Born to Run...?

During Christmas 2010  I opened a book called ‘Born to Run’ by Christopher McDougall; I think it was supposed to be an amusing or inspirational gift as I am not what you might call a ‘natural runner’. With the busy months going by I finally got to the reach for this book on a summer break and found a passage that I wanted to share…

The book itself is an exploration of the Tarahumara Indians, ‘the world’s greatest distance runners’ who can literally run for hundreds of miles without rest and be enjoying themselves at the same time. A running coach, ‘Vigil’ is at a long distance running event having spent years studying the ways to improve people’s running ability. He has discovered something new and is sharing it with his runners:

“There are two goddesses in your heart, The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come.  So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddesses of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you”.

In this context, Coach Vigil says ‘ask nothing from your running, and you’ll get more than you imagined’. I got to thinking about how true this is! How much better is life when you are spending time on things you love to do? How much better at it are you?! I wondered how many miles I could go for if I began to love running…

With this in mind, ask yourself these questions when making decisions about your career or business:

·         How much better would I perform if I LOVED what I was doing?

·         How much more successful would I be if I LOVED what I was doing?

·         How much further could I travel if I LOVED what I was doing?

·         How much more enjoyable would work be if I LOVED what I was doing?

You might have grown up believing that work had to be ‘hard’, ‘difficult’ or ‘exhausting’ if you were to truly deserve success, wealth and happiness… think about the above and see how it could work for you!

What’s stopping your next career move? Consider your worst case scenario…

Do you have a big decision to make in your career? Are you held back because you fear something about your chosen future? Perhaps you fear failure, or even worry about success. Whatever it is that is holding you back, take time out to really thrash around your worst case scenario and acknowledge your biggest fears. This can be truly liberating! (and daunting all at once).

When we try to ignore our fears, they do not go away. Fear is an emotion and like any emotion it is sending you a message and trying to protect you. It will only knock louder waiting to be heard if you continue to shut it out. We cannot eradicate our fears and they actually often have a positive intention, asking us to consider our options and keep us safe. When we recognise our ability to deal with that ‘worst case scenario’ and that which we fear most of all, we can feel empowered into moving forwards.

Consider for a moment the decision you have to make, or the progression you dare to seek.

If you made that decision what is the worst thing that could happen? What would this worst case scenario look like? What would you be doing? What would others around you being doing?

Now consider how likely this is to occur in reality?

What of the following do you have that will help ensure that you don’t get to that worst case scenario? (make a list by each item)

-          Knowledge/skills

-          Strengths

-          Support

If there are gaps in your resources, how can you fill those before you take that next big step? What steps would you take if you did find yourself in that position?

When you have really thought about the worst possible outcome and put measures in place to minimise the risk of actually ever getting to that point, how do you feel? By beginning to answer some of these questions, you are taking a step closer to achieving your goals. When you know you can handle anything, there is nothing to get in your way! 

(To really kick that fear habit, I recommend 'Feel the fear and do it anyway' by Susan Jeffers) 

What do you really want from your career?

One of the biggest issues I come across as a coach is people feeling dissatisfied with their jobs or careers, but not knowing what to do about it. Often the first question people ask is ‘what other job can I do?’ and find themselves endlessly trawling through job searches and taking quizzes that ask a series of questions and pop up with a list of recommended jobs. Whilst this can work for some, I have found a different approach much more useful!

Instead of starting with what job/vocation/title you would have, ask yourself these top questions:

·     If you absolutely knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do?

·    What would a day in the life of your ideal job look like?

·  What are your values in employment? Are you looking for security, adventure, challenge or something else?

·         What has kept you in the jobs you have had?

·         What has made you leave?

·         If you know what you would love to do, what is stopping you?

Write the answers to these questions and you will have begun to understand what is most important to you in your career, what your ‘must have’s’ are and what barriers could be getting in the way. Once you have a greater understanding of this, you can begin to set goals that enable you to reach your true potential and overcome the barriers you identified!

