Category: Career

Posted on

Vision Boards and Goal Setting

 

Goals or Well-formed Outcomes?


Saturday saw my first workshop of the year and as it was only 19 days into 2013, it was designed to get us all thinking about what we want to achieve this year. We started the afternoon with a relaxation exercise to get us all into a calm and tranquil state, which is a good way to allow the mind to be creative. I demonstated how to form a goal – rather than just stating what our goal is (that would be short workshop), we tested it out against several criteria. The questions are designed to get each participant thinking about what their goal is, how they would know when they have achieved it, how and where they want to see this skill/goal achieved in their life, what they would gain or lose if they achieved it and how they would go about achieving it. Sometimes half way through this exercise people realise that they don’t actually want what they said they wanted anymore, which is a good thing and allows them the re-think it, or word it differently, or add some parameters to it.

A yet unfinished vision board

The questions in the first part of the workshop encourage each person to check whether their goal is well-formed or not, meaning if I decided that i was going to go to the gym every night of the week, you could ask – for what purpose or at what cost? If I chose an unbalanced goal I might lose something as well as gain something. 

Busy creating

The second part of the workshop was where we used all of the ideas and inspiration gained from the first part to start the creative part. This was really fun, allowing our imaginations free, although we could have done with another hour or so. Time really does fly when you’re having fun!

The Create Place, Bethnal Green, London

If you would like to know about my next workshops, please contact me to be placed on a list. You’ll be the first to know!

Posted on

Vision Boards and Goal setting Workshop January 2013

Happy new year to you all, and welcome to 2013!

What are you planning to achieve this year? What would you like to have achieved when you look back in a year’s time? If you want to create your best year yet, come to my workshop!

On Saturday January 19th I am running a workshop in conjunction with Katie Macleod Peters of Creating Well-being in Bethnal Green, East London. We will be teasing out our goals for 2013, and drilling down into specific goals, and then working on moving towards achieving them. We will be using a variety of NLP techniques and principles including PACER which is a simple way to create a well-formed outcome. This will help us ensure that the goal is realistic and achievable. Katie’s Creating Wellbeing workshops work on the principle that each participant uses their creativity to support their own wellbeing, an idea that I love, so we will also be creating our own vision boards to take away to support our goals.
This session costs £40 per person to attend (plus booking and transaction fees; £20 concessions).
Tickets are on sale now and you can buy yours through Eventbrite: creatingwellbeing.eventbrite.co.uk
To find out more feel free to contact me.

More about Creating Well-being

Creating Well-being is an ever-evolving project, still in its pilot phase. There has been an overwhelmingly popular and positive response since the start of the project in August, but we are still trying to work out the most suitable funding model. When the pilot phase is over, we will asses whether Creating Well-being will become a charitable or commercial project, Community Interest Company or Social Enterprise.
For more information, email: 
creatingwellbeing2012@gmail.com

 

Posted on

Women’s Networking Meeting and Goal Setting

As you may know, I am a member of the Wonderful Women’s networking group run by the fabulous ReeRee Rockette. We meet once a month for full meetings, and are invited to smaller meetings depending on our particular needs. The meetings usually have a theme and so far we have discussed topics like using social media, branding, marketing, webdesign and copyright. Today’s theme was about setting goals, which is the sort of thing that I know works, given my NLP background!

Each of the women articulated in words one goal for their business in the next 5 years, 3 years, coming year and 6 months. Many of us were saying it was difficult to start with, but by the end we had lots! We also tweeted our goals so that we weren’t just saying them to each other, but were putting them out there to the world (or at least our followers). As we all agreed, how can you know if you’re there if you don’t know where you’re going? We also tried to have measureable and specific goals. Needless to say I came back very excited and fired up about the goals I had set for myself this afternoon. I was even more excited to see that a few Twitter followers said that my goals summed up what they wanted to do and gave them some clarity and support. That made it even more worthwhile!

We met at the delightful vintage cafe Drink Shop and Do on Caledonian Road.

Picture: ReeRee Rockette

Picture: ReeRee RocketteAmongst our group of women this month we had our host, ReeRee Rockette, owner of Rockalily London Make-up, photographer Tigz Rice, Editor of New Empress Magazine Helen Cox, The Thrify Stitcher Claire-Louise, and sound engineer at Sounds Wilde Kirsty Gillmore. We also had the owner of Wonderland Wigs Sam, milliner LittleMissB, hair and make-up artist Miss Honey-Bare, Lizzie of Betty Blues Loungerie and burlesque performer Duchess Divine as well as new member Rosie who is considering her business options! We are quite a diverse bunch, but inspite of this and being at different stages of running our own businesses, we all contribute and gain so much from our meetings. 

Posted on

What do I really want?

In my capacity as a teacher, and more specifically as a Literacy specialist, I have been thinking a lot about doing some training in the area of dyslexia. I am sure that there are many pupils who I could help even more, with some background knowledge in this area.

Despite searching on various web-sites and speaking to people who might know, I still haven’t managed to find the right course for me. I know that I am looking for a course with direct teaching, which means it needs to be in an accessible place, and one which gives me an overview and some skills which I can use to assess and support pupils.

I signed up to a course today and almost as soon as I had filled in the online application form, I felt I had made a mistake. The feeling continued all day, until the evening, when on further consideration, I realised that this particular course goes far deeper than I want to go. It leads to a Masters in Special and Inclusive Education, which at this stage would lead me off on a tangent from where I am going in my career. 

As soon as I made the decision that I am not going to take up the place, I felt much better, as I was beginning to feel quite stressed! I realise now how far I have come in terms of listening to my heart and recognising my internal incongruence signals.

