Be the Life & Soul of the Party: Update December 14, 2009
Posted by selfworks in More About "Be Life and Soul of the Party", Personal Development (General).Tags: parties, self confidence at parties
add a comment
Just in case you’re new to the blog or haven’t yet heard about this from all my twittering, I was interviewed about “Be the Life and Soul of the Party last week on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s hour.
For the next four days , you can still hear the interview (incongruously sandwiched between two, probably worthier, but much less buoyant pieces) at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p4kb9
And I hope this goes some way to explain the lack of posting in the last few days!
Is it Christmas already?! December 7, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Happiness and Success, Personal Development (General).Tags: Christmas
add a comment
Am still in shock. Though the calendar has been helpful in showing, all year, that Christmas is on Dec 25th yet again 
I still seem to have failed to get my act together. So am here again in panic mode, as the whole event has crept up behind me, “on rubber heels”, as my grandma would have said.
If you can identify with this too, the only solution of course, is for us to find a way to get into feeling more Christmassy, and get on with it. But how? Here are the things that have worked for me in the past (and some of which I’ll be re-visiting to get into the spirit of things):
1. Think about one thing that you love to do, that you can only do at this time of year. Personally, I like watching “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and the Christmas theme in it just feels too weird to watch in July. You may hate slushy movies, but love Christmas decorations. Or wrapping ribbons around presents. Or an extra hour under the duvet because you’re not going to work. Or eating turkey.
Take your pick. In any event, concentrating on what you do like is, as ever, going to be a bundle more relaxing than stressing out about the stuff you hate.
2. Speaking of relaxing, where is it written that all people above the age of 25 should cease to enjoy Christmas and turn it into one long stress-fest? Decide on the most relaxing way in which you can get everything done, and stick to it. (And yes, if that means people get vouchers, then they get vouchers…and will probably-even if secretly-really enjoy their consequent freedom to choose what they want).
3. People. If you’re delighted about who you’ll be with, enough said. But even if you sometimes feel you’d have more in common with Martians than the people around you on 25th, there is something you can do make things easier. If you drop your expectations, and just allow yourself to observe what’s going on, without any judgement or emotion (exactly as you might if you really were recording the habits of a Martian species), you’re likely to find that your enjoyment increases. Bizarre? Maybe. Effective? You bet.
At the same time, it does no harm to re-focus on the spirit of it all. Many of us aren’t conventionally religious, though we might, if forced to say something in the face of a crow-bar or a census-form, talk about being “Spiritual but not religious”.
However, whatever our beliefs, most human beings can agree that love, of whatever kind, is A Good Thing. Perhaps we can all just start with that thought, express it where possible, and work out the details from there.
Now, if you”ll excuse me, that Frank Capra masterpiece is still waiting to get me into the Christmas spirit…
Free Coaching? November 13, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Personal Development (General).Tags: free coaching
add a comment
If you’ve often thought about having coaching, but would prefer a free taster first, here’s something new.
As an experiment, I’m testing out whether it’s possible to ask effective coaching questions via YouTube videos. If you’re curious, here’s the first one:
Please do comment and let me know what you think.
“Uncaring” People Getting You Down? Try this. October 13, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Career and Work, Confidence, Family, Happiness and Success, Holistic Ideas, Personal Development (General), Relationships, Wellbeing.Tags: uncaring
add a comment
Lots of the people I know, from all walks of life, have a bit of a thing about the, “uncaring” people around them. It could be a co-worker, spouse or boss. Perhaps a friend or family member. And usually, the people concerned are the nicest you could ever wish to meet. They, not surprisingly, tend to be very puzzled as to what they have done to attract this lack of heart, feeling hurt, disgruntled, and sometimes even frightened.
I’ve observed this phenomenon from the sidelines many times, and occasionally, experienced it myself . Yet, until now, it’s been hard to work out what’s going on, when nice people attract more than their fair share of cold -shouldering.
If that describes you, or someone you know, read on, because finally, I may have figured out what’s going on here.
A shift of perspective
Come with me, on a shift of perspective. That does mean coming away from the barrel-load of good reasons to feel out of sorts, and into the twilight world of the particularly “uncaring” person in question.
Ask yourself:
-What’s going on for this person: physically, emotionally (and even spiritually?)
-What does this person care about?
and,
-Could it be that something within the situation is causing them to switch off and stop caring, rather than it being anything to do with me? (Eg, does my boss secretly hate being on this project, is my friend really worried about her family, is my spouse really concerned about job security?).
