What the “Drains Man” Taught Me February 13, 2010
Posted by selfworks in Personal Development (General).Tags: personal development, personal development story
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It’s not often that I talk to you about drains, rather than personal development. But this time, it’s worth it, because the two became strangely connected this week.
I’ll be honest, I was not looking forward to the “Drains man” and his visit. We live in a property with several flats, and someone else had kindly organised it all. Which was just fine by me. I’m a cyber kind of girl, and the more “virtual” life can become, the happier I am. Especially when it comes to drains.
Anyway, the drains man was here longer than we thought he would be. Meaning that walking past the whole process, in order to get out the gate and to my next appointment, become unavoidable. Coming face to face with your own s*** in a personal development context is one thing…I wasn’t looking forward to its physical equivalent one bit.
Marching smartly out the door, being me, I still couldn’t just walk past the drains man and his mate without saying, “Hello”. And being me, this turned into an irresistible extra comment of the kind that always just seems to fall out of my mouth whether I want it to or not.
“Thank you so much for doing this, ” (So far, so good). “I’m so glad that I don’t have to”. (Another heartfelt comment, but did I need to say it? I made an attempt to hurry away).
At which point, the drains man, with perfect sincerity, delight and charm said,
“It’s a great job…I love it. You get to make a real difference to people’s lives…I just love it when there’s been a big blockage, and we can take it away.”
Oh drains man, I really, really wished I could have stopped longer, found out more about you, and thanked you for what I learnt from you. Which was:
Coaching and drain clearance are much more closely related than I thought. People in both professions get to clear blockages, and to make a difference.
But one of us was scared to go near the dirt…and yet learnt more than she could have imagined by doing so.
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
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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 McDonalds Serving Personal Development? June 25, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Personal Development (General).Tags: McDonalds, neuro linguistics, NLP, personal development
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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…
Multi-Causal Solutions May 21, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Career and Work, Happiness and Success, Holistic Ideas, Money and Prosperity, Personal Development (General).Tags: holistic thinking, linear thinking, multicausal, personal development, problem, solution, weight loss
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Have you ever had a problem where you keep trying a variety of different solutions, but none of them seems to work properly, or for any length of time?
A good example of this kind of issue, for many people-including myself, is weight loss. For ages, I darted around between sorting out the emotional causes, diet, exercise, changing my habits of thought and belief, even energy work. Then I finally realised that the problem existed on all of the levels at once, even though its most obvious manifestation was my big fat tummy.
Once I began doing all of the above at the same time, pounds began to shift,(though still not as fast as my big-chunking, fast-moving mind might have liked . 
But tackling a multi-causal problem by means of a multi-causal solution did work (and is continuing to do so). So if you have a seemingly intractable problem, consider approaching it on many levels at the same time too.
How?
These questions are likely to target the different aspects of a problem, and can be asked in any order, so long as the solutions they yield are then blended together and put into action together, in a manageable way:
1. What needs to change on a physical level here?
2. How do feel about this change, and if the feeling were transformed, what would be the result?
3. What do I/we believe about this situation?
4. Which habits do I/we need to change in order to move forward with this?
5. How do I/we perceive the energy behind this situation, and how do I/we want to change that? (Less abstractly, you could also ask yourself, “If this situation were a thing, what would it look, sound and feel like, and change the resulting metaphor).
“But…”
“But”, you may be saying,” this isn’t new. It sounds like you might just being applying things like logical levels, Maslow’s heirachy”.
If you’re so inclined, these might also seem like the more esoteric idea that everyone has physical bodies, but also energetic, emotional, mental and spiritual ones, vibrating away on unseen frequencies.
And you’d be right. The point here though, is that even these well known psychological and esoteric frameworks usually approach problems in a fairly linear way. The approachtends to be, “Upon which level is this problem occuring?,” rather than, “The obvious signs of this are on level X, but let’s check all of them, to be sure that we’ve sorted out every aspect of the real cause.”
When you think about it, it stands to reason. We are all complex individual with many facets. So it stands to reason that, in order for our experiences to challenge us properly, they would need to be multi-faceted too.
In other words, employing an, “holistic approach”, isn’t just a fluffy way to give yourself good PR and a nice warm glow. In fact, it’s the most thorough, realistic and sure-fire path ot a solid, multi-causal, solution.
Life Without Limits? April 3, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Freebies, Happiness and Success, Personal Development (General).Tags: free personal development technique, free personal development tips, life without limits, no limits, personal development
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Lots of personal development gurus talk about living, “a life without limits”. And if we’re lucky, many of us, in-between grocery shopping and paying the bills, get as far as thinking who or what we might be if that were so.
