How Not To Fail

How are you doing with your New Year's Resolutions? If you're like 90% of the population you'll have broken them at least once by now! I managed to break one of mine several times already!


The key thing to remember is that it doesn't matter how many times you fall off your horse, as long as you get back on it again. Or to put it another way, the only way to fail is if you give up.


This year I've designed my New Years Resolutions so that I'm less likely to give up. For example, I had been considering structuring my weekday evenings so that on Mondays I could play games, on Tuesday I'd do DIY, on Wednesdays I'd read work-related books. Basically these measures would help me to get more stuff done.


But personally I hate restricting myself so much - it totally deadens any sense of enjoyment when I feel that I "have" to do things at a certain time. I really prefer autonomy and spontaneity. So, rather than set myself up to fail, I've decided to abandon this particular resolution. I'll continue to do stuff as and when I feel like it, and I'm not going to feel bad if some stuff takes ages or doesn't get done at all.


My most important resolution is to be kinder. This is the one I've already broken twice, but I'm not giving up on it. It'll just take a little while to change this habit. Being a techie geek with a very scientific outlook, I tend to be very analytical. I then can get a bit pedantic and feel that it's necessary to correct other people's mistakes and argue when I disagree with them. Instead, I'm trying to just take a step back and remember that it's usually better to be kind than to be right. 


I'm not going to shy away from challenging others when it's really important. And if I notice that you've set your shirt tails on fire, I won't avoid telling you for fear of upsetting you :)   Basically I think it's all about picking your battles more carefully and seeing the bigger picture.


Apart from that, my only other resolution is to run a half marathon this year. I guess it's more of a goal than a resolution, but still. We've bought a treadmill and I'm planning on running several times per week. I had thought about specifying exactly how many times I'd run per week, but this would feel too restrictive again.


Good luck with your own New Years Resolutions!

Is Life Coaching Worth It?

Happy New Year! In the last few days, many people will have been thinking about their New Years Resolutions. It's a great opportunity to re-evaluate what's important in your life and what you want to achieve in the next 12 months. Increasingly,  people are turning to life coaches to help them accomplish their goals. But is life coaching actually effective? Is it worth it?


In this post I'll be discussing the benefits of life coaching and I'll help you to decide if it's right for you.


What qualifies me to discuss life coaching?
I've been interested in the personal development field for over 10 years. I've read a silly number of  books in this genre, some good, some bad. Most importantly, I've implemented the best ideas that I've come across in my own life and I've been really pleased with the results. So I know from first-hand experience that there are self-help techniques out there that really do work. Regular readers of my blog will have heard me say before that my life is in a really great place now. I'm not saying that I have a perfect life, but I'm happy with every area of it. My marriage has gone from strength to strength and I feel very lucky to have a career that I love.


A couple of months ago, I decided to see a life coach myself. I opted for (allegedly!) one of the best coaches out there, Tim Brownson. I have been following his blog for about a year and eventually I decided to take the plunge and have a few sessions myself. They've been great!


Recently I've been teaching myself life coaching techniques so that I could have an in-depth understanding of both sides of the fence, both client and coach.


And before you ask, no, I'm not getting any kind of commission for writing this article! I'm being as open and honest as I possibly can.


What can life coaches help with?
Two of the most common areas that people seek help with are with their careers or with their relationships. Most life coaches can help with both of these, though there are also coaches that specialise in certain areas. Please do search these out if you already know exactly what you want to work on.


Other people want this year to be the one during which they finally shed those extra pounds and reach their ideal weight. Some people don't know what they want, they just know they don't feel satisfied with how things are right now. And some people just want to learn how to be happier.


Life coaches can help with all of the above.


How do I know if a particular coach can help me?
It's a good idea to make a list of your own questions to ask a prospective coach, so you can be certain you won't be wasting your money. If they have a blog, read a few of their articles and see if you like their style.


Although any reputable life coach will have undertaken a certain amount of training, I feel that this isn't as important as you might think. It's far more important that you 'click' with a particular coach and feel you have rapport. Any coach worth their salt will let you have a free initial consultation to help you decide if you're right for each other. And the very best coaches will offer a money back guarantee after the first session.


