From Clutter to Clarity

An article in our local rag interested me this morning. It was about a UN study which argues that we are giving our children too many toys to compensate for not spending time with them, because 'we are too busy.' The most disturbing part about it, was that the children when asked what they wanted most, replied 'more family time.' Our children it would appear 'get' it while we adults appear to have 'lost the plot' at least that is what the article suggested. And as always when I read something interesting, I start applying it to my world and that of my coachees, so out of interest what do we think about the following questions. 1) How many 'toys' (and not just children's toys here) do you have in your home now compared to the home you grew up in, and did you as a child feel deprived? 2) How many 'activities' or 'adventures' have you been on in the last month? (don't include organised regular activities) 3) When y...

I am reading a particularly interesting book at the moment... Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin and although I am still to be convinced by some of the argument, the book did get me thinking about how we practice and what we practice. In particular I started thinking about a topic which has come up and awful lot this week, communication. Why is it that we usually wait until communication breaks down before we do something about it? But instead what if we decided to proactively practice our communication. So, I am going to pick a frequently discussed coaching topic "real conversations' v' 'talking' and challenge anyone out there who reads this to do the following exercise with their family, whatever it's shape, size and dynamic. Your challenge is to sit together in a room for more than 30 mins and have a 'real' conversation, that is a conversation where you learn something about someone else in the room, about what they think or believe. A...

All of us have them, but how often do we challenge their usefulness?  Routines allow us to do things quickly and efficiently, make us feel comfortable with our environment and existence and generally take us through life, but what happens when a routine becomes a barrier to change? We allow our habits and routines to prevent us from making a different choice, from trying something new, from changing, from losing weight, from exercising more, from (fill in your own blank here). So as Spring approaches (Autumn in the Northern hemisphere) it is time to clean out those habits- or at least challenge them and to think through your routine and decide which bits are helpful and which are not. I will be swapping my habitual pre work coffee in front of the computer for 10 mins of meditation. Although the coffee is lovely I don't need that extra 10 mins in front of the computer- the jobs will still get done, and I don't seem to be able to find the time to meditate, and 10mins ...

What does success look like for you? Is it attached to a career? A job role (label) or position? Is it an amount of income generated or is it more? In our very hierarchical workplaces (very few are truly flattened) success is often tied into the job we do, and the higher up the ladder we go the more 'successful' we are apparently. However I pose you this question, when someone is giving your Eulogy what do you want them to say about you. That you achieved a particular position at work or that you had a successful whole life? A few people who come to see me are at a stage in their lives where the external work generated view of success is not enough for them. They have either stopped getting fulfilment from it or are disappointed with the reality of the top of the ladder and want to explore a far wider view of success, a more balanced reality. And as I tell them the good news is that YOU get to define what success is in your life, because it is just that, YOUR life. If ...

While I was watching this rather cute woofter enjoying basking in the winter sun I got to thinking a little. What is my equivalent of 'a dog's life.' What is the ultimate simple pleasure and enjoyment? Making the first fresh steps in snow (not that I get to do that very often anymore!!)  The smell of coffee first thing in the morning? Reading the paper in the middle of the day with a cup of tea? Fresh brewed tea using leaves and a proper teapot? Hearing the rain on the roof? Walking in the early morning while the sun is coming up? Anyway, what is your simple pleasure. Let me know. I would like to know what simple things we can do every day and acknowledge them as a precious moment. Maybe with enough of them we can fill a whole week with pleasure.

For most of us non Yogi like individuals 'being in the moment' is very tricky. We can maybe stop doing physical stuff, but the physical bit is much much easier than switching the brain off. So how do we stop those lists being drawn up constantly and the constant 'Oh I must remember to,' or 'Wouldn't it be great to.' It takes focus and practice, lots of practice, but the good news is that the focus part is the same sort of focus we use when we have a deadline and manage to block everything out apart from the thing we are doing! So take that focus and focus on something around you now  and really look at it, what do you notice? (If you are really stuck look at a tree! How many different colours are in the foliage, how many different shades of green?, how do the branches connect?) Focus entirely on the thing happening around you and see how long you can keep that up before something pops into your head, acknowledge the thing and then start the proc...

So let me ask you a question. When was the last time you brought work home with you? It would appear from the MANY conversations I have regarding this, that most of us, take work home some of the time, and lots of us take work home most of the time but to what end? Does it make the volume of work get smaller? Does it allow you to exist in a stress free environment? I am predicting probably not, in fact it usually has the opposite effect. We seem to have an inability to accept that for most jobs the work never gets finished, the in-tray is never empty, that enough is enough. It is time to make a stand against ourselves, taking work home habitually is not good for us, our relationships or our families. So our challenge this time is  to not take work home for a week. Then observe if anything really changed at work in terms of our function, did the in-tray get so much bigger, or did we actually start managing our time or our boundaries (that would be the No word!) and on the...