The results
When you have applied your own gift for caring in this way, you may come to surprising conclusions, such as:
1. That this person isn’t being deliberately uncaring toward you at all. Rather, there is something about the whole situation they’re in which makes them care less about certain pieces of it than others. And you just happen, unwittingly, to be attached to one of those less-valued pieces right now.
2. If the person is persistently uncaring, they’re probably not feeling very happy. And the only person who can alter that, is the individual themselves. (So, nice person that you are, please stop trying to tapdance around them and jolly them out of it. A well-timed grunt from you may elicit more response and rapport than you can imagine).
3. As a caring person yourself, you may be assuming that there is a certain level of care others,”must” take towards you. People do differ, both in their capacity to care, and the way in which they express the feeling. (Think for example of the mother who rarely hugs, but always has a delicious meal on the table). If you need a particular tye of caring, make it your responsibility to ask for it, and/or seek it elsewhere.
4. As a caring person, you have the edge, because you’re likely to be more aware of the other person’s position than they are of yours. Used wisely, this can be a tremendous asset, and can help you to help they person towards what they need, rather than, “what they should want, if they only cared…”
In short: care about the uncaring person, rather than their opinion of you, and you may be astonished at how swiftly the situation can change.
Why “Good Luck” May Not Be An Accident… October 12, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Confidence, Happiness and Success, Holistic Ideas, Personal Development (General).add a comment
Have you ever thought that some people just seem to be, “luckier” than others? Or that some people appear to, “have it all” whereas others seem to have difficulties the moment they put their feet out of bed in the morning?
For a long time, the NLP community has been suggesting and demonstrating that changing your attitudes, thoughts and actions on specific topics can help you to better your outcomes, enjoyment and well-being. The thing is, it’s always been jolly hard to prove (except by asking people simply to make the changes and then experience the results…).
Anyway, someone totally unconnected with NLP has shown that we all do have more control over the degree of luck in our lives than you might think. Dr Richard Wiseman has come up with a series of experiments that show attitudes (and the actions that flow from them) really are key in determining whether or not an individual is, “lucky” or not.
Have a look and see whether these findings could impact upon your life, or that of someone you know.
Thrive Anyway! September 16, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Happiness and Success, Inspiration, Personal Development (General).Tags: thrive
add a comment
Yes, I haven’t posted for weeks.
My guess is that the past few weeks have been, for me personally, some of the most turbulent for more than a decade.
Am I going to list out the tale of woe here? Of course not! But, being just far enough through it all now, it’s time to reflect a bit, and boil down a list of pointers that might help you (or someone you know) if there’s more turbulence in their life than they’d like at present. Here’s the top ten:
1. When things really do begin to kick off, sometimes you need simply to withdraw a little and sort them out. That’ s OK, and rather than being selfish, may well save others from receiving unnecessary fallout.
2. Despite point one, gauge the right time to re-emerge and/or ask others for help. There may well be others who, because of their prior experience or different position, can help more easily than you think. Just take care who you ask, how you ask, and when.
3. Keep focusing on solutions, and if they feel deeply and instinctively right, pursue them.
4. Accept that turbulence usually means that you’re breaking new ground, and allow yourself to make the mistakes that go with new ground without beating yourself up.
5. At the same time, turbulence (annoyingly!) usually presents the very best learning opportunities…console yourself that all the mayhem means you’re learning faster than usual, and this will all come in handy in the future.
6. Don’t expect more of yourself than you can deliver. For example, you may always strive to be cheerful. But sometimes, it’s especially crucial just to feel how you feel, and keep remembering that you’re doing the best that you can (even though it may be a different level of “best” to normal).
7. Keep counting your blessings. It sounds twee, but actually going through a litany of things for which you feel grateful, especially at night-time, is relaxing, inspiring, and a great help in keeping yourself focused towards that which you still have.
8. Try to think of radical change as an unusual visitor that shakes everything up, but can bring huge opportunities. A bit like the kind of larger-than-life relative who appears once every five years and turns the house upside down, but showers everyone with gifts at the same time.
9. When the storm subsides, pick through the pieces of the past that are still workable, usable, and in resonance with the new you…and weave them into the new direction your life is taking.
10. Think of all the great stories you’ll be able to tell once the dust has settled. (just like the posts and changes that will be appearing in this blog, now that I’ve whetted your appetite…)
Making “Life Purpose” & “Abundance” Simpler? August 10, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Career and Work, Happiness and Success, Money and Prosperity, Personal Development (General).Tags: abundance, life purpose, personal development
add a comment
Much is talked in personal development circles about, “life purpose” and “abundance”. And yet, in both cases, answers can be given which are so over-simplistic as to be unhelpful. Eg. “Just love yourself ” or ” You are already abundant, but have yet to realise it.” (?!)
