I’ve been bogged down with the flu this week. On Thursday I was lounging on my sofa feeling sorry for myself, whilst rotting my brain watching daytime TV, when the phone rang. It was a journalist from the Yorkshire Post who was writing an article about whether money brings happiness and wanted my point of view. Despite feeling awful I was able to chat with him and share my thoughts. The resulting artice was published the following day and makes interesting reading. You can read it, and my comments, by clicking here.
When you work from home it can be very easy to spend the day attached to your computer and not get enough fresh air nor exercise.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been experimenting with going for a walk before I start my work and I have been thoroughly enjoying it. I go out for anything between forty minutes and an hour and I leave my mobile phone and handbag at home. It is really pleasurable to stride along unencumbered by any bags and general clap-trap. This also leaves you free to swing your arms as you walk which increases your heart rate and thus gives you a fitness benefit too.
When I get back home I have the same buzz as if I had just worked out at the gym. Even though the walk makes my start time a little later, I feel that I work more productively.
I’m doing a lot of writing at the moment so my day at the computer is quite an intense activity. However, it definitely helps to know that I have had sufficient exercise before I get lost in the creative process.
A couple of weeks ago I heard the most brilliant tip to help me keep my writing on track. All you need is a calendar or wall chart. I was told that for every day that I write I need to put a big ‘W’ on that day on the calendar.
Initially I mis-heard the advice and thought it meant that you used the calendar and the ‘W’ to plan the days when you intended to write. But then I realised that you placed the ‘W’ on the calendar after you have written.
So I have tried out this technique and found that it is really good to see exactly how often I have been committed to my writing. This highly visual record is motivating me to have as many ‘W’s as I can.
How can you adapt this method for your creative pursuits or business aims? If for example you decide that you are going to do some painting twice a week then perhaps you need to mark your calendar with a ‘P’ when you’ve done your painting and review at the end of the month whether you’ve hit your twice weekly target.
You could mark the calendar with an ‘E’ for exercise or an ‘M’ for marketing or an ‘S’ for study, depending on whatever it is to which you need to be regularly committed. The possibilities are endless.
Happy New Year!
Here we are – the beginning of January, that hangover time of year where all the fun relaxing time has gone and another year of hard work beckons! It is also a time when we are bombarded with messages of get fit, lose weight, stop smoking, start detoxing and get success in 2008 beginning right now. It is no wonder that most people in the northern hemisphere hate January!
I am one of those people who find January (and February) difficult. It is winter, daylight is in short supply and our bodies naturally want to curl up and hibernate for a few weeks. So this puts us in conflict with the messages I’ve described above where society wants us to work hard, be dynamic and solve every personal flaw overnight!
For many years I coerced myself into this January bandwagon and just found myself even more worn out and depressed than when I started. Why do we force ourselves against our natural flow? When it is summer time, the weather is warm and the days are long we don’t make ourselves sit inside, curled up with a movie and stuff ourselves with mashed potato. So why do we expect and demand an unnatural level of activity in this cosier time of year?
Last year I started to experiment with following my natural rhythms and honouring the fact that at this time of year our bodies want to be slower. I learned that it was harder to promote myself and my business in these few weeks and so changed the rhythm of events and activities that I was undertaking. I also let myself off the hook in my personal life and allowed myself to enjoy spending time alone at home pottering about doing nothing much, rather than being the social queen that I sometimes am. I found that I was happy doing quiet activities at home and as soon as spring started to make an appearance with the longer days in March then I naturally came out of my shell again.
This year I am doing the same. My most important activity at the moment is completing the draft of my novel – this is perfect ‘at home’ cosy work. Of course I am still seeing my clients, doing a bit of marketing and anything else that must be done but I won’t gear up and do anything powerfully dynamic until March or April.
In the last two years of being a life coach I have also found that my also business takes on this same rhythm. My busiest time of year when new people come to me for coaching is not January but April and May. Whilst we are bombarded at this time of year with what we should be doing, it is often easier to act on these goals in spring.
So here comes some radical words from a life coach – don’t flog yourself too hard at the moment to achieve your goals. Honour whatever your natural rhythms are and enjoy the quietness of winter if that feels right to you. It might be a perfect time of reflection to formulate what you want from your life but don’t thrash yourself to achieve it immediately. Take small steps and leave some time for relaxation. Make sure you do get outside and get some daylight everyday and then enjoy spending time with yourself at home.
Happy winter!
It’s the end of the day and I am sipping my first sherry of the festive period.
I’ve had the most brilliant writing day today. At last that Christmas quietness has arrived – the time when work, business and commerce winds down and a rejuvenating headspace begins to appear. I remember, at exactly the same time last year, when after weeks of promising myself, I was finally able to sit down and easily write a long-planned for ebook.
Is it something about the rhythm of winter solstice when the day is at it shortest before sunlight begins to increase again, or is it just the day’s proximity to Christmas when the world begins to stop turning quite so fast? Who knows – but whatever it is, it works for me. I’ll hopefully be able to squeeze one more day of writing before succumbing to Christmas preparation and festivities.
Where ever you are have the most wonderful Christmas, relaxing time off and a Happy New Year
Until 2008 …
When it comes to finding time to write it is often necessary to be exact with your time management. The completion, and publication, of my novel is becoming more and more important to my overall business success. However, even I – a life coach, have found it difficult to put enough time aside to concentrate on writing. My business keeps me very busy and I have a mile long list of marketing ideas that will bring me more business – but if I spend too much time doing them then I am not writing!