But few people ever talk about practical processes for lifting those limits. I happened upon just such a process the other day, whilst talking to a friend. I can’t vouch for whatever worldly success it may or may not give you-at least, not yet. But I can say with some confidence that it’s likely to give you a true feeling of liberation, which is portable, and surely the first step towards any other sort of freedom.
The process
1. Set aside a few minutes (five or so will be ample) during which you can concentrate by yourself and will not be disturbed.
2. Think about an area in you life where you know you’re naturally strong. It could be anything, from cooking to thinking, to being able to attract others into your life.
3. Because of that strength, it’s likely that others, in the past, may have become jealous of you, even if they’re not conscious of it themselves. And this includes your nearest and dearest. Therefore, as a fundamentally nice person, it’s also likely that you have limited your use of that strength (even if it is the basis of your life and career).
4. Conceptualise your strength. Imagine what it would look like if it were an actual part of your soul, spirit, psyche or personality. Perhaps it would be a fluffy cloud, a disc, a web: whatever springs to mind for you is the image you should choose.
5. Inspect the image in your mind. As you do so, think back to the times when you may have held back from unleashing the full force of this gift or strength. As you do so, you’ll see or feel something in relation to the image of your strength that represents it being held back. (In my case, it looked like black clips, but it could be anything for you. Again, just go with whatever feels right).
6. Use your mind to release whatever it is that’s holding the strength back, and be aware of what happens and how you feel as the energy behind your talent expands to fill its rightful space. Only you know where, and even if, it will stop. Let it come to rest wherever and however feels right.
7. As a test, think back to how you feel now about exercising the full extent of your strength or talent in “real life,” and be aware of how you feel.
8. Finally, remember that this is a real exercise with real effects, so please do everything you need to do afterwards to fix or “ground” yourself back in the everyday world. At the very least, drink some water and stamp your feet.
Hope this helps in a practical way to releaase any limits you no longer need. Please do leave any comments you have about how you found it as an experience.
Marley and All of Us March 17, 2009
Posted by selfworks in Career and Work, Confidence, Family, Happiness and Success.Tags: life lessons, life purpose, marley and me, personal development, what is my life purpose
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This is a post I meant to make when I read the book, “Marley and Me”. Having now seen the film as well, it’s still a post that just has to be made.
Very broadly, the story is a biography of a dog. Though that’s utterly cute in itself for dog-lovers like myself, that’s not the reason I’m talking about it in a personal development blog. For, the story is also one of how Marley (the dog, in case you’re wondering) taught his owners several life lessons.
There are the lessons commonly associated with dogs, such aunconditional love. But there’s also one that’s relevant for many of us, and often appears when people seek coaching.
In the book and film, the writer, John Grogan is portrayed, and describes himself some of the time, as a devoted family man, who still sometimes looks wistfully at other people’s lives. One suc other life is that of his friend, who is a reporter, travelling to exotic and dangerous locations. Grogan, on the other hand, is a columnist who makes everyone laugh with tales of his family, his dog, and life-in-one-place.
Yet, looked at with hindsight, Grogan was surrounded by the very things he needed to have success on his own terms later on. Without Marley and Grogan’s family, there would have been no book, no film, and no joy in both for millions.
So, perhaps there’s a lesson in all of this for each of us. What if, however mundane life might sometimes seem, we were each surrounded by the very things we need to let our life unfold in the very best way for us personally? And if that were the case, then personal change would become primarily a matter of perspective, rather than strife, efforting or overwhelming upheaval.
By the way, personal development ideas aside, do go and see the film/read the book…though you’ll probably need to keep the hankies handy in either case.
The Empathy Mechanism? December 10, 2008
Posted by selfworks in Personal Development (General).Tags: empathy, personal development
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That’s weird. No sooner do I post about empathy (well, OK, not that soon…apologies for the delay, all manner of stuff here and most of it good) than possible evidence of its mechanism comes along.
More precisely, it seems that neuroscientists have discovered that we are all perfectly capable of identifying with a mannequin’s body as if it were our own, under the right circumstances.
This makes experiencing another’s feelings even more plausible, and possible.
To check out a summary of the story (which also has links ot the original research, if you’re feeling really keen) visit:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/vr-goggles-and.html
And I’ll be back with some longer posts in a few days (preferably of the kind that have 30 hours each. 