It's important to check how long the coach has been in business. If they've only just been trained, the results may not be as good as you'd hoped. Ask the coach how many clients they've had in the last few months. The coach may even be able to put you in touch with their previous clients so you can ask them about their experiences.


What can a life coach teach me that I can't just get from a book?
This is actually one of the questions that I asked myself before hiring a coach. It's tempting to consider just buying a set of books and teaching yourself certain techniques. There's nothing wrong with this option, in fact I've been doing it myself for years, but there are certain disadvantages to just reading books:


1) Time. Firstly, just reading lots of books takes a huge amount of time and not all of the information will be relevant to your needs. However, life coaches are skilled at quickly getting to the heart of the stuff that's important for you. Many people see impressive results from coaching after just 4 to 6 hour-long sessions.


2) Knowing vs Doing. As I've learnt myself the hard way, there's a big difference between just reading a book (knowing) and actually implementing the advice (doing). Most people read books for enjoyment, skipping over some or all of the exercises. Then they feel disappointed when nothing changes in their lives! By contrast, a life coach will help give you that motivational boost to actually change your thinking and behaviour, day after day. 


3) Blindspots. This is probably the most important reason to hire a coach. No matter how well we think we know ourselves, we all have blindspots. I found this out myself during my first life coaching session with Tim Brownson. He pointed out one of my own blindspots and it felt like a revelation! At first I felt stupid for not noticing it myself, then I remembered that this is exactly the kind of thing that makes it worth hiring a professional life coach. You can read a million books and have great self-awareness, but you still may be missing something that a good coach can point out in 10 minutes flat.


Is life coaching a 'real' profession?
Life coaching is a relatively new profession and it's currently unregulated in the UK and US. Unfortunately that means that there are plenty of well-meaning yet incompetent coaches out there. Even worse, there are a tiny minority who are nothing better than con artists trying to rip you off. That's why it's important to do your own research and be totally happy with your choice of coach before handing over any money. If you know someone who has had coaching themselves, ask them if they're happy with the results and if they'd recommend their own coach.


Shouldn't I be able to deal with life myself? Isn't asking for help a sign of weakness?
Stop being so macho! We're in the 21st Century now! 


If you wanted to improve your golf skills quickly, there would be no stigma associated with hiring a golf coach (if could afford it). Similarly, I think that life coaching if a perfectly valid way to quickly see the improvements you want in your career, love life, health, and so on. I like to think of life coaching as some kind of super life shortcut!


What can life coaches do that counsellors, psychiatrists or psychologists can't?
These well-established professions definitely have their places. They tend to do a great job of helping people who have really quite serious problems in their lives or poor mental health. The goal is often to get their clients back to a 'normal' level of operating in day-to-day life. But these professions usually have little to say when it comes to achieving human excellence (though the fledgling field of 'positive psychology' is starting to make up for this).


By contrast, life coaches tend to work with clients that are already more or less 'average' and 'healthy'. The focus is on achieving excellence, not just normality. Personally, I find that far more exciting!


What actually happens in a life coaching session?
During your first session, the coach will probably want to ask you lots of questions about your problem/goal, just so that they can ensure that they understand the situation thoroughly.


After that, the coach may start working on those issues with you, or first they may want to undertake some more fundamental exercises, such as discovering your values. It really depends on the particular style and training of the coach.


When working on issues, Tim Brownson provides very little direct advice. Instead, most of his time is spent asking very specific questions which help you to think about your issues in a new way. There are a number of advantages to this approach. For example, psychology studies have shown that people tend to be better at making changes in their lives when they feel like they've come up with the answers themselves. In this sense, Tim is a master questioner! During my sessions with him I had several, "Aha!" moments that I reached thanks to Tim's skilful questioning.


What specifically did Tim help me with?
I've now had 3 sessions with Tim. There were loads of little benefits. But here are what I consider to be the 4 most important changes that I've seen as a result of life coaching:


1) I've now committed myself to starting my own business. I'd been toying with the idea for a very long time, but Tim has helped me to overcome my doubts and finally get on with it! I need to be very clear here - Tim didn't persuade me to start my own business. He didn't advise me either way, in fact. All he did was ask me certain carefully worded questions that helped me to realise that it's something that I really do want to go through with.


