BlogPositive

Why are you queuing?

I had another challenging transport day yesterday.  I was at Birmingham International station with no trains at all going North due to a fatality at the next station.  There were about 200 people queuing for buses and another 50 or so in the queue for taxis.  It was just gone midday and I had been up since 3.30am. I was certainly not in the mood for queuing and I just wanted to get home.

So a thought came to me.  That station is right next to the airport and is connected by a monorail taking just 1minute.  I hopped across to the airport and jumped straight into a taxi to New St station. No queues, no crowds, no waiting.

All it needed was the creative thinking to make the connection.  But how many of us feel that we are waiting in line in our lives and work for something to happen, feeling that you have to let the others go first, that you have to hang on until the appointed time, until you came to the top of the pile or the front of the queue.  Yet maybe, just a minute away, there is a place where you don't have to queue, where people want to help you, where there are resources and facilities aplenty, where there is opportunity. It could be right in the next office or just around the corner and you haven't seen it cos you've been blinkered, focusing on keeping your place in the queue right in front of you, just like everyone else.

I say, life is too short for queuing.  Think creatively about where there are no queues and how could you get there.  What will you do to queue-jump today?  How will it feel when your queueing days are behind you and you have all that stuff that you have been waiting for?

The best year yet?

See I don't really believe in being talked down by all those gainsayers out.  It may not be cool or popular to say it but I am going to.......

Are you ready?

I am having my best year yet!!

Yes its completely true.  Exisiting clients are throwing more work at me almost daily. I am getting new clients and I am getting calls from people who want to work with me in a variety of new and different ways. Hey you may think that I'm lucky, that I have some secret formula.  Well let me tell you the secret.

Are you ready?

Its bloody hard work.  All that client work does not fall out of the sky I can tell you. Its about applying yourself, doing the hard graft, not giving up when you get a no the first time round all mixed up with a very healthy amount of always putting the client first, doing a damn good job when you get out there to do your thing and believing that everything will go right, having a sales accumulator graph on the wall in front of me and expecting to be successful.  And yes there are some nights with just a few hours sleep.  Yes there are the days when the public transport system lets you down or the bank seems to be your worst enemy, but thats just real life and no-one ever died from real life.  Above all its  about having a passion and belief in what I'm doing.  For me thats what makes the difference between good and great.

So if I can buck the recession trend so can you.  If you want to have the best year yet for you and your life just decide to make it that way.  Think positve, take action towards those positive goals, give something back and expect the best.  But remember - the secret is taking action, not just thinking about it.  What action can you take today to make this your best year yet?

Vote for happiness!!

The Mind Gym award an academic prize for the best research on positive psychology.  You can look at short videos prepared by this years short list entrants and post your vote here.

My vote went to the Happiness research.  If there is one thing that almost everyone wants on my development programmes its to be happier. I'm delighted to see that the research backs up my gut feeling - that having more things doesn't make you  happy.  When I look around at the people I know the ones that have always seemed the happiest are the ones having more experiences, doing more things, interacting with more and different people, travelling, doing new things and trying out new ideas, expanding their experiences.

Its great cos it now shows that you can do things to make you happy.  As the guy says " The take-home message: to become happier, start doing something new. If you do it well, and also vary how, when, and where you do it, then you can gain lasting benefits."

What new things can you do this week that will make you happier.  How can you vary the new things you did last week to keep this new state of happiness?

Keep smilin thru

The last two day have been a time of trial by weather for many.  I've chosen to stay smiling and believe that the best would happen.

Yesterday I had a flight to Stansted from Newcastle.  This was a good thing cos it was the only airport open.  Bristol, Luton, East Midlands and Birmingham all were shut with snow.  At the end of the day I then went by train to Swindon.  I arrived hopefully at an eerily empty Paddington at 5.30pm and was safely delivered to my destination on time amidst gloomy predictions of travel chaos.

Then today I had to get to Bristol from Swindon for a flight, with heavy snow making travel difficult.  Fate deliverd me a coaching client with a 4x4 (thanks Michelle) who drove me to Bristol Parkway station where we holed up to regroup.  We laughed a lot and believed that we'd get it sorted out.  I took a train.  My gut feeling that the airport would remain closed and my flight cancelled turned out to be right and I actually got home earlier than if I had been on the plane.  Despite both Severn crossings being closed Michelle also got to Wales eventually.

Are you facing the world with equanimity, believing the best will happen?  What's your disaster recovery plan if everything fails?  What would be a more helpful emotion than worry and anxiety?

Proud to be Australian

The BBC announced this morning that the difference between the minimum temperature in the UK and the maximum temperature in Sydney was around 60 degrees.  Thats an amazing fact.  They then interviewed a number of Australians, asking them if they wanted to swap their heatwave for the snowy environment in the UK.  Not surprisingly they all said no.  One said "I'm proud to be Australian and I love my country.  I wouldn't swap it for anywhere".

I thought how refreshing it was to hear someone express that sort of pride.  I've very rarely heard anyone say that about Britain.  Somehow its become unfashionable to express pride, and not just pride in your country either.  How unusual is it for you to express pride in anything - your work, your children, your successes, your home or garden or creative projects, your friends or the support that they give you.

So just for a minute think of what you're proud of.  I'm proud of what I've achieved with my work - bringing opportunites for development to so many women.  I'm also proud of my course particpants for the many amazing things that they go on to achieve.  I'm proud of all my climbing and skiing friends who keep in touch when often I can't get out and join them because of work pressures.  I'm proud of taking the circulation of my newsletter to over 700 and I'm proud of my independance.

What are you proud of?  What does that tell you about yourself?  Who will you tell about that pride tomorrow? 