The other day though, a thought struck me which links together both, and could simplify matters for anyone currently thinking about life purpose or abundance.
If a certain interest, concern, or way of being is part of our life purpose, we’re likely to do it a lot, and with enthusiasm. And by doing things a great deal, any of us can accumulate expertise and skill in a given area. Yet precisely because we are enthusiastic about it and precisely because we have become skilled enough at it to find it easy, we may not value that skill as highly as others who don’t possess it. Hence, our life purpose naturally yields an abundance of something, but we may need to recognise it for what it is.
Taking examples of this may make the matter more concrete. As a talkative, communicative person, I learnt a long time ago that others sometimes prefer you to keep quiet…and so labelled myself internally as talking to excess. In fact, it’s an excess that can be turned into abundance (eg when the words are used in trainings, to help clients, or to write).
To take another example: my Long Suffering Spouse loves to fix computers (so much so that, on the rare days when he isn’t fixing other peoples’ computers, he wanders round our house looking for devices and problems to fix). People pay him gladly to exercise a skill that he has in abundance.
So, in a sense, people perhaps haven’t changed that much over the centuries. Just as the miller used to barter an excess of flour for the farmer’s excess of apples, so today, we trade more abstract skills: conversation, fixing, a helping hand, the ability to make things beautiful, and so forth. But with our modern world comes a degree of complication and stress that can make these true skills harder to see in all their glory.
My question to you therefore, is simple:
What do you do, naturally, and in such easy abundance that it creates an excess that others will value?
Therein may lie, not just abundance, but a lot of information about your current life purpose as well.
Is this the key to banishing boredom? August 3, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Personal Development (General).Tags: bored, boredom, what to do if you are bored, what to do if you're bored
add a comment
Summer holidays again…bringing with it all those fond memories of long ago. During which I’d whine, “I’m bored,” and then spend hours trying to alleviate the problem, after being told there’s “no such thing”.
In fact, if you look at Google’s own stats, the bigger problem these days isn’t children being bored, but adults. A staggering 246000 people a month worldwide apparently type ” I am bored,” into the Google search box. A further 40,500 are more specific,”I am bored at work” suggesting that adults can get just as bored as kids, if not more so.
What helps?
People’s natural instinct when bored, these days is then to seek out funny clips on YouTube, do a bit of social networking, or something similar. And as I’m a big fan of all things internet, please don’t take what I’m about to say as a slight on those sites or that approach.
The thing is though, everyone can get bored, whatever their situation, or whether they normally enjoy their work, or their life situation. And just solving the problem via YouTube or similar, may not really solve it, but simply mask it, and put off the solution for another day.
So, if surfing and social networking isn’t the complete answer, what is?
In two words: direct experience.
What is “direct experience”?
The kind of direct experience I’m talking about is something where you personally go and do something which engages all your senses in an experience that you can only have by being in that place or doing that thing.
To take an example from my own life: yesterday, more-or-less on the spur of the moment, my Long Suffering Spouse and I took a 250 mile round trip to go seal watching. A great day…and one that we could only experience first-hand, or directly, by actually going there , getting on a boat, looking at (and smelly the fairly fishy whiff of) the seals. The seals were still cute beyond words, and the experience, though not lengthy, or expensive, was fantastic.
Others who are less wildlife-obsessed than me, or more sporty, might choose hiking, windsurfing or canoing. Foodie types might prefer wine-tasting, and if you feel you’re more arty, there’s sketching, photography, or going to a live play or performance. And any of us can ring up a friend or family member for a chat.
But what each of these activities has in common is the element of direct experience.
Why direct experience is important
Direct experience could be even more important than its simple role as a means of banishing boredom. Consider the fact that within the past three generations, rates of depression have soared. Of course, there are many factors behind this statistic, including the inevitability that more educated, self-aware people are likely also to be more aware of that which they lack, and therefore, more inclined to get miserable about it.
But over a similar time period, our access to indirect experience (paperbacks,television, radio, cinema, and now the internet) has soared, whilst our opportunities for direct experience have decreased. Employees in cubicles, and especially, teleworkers, are spending almost 100% of their working life experiencing, if at all, through other people’s accounts, YouTube clips, and daydreams. They then watch TV, and/or, read, and go to sleep , before beginning the cycle again.
Compare this even with our recent ancestors, who might have worked on the land, and/or in shocking conditions, but for whom direct experience, including that of chatting to others, would never even have been an issue.
The fundamental point
Let’s be clear. My fundamental point here is pro interaction, not anti-technology. I love technology. But it’s because I love it so much, that I want everyone to be able to reap its benefits whilst having the happiest life possible.
