatever spiritual beliefs you hold will help you to keep focused on what’s important.  Developing the observer position, where you step back and view what’s happening rather than always being in the thick of it helps foster self-awareness.  The often negative self-talk we have in our minds usually giving a constant commentary, can begin to be addressed once we have this awareness.
   
   
   9.  Sense of humour.  Keeping our sense of humour, helps improve our mood and deal with life’s ups and downs.  We know we are not taking things too seriously or personally when we can laugh at them
   
   
   If you’ve all 9 ingredients in your life, congratulations!  If there are any you’d like to work on- do get in touch!