Getting to grips with the to-do list

I was so busy training last week that I ended up with only Wednesday evening to catch up with admin and prepare for two days of delivery and client and supplier meetings. I jotted down everything that needed to be done and the list had 16 items on it. It has to be said that there were 3 items on that list that didn't HAVE to be done immediately but everything else was critical for the next two days.

Now I know that some people are completely overwhelmed by having a to-do list like that. However I view it very differently. It's a bit like being in a sweetie shop with jars and jars of different sweets. There is so much choice. Today I can have liquorice allsorts and tomorrow butter toffees. Having a long list to me is great as it gives me a huge choice over what I do and the order that I do it in. I had about 5 hours to get most of it done and it didn't really matter in what order it was done. So as my feeling changed minute by minute I was able to select things from the list that I felt like doing. It was also good because I could make a start on one thing - printing out materials for example, and then go on to something else whilst that was in progress, therefore working on two things at once.

The trick is to look at things differently, in a positive light, rather than being weighed down by negative perceptions. How could you look at your to do list differently? How will that help you be more successful?

Where have you come from?

I've just reached my company financial year end. I was discussing this with a friend on Sunday. We have had a slight drop in overall income this year for a variety of reasons. None of these are to do with the credit crunch. However, looking forward to next year I am optimistic. We already have as much work scheduled for next year as we have done this year. That means that whatever new work I secure from here on is an addition to our bottom line, giving a greater income for next year. That's really good news to have just before xmas. But even better, my friend asked how that compared to last year. Well that's the critical thing. Looking back to December 2007, we didn't have the same level of work already programmed in for 2008. So that means that we are already ahead year on year. And that feels even better. I hadn't really taken that in until my friend asked that question. Sometimes we can only see how far we have come by looking back and seeing where we have come from. We often don't do that cos life is always moving forwards, we look to the future, we plan and set goals. So actually analysing where we were a year ago, a few months ago or even a week ago allows us to see how far we have progressed up our success ladder. And of course our success is not just measured financially but also in how we feel, how well our projects are progressing, how well our relationships are going and a million other measures that are meaningful to you. So how far have you come this year? Where were you a year ago? Where do you plan to be in a year's time?

Whats your passion?

I had a friend staying the other day. He is a Liverpool fan and they were playing a game. Every now and again his phone would go off when it alerted him that they had scored. He apologised for it. "You don't mind if I look at this do you?" I don't mind - it's important to him, its something that he cares about. Is there stuff you care about? Or do you just fade into the background, just another grey person with nothing to distinguish you from anyone else. I've often found that people can be all too politically correct about stuff, not want to put their hand up and be counted, actually speak out about stuff that they care about. It doesn't matter what you care about really, just that there is something that gets you excited. That something will give you some zing, make you seem alive. It will drive you to action and colour what you do. It will set you apart from people around you. And when the chips are down it can give you something to live for, a reason to keep going. What you really care about makes you who you are to some extent. If you don't really care very much about anything then who are you, really? What do you care about? Does anyone know that?

Being superwoman

I was working with some senior women in the Midlands this week. It was the end of our programme and we were taking some feedback. One woman said that she had been a bit anxious about being invited to attend as she knew quite a lot of the names on the list. She thought that they were all superwomen who she may not be able to measure up to. Once she arrived and got to know everyone she realised that they were all normal people. They were good at their jobs and juggling busy lives, just like she was. She felt really relieved but then had a light bulb moment. If she was sitting in the room with all these supposed "superwomen" then maybe she was a superwoman too! She asked some of the other women and they said that they really admired everything that she achieved and the way that she had a great relationship with her staff and actually got huge amounts done. At the end of the day she went home feeling fantastic as she'd become a superwoman simply by being herself and associating with other successful people. Anyone can be a super-person. In fact you may be a superwoman or superman in someone else's eyes, yet not realise it. You won't know until you ask. And if you were a super-person what would you change? Now go and start work on that - you know you have the powers!

What's your attitude?

This week I'm zooming around the country picking up some training for some of the trainers in our network who are unable to deliver this week. I just arrived south of Birmingham tonight at about 8.30pm after a 4 hour drive from Cumbria. The hotel receptionist was sympathetic to my very hectic schedule. I told her about the reasons for my trip and then she said, what, to me, seemed a very odd thing. She said "So you got the short straw then, driving down to deliver the training at really short notice". I was stunned by that, as that attitude had never occurred to me, nothing could be further from my mind. I'm really pleased to be able to help out colleagues who are in a fix. I'm happy to have work as I happen to have the time available. I'm interested to meet some different clients and people from different organisations. I'm putting on hold the things that I would be doing because its more important to keep the programmes going and to help out colleagues who need it. There is not a bone in my body that feels put upon, short changed or unhappy to be driving down to deliver these programmes. As I said it had never occurred to me. So what that said to me was that my attitude was a long way from what other people's might have been in that situation. I had a much more positive attitude to the situation than the receptionist was expecting. Now that was a surprise to me because I sometimes potter around in my own little world without really checking what is going on outside. So when you are suddenly brought up against the world outside yourself it can be a surprise. And you don't actually know about that unless you ask or you get some sort of feedback like that. What's your attitude and how does that compare to what people are expecting of you? What will you do with the feedback that you have?

Conservation of resources

Many of you will know about the fraught relationship that I sometimes have with time.  I need to keep it all filled and it sometimes gets over-filled and then trips me up. It seems to run too fast when I need more time and then too slow when I'm in anticipation mode!  I've never really got enough of it, so I feel.  Well of course I have, as I have the same quantity of time as you and the person sitting next to you.  Its all about how I prioritise my use of this resource.