If we can use all the fantastic benefits of technology: its speed, its capacity to connect us, the wealth of knowledge it can bring us, and harness that to the very best that the physical world of direct experience can offer, then we’ll all be pretty blessed and lucky, rather than bored or depressed.
Three Reasons to Make Changes This Summer July 20, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Personal Development (General).add a comment
Traditionally, fewer people make changes to their lives/ their habits/anything else, in the summer. They favour the “tried and tested” times to attempt it instead (ie Jan 1st and the three days afterwards 
, or the engrained September start of the academic year, that seems to speak of change to anyone in the western world, whatever their age.
Various reasons are given for this, such as,”Well, everyone’s on holiday”, or, “there’s no-one around.” In fact, these conditions are perfect for implementing personal change, and here are three reasons why.
1. Your own holidays give you time to think
Let’s face it, the demands of most people’s everyday routines aren’t conducive to simple change, without concerted adjustment. Many of us find it tough to feel justified in day-dreaming, imagining and “mulling over”, when there are deadlines, and people, to meet.
On holiday, it’s a different story. Long stretches of unallocated time (or indeed, long periods of time occupying you, but in a relaxing way) do give you the conditions to think about “what next?” Plus of course, when you return from the holiday, it’s an easier time to, “press the re-set button”, because you have an immediate chance to begin doing things differently.
2. You get to try things out when no-one’s looking
If you implement a change when there aren’t many people around, you increase your chances of the change becoming permanent later on. This is because, when you first make a change, your first efforts at implementing it are likely to be less, “polished” than those you make later on. Think back to the first time you travelled to work from a new home, for example. Or your first attempts at using a new piece of software, a new language, or anything similar.
Therefore, if the “audience” for your initial efforts is smaller, because it itself is out of town, you have the perfect chance to get proficient in your own time. Meaning that…
3. When everyone’s back from holiday, you have a head start.
Whilst everyone else is returning from holiday, and attempting to “get back in the groove,” you’ll already have been practising your new habits so that they feel more comfortable, and look more proficient. So, by the time they begin to look at websites and think about making that, “September change”, you’ll already have implemented yours, and be raring to go.
So, if you’re even thinking about making a change, there really is no time like this particular present.
PS. We aim to practice what’s just been preached around this blog too…watch this space.
Is McDonalds Serving Personal Development? June 25, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Personal Development (General).Tags: McDonalds, neuro linguistics, NLP, personal development
add a comment
Yes, you read that right. And I did mean that McDonalds. The one with all the monolithic corporate infra-structure and the court cases in its past. The trouble is, I suspect they might be making a contribution to personal development…albeit, most probably, an inadvertent one.
Let me explain. At the heart of my point is their slogan,”I’m lovin’ it,” complete with that irritating jingly meme, that’s designed, in a few notes, to bore their new and dubious connection with “love”, into your unconscious mind. (Still not looking all the great on the personal development front, is it? Hang on in there with me…).
The thing is, at least here in the UK, the advert is so prevalent, that it’s beginning to have an effect on people’s language patterns. We always used to say, “I love X, ” or “I like Y.” And sometimes, we still do.
But more and more, I’m hearing (and there it is again!) people, on TV and in real life, say, “I’m loving X”, or “I’m liking Y,” about something that’s going on right in front of them.
If you subscribe to the idea that language patterns go on to affect thoughts and feelings, the effect of this new language usage is to put the speaker of the words in touch with what’s happening for them right now. In other words, they become “more present”. Since becoming, “more present” is one of the age-old keys to personal development (and something that lots of us, including me, still find pretty challenging), McDonalds could therefore, be said to be serving up something quite useful.
An experiment
If you’re sceptical about this, try an experiment for yourself. Think about something or someone you know that you truly do love in life, right now. Just to be unoriginal, that “something or someone” is “X” in the two sentences that follow.
Say to yourself, “I love X,” and notice how you feel.
Then (and preferably after giving yourself a little shake, to neutralise your system) say to yourself, “I’m loving X,” being equally aware of how you feel. Compare the two states for yourself, though I’m guessing (!) that there may well be a difference for you.
Does this development serve us?
Given that it’s probably pretty unlikely that those beneath the golden arches ever set out to make people more “present,” and in touch with themselves, what are we to make of this development? Should we refuse to use the language construction that’s in vogue, just because of where it’s come from, and potentially miss out getting, “present,” more easily? Or should we just accept that the universe sometimes moves in mysterious ways?
Myself, I’ll do the latter. Though I’m also still “lovin’” being a liberal vegetarian, thanks very much…