2) I now feel far less anxious in certain situations. Tim helped me with some cool techniques.


3) I've clarified my values. I was already pretty close with these, but Tim helped me feel completely certain in them. Values are important because they help to explain why certain careers, relationships etc feel right for you and others feel very wrong. Understanding your values helps you to make much better decisions because you'll be in touch with what's really important to you. For me, my 3 most important values are Fun, Growth and Connection.


4) Tim helped me to overturn a particular negative belief I've had about myself for ages. It now feels totally ridiculous that I'd believed something so silly. Now that this false belief is out of the way, it's helped me to feel more confident in certain areas. This is a great example of the blindspots that I mentioned earlier. I don't think that any amount of book reading would have helped me with this issue.


I've still got 1 session left, but I'm saving it until I find something else that I really want to work on!


Did I find life coaching worthwhile? Would I recommend that you hire a life coach?
I've certainly enjoyed my sessions with Tim and it has definitely helped me in certain areas. I'm a bit of an unusual case for Tim because I was already pretty happy with all areas of my life before we started our sessions. Usually Tim's clients have at least one or two areas of their lives that they're significantly unhappy with. These areas tend to be the ones that get focussed on during the life coaching sessions and there's often plenty of room for improvement.


So, you can see that I was setting Tim a pretty hard task to improve my life when it was already pretty damn good! But, I'm pleased to report that he's managed it.


So, if you're like most people and have a poor track record when it comes to New Year's Resolutions, or perhaps you just have a vague feeling that 2012 is your year to really make a difference in your life, definitely see if a life coach might be able to help you.

Babies and Bath Water

Backtracking
In the history of time, has anyone literally thrown a baby out with the bath water? But then I suppose many metaphors are unlikely to have ever been carried out literally. The baby, unless exceptionally tiny, would struggle to fit down the plug hole. I would imagine that the police may be interested in any attempts to dispose of infants in such a manner. And I've yet to meet anyone quite so pig headed as to cut off their nose despite their face. Though maybe that's what really happened to Daniella Westbrook and she simply made up the drugs story in a poorly calculated attempt to save face (pun intended).


Anyway, after my huge rant in my previous blog post, I've calmed down a bit. Tim Brownson has reminded me that there are valuable aspects in personal development (the aforementioned freshly-washed infant) amongst the dross (grey bath water). It's just frustrating that there is often such a lack of critical thinking and scientific evidence for many self-help theories being peddled by so-called experts. No wonder more established professions such as medical doctors and psychologists frown upon the personal development field when it lacks rigour. 


As an aside, it's useful to remember that some people do do it right - hence "positive psychology" degrees being taught at certain enlightened universities, which seem to go to great lengths to care about taking a properly scientific approach. Interestingly, positive psychology focusses on helping people with average mental health to excel, as opposed to standard psychology which often has a focus on the ill; helping people with poor mental health to reach an average again. Positive psychology is a relatively new field, and I believe it is making great strides towards improving society one person at a time, though it needs to extend its reach much further still and become more socially acceptable.


Beliefs
Moving on, recently I've been experimenting with some techniques for changing beliefs. I think we all carry around some unhelpful beliefs about ourselves that we simply assume are true and we rarely challenge them. Unfortunately these beliefs aren't harmless - they have undesirable consequences such as making us feel bad unnecessarily, or preventing us from fulfilling our potential.


For example, many of us believe (and frequently tell themselves) that we are stupid, or ugly, or bad at maths, or crap with money, or a poor friend/partner/lover etc etc... Basically in some way we think we are "not good enough". It takes balls to recognise and admit this to ourselves!


In the last year or so I've become fairly adept at REBT techniques for changing the way that I react to external events. These have been a minor miracle for me and have resulted in far fewer occurrences of negative emotions. Basically, they've made me much happier on average. They're easily one of the most powerful set of self-help techniques that I've ever come across.


But interestingly, our innermost beliefs about ourselves often operate at a subconscious level, so we're usually not aware of them even when consciously implementing the critical thinking techniques of REBT.


