BlogPositive

Believe it will happen

Earlier this week I was chatting with an acquaintance about manifesting.  We talked about manifesting parking spaces and empty roads.  He asked if there was anything else that could be manifested.  During the previous two or three days I'd had 4 days work cancelled by a couple of clients. I told him about this and said that I was confident that by the end of the week those days that had been cancelled would be replaced.

At that moment I had no idea where that extra work might come from.  I was not waiting for clietns to call back to confirm dates or anyhthing like that.

Then within 24 hours I had a call from a client who wanted to run a Fresh Steps course - thats 4 days work.  This was completely unexpected.  I also then took another call to be offered some really interesting work on a project for the British Council.  So bingo more work than was lost has now been replaced. I really need to dig out his email address and let him know......

All you need to do is be clear on what you want and send out the intention.  The universe will do the rest.  What do you want for your future?  Just ask.

First Impressions

I've been away in London today at a meeting with some potential new clients.  They are a global organisation and I had just 4 minutes to get in front of them and pitch what I have to offer.  This is a rather daunting prospect.  Get myself all the way down there for only 4 minutes of their time.  Of course it turned out to be much more than a speed dating session and I think that we both learned a lot about each other.

There is never anything truer than "you never have a second chance to make a frst impression".  And given what I do it is essential that I embody everything about that in my "speech". When do you have to make a first impression?  Or when do you have only a very limited time to make an impression?  What will you do to make that count?

In this case going against all advice and perceived wisdom, I didn't prepare anything. I know my products inside out.  It was important to show how what I do and the way that I do it, was directly relevant to the way that the client works and their needs.  Therfore I had to listen to what had gone before and tailor what I said.  So preparing something in advance would not have worked. And of course one of the best things about what I do is that I am always adapting material to the current needs of the group and that makes it fresh every time. So I was therefore able to stand up and respond appropriately to what I  had learned during the afternoon.

What is the best way for you to make a fabulous first impression?  Do you need to prepare?  What do you need to prepare? How will you do that?

Perfect 10

Well the nice people at the NECC have changed their course evaluation forms.  When asked how likely they were to reccommend the course to a friend I scored straight 10s today.  This brought their whole week's averages soaring up so its a great end to the week for them.  I'm also particuarly pleased as its been a very busy week and I was very tired today,

As trainers we get external verification almost every time we do any work.  Its great to have all those positive strokes but do we really need them?  I guess we all need to be told that we are doing a good job even when we already know.  I can feel when things are going right so although I like the eval forms I really want them so that the client can see that it all went really well, cos they are not usually in the room.

How do you know if things are going well?  What do you feel?  What do you hear?  What do you see?  If you can capture that then you'll need less external verification and can plan to be your own best supporter, giving yourself positive feedback whenever necessary.  What did you do well today?

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? 

I can do anything

I've just been reading a fascinating article in Scientific American about stereotyping and stereotype threat.  This summarisies the work on this subject in relation to performance.  They have found that if you know of a stereotype that indicates that a group the you belong to (women, for example) perform worse at a particular task or activity (doing well in interviews for senior posts for example), then you will tend to perform less well in this activity compared with someone who is not aware of the stereotype.

On the other hand if you believe that your group are better in a particular area then you will also tend to fulfil that expectation.  No-one is really very sure of the mechanisms behind this. However they do know that stereotypes can be fluid.

So lets say you have an interview coming up and you are a woman, knowing this stereotype about women not doing well in interviews. You can think about belonging to a particular group that does do well at interviews, for example people with a degree or qualification, and that will really help you in the interview.  You'll perform better because you believe that you are part of a high performing group.

What this tells me is that at any time you can decide to belong to a high performing group and achieve that high performance that you now expect of yourself.  How will you stereotype yourself helpfully today?  What high performing groups do you belong to?  What others will you think yourself into?

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?

Quantity gives quality

I've been writing an article about my India trip tonight and needed some photos to go with it.  I hadn't actually downloaded them yet so I've been squirting nearly 600 shots from my camera into my PC. I'm surprised at how many pics there are.  But then when I look at them there are probably about 20 really good shots, with the right light, exposure, composition etc that I could print and frame and hang on the wall, and then about 20 mediocre ones and the rest are just tourist snaps that we just don't bother printing any more.

This really ilustrates the point from my creativity course last month that in order to be really creative and make good work you have to churn our vast quantities of work and be prepared to throw most of it away.  This can be a bit galling, but when the good stuff is really good then its well worth it.  I took about 50 shots of the sunset over Dal Lake, a famous beauty spot in Srinagar and there are two or three that I am really pleased with, so it was worth the effort to take the rest.

This maxim of quantity giving you quality applies to lots of things in life but we forget this and expect things to be perfect first time.  You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince (believe me I'm still looking) and you may have to try out lots of jobs before you find you ideal post, look at lots of houses before you find your perfect home, practice with lots of salsa partners before you find your perfect match.  So if there's something in your life that's not quite right remember that you probably just haven't tried enough times, not given enough permutations, or not had enough experiences.

So where have you given up too early?  Get out there and do more!

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?

The crows

The birds in the garden are thronging around my recently filled feeders this morning.  There are about 35 chaffinches (which are my sparrow equivalent) along with the usual array of blue, great and coal tits, greenfinches, siskins, nuthatches and the woodpeckers.  Here is a shot of one of my woodpeckers at the nut feeder.  Thanks Pete for sending this over.  We also get visitations from jackdaws and crows.  The crows don't stay on the ground for long, they are very nervous and fly away if I move about behind the windows.  This always surprises me as they are the biggest of the birds that visit (apart from the one time that a peregrine was strutting around the lawn).

Despite its shyness the sheer size of the crow makes all the other birds fly off when it lands.  This just serves to remind me that appearances are deceptive.  We all assume that the crow will be powerful and confident because of  its size.  We are all fooled by appearances to some extent.  Remind yourself of this when you are going into new or difficult situations.  If you land the way the crow does, with an air of command and presence, then you'll convince everyone around you that you know what you are talking about and are a force to be reckoned with.

Remember that projecting an outer positive self helps us to maintain our inner confidence and resolve.  Your insides may be churning, squirming or filled with butterflies but no-one aorund you can see that.  They can just see that calm, confident self assured outer self that you are projecting.  Try it today.

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.

A 13 year old moment

A 13 year old moment

I’ve been watching Sex in the City.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before as I don’t have a TV and rarely watch when I am in away hotels, as I am usually still working in the evenings. However they were talking about being 34, yet having a 13 year old moment and I thought what a fabulous idea that was.

I know that sometimes I really want to step aside from being grown up and have some 13 year old time.  A time when there are no responsibilities, no car to service or rent to pay. Some time when life stretches before me like a blank sheet of paper, waiting to be filled with exciting adventures. Some time when life contains more fun and less worry, more hopes and fewer fears.

And we can all do that. We can all decide to have some time when we are going to act as if we were 13 again and there was so much potential ahead of us. Just think what we could accomplish if we believed that some of our best achievements were yet to come, that we were still at the beginning of an exciting lifetime, that there was still so much more to look forward to.  Try it and see how it feels. 

Or you could ask yourself next time you are wrestling with a problem or issue - How would I react or approach this if I was 13, what decisions would I make, how would I see things differently?

That 13 year old is still there inside all of us, get your 13 year old to help you.