We all have plentiful supplies of resources. Things like time, energy, motivation, enthusiasm, love, belief, confidence, determination, self esteem, joy, positivity, are the resources that we use for daily living.  We all have these reources and we can chose how we use them and how much we use them.  We all make different choices about how we prioritise the use of our resources.  You might choose to use most of your energy on work and neglect bringing that energy into your home life.  Or maybe you put all your determination into one project and you let some other issues just float on by.

You may prioritise the use of your resources by what is important to you.  Or perhaps its what is urgent.  Or maybe you prioritse the use of resources that you think are scarce.  Well however you prioitise or try to conserve these resources there are usually more out there somewhere.  You just have to decide that you'd like more.  You can get pretty much all the resources you need in this way.  Just decide to have more available to you.

What resources would you like to have more of today.  Just ask!  Now, where did I put that jar of extra time and the box of instantly applied enthusiasm?

The snow wins

Yesterday I was up in Scotland taking my skis for a walk. We had planned a traverse route from Ben More near Callander, southwards across a couple of other hills ending at our second car. We ended up being much later leaving than intended because I had arrived late.  This was due to waking to an unexpected 3 inches of snow. This made my journey out to the main road quite interesting.  Then we failed to find the right track through the forest so had a tricky ascent up a stream to break out onto the hillside. Then it was just hard work.

Eventually there was enough snow to put our telemark skis on. We were skinning up mainly neve, aiming for a ridge to gain access to the main mountain. This was slow work as we were working across a slope and had to do much of it edging instead of going straight up. It was also pretty windy, blowing spindrift into our faces and lifting me off my feet once.  Eventually we topped out on the ridge and could then see the rest of our route stretching out before us. It was still a very long way, even if we missed out the two hills. By then it was already 3pm.  So we made the sensible decision and headed down the way we had come.

The skis ran very fast on the neve and we were soon stomping back through the forest with legs and feet sore from walking so far in ski boots. Even bendy telemark boots and ski moutaineering boots take their toll on your body.

It was to have been a two munroe day and we failed to make even one of them. Today my hip bones and collar bones are sore from carrying my rucsack weighed down with skis.  I know many people who would have wrttten the day off as a complete failure. However we had a great time, I really enjoyed being out in the hills. We enjoyed what we did and got home safely. We managed all of our gear effectively and got off the hill in the daylight.  We proved to ourselves that the hill was skiable even with the level of snow cover that there was.  We had all driven and met up from three different locations and that worked OK as well.  It will still be there next time we want to go back and we have a lot of knowledge that will help us next time.

Anywhere in life if you don't achieve your original goals there are positive things to take from that jounrey.  It is not the time to beat yourself up. Its the time to review and work out what worked well (all of our gear worked well in pretty horrid weather conditions), what did you enjoy (just being out in the snowy mountains), what should you do different next time (get up earlier!).  No experience is life is wasted. There is always something new to learn from it.  We took on the snow and it won but we still had a good day out.

Do something different

All the research evidence tells us that as we get older we need to use our brains more to avoid mental decline.  However there are actually things that we get better at doing with our brains as we get older. One of these is pattern recognition.  We are better able to notice when there is a repeating pattern of behaviour, events, incidents and we also better remember if we have previously encountered conceptual things before such as a story, news article, piece of music or we can quickly associate images with those we have seen before.

So I believe that our brains become more powerful as we get older.  Maybe they are a bit like my computer - its more powerful to me now than when I bought it as it actually has more stuff stored in it.  Your brain does store more stuff every day so its not surprising it can recognise patterns more easily as it has more data to work with. Any time you enc outer a new experience in life you brain tries to classify or categorise it with something that it already recognises.  This is a bit like me asking my computer to find a file containing the word "happiness".  The more data it has to compare with, the more likely it is to make a positive association.

When the brain is doing this work it is laying down new connections and developing new pathways.  This build up your brains ability to do things, giving it greater choices of the pathways it uses.  So its like a road map - if I wanted to go from A to B and only one road existed, with a slow tractor on it which I couldn't overtake I'd take a long time to get there.  If I had a choice of roads I'd be able to make the journey more effectively.

You don't have to do things outrageously differently to make your brain work that little bit harder and make new connections.  You could just take a different route to a familiar place, eat your lunch in a new cafe, go to the cinema instead of the pub.  What are you going to do that's different today?  What else will you do that's different tomorrow?

The old way is best?

I've got great gaps in the brickwork in my porch and yesterday finally got aorund to filling them with expanding foam filler.  This only took about 20 minutes and has done a pretty good job too.  However later on I was reflecting that the other alternative would have been to mix up some mortar and repoint the areas in need of it.  That's what should have been done when the porch was built, probably about 40 years ago.  However its much quicker and pretty much as effective to use the foam.

One thing I have noticed about getting older is that I can keep doing things the old way, becasue I know how it works, I'm comfortable with it, when there may be better ways to do things.  So I spent many months thinking about buying mortar (and always rememberig after I'd left the DIY shop).  Then the other day I saw the foam filler cans and just bought them almost without thinking.

So there are times when we should stick to the old ways but we should also recognise that the world is moving on with us and new ways of doing things are appearing every day.  We should always investiagate these as with our life experience we'll be able to judge very quickly if they are better than our exisitng ways.

What new things will you try to day?  What old ways are you going to dump?  What are you going to experiment with?

Silver Linings

I spend a lot of my time asking people to look for the positive things in their lives and sometimes I need to remind myself about this too. Its been a really busy week and I have done 5 days of full day meetings and training delivery at three different places around the country.  So by the weekend I was pretty tired and also had more work to do, writing some tender specifications and a session for a conference in March.  I decided that I was not going to work on Friday night and caught myself reflecting how busy I had been.