It's been my experience in the last few weeks that you have to deliberately hunt out your negative beliefs about yourself. You need to keep a close eye on your inner monologue to catch them. This definitely takes practice!


The good news is that once you've spotted a negative belief about yourself, the techniques for changing it are pretty simple. Michael Neill discussed these in his book SuperCoach. I read about this technique a while ago, but like a lot of things, there's a big difference between knowing something and actually implementing it. As an aside, that's another self-help book with some great techniques, but also a lot of bollocks in between. It can be hard work differentiating between the two!


Here's the process that I've been experimenting with for changing negative/limiting beliefs:
1) Write down the negative belief, e.g. Nobody that I fancy finds me attractive (This isn't one of mine, I've just made it up!)
2) Turn the belief into a positive statement. Don't worry if it seems unlikely! e.g. Quite a few people think that I'm attractive. Tip: Don't go overboard, it has to feel at least slightly possible!
3) Every now and then, tell yourself that the above positive statement is true.
4) In the next few days and weeks, actively look for evidence that supports the positive belief. Also actively look for evidence that undermines the previous negative belief.
5) From time to time, decide that you'll act as if the positive belief were true. It's just a bit of fun and you'll be surprised at how different it makes you feel.


Personally, a few weeks ago I had an irrational belief that I couldn't succeed at any big project or goal in my life because I'd always fall at the last hurdle. Tim Brownson helped me to realise that this belief was based on threadbare evidence, yet to me it felt completely true! Now I can see that there's tonnes of evidence to show that by and large, I've made a pretty good success of my life and there are plenty of projects/goals that I haven't messed up. My previous belief now seems totally ludicrous.


There will be some amongst you that think what I'm proposing is nonsensical and heresy, e.g. "I can't change facts about myself, I am who I am". Well, to that I'd offer a subtly different alternative: You are who you think you are, and thoughts (even deeply ingrained ones) can be changed. It just takes conscious effort and practice.


It's such a freeing thought to realise that you can define your own reality. To a large extent, you decide what is true and what isn't about yourself, your personality, your capabilities. Think of all the possibilities!


I'd speculate that it's possible to go too far with this technique. If you convince yourself that you're the most confident person in the world, you may come across to others as arrogant or delusional! And if you decide you're God's Gift to Women, you may just seem sleazy. With that caution in mind, I'd recommend this technique as being very effective at stretching the boundaries of what you'd previously simply accepted as true and/or possible. So why not start small and see where it takes you!


If you want to find out more about the theory behind these techniques, check out this book on Amazon, which is only £2 something for the Kindle version: About Self Esteem and How To Be Confident (The Self Help Bible).


Moodscope
Lastly, I just wanted to mention a cool website called Moodscope. You log in each day and track your mood by rating yourself against various emotions. If that sounds a little navel-gazey and narcissistic, bear in mind that it is very useful for improving your self awareness. You learn what sorts of things tend to make you happy and which make you less so. Over time you can learn to recognise the symptoms of an impending bad mood and implement strategies to prevent them or reduce their severity. Cool, huh?


The ratings system is based on scales developed by the American Psychological Association, so I feel reassured that it's probably based on fairly sound science.


One of the coolest things about moodscope is the daily email you get sent after signing up. It usually features a little anecdote which helps you to get your thinking into the right place and therefore improve your mood. There are loads of wise little nuggets and I really look forward to getting them each day. It's free, so why not check it out at www.moodscope.com.


Ciao for now, have a great New Year!

A Revelation

The Gods Are Cruel

Today's post is actually about personal development, but first a quick comment about yesterday's music rant. The timing couldn't have been any more comical! I rant about my 2 favourite DJs and then just today Radio1 announces that one of them is leaving the station in a few months and the other is having his weekly show reduced down to 1 week in 3... you couldn't make it up! Well, as the great philosopher said, life's a shit and then you die ;)

Sometimes the best action to take is no action...

Tonight I've had a revelation. I've finally read 1 crap self-help book too many and I'll have to restrain myself from hunting down and killing the author for inflicting such nonsense on the world. The whole self-help industry suffers from an appalling signal-to-noise ratio. I've realised that life is actually a lot simpler than I've been making it.

