Time trials!

Have you ever found that there are not enough hours in the day?

Do you ever seem to be really, really busy but still feel as though you ahve underachieved on your day?

Me too! This post will be short as a result. I have a meeting to go to and I am in danger of missing my self imposed target of completing this blog every week.

Tips to get things done that work for me:

1. Schedule activities that are routine as though they are business meetings
2. Do not allow yourself to think they are unimportant and can be dropped for anything else
3. Reward yourself when you do it (chocolate, 5 mimutes to read the paper – whatever works for you)
4. Keep doing it until it becomes a habit
5. Make yourself do it even when you don’t feel like it

That’s why this post is here today! Have a great week

You have choices

I remember and old cartoon that covered one of the differences between the UK (my home country) and the US (the great country I now call home). It concerned the ordering of ice cream. If I remember it correctly the American customer was offered the choice of around 50 flavors, different sizes, different toppings and so on. The Brit was offered “Chocolate or Vanilla” and his response was: “Err… you chose”.

Not very funny I guess, and what is the relevence to coaching?

Well I have found that we generally have a lot more choice in life/career/business than we think. We can chose to put up with our current situation, or we can chose to change it. I have talked about change here before. Once we decide to definitely change, that decision can be very empowering.

So what is my contention about choice? Once we have decided to change (the first choice) we are apt to pursue relatively limited options. We can be constrained in our thinking by what we suspect others might think, or our view of societal expectations, or because we are afraid of failure – or maybe afraid of success.

Therefore we may feel that we don’t have much choice because either we can’t think of any options, or the things we think of appear too risky and we are stuck with what we have.

How to address this?

1) Assume that you can’t fail in what you try – now what will you do?
2) Assume you have unlimited resources and skills – now what will you do?
3) Consider what you really, really want to do. When you are doing it, how does it feel? What would a typical day belike in this new life?

There are other methods, these help us get passed limiting beliefs we have about what we can achieve by removing the common obstacles in our mind (including failure, money, resources, skills etc.) Once you see or feel these opportunites, it should free your thinking and help form a goal. From there we can explore options as to how to get there.

There are always more options than you initially think!

Confidence trick

What is confidence? When does it become over-confidence or arrogance?

Confidence is a fragile thing. When we are confident we approach life in a much more positive manner. The results we get tend to be better and this feeds our level of confidence all the more. The reverse can also be true. A lack of confidence can affect our performance and lead to a down ward spiral.

Building confidence is not simply a matter of telling yourself you are good at something. That can help but we are our own worst enemies and can sabotage such feelings quickly. There are a couple of things that can help though:

• We are responsible for how we react to a situation. We often can’t control what happens, and nor can we control our feelings about that situation. What we can do is decide how we respond. This can be very empowering. We can decide not to get angry/depressed/annoyed/animated/happy if we recognize how we feel about something and take responsibility for our reaction.
• Something that knocks our confidence doesn’t mean we need to take that as a reflection on our value – to ourselves or others. “We all make mistakes” is a cliche but, like many cliches, is essentially true. If we can accept that we messed up, but chose not to accept that we ARE messed up/ineffective/”bad” we can distinguish between the action and ourselves

In other words when something goes badly we can CHOSE to see it as learning point. We found something out that didn’t work. That doesn’t mean we are bad people, or that we won’t find something that works next time.

Similarly, when we find something that does work, we know that it can be repeated. This leads to better performance, and therefore we can feel good about that.

Confidence is fragile, but we are all able to build build it and when we look at ourselves, we can chose to see the positives, and learn from the negative outcomes without seeing a neagtive reflection of who we are.