Some of you will remember that it seems only 5 minutes ago that I was writing about not having enough work and having work cancelled.  Yet here I was dwelling on how much work I had. So I gave myself a mental shake and thought about the cash flow benefits of being busy.  That made me feel better.  Then I thought about the other silver linings of not being busy.

Although I did no paid work between the middle of December and the beginning of this week that actually gave me lots of development time.  During this period I have written and submitted 5 tenders and been successful with two, designed two new courses for clients, planned other delivery commitments with existing clients as well as writing and getting approved a whole load of company policies (which are now on the website).

Where are the silver linings in your life?

Cancellations

I’m typing this on a GNER train on my way to London where I’m delivering a Springboard workshop tomorrow. I’m very grateful for this work, which was actually booked and paid for in March, because in the last week I’ve had five clients cancel a total of 13 training days between them. This is shocking. Although I expect it to be quieter on the run up to Christmas, I certainly don’t expect the doldrums to start in the middle of November.

None of this could have been anticipated as people have just not signed up for programmes which have been very popular in the past. There appears to be a variety of reasons for this and I am sympathetic to those who have been trying so hard to sell internally yet very frustratingly, having little success. Training programmes running between now and March are affected and although many of the dates will be rescheduled for later in the year this will not give the anticipated cash flow in this quarter and there may need to be some belt tightening done at Milecastle HQ (just as we are going into the ski season).

On the other hand it is liberating some time, as I previously had no free days until February so now is the time to ask if you need me to do something last minute!  I’ll now have some more time to focus on marketing and new product development, two very important activities that build business for the future and are often marginalised when I am doing lots of delivery.  I will also have the luxury of not having to shoe-horn my ski training into odd pockets of time so maybe tonight I’ll write a proper training schedule.

Its disappointing when anything gets cancelled or rescheduled but there are usually good things that come out of it. Although losing work brings its own stresses I will certainly not be arriving on the piste as tired as I may have been in previous years.  What are the silver linings in your cancellations and rescheduling?  How are you going to make the most of all that time that you have suddenly been given as a gift?  What contingency do you have if this happens again?

Victorian Women

"Women should lead bland lives that are filled with blamelessness and barley water."

This is what the Victorians thought about women and I was imagining the other day how stifling that must have been, how restrictive and what quality of life would it promulgate. Its the complete antithesis of my life so I propose a new quotation for the women of this century.

"Women should lead positive, exciting and fulfilling lives that are filled with challenge, achievement and success celebrations."

No more barley water (unless that is what you really want!).  Now this doesn't mean that we all should aspire to have lives like Jo Cameron, Anita Roddick or Carol Vorderman but that we should set achievement goals that are relevant for us and challenging within the context of our lives and most importantly that we should all recognise our own successes.  Your successes may be very different and in a different part of your life from anyone else and you should always celebrate them.

So your weekend challenge:  What can you do to bring more positivity, excitement and challenge into your life?  What are you going to do to celebrate your success so far?

Making new friends

I've got two new friends!  I submitted some tenders for work recently and I've received feedback from two of them that I have been unsuccessful.  They didn't give me much information and I needed to know more so that next time I can improve my performance and win the business.  So I needed to ring them up and have a discussion about what their parameters were and why I fell outside them.  But I put this off for several days and wasn't really aware of myself doing that. 

Finally I made the calls and I got lots of really useful information. What became clear was that the actual remit of one of the tenders was flawed to start with so I was never actually going to get through the door. That made me feel a lot better and, despite being unsuccessful, my tender documents are being passed on to other departments who may be interested in what I have to offer so thats a really positive outcome from the calls. I also now feel that I have two new friends in organisations that I haven't worked with before.

Only after I'd made the calls did I realise that I had been putting them off, as I noticed how much lighter I felt. Before I had a vague feeling that the people on the other end would be unhelpful or even unkind, that it might be a challenging phone call or that I'd just get stonewalled and end up feeling stupid for asking. In fact they were just normal people doing normal jobs who actually wanted to help once I had asked the question.  I had allowed my assumptions about other people to stand in my way. I need to remember that there are very few people out there who are deliberately obstructive and that most people will help if you only ask.

What are you putting off because of your assumptions about other people?  How would you approach those things if you had positive assumptions?  What other things in your life would run more smoothly if you had positive assumptions? 

My job is boring!

Well in fact you know that its not boring - that I live and breathe for my work. However there are bits of it that are - well shall we say - tedious.  Its my financial year end and yesterday I spent the whole day checking through the whole year of accounts paperwork.  This a really necessary task as if we have  messed it up and the accountant have to do more work then they will end up charging us more. And also it important that I have a clear picture of where the money is going :-)

Anyway I wasn't looking forward to this especially on a Saturday. So I pondered how I could make it more exciting (!) or just less feeling like a tedious task on a Saturday. So I went and pulled out all the files and my laptop and sat on the sofa in the living room all day working on this and lit the fire as I worked into the wee small hours. By changing my environment in this way it felt like it wasn't a real work thing and I approached it very differently, really knuckling down and getting on with it.  I had to wander back into the office sometimes to print off some stuff but most of the day I was sitting next door and not feeling that I was locked in the office at the weekend. 

And at the end of the night it was all done and then this morning I rewarded myself with a trip out to Keswick to Needlesports (simply the best climbing shop in the world) to buy some guidebooks for my next climbing trip - thanks Roger.

