Category: Goals

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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!

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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

 

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Best Year Ever – 2012!

Hello everyone and a very belated Happy New Year to you! I can’t believe that 3 weeks of 2012 are already over! I have been enjoying an extended holiday and rest period and am now ready to get back to work. This year I have many exciting ventures up my sleeves and I am ready to face some personal challenges too. I also intend to write blog posts more often, sharing self-help tips and inspiration to help you live a happier life. I am taking the leap and embracing new opportunities and want to help encourage you to do that too. So, if you are not already on the mailing list, click the subscribe button, pop in your email address and you’ll never need to miss a blog post again! Let’s make 2012 our best year ever.

View of the sea, Garajau, Madeira

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Vegetarian Experiment Day 16 and Review of Goals

Stuffed field mushrooms topped with parmesan cheese served with mixed vegetable wild rice

This is the last post from me for a while as I am getting ready to go on holiday, and although the beach, the pool, lots of relaxation and an abundance of wonderful vegetarian food will be featuring, my lap-top will not! In any case I thought around half way is a good time to review my goals and consider the impact of my vegetarian diet so far.

When I started thinking about a vegetarian diet these were my goals:

  1. To increase my energy levels
  2. To feel less fatigue and tiredness (Not the opposite of 1, but linked to 3)
  3. To reduce the symptoms of my Psoriatic Arthritis
  4. To reduce my intake of tea from 6 to 3 cups, plus herbal tea at night
  5. To increase my intake of water gradually over the month from 0.5 litres to 2 litres
  6. To avoid processed foods as much as possible

I would say that I have achieved 1 and 4 definitely. My energy levels been up; I have been working very hard and have been raring to go most mornings. Re-discovering Jasmine tea has made number 4 easy to do!

I have made good progress with 6 – avoiding processed foods. I have cooked from scratch most evenings, and I have only eaten processed foods when I have been out and could not avoid it.

I have not achieved number 5 – I am still terrible at drinking water! I will practise this on holiday.

Numbers 2 and 3 are to do with the effects of my Psoriatic Arthritis – I would say this is inconclusive. I have still had aches and pains, swellings, stiffness etc all over my body and at different times. I think it would take a very long time for me to be able to conclude that this sort of diet has a healing or positive effect on a chronic disease. However, I think there are many other positive effects which are not as easy to measure – like the strength of my nails, hair and skin (which are all looking and feeling super healthy). My whole digestive system has felt as though it is working more efficiently and I have not felt bloated or gassy (which surprised me)!

I would also say that the psychological effects of this diet have been very positive. It gives me the feeling that I am in control of what goes into my body, (so why not choose good things?) and that the fresh food can get to work straight away as it’s being digested easily, without lots of synthetic ingredients getting in the way.

 A colourful side dish of seasoned raw vegetables – I would not eat this as a whole meal, but as a little side dish, it is a crunchier version of a traditional salad

I hope you have enjoyed reading my posts. As always please leave a comment and let me know what you think. I promise to keep working on my goals whilst I am away and will bring back some photos to share 🙂

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Vegetarian Experiment Day 3

Just a quick post today to show what vegetarian delights I have been munching on, as I am going away for the weekend. I am very excited as it’s my friend’s hen weekend and I don’t need to worry as all of of meals will be catered for us, and she is a strict vegetarian! Photos will be shared when I am back!

This meal was heavenly: pea and mint salad with mixed leaves, topped with stuffed courgette flowers and a side of mash!

I grew some courgettes last year in the hope that I would end up with some flowers too. It was a partial success, but I would say if you are going to try it for yourself, the bigger the space, the larger the crop will be. (Pretty obvious really, but some plants can yield lots of fruit in a smaller space.) Also when you pick the flowers, you need to check which ones are male and which ones are female, and ensure that you leave at least one of each so that the bees can continue to do their great pollination work. This is something I did not realise and so I only had two small crops!

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My 30 Day Vegetarian Experiment

I have been thinking a lot lately about what I am eating and what the food I eat is doing to my body.

In a previous post I talked about Paul McKenna’s weight loss system and how my weight has fluctuated over the years. (You can find out how it has been for me so far here.) But now I am thinking about more than just losing weight. I am looking for a way to increase my energy levels and reduce the fatigue and stodgy feelings I get inside my body, and although I don’t eat masses of meat, I am keen to see what difference this makes (if any) to how I feel. I will also monitor the effect it has on my Psoriatic Arthritis (if any). I also have some other some bad habits which I am going to work on too!

So for the next month I am going to eat vegetarian food only – all manner of vegetables, pulses, grains and fruit. As well as this I am going to try to:

 

  • cut my intake of tea from 6 cups per day to 3 cups, plus herbal tea at night
  • I am going to increase my intake of water gradually over the month from 0.5 litres to 2 litres 
  • I am going to attempt to avoid processed foods as much as possible

 

I will post as often as I can on my progress and upload photos of the new delights and recipes I discover! 

To whet your appetite, here is an example of the lunch I ate on day 1 of the vegetarian experiment:

Avocado, tomato and pepper and chick pea and beetroot dips with pitta breadFollowed by mint tea!

I would love to hear from anyone who is trying a vegetarian experiment at the moment or has tried this before. Please share your experiences or comment below. If you have enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe so you can keep up with my progress. Thanks!