There's no point in me continuing to search for powerful answers in books or the blogs of gurus. I've also just cancelled the remaining life coaching sessions in the course that I'd booked with Tim Brownson. I already know all the answers I need to know. I already have the secrets to a happy and fulfilling life. All I need to do is believe in myself and take action as and when required.

Here's what I've decided I need to do to achieve my ideal life: nothing. That's right, nothing, nada, zilch. Instead I'm gonna take a long overdue chill pill, stop navel-gazing and just get on with life! I'm just gonna go with the flow. I'll do the things that I want to do, and I won't do the things that I don't. Simples.

I'm declaring myself a self-help free zone for the forseeable future! That means I probably won't be blogging about it either.

Yes, the are some useful pieces of self-help advice I've learned in the last few years. But they're all quite simple really and could fit onto 1 A4 page. If I had to identify the most important advice I could give to anyone else, it'd be to learn to think critically and question everything, but then also know when to stop questioning! If you can do that, all the answers you need for your life are already within your grasp. So have faith in yourself, dive off that 1000ft cliff and stop spectating life or trying to find all the answers (like I've been doing). Just get on with it!

Modern Dance Music

Today's rant has nothing to do with personal development, instead it's about one of my favourite passions, dance music. If it's not for you, switch over now!


When I was a teenager, I used to love listening to rave music. I owned several Helter Skelter 6-packs of live rave music and wore those buggers out. Most of my peers looked at my enthusiasm for this genre with a mixture of amusement and faint pity. I'm not sure that rave music has ever actually been "cool". It certainly seems to attract a different sort of crowd than say your average night at Pacha or the funky house scene. Somehow it's never really been respectable.


Twenty years on (yes, that does make me feel a bit old), rave music has evolved substantially and in the last few years seems to be undergoing something of a resurgence. Two of my favourite DJs at the moment both have weekly slots on Radio1. I guess that means their music must have a reasonably large fan base. Kutski specialises in hard dance, rave and the multitude of sub-genres in between. Kissy Sell Out describes his music as, "Jump up electro, rock and rave" - I guess this is his tongue-in-cheek effort at subverting the hard-to-follow micro-niches that dance music has evolved into. It's basically a kind of mixture of electro, dubstep and rave music.


I feel so strongly about this next bit that I'm going to have to put it in massive letters. Fuck subtlety!

I have never been so in love with dance music as I am right now

I love how all the different dance music genres have evolved and borrowed sounds from each other whilst at the same time continuing to sound fresh and new. The music that Kissy Sell Out and Kutski play now is the music that I wish was being played in clubs when I was 18-25. It's pretty much my perfect kind of music: Fast, fresh, cheeky, fun and musically complex (well, mostly!). I know that some people still turn their noses up at the rave, electro, hard house and dubstep scenes. Fair enough, all music is subjective so it won't be everyone's bag. But at least nowadays I don't feel embarrassed about the music I love. These tunes make me feel awesome and that's all that matters.


About ten years ago, most of the clubs I went to were trance nights. I do quite like trance, but it's never been my favourite genre and I got quite disillusioned with the lack of inventiveness in the scene. For me, it's often just not very musically interesting and somehow lacks "oomph". When Iisten to Judge Jules' show these days, most of his music just sounds really dull  to me. No offence to trance fans! The Judge used to be one of my favourite DJs too.


A couple of weeks ago, a good mate of mine joined me on a night out in Newcastle to see Kutski and other hard dance DJs. I was in heaven musically! Yeah I felt a little old, and the clubbers weren't as friendly as I'm used to, but it was still an awesome night out. Even the cheesy yet fun 180bpm gabba silliness with the opera singing that was played right at the end!


Although I don't think I'm ready to hang up my glowsticks quite yet, I do sometimes get that slight feeling that I may be getting a little old for clubbing. Lots of people my age have already grown out of it, or they have families and other responsibilities which make it logistically difficult. But I figure that as long as I'm not the oldest person in the club, and as long as I'm still having a good time, there's no reason to stop just yet!