We can all do this when we have difficult or tedious task to get to grips with.  Maybe you can sit on a bench outside or in the canteen, or change the posters on your wall or swap desks with a friend for the day.  Whatever, changing your environment is a positive way to help you to feel different.  What tasks are you putting off? What can you do to change your environment today so you will approach things differently? Then what reward will you give yourself when its all done? 

Email crashed

Apologies to anyone who got my newsletter today and couldn't access any links through to the website. We've been experiencing some technical difficutlies with a "lost" domain since yesterday morning but we have now sorted this out and by Monday it will all be functioning well.  It has also meant that I have lost some emails so if you have emailed me yesterday or today then please do send the email again as I may not have received it.

Although there was lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth over this, in fact I salvaged some positive stuff from it. Last night as I couldn't deal with emails I spent the evening catching up with friends who I haven't called for a while.  This was good and I got some great support and advice about my writing.  And the whole episode has pointed up a business critical risk which we are now in the process of plugging so that we do not have the same problem again.

And it reminded me who my friends are - those who care about me out there - so thanks to any of you who took the time to ring and tell we that your email messages had bounced.  Its true that in a crisis you can work out who your friends are.  When has this happened to you?  Who were the friends who came to your aid?  How are you helping them in return?

Developing positive habits

I’ve got 2 new positive habits.  First, I am now making my bed in the morning, and not just making it, but even turning the quilt and plumping the pillows.  Yes I know that’s a sad admission but you can get sloppy when you live by yourself.  At least it means I can just slide into it gratefully after a hard day’s work.

My second new habit is walking as I am waiting, to pass the time and get some exercise, which I started on a long trip recently whilst waiting for flights.  The other day I was catching a train to Manchester and after buying a coffee I set off and started walking up and down the platform without even thinking about it.  It’s that automatic thing that tells me it’s a habit now.

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but I say “what a load of old rubbish”.  Whatever stage of our lives we are at we can replace old habits and develop new ones just by deciding to do that. What happens as we get older though is that we get lazy, we believe that there is nothing new to learn or that we can’t change.

Just remember that you are a change expert.  You’ve been experiencing change and coping with it positively ever since you were born.  There is nothing in life so certain as change.

So what new positive habits are you going to introduce to your life?  What old negative habits are you going to change or ditch now?

Boys!

I had a text from my friend Dave the last week to tell me that he’d bought a new climbing helmet to save his head should he fall when we are away climbing at slab heaven in this week. However he left out one vital detail, the colour of the helmet. The same with Andy, my garage man, who arranged a courtesy car, told me where to find it and the registration number but not the colour! Now I have to ask all the girls out there – is that not a vital detail? Ha – boys have no idea

However it would be boring if we were all the same and (speaking from personal experience) it’s the very difference about boys that makes them interesting. Now you can interpret that as you will.

But this not just true in context of gender, difference is interesting and enriching wherever we encounter it and we should all spend more time valuing it, celebrating it and seeking to experience it

Exposing yourself to difference makes your brain work harder, develops new pathways and opens up new possibilities, helping you understand the world better. Now that’s a really positive thing to do.

They say that travel broadens the mind. Well it’s not the actual travel but the exposure to the different customs, cultures, people, environments, food and languages that your brain loves. In India recently I found it really interesting to see how they do things differently and to learn from that.

What will you do to experience something different today? Where have you encountered difference and been negative about it? How can you find the positive aspects of that difference?

Alzheimer's Disease

Today I am adding a link on my website to Helena Segets work.  Helena is a former Springboard participant from Newcastle who now has a studio at 36 Lime St.  Helena's recent work has taken the destructive trauma of mental decline in Alzheimer's disease and turned it into a positive experience for her and her customers.  You can see examples of her work on her website.

It is very sad that her mother was so ill and I really applaud the way that she has transformed this episode into a creative stimulus for her work.  We all encounter difficult periods through our lives, whether they are relationship breakups, physical trauma, death or injury of loved ones or any other of the many assaults that can overtake us.  As we get older the sum total of these things will increase and we can become overwhelmed.  However we can all choose how we react to and perceive these things.

We know that when we were younger and our pet dog or cat died, it was extremely difficult for a while but we survived. Life went on and we were better able to cope with the next bad thing that happened.  So instead of wallowing in the bad feelings that these events precipitate choose to use them as a positive influence.  It must have been traumatic for Helena when her mother was ill and she has now used that as a positive influence.  I went through a bad relationship breakup and produced some great poetry as a result.  I had my leg in plaster for 8 weeks and it enabled me to travel first class when I threw myself on the mercy of the railways.  My bags were lost by BA this week but it meant that there was no washing to do when I get home.

As we get older we have a great store of experiences that help us to see things in a positive light.  What are you hung up on at the moment?  How can you perceive it as a positive influence in your life?

Children are our future

Yesterday we visited Pahalgam, a beautiful village, the site of a former hill station, nestling amongst the Himalayan foothills at 7,200ft.  It was about a 3 hour bumpy ride from Srinagar on a wonderfully clear autumn day.  On the way there we passed many families in their valley fields threshing their wheat crop in the traditional way by bashing it across a large boulder and collecting the grain on a tarpaulin, upon which it will be spread out to dry in the sun.  This is an ages old practice and whole families were involved, from the very young to the very old.  It’s the last harvest to come in, the rice and saffron having already been collected. 

Here in Kashmir the majority of the population have no pension to look forward to when they reach a retirement age, if they even live that long, with the continuing military and political trouble, accompanied by poor health and sanitation.  So they are still out working in the fields whatever their age.  Their security for their old age is their children and grandchildren.  The family culture is very strong on the Indian subcontinent and literally as in Sting’s song “children are our future, teach them well”.  Your expectation is that if you become unable to look after yourself your children will welcome you into their home and care for you.  There are no old people’s homes up in the wild hills.