If you need security in your employment, setting up on your own may feel like a daunting task and you may need to find an acceptable level of stability first to enable you to really get it going! If independence is most important to you and you hate being told what to do, a job that offers more autonomy and flexibility is likely to make you happier. Working through these questions can enable you to do your job searches with a renewed focus, with a clearer idea about what you actually need to keep you happy in the work place. Good luck! 

Reduce Stress! The 5 R's

Has anyone noticed how stressed people seem to be today? It doesn’t take very long during the course of a week to hear someone utter the words, ‘I feel stressed!’ but the reality of it for people can be serious. In 2009/10 9.8 million working days were lost due to stress and it is estimated that as much as 75% (or more) of visits to Doctors are either directly or indirectly linked to stress. So what can we do about it? Here are five R’s to consider in reducing stress, today!

1. Re-evaluate. When did you last stop and take stock of what you are doing and why you feel out of control? Take time out and write down everything that is causing stress and those areas where things are going well. Seeing it written down allows you to begin thinking about how you can move forward. Be specific about how you would like things to be and spend time imagining this happening in reality.
2. Reward. Be kind to yourself and reward the things you do that work for you and are positive. Take just one action every day that contributes to your goal of reducing stress and note this down. Some people find it helpful to keep a journal so you can see how far you’ve come over time. 
3. Relaxation. Take time for relaxation and release. Changing our physical state impacts our emotions. You can utilise deep breathing techniques, visualisations, or just get up and move around. Doing something physical will release the tension and leave you re-energised.
4. Reduce. Sometimes we just take on too much and need to remove things that are unnecessary so we can begin to prioritise. If you can’t do everything you want to do, what is the most important thing today? What really matters to you? What would make the biggest difference?
5. Rethink.  Negative mind chatter can be very powerful in keeping us locked into stress. We can’t see the wood for the trees or a way out. Challenge the negative thoughts and begin to ask yourself, what can I do? What strengths do I have that can get me through this? Make a list of all your strengths and add to it everyday for 30 days. This in itself is a powerful way of getting your mind to focus on positives and minimise stress!

 

Get more done in less time!

How many of us would leave on a journey without having found out where we are going or considered the route we are going to take? I would imagine that most of the time, we check our destination, get a map or route planner and find the most efficient route of getting there before we leave the house!? However so many of us do not take this approach when we have ideas, goals or tasks to undertake. This can lead to feelings of overwhelm and we can end  up taking the longest way round, or stopping all together when we are not getting the results we crave! How can this be changed? These simple steps before starting out on a goal or task can support us in becoming more effective in an ever more pressurised world:

1.       Start with the end in mind:

What do you want to have achieved and when? If you could fast forward and your task is complete or your goal achieved, what is happening for you that tells you it is a success? When we consider the final destination this not only helps us identify how to get there, but supports our motivation for taking action at all.

2.       Establish why you want to do something:

What will completing that task, achieving that goal give you? How will you feel, how will your life be different? With bigger goals really take the time to visualise your success and attach emotion to it. Knowing it might be a good thing to start that business or it could feel good to be fitter is too vague. Be specific and be passionate!

3.       Identify the one thing that would make the biggest difference to your success:

What has got in the way before and how can you remove this obstacle? If you want to be more effective in the workplace, consider what one thing you could do to make a start! Would getting in 30 minutes earlier make the biggest difference, or writing that list so you know where you are heading?

4.       Track your progress:

Having considered your motivation, what your starting point is and where you are heading, how will you make sure you are on track? Set in review dates with yourself to consider how far you have come, reward successes and change course if things are not going well. If you did take a wrong turn on a journey would you stop there?! Re-visit the final destination and get back on track!

5.       Reward Success!!!!

When you do arrive, your task is completed, your goal achieved, what will you do to celebrate?! This may vary depending on the size of the goal however small milestone success should be celebrated. Having dinner with a friend, booking in that treatment or just having a cup of coffee out of your favourite mug in peace allows you to sit back and notice the positives….enjoy!!!  