I do know quite a few people that feel that their favourite age of dance music has pretty much passed. They lament the passing of their perceived golden age, and make comments such as, "music nowadays ain't what it used to be". I kinda feel sad for those people and I hope that the scene I currently love doesn't die out any time soon. But then again I also know quite a few clubbers that love the music that's around now just as much as some of the older stuff.


What about you? What do you think of the current dance music scene? Is it worse than the "good old days", or better? And do you still go clubbing, or do you feel a bit past it now?

Let's Go For A Walk

Making The Most Of Now
We've all heard the trite-sounding sayings like Carpe Diem (seize the day). My mum had a lovely painting which featured the words Cherish Yesterday, Dream Tomorrow, Live Today. But how many of us have actually tried to put this philosophy into action? It's something that I've been actively trying to do for a while now. Like any significant lifestyle change, it takes persistent effort and thought. Well, it does for me anyway :)   


This might sound slightly morbid, but for probably the last year I've managed to reach a point in my life where if I was told tomorrow that I only had 6 months left to live, it wouldn't be the end of the world for me (if you know what I mean). I'd be far more concerned about doing everything I could so that my wife and family would be OK after I've gone.


Sorry if that sounds depressing, but I actually think it's very very cool. My life these days is far less about achieving massive goals. I'm much more interested in ensuring that I consciously think about how I spend today. Am I doing things that I enjoy? Am I living a life that's congruent with my values? How could I tweak tomorrow so that it's just a tiny bit better than today? 


If I went to a job interview next week (this is hypothetical, I'm not thinking of leaving my current job!), it'd be quite funny to see the interviewer's reaction to the following:


Interviewer: "So, Rob, where do you see yourself in 5 years?"
Rob: "I don't really care. I know that wherever I'll be and whatever I'll be doing, I'll be making the most of each day, and that's all that matters"


I don't think I would get that job, but I'd be happy, so who cares?! Note to self: Be economical with the truth in interviews.


It's been said a million times before but it's so important that it's worth saying another million times again: Money, climbing a career ladder and material possessions won't make you happy (not long term, anyway). Happiness comes from the inside. And the best way to increase your happiness is by changing your attitude and the way you think.


Mm
OK, that "Mm" is just me being minimal with the word 'minimalism'. Crap joke, I know. Moving on, in the last few days at my house we've had a pretty massive clearout. It's looking quite tidy at the moment, which is surprising given that half the house is only semi-decorated. It's a beautiful, cathartic feeling to get rid of all the material crap that's clogging up your shelves, cupboards and tables. I can highly recommend it. The only problem is that we've half filled our wheeliebin already, with most of a fortnight left until the next collection. Oops.


Oooooom
Inspired by Tim Brownson's 30 Day Challenge, I'm dedicating at least 10 minutes per day for all of November to meditating. It's great for clearing your mind, becoming more relaxed and increasing creativity. Hopefully I'll be a little more committed to it than I was to the visualisation exercises!


Life As A Line
OK, time for a slightly Mad Rob (TM) concept that I was thinking about on my way into work this morning. I've only half thought this out, so by the time I've finished writing this section, it may seem a lot more crap than it does right now!


Imagine complete nothingness. Now imagine a blank sheet of A3 paper held just in front of your face. On that paper, a black charcoal line starts to be drawn from the middle of the left-hand side. This line literally charts the highs and lows of your life. As the days pass and the line snakes from left to right, it'll go down into dips when you're feeling crap. When you're feeling great, you get nice uphill slopes.


Now you can start to fill in the space around the line with a landscape that matches how you're feeling on a given day. On your crap days (the dips), you might draw a muddy bog. It's dark, cold and difficult to walk through. On your good days, the peaks might get changed into mountain tops, with snow, mountain goats and the odd skier. You could also draw a blue horizontal line across the page. This line could be the sea. It represents a neutral mood for you. When the charcoal line is above the sea level, that's a good day. When the line is below sea level, that's a bad day.


When I think about my own life on this sheet of paper, I think about how it used to be and how it has changed recently. I've had a slow and steady earthquake for the last 18 months or so. Thankfully the only casualties of this natural disaster have been people who were dragging me down. The land has been gradually pushed up, so that far less of it is below sea level. I'm having far more "good" days, and far fewer bad days (I nearly wrote "less" instead of "fewer" there - my wife would have kicked my ass!).