Just for a moment now imagine that you have no pension, no inkling of what a retirement plan is, no opportunity to ever stop “working” – whatever that means to you, no vision of life being different after a certain randomly picked age.  Imagine that life just goes on until the end, pretty much the same every day, changing gradually with the seasons.  How does that feel?  How does it make you think about your future differently?  What other options does it help you to think about?  What would you do differently if this was how your life was?  What will you do differently tomorrow as a result of this reflection?

Positive Steps

The papers arrived this morning as I was drinking my bed-tea today and gazing out at the spectacular Shimla mountain view, looking West towards tomorrows destination of Kashmir.  I leafed through the Times of India to find a Speaking Tree article defining confidence.  What do you know - it's all reduced to a simple formula, so all your worries are over. 

Here goes:  Confidence = Feeling good + Taking Responsibility = Being Accountable + Developing Skills

There - simple!

So in typical left field style I am going to start at the end and come back to the rest.  How do you feel when you start to learn something new?  Well mostly rubbish cos you are not very good at it.  But as your skills improve don't you feel your confidence building as you master more and more of the skill, as you become expert at each little step, as what felt awkward and new now feels familiar and safe?  However what often happens is that we try learning new skills and give up too easily before we have even given ourselves enough time to know the basics.  it's time to realise that a little persistence pays off and the skills development success will really boost you confidence and give you a more positive outlook.

So what skills are you developing now?  What did you start and give up on?  What new skills do you want to develop?  Take those first positive steps today.

Believe in the best outcome

So here I am in Shimla in the Himalayan foothills and damp, rainy Cumbria feels a whole world away.  After arriving at a seething Delhi airport late last night I followed all my host's instructions and engaged a pre-paid taxi.  That is when the trouble began.  My very willing young taxi driver didn't have a clue where the government guest-house was at Mandi House.  This is despite being assured that it was one of the very well known parts of the city.  I actually thought this was very funny.  I made the 6am flight from Newcastle, getting up at 3am after 90 minutes sleep, managed to do a record T1 to T4 transfer at Heathrow for my international flight, we are delayed by an hour but make all that up and I arrive hopefully in this new city, then to be let down by the last link in the chain.

Anyway, I got out my trusty map of Delhi and showed him where it was and where India Gate was, which he knew.  He still looked blank.  After asking some of his taxi colleagues we set off hopefully into the sticky Delhi night.  He was soon on the phone to a friend, then we stopped to ask a policeman, then got some more advice after raising some napping tuc-tuc drivers, checked in again with some early rising workers and then finally stumbled upon my destination as we were turning around to set off in the opposite direction!

Despite all this I was completely comfortable all the time and found it all really amusing.  I just believed that I would arrive safely, if by a rather unorthodox route.  Sometimes you just have to trust to the fates and have confidence in the best outcome happening.  What areas of your life are you imagining the worst?  Why were you surprised when it happened?  Now try imagining some more positive outcomes and see what happens.

Kashmir

In 8 hours I am on a flight to Delhi and then on to Srinagar in Kashmir by way of Shimla. I'm really excited to have this opportunity to work out there. I'm particularly interested to see how their attitudes to older people might differ from ours further West. Watch this space!

The vital role of older people

Today, 1st October, is UN International Day of Older People and there are meetings between older people's organisations and governments across 4 continents as part of the Age Demands Action campaign to demand improvements in ageing policies and practices.

Older people play a vital role in communities the world over. They are often the glue holding families together. They provide emergency child care and family support and also in sometimes step in to bring up their grandchildren if parents suffer untimely death.  They are becoming an increasingly important part of the economic wealth of western nations as our birth rate falls and we all live longer.  Yet their vital role is underestimated to the detriment of us all,  both economically and socially.

You can read about the campaign here at HelpAge International.

What are you going to do to help to highlight these issues? 

Kashmir

In 8 hours I am on a flight to Delhi and then on to Srinagar in Kashmir by way of Shimla. I am really excited to have the opportunity to go and work out there.  I'll keep you posted whenever I can about all the Indian positivity that I'm harvesting over there and bringing back to Blighty!

Thursday philosophy

A discussion on the radio this morning was talking about Socarates and how his basic premise about how life should be lived was that "Life should be lived flourishingly". I thought that was fabulous. In his time it was connected with virtue and doing the right thing.  But I think that living life flourishingly is a great maxim for today.

My two volume OED has almost 4 column inches on "flourish". To blossom, to thrive, to attain full development, to be prosperous or successful, to be at the height of fame or excellence, to be in one's prime.  What an excellent way to live.

What are you doing today to live life flourishingly?  What questions do you need to ask to maintain your level of excellence?  Who can help you keep that prosperous stretch going?  Where will you bestow your gifts to help others thrive?  How are your decisions supporting you reaching your prime?

Live life to the full, live life flourishingly!

Shout about it

What do you do when something exciting is happening or you have achieved something?  Do you just sit there feeling all smug or do you shout about it?  Well I've got news for you - sharing good news really helps the world go round, it helps keep the people around you positive and also, critically, it helps to keep you positive.  The more you tell people about your exciting event or success the more you are reinforcing those positive pathways that brought you there.  Sharing good news will lift any conversation and energise your communication.

At the beginning of most of my workshops I ask people to report on their recent successes. These need not be great earth shattering events, just minor achievements or nuggets of good news. The more you focus on the positive the more your mind will help you do that.