I have learnt today more about what I do want, because now I am sure about what I don’t want!

Posted on

Networking Meeting and Biscuits!

I attended my monthly business network meeting this Sunday, which as always left my head buzzing with ideas. We are a group of self employed women who meet every month to share our experiences, knowledge and expertise about going it alone. Our meetings are interspersed with online communication through a forum. The topic of this weekend’s meeting was copyright and trademarking, including intellectual property. As the film The Social Network has just been awarded 8 Oscar nominations, intellectual property is all the rage! Some of the women had first hand experience of other people stealing content from their sites or blatantly copying their ideas or designs, so this was a good way to learn about how to protect ourselves.

These were some of the biscuits I baked with my 12-year-old niece and took to the meeting with me

At the end of each meeting, we make a list of goals we aim to achieve this month and share them around the group. The next meeting starts with a review of how we faired. I find that it’s a great way to keep motivated and to celebrate how I’ve got on as I have a group of well-wishers on hand, who have lots of ideas and words of encouragement. Between us we know so many people and have many different areas of expertise, so this way, we can pool our resources and support one another.

Wonderful Women: Minding Our Own Business

Posted on

Living life to the full… (and living with an illness)

I recently wrote a guest post for my networking group on the subject of making the most of life, whilst living with an illness. You can read it here in its original context or you can read the whole post, below.

 The beach at Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh

As someone who loves to be creative and keep my brain busy, I have realised after many years that for me, working part time and being self employed the rest of the time is a winning combination.

I have had an auto-immune type of arthritis for almost 20 years now, and I have to say, it has not been easy. The symptoms have ranged from chronic pain to fatigue, but most of the time it felt like I was coming down with the ‘flu. Among many other challenges like being diagnosed and treated in the first place, was the fact that (fortunately) other people could not tell that I was unwell. This although a blessing in many ways, made it difficult to ask other people from help when I was very run-down or simply did not have the strength to do what others would regard as easy.

During the time when the illness was at its worst, I was working full-time as a teacher. Although I had loved my job, I came to loathe it, as it was just knackering all of the time. I slept for most of the weekends and basically had no life. When I tried to do anything other than my day job, I got sick. At one point I was chomping 14 tablets a day (and still in pain).

One day I had just had enough and told the head teacher that I was going to end the school year and resign. She arranged for me to have a job out of the classroom and also gave me flexible working hours which meant I could work from home from time to time. This was the first time I had ever asked for help and I realised that my employers liked me and had a legal obligation to make it possible for me to do my job as well as I could. This new role gave me the mental flexibility and confidence to imagine doing something new.

Years later here I am, nurturing my fledgling coaching business, and doing a teaching consultancy job part time. This gives me two days to work on my business and I have a day off on a Wednesday which is my ‘relaxation day’. I go to my T’ai Chi class, go shopping, meet a friend for coffee, have a swim, whatever I like to relax on my special day. I take on lots of free lance work now, which gives me the flexibility in both my working hours and in what else I do. Planning is of critical importance because living with an illness means I need to plan in rest days. If I have worked 3 days at a stretch, I have a (planned) day off. If I go out in the evening I plan to start my morning later the next day. One of the hardest things for me is accepting that I need more rest than other people, so I write my days off into my diary weeks in advance. That way I ensure that I have time to be at home. I may well be working, but at least I can take it at my own pace.

My new working arrangements have lots of positives, but obviously there are downsides too. I earn a fraction of what I used to, I don’t have the same benefits that I did before, like sick pay and the same level of pensions contributions. What I do have though, far out weighs these factors – the sense of being free and being able to choose to look after my own health and well-being; being creative with my ideas and time; enjoying my work time, business time and leisure time, means I am actually living life much more to the full.

My Ten Top Tips 

1. Work out when your energy is the highest and do things you need to do then. You’ll get more done that way.

2. Plan time for rest. This does not necessarily mean bed-rest, although if that’s what you need, take it.

3. Learn to listen to your body. Pain and fatigue are indicators. Your body is trying to tell you something. Listen and acknowledge this communication.

4. Find some form of exercise that you enjoy. It does not have to be the gym! Walk in the park or dance in your living room- whatever makes you feel good.

5. Talk to other people who have the same issues or look online for support groups. It makes it much easier when you realise you’re not alone.

6. This one is hard: Accept the limitations of your illness. It is an illness, but it does not define you. If you accept it and make peace with it, you will be more able to get over it.

7. Get over it. It’s not the worst thing in the world, you are not the only one and there are many others out there suffering more than you. It took me ages to stop feeling sorry for myself, but when I did, I felt much better.

8. Make goals for yourself – e.g. today I will walk further than yesterday. Even a few extra minutes will build your strength and stamina. 

9. Get out and about. Use your leisure time to discover new things- your brain loves stimulation and helps place your attention elsewhere.

10. Get sociable. Hang out with positive fun people and you will feel better about yourself. Laughter is the best medicine.

My cat Puffin brings me great joy

Please drop me a line if you found this blog post useful or you have anything to share on the subject. I always welcome your comments!

Posted on

Work-life balance, self employment and illness

I recently wrote a blog post about balancing one’s work-life commitments and living in harmony, particularly in relation to managing an illness. Here’s a taster:

Being a Wonderful Woman while certain bits of you aren’t always so wonderful

‘As someone who loves to be creative and keep my brain busy, I have realised after many years that for me, working part time and being self employed the rest of the time is a winning combination…’

For me, self employment means the freedom to choose

You can read the full post here on the Wonderful Women: Minding our own Business blog, hosted by ReeRee Rockette.