In addition, I spend far less time trying to get myself back up to those peak experiences. They used to be short-lived and were inevitably followed by trudges back down into the boggy valleys. These days, the earthquake has not only pushed much more of the land upwards, but it has rounded out the peaks and the troughs, making them less extreme. Not only that, but the little stick man who is traversing this landscape spends far less of his time looking way forward towards the next peak. Instead, he's making the effort to appreciate all the beauty that's around him right now. Was that a stork he just spied standing in that river in the mist? Gorgeous.


On the one hand, I feel a little reluctant writing stuff saying, "My life is awesome". A friend of mine had a habit of banging on about how amazing his life was. It was fucking irritating, to be honest. Instead, I hope that I'm inspiring people to take action to improve the parts of their lives they're not 100% happy with. 


Today's challenge: Think about how you want to change your landscape. And not only that, think about changing how you look at your landscape.


Hopefully that wasn't all just a load of old bollocks. Let me know!

Tweaks'n'Fixes

Applying Values
This morning I was reading Sam Spurlin's excellent blog and it suddenly dawned on me that I've not been making the most of my values. Previously, I'd recognised that I could refer to my list of values whenever I needed to make a reasonably important decision. But this misses an even better application of values. 


All we need to do is take a look at how we're spending our time, day in and day out, and for each activity we're engaged in, evaluate how much that activity aligns with our values. We can then try to change the activities that make up the bulk of our average working week to make them more aligned.


This seems so obvious with hindsight that I'm wondering why it hadn't occurred to me before. I have no excuse really - Tim Brownson's book How To Be Rich And Happy has a great exercise on how to design a working week that fits much more closely to your values.


As an example: my top 3 values are Fun, Adventure and Growth. So if I ever find myself spending lots of time on a task that's incredibly repetitive, requires little skill or is just dull, it'd be an excellent idea for me to make the effort ASAP to delegate the task, or change it to make it more fun, or teach myself a way to automate the task, or just ditch it altogether. Or I could just allow myself to slowly go insane ;)


De-cluttering
I've mentioned before that I love a good de-clutter, both physically and mentally. Since I decided to become a life coach, I've become intensely aware that there simply aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that I'd like. I need to de-clutter my home, my weekly schedule and my mind by getting rid of the things that don't fit with my values, passions or key skills. I've been inspired again by Sam Spurlin's minimalist tendencies. However, I don't wan tot go too far and end up having all my rooms look like the sparse 


Some ideas I've had about things to de-clutter:

• Sell DVDs & games that are cluttering up the area around our TV. I'm already only ever buying books and magazines electronically whenever I can.
• Tidy up all the important letters and documents that are cluttering up my computer desk.
• Sort through all our cupboards and ditch all the crap I've been hoarding. I'll be asking myself, "Do I really need this?!"
• I recently had a big clothes purge which was very cathartic.
• Start a project plan for embarking on my life coaching career.
• Set a date for passing my VCP5 (Nerdy IT exam) 
• Get my audio books back onto my iPhone so I can listen to them on my daily commute.
• I've banned myself from Facebook. I've gone cold turkey for about 24 hours. I get cravings, but I've removed the app from my iPad and iPhone, so that'll help break the habit. I reckon I'll get back at least 30 minutes a day. I may still have to venture on there occasionally, for example to look up event details for friends' birthdays, but I'll be in & out faster than an SAS strike team.
• Stop eating in front of the telly. Sit down at the table and talk to my wife! I'll feel more full, enjoy my food more and it'll boost my marriage.
• Focus on only doing 1 task at a time at work. It'll increase my productivity and help to minimise stress.
• Close Outlook and instant messaging applications while I'm working. Listen to music via headphones. These steps will increase my concentration and reduce interruptions.
• Slow down! I've become really aware of when I get stressed/anxious recently. The best antidote is simply to slow down, take deep breaths and remind myself that nothing's really as important as it might seem right now.
• Meditate. The single best way of clearing one's mind and increasing inner peace. But I've found it doesn't work very well if all you do is talk about it! I'll book it into my daily schedule.

Have you got any suggestions for de-cluttering yourself?