So I am shouting about my trip to India next week because for me its very exciting. Heading off to Kashmir to deliver two Springboard workshops is exactly the sort of really important work that I want to be doing. You can read all about it in the News and Star (Carlisle's daily paper) and of course I'll be writing here about the trip when ever I can get on the web.

What do you have to shout about today?  What's exciting in your life?  Who are you going to tell about your latest successes?  Write a comment to this posting to share your success with all our readers.

Harness your passion

Today I was listening to a thought for the day on BBC Radio Cumbria where someone's passion has led them to new opportunities.  And I wondered how many of us really allow that passion that we have (whatever it is for) to drive us along. Often we will stifle it because its not appropriate, there isn't time, someone else thinks its silly etc etc

Well if you keep doing that then you will  never get into that state of excitement that sweeps all before it, that state where you believe that nothing could possibly go wrong, that state that allows you to conquer all and achieve anything that you set your mind to.  These things are driven by passion. If you allow your passion to show through then you will not need to motivate yoursef to get up every day, you will find your motivation rises easily from within.  And that positive feeling will transfer to other areas of your life as well, making everything much rosier.

So go on indulge your passion today!

Filling the pond

Its been a busy week.  Despite not having any training delivery this week I still seem to be rushing around. On Wednesday I zipped off to London (overnight non-sleeper - a seat not a berth) to get my visa for India. I was originally planning to go to Edinburgh for this but at the weekend discovered that I was going to Kashmir (Srinagar) and thought that I might need a special permit - which is not available from Edinburgh.  7.30am saw me in the queue of about 100 outside the Indian High Commission in Aldwych. All done and dusted by noon and I can now go to India as often as I like for 6 months.

After that I had about 7 hours to while away before my train back so I decided my pond needed to be topped up.  This is a thing from my creativity course.  Keep your creativity pond stocked with experiences and stimuli to to provide inspiration and source material.  I went off to the Tate Modern and had a great time looking at all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff.  I was most taken by the installations and some of the abstract art.  I particularly liked the bubble machines, a group of mirrored cubes and a video piece that showed simultaneously the views from three cameras placed on the side and two ends of a barrel as it was rolled down a New York street! Not for those who suffer travel sickness.

Keeping the pond full does not just apply to creativity though. We need to keep our pond stocked with all sorts of positive experiences both new and familiar.  This is one way to help you feel good about yourself. Positive experiences could be as small as helping someone or giving yourself a reward when you have achieved a goal, even if its just something that you have challenged yourself to do in half an hour. You can keep your pond stocked with visits to favourite places, catching up with friends as well as going somewhere new.  Keep stocking your positivity pond and you'll find it will be much easier to keep in that positive frame of mind.

So what are you going to do tomorrow to stock your positivity pond?  How will you treat yourself? What new experience will you try?  What new or familiar person will you make a point of talking to?  How will you feel afterwards?

Lost words - again

The other day I was talking to a man who runs a small business.  All of his staff are female, about 8 or 9 or them.  He is a great supporter of women's development but mystified about the apparent lack of confidence of his staff.  He tells them repeatedly that they are doing a great job and from my dealings with them I know that they all do a highly professional job and I have a lot of respect for their skills and experience.

Yet he says that the first thing they do in the morning is apologise - they say "Sorry" as if they are apologising for their own existence.  When I pondered on this I realised that I hear this happening a lot. Women will often say sorry as a way of opening a sentence, before we even know what the other person's reaction is going to be.  If we went around and counted how many times at work we hear our male colleagues saying sorry and compare that with how many times we hear our female colleagues saying sorry I think that we'd find that we win hands down.

Also because it is such a habitual speech pattern we do not even hear ourselves saying it - let alone recognise how it diminishes us.  Can you remember the last time you said sorry and really meant it?  Yes of course you can.  Can you remember the last time you used the word - probably not, because its part of the regular landscape of your speech.  It was probably only ten minutes ago, or at least earlier in the day.  So its time to take action.

This is the next word that I want you to strike from your vocabulary, except when there is a genuine reason to be sorry, real regret.  First you need to build awareness and start to notice yourself saying it.  Then you need to catch yourself about to say it and decide that it is a positive thing to find another word or just lose the sorry and don't replace it.  You will feel much stronger if you do not go around apologising unnecessarily for yourself the whole time.  You have as much right to be you as the next man.

Building buttons

Its not a normal day here at all.  My neigbours are moving to the beautiful town of Wooler and the removal men are here.  I have just been to my doctor and they've taken some blood to find out if I'm ill or just getting older! And I'm finally getting back into my online bank accounts after my laptop was stolen in May. And all of this on very little sleep cos I was up till 3am working on the blog.

The blogosphere and web are all about linking. I'm a kind and helpful person and I have had so much excellent feedback on the blog content from all of you, my loyal readers, that I'd like to let more people know about the blog so they can also live more positively.  So I have started listing in blog directories.  When I started this I thought it would be an easy job.  Then I found out that I had to build back links with buttons and clever html stuff.  I was a bit hesitant about this as its not something that I've done before and all the clever stuff on the web site is done by Sylvia, my indispensible right-hand woman.

So I first of all just attacked it using the techniques that I'd used for adding other stuff like the website links. This didn't work properly.  Then (at about midnight) I read all of the stuff in the Typepad knowledge base and after translating it into non-technospeak I thought I knew what to do.  My first couple of attempts at the coding didn't work but then I had a light bulb moment and it all fell into place.  It's a sort of work around as there is no easy way of doing this in Typepad.  But the result is all the button links that you can find by scrolling down on the right below the daily cartoon. As we are accepted into the directories I'll update these so you can go right to our entry and vote or rate this blog.