What is your leadership style?

When you think about leadership, what springs to mind? Most of us think about the top chief executives in companies, great visionaries and those high up in public view. For me, the likes of Barack Obama, Lord Sugar and  Margaret Thatcher (whatever your thoughts on them individually) have demonstrated very different but definite leadership!  However, if you look at both your working and personal life you might be surprised to find that for most of us, leadership is something we do regularly and often don’t realise! So what is your leadership style and who do you lead?


Whether it be a family gathering, parenting a child, organising a trip or supporting colleagues, we all lead in some way at some time. Does the same style always work? No. We must be adaptable to be successful!

There are four main styles of leadership that most people will use at any one time:

• Directing/Telling 
• Coaching/Selling
• Supporting/Participating
• Delegating

 Directing and telling may be completely appropriate if you want your child to put their shoes on before going out in the snow! But is directing without consultation always the most effective approach with a teenager studying for exams? Similarly in a work environment, at times decisiveness is necessary but knowing when to step back and delegate a task, or when  support/coaching is required makes for a successful leader! 


For many individuals I have coached, poor leadership at work can be an exhausting drain on energy and resourcefulness. More people leave managers than leave jobs! Whilst we cannot change the behaviour of others directly, knowing more about our own ability to lead and adaptable styles can help us to be more effective within our sphere of influence. What kind of leader would you like to work for?

If you want to find out more about your own leadership style try out ‘Inspirational Leadership: Insight into Action’ at  www.inspiredleadership.org.uk and click ‘new user’. See what you discover today!

Source: Ann Skidmore: 'Coaching Leadership' at The Coaching Academy

I can make you thin??

After several years of queuing up at one slimming club or another and developing experience as a coach about what really motivates people to make changes I decided it was time for something radically different. No more calories, points, shakes, ‘syns’ and fads, what would really work in the battle of the bulge that won’t budge??  So, on 19th February 2011 I attended an event deliberately designed to draw in the hopeless dieter professing’ I CAN MAKE YOU THIN!!!’ courtesy of Mr Paul McKenna.

Welcome to the simplest yet apparently most effective system. Just four golden rules:

1.     When you are hungry go and EAT

2.     Eat what you want, not what you think you should

3.     Eat Consciously, (slowly) enjoying every mouthful

4.    When you are full, STOP eating

To the naturally slim reader this sounds like common sense right?  Essentially, it is. However those of us who have been brainwashed into believing the dieting mantra of thousands of books, clubs and shakes haven’t quite got there. We have instead gladly handed over lots of money, temporarily shifted some of those illusive pounds before getting disheartened, fed up, stopping the ‘plan’ and gaining it all back! Oh the joys of the calorie count…Paul McKenna’s mantra suggests that ‘dieting is a lesson in how to get fat and feel like a failure’. I concur.

What did this event teach me? Firstly, the golden rules as above – the most important of which he states is slowing the eating pace down to about ¼ of the usual speed. This is about getting in touch with your ‘physical hunger’ and recognising that weight gain is not, I repeat not, about the food! It is about habits we develop over time that are unhelpful. Bored, upset, sad, happy, stressed – if you link emotions to eating, things get out of sync.

It isn’t so easy in reality to shift these habits, but Paul McKenna’s event lightens the mood on this issue. It is ok to laugh at the habits developed and to seek support to change them. His books all come with a hypnosis cd called the ‘mind programming technique’. The cd is relaxing and helps reinforce the positive messages from the event to help you feel good about yourself and embed the above principles. (You don’t have to attend a live event to benefit from this).

Having attended the event and listened to the cd I am feeling great! I have found myself eating less but actually enjoying food instead of feeling guilty. I am recognising when the hunger signals kick in, when I am full and I have stopped berating myself every time I dare to tuck into something really tasty and usually forbidden!

As a coach, I am already aware of the importance of setting specific goals and visualising success. Therefore I am a fan of anything that helps with that. Paul Mckenna – I am a fan.