Have You Ever Made This Mistake? November 27, 2008
Posted by selfworks in Confidence, Happiness and Success, Personal Development (General).Tags: confidence, personal development, Personal Development (General), personal development tip, personal power
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Yesterday, I met a fantastic person. Warm, witty, and infinitely capable.
We shared some ideas. I managed to pass on a few things that have worked in the past for others, whilst she taught me a great deal on a couple of subjects I know little about.
But most impressively of all, she managed to avoid a mistake that I’ve made often myself in the past-and have seen others make, not only in the personal development field, but any other area, in which, for whatever reaason, they feel underconfident.
This person talked about how she wanted to, “share the information,” I’d given her, with others. In other words, she distinguished between the powerful information itself, and me, as the mere messenger, or mouthpiece, for that information.
Why is this such a wise distinction? Primarily because it’s the information itself (coupled with a person’s own willingness to make changes) that causes change to be made. A particular person acting as mouthpiece, or scribe, for that information might well put it in a particular way that sparks a certain response, on occasion. They might be warm, sympathetic, or in some other way appealing on any given day. But they themselves are not the factor that creates the change. The change only happens during the magical interplay between the info itself, and yours or my willingness to be open to it.
Confusing the power of the information with the much more limited power of the mouthpiece, leads some to make gurus out of others, in an exact reversal of the way in which they might want to, “shoot the messenger” if the info they hear is not to their taste.
And whilst it may upset some to hear me say this, however well-intentioned a guru might be, making any other human being into a guru risks diminishing the person who’s eagerly erecting that pedestal. Why? Because by elevating someone above your own level, you’re suggesting that they are in some way more powerful, or “better”, than you are. Different , yes. More experienced in a certain field? Quite possibly. But “better”? Absolutely not, and believing in a “guruising ” myth can only, in the end, make the believer feel unfairly robbed of his or her own personal power, and until they correct this perception of inequality, less confident of their own unique abilities and position.
So, if making gurus of others isn’t a great way forward, what’s the alternative? Being aware of what helps you to feel open to change, powerful, and all you can be. Noticing when information itself helps you to empower yourself. And being alive to the fact that each of us, though unique and diverse, is as innately powerful, resourceful and talented as the next person, whether or not we’re exhibiting that to the world at any particular moment.
On Plumbing & Empowerment… November 20, 2008
Posted by selfworks in Confidence, Personal Development (General).Tags: Add new tag, empowerment, personal development, personal development tips, procrastination
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OK, it’s a weird title. Plumbing and empowerment do not normally go together. But this week, for me, they have. And in the process, they’ve revealed some interesting ideas that might be of use to you.
First off, let me explain that plumbing comes into it-not least because it helps to explain a week’s blogging silence.
The plumbers have been in in our house. And, terrified though I was at the point when gaping holes remained where the bath had been, I’m feeling a certain sense of empowerment now. After all, as a committed, “cerebral rather than practical” soul, it was a big stretch even to stray into Builderland, with its strange lingo (“You’ll need a woodnut”…I never did really work out what a wood nut is, but apparently we now have them) and even stranger customs. For example, our builder didn’t like emails, and would only phone… Another stretch for a blogging and email junkie;-).
Anyway, the first lesson from all this, as my Long suffering Spouse and I appreciate our gleaming bathroom, is that there is always a job you’ve put off for so long, that seems so alien, and is buried so deeply, that it doesn’t even feature on your, “Things I must get round to doing,” list anymore.
I can promise you that if you find that buried task, make a plan, seek help if needed, and then just get through it the best way you know how, your rewards in terms of energy, achievement and empowerment, will be huge.
A second personal development reminder
Another useful reminder came from our plumber himself. Just as he was finishing our (have I mentioned this already?) astonishingly nice bathroom, he revealed that he himself hadn’t been able to have a shower at home , but only baths, for two years, because he’d been so busy working on other people’s bathrooms.
So, personal development question number two for you, me and the rest of the world, is:
“What skill or talent do you share with the rest of the world to a really high standard, but often forget to enjoy using for your own benefit?”
Once you’ve identified it of course, your challenge is to give yourself that benefit (whether it’s cake-making, friendship, support, advice, or great bathrooms) to the same extent that you’d give it to someone else. And do please leave a comment about your experiences, or any stories that this post has brought into your mind.
Who’d have thought you could get all this from a bit of plumbing? Everyday life really is it’s very own personal development/empowerment course, if we can all allow it to be.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go, because it’s time to run a nice, hot, bath…