My sense of achievement is huge over this.  And I was really hesitant about doing it, it didn't work properly the first few times but I knew that it should be do-able.  So lessons for us all here in terms of actually just getting stuck in.  It also absolutley typical of me to charge in without reading the instructions so if you are like that don't give yourself a hard time - cos I actually had it about half right in the way that I first tried. And I knew that when I'd done it I'd feel really proud.  Stepping outside your comfort zone and trying something new can be intimidating but if you don't take that first step you will never reach your goal.

Believe in the possible

We have scheduled dates in our diaries to go back to the Middle East.  The only problem is that I have no full weeks available in October (or had).  This is difficult as I need to be there to work with Gavin and deliver the courses and he does not want to work with anyone else.  Impasse.  I  have no time - I need to be there.  I've been letting this sit for a while, believing that it would sort itself out somehow.  I had no idea how, as it seemed that unless we could magic up some spare weeks from somewhere, maybe by co-exisiting in a parallel universe, then it just wasn't going to happen.  However I said to Gavin several times that I was sure we'd sort it some way or other.  This is the art of believing in the possible. 

In this situaiton its no good me spending time and energy fretting about what can't be done, it just won't help.  As the situation stood I couldn't go, I just believed that we could overcome that in some way. 

Then Dave rang last night.  One of the reasons I couldn't go to the Middle East is that for the last 6 months Dave and I have had a climbing holiday to Spain scheduled in our diaries . His availability for holiday is much more limited than mine so once I have a trip arranged with him the dates don't change.  Last night he was ringing to change the dates.  We managed to find another option and this has freed up my time to go back to the Middle East.

Life is going to be a bit of a whirlwind as it looks as if I am going to India, the Middle East and then Spain with about a week in between each trip!  Even though I did not know how that was going to happen I have now achieved my goal of having that week available for Gavin.

How much time and energy do you spend dwelling on the impossible rather than believing in the possible?  Its only a small shift in thinking to allow yourself to believe that it could be possible, and you don't even need to actively imagine how.

I have been wanting to work with women in Nepal for a while and I have believed that it was possible even though I didn't know how it was going to be achieved.  Now I have discovered that one of our network of Springboard trainers is already working there so I am about to contact her and to talk about working together.  Remember nothing is impossible and anything is possible.  Believe in the possible.

Seabiscuit

Last night, tired and jetlagged, I cut the work and watched a dvd. It was called Seabiscuit - about a famous US racehorse.  Its a fabulous story about achievement and should probably come with a half tissue box warning!  You can read  more about him here http://www.seabiscuitonline.com/index1.htm

One of the great messages of the film was that this little horse just kept winning against the bigger guys cos he just didn't think of himself as small. In reality he was only a small pony and with the right techniques and encouragement he was winning races against much bigger thoroughbreds.

It made me think about how small we all often think we are.  The smallest cog in a great wheel, the lowliest person in your team, the one making the smallest contribution to anything. And if that is the way that we continue to think about ourselves then that is the way that we'll end up. I could think about myself as just a freelance trainer but I know that what I do amounts to much more than that. What I do makes a big difference to people's lives so I am not JUST a trainer.

Maybe you are saying to yourself "But I am ONLY...."  " I am JUST...." Listen to your own language. If you are talking yourself down why would you expect anyone else to give you space on this planet. Its time to stop talking small and start thinking bigger.  About your life, your career, your hopes and aspirations.  You can be like Seabiscuit and take on the big guys and win.

Disappointment Peak

I am at Chicago airport on my way home and pondering about my holiday in the Teton National Park, Wyoming. I have had a great time and have unfortunately not got as much climbing done as I would have liked. This was due to a vareity of circumstances. I am disappointed as its a long way to travel.  There is a peak there called Disappointment Peak. It was climbed by the earlier expolorers and as it did not lead where they were hoping so they named it Disappointment Peak.

One of the side effects of not managing so much climbing is that I have seen a LOT of wildlife that I may not have encountered. Count amongst that lots of bear, buffalo and elk, as well as some spectacular birdlife and it all adds up to not a disappointment but a great success. In life its all a matter of attitude. I could call it a disappointing climbing holiday or a successful break in the Tetons. I choose the latter.

What are the things that you are viewing as a disappointment?  What are the positive aspects of that apparent disappointment?.  How can you reframe how you are looking at things to give yourself a more positive outlook?

In great company

Today I have been with all of my Springboard, Spring Forward, Fresh Steps and Navigator chums at our annual get together in Rugby.  I came away from the day feeling as if I was glowing with a sort of "ready brek" glow both internally and externally.  This is because I had been in great company all day. In the company of people who are positive, care about what they do and about other people.  People like this who enjoy what they do and who are enthusiastic lift our mood. Its great to be with them as you feel better.

A while ago I noticed this and did a clear out of my friends. I chose not to spend time with those who sapped my energy and dampened my mood.  I didn't really do anything interventional, just didn't ring or email them. And they never really contacted me so its was clear where all the energy was coming from to keep the relationhsip going.  I now spend time with friends who are positive and supportive where we are both gaining from the relationship.

Who are you spending your time with?  How do you feel with those people?  Are you in great company or are your friends and family sapping your energy?  Its time to choose those positive relationships over the negative ones.  You won't miss the negative ones when they are gone but you sure will benefit from spending more time with positive people.

Thanks to Jane, the Lizzes, Sarah, Helen, Kay, Janet, Debbie, Moira, Cath, Jenny, Julia, Marie, Bernadette, Patricia, Chris, Jan, Hugh, Celia, Nicky, George, Kathy and everyone else for being my GangPositive!