In the last few days I have had to have a brutal look at that to-do list. For each item on it I have asked the question, “Is this more important that my writing?” For some of the items the answer was yes so I still need to schedule time to do the activities. And for some the answer was no. Some of the ‘no’ items are important and are good ideas, but for the time being they will have to wait and I will get back to them in a month or two.
What is it that you are never getting around to doing? Then look at the barriers that keep stopping you progressing with your aims. You can now ask yourself, barrier by barrier, which is more important. By doing this you may find some useful insights as to how you manage your time.
The last few days have held many accomplishments for me. Last week I did my first radio interview. It was for Passion for the Planet radio, which is a fantastic digital radio station dedicated to environmental and health issues. (See http://www.passionfortheplanet.com/ for more info). My interview was on the theme of “don’t give up your day job tomorrow but do start doing something towards your dream” and will be played throughout January.
And last weekend I, at last, completed my NLP Practitioner course. This course should have taken about three months but because of the severe back problems I had last year I had to keep deferring the final module of it. I was supposed to do it last October but had to defer it to January. Then I had another back episode two days before that attempt so it got postponed again. There was another opportunity to do it in the Spring but I was on holiday so we booked it in for August. Unfortunately the training company had to cancel the August course so it ended up being November, over a year since I was originally scheduled to complete it!
It was definitely worth the wait and really pulled together all the strands of learning and my experience of using NLP with clients over the last year.
We finished the course with an arrow-break. This is a fantastic exercise where you break a proper archery arrow with your neck and sheer determination. It is a bit daunting as the metal tip of the arrow goes in the soft bit of your neck where your throat is and the other end is braced against a piece of wood held by someone else.
The exercise goes back to Red Indian folk lore where a wise old Indian decided that the arrow represented all his fears and everything that was holding him back. He had noticed that a puma gathers himself and pounces in a single attempt and with all his might on his prey. The Indian challenged himself to break the arrow with this same determination and thus shatter his self-imposed limitations.
I had seen the exercise done before so knew that it was possible but when I found myself standing with an arrow propped against my throat I did briefly question my enthusiasm and sanity! However, I stepped forward into the arrow with great determination and it broke very easily. I then had a feeling of tremendous elation and left the course feeling that I could conquer the world.
Hi all. It has been a couple of weeks since I blogged so here is my latest update. I have now written a completely new chapter one to Tales of the Countess and am now working on Chapter 2. I think by the end of this chapter I should be able then to make the link to my existing draft. From that point onwards I’ll be editing rather than writing afresh. So I’m about half way through the hardest part! I have quite a bit of time to write this week so am hoping to make good progress.
Last week I heard the most wonderful tip. It is called a Gratitude Book and it works like this: at the end of each day you write down three things that happened in your day that you feel gratitude for. I heard about this on Tuesday evening at the end of what had been a very s**t and frustrating day. I decided to try out the technique and it was fantastic to overlook my irritation and to find and pick out three positives from the day. I’ve been doing it since and it is really good fun.
So often when we are working in our own businesses or in creative pursuits (and I’m doing both at the moment!) we can get very bogged down if we don’t see immediate results from our labours. This can lead to a plummeting self esteem which can then create a disastrous negative cycle. I think that spending a couple of minutes at the end of the day to pull out three positives (or three small achievements) and feel gratitude for them will boost self esteem and result in a new upwards and positive cycle.
It has been a couple of weeks since I updated this blog. The main reason for this is that I was preparing for my Start The Future Now workshop that took place last Saturday. I had a wonderful group of people in West Hampstead on Saturday morning who all figured out a game plan that would take them from where they are now to where they would prefer to be in life. I look forward to presenting my next workshop – Stop Procrastinating, Start Doing on 1st December.
I put a lot of effort into delivering workshops and find that it can be leave me quite tired and drained for a couple of days afterward. This week was no exception so I decided to take the beginning of the week off. On Monday the weather was very grey and pretty cold so, after treating myself to breakfast at my local café, I had a wonderful day on my sofa watching movies and DVDs of my favourite TV shows (not telling you which show because I’m too embarrassed. The only clue I’ll give you is that it is an 80s classic!)
On Tuesday the weather was much brighter so I took myself into Central London and had a fabulous day mooching about Piccadilly and Mayfair. As I sat in a deckchair in Green Park, enjoying the Autumn trees and bright sunshine, it occurred to me that perhaps we all need a half term break. For me, September through to Christmas is a very productive time of year but it is good to take a couple of days breather and go out and ‘play’ somewhere. Your ‘play’ might involve a DVD fest, a shopping trip, a beauty treatment or taking the time to do something touristy in your own town or locale. I certainly enjoyed taking a back seat from my normal routine and seeing London through fresh eyes.
This is an apology if you have just arrived here from the Alternatives newsletter.
There was a mistake in the newsletter which ended up advertising my blog instead of my forthcoming Stop Procrastinating, Start Doing workshop. You can find details of the workshop at: http://www.leadthelife.net/events/stop-procrastinating.html.
Anyway, now you are here, have a look around and enjoy my website.
