Category: NLP

If you read my last post you will know how excited I have been about the Olympics taking part in my home city. Well, the games started a week ago, and I am still well and truly gripped by Olympomania! In fact as I write, I am waiting in an (online) queue to see if I have managed to secure some tickets for next week. Last night, after two and a half hours of continous tapping, clicking and waiting I managed to buy a ticket to see judo today. I think I will get to see the repechages, bronze and gold medal contests. Needless to say, I am very excited about it! Photos to come soon…

It made me think about persistence in achieving a goal. In total I have spent around three hours every day trying to buy a last-minute ticket to an Olympic event, any event in fact, just to feel even more a past of these games. Despite trying to buy tickets when they originally went on sale last year, I wasn’t able to get any, and I have been hearing the reports of the unused Olympic Family allocation, which are now being sold every day. But it’s a slow and clunky system; made worse by the sheer volume of traffic going to the site, it is taking up a lot of time and you don’t know when the tickets will be released and so on.

So why am I still trying despite these annoying obstacles?

• I am persisting because I know that just trying over and over again sometimes works – a case of numbers.
• Also because in this case I have nothing to lose, only a potential seat at an Olympic event to gain.
• Although I am spending hours of my time in pursuit of Olympic tickets, this period of time is short-lived so I can happily give up that time.
• Even when I feel disheartened and walk away from the computer, I switch on th t.v. and see the crowds watching an event in my city, and think ‘that could be me!’. I then go back to the computer and  keep trying.
• I have successfully bought one ticket, and I also know of other people who have managed to buy tickets this week.

In this case, my motivation is very towards my goal (as opposed to away from – for example ‘I don’t want to miss out’). I will report back on the judo experience later and see if and how reality and my expectations coincide.

If you are searching for tickets, keep going. They are out there and more are being released every day!

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Do you have ideas, plans and goals that you think about, but just can’t ever seem to get started on? Do you procrastinate and worry about how things would work if you tried to move forward with those ideas? Me too. Below is a case study of one such idea I have had for ages, and finally got around to starting.

 

This Monday will see the last of my weekly Embrace Relaxation classes for this term (which return in September, after a summer break). I can hardly believe it has been running for nearly 2 months! It has been a successful project for me on several counts: Mainly because:

• People came along and enjoyed it
• I enjoyed doing all of the planning and preparation and I loved teaching the classes
• I have received amazing feedback from the women who have attended
• I have felt the physical knock-on effects myself. I leave the class floating each week – this has got to be a brilliant benefit! 

We practise Green Therapy in our classes. Just allow your eyes to rest while gazing at something green.

So, it got me thinking about why it took me so long to get started on such a project and why I found it such a difficult thing to do? I realise that I have a problem with the idea of ‘being ready’. I always think there is more to learn, more to read about, more flourishes and embellishments that could be added and more details which could be tweaked. It is one of the main issues I have had with writing a blog, marketing my services or even putting this website together. It is a theme which has run through most of the things I have done. But there comes a point with every project I try to put my hand to, when I must think “…Okay… I am ready…”, otherwise I would never have done anything!

You have to climb a hill one step at a time, but the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll reach the top!

‘Know Thyself’

A few years ago I completed an online personality test called Strengths Finder, which is designed to pull out your strengths and talents and show you how to develop them in a work context. It is quite a useful exercise, as it gives you your top 5 ‘themes’, which is like having your personality distilled to its essence. What jumped out at me from this test, was that my top 3 themes were ‘Input’, ‘Learner’ and ‘Positivity’. That fits me to a ‘t’ actually. Although it was great that my strengths were in the region of learning, (it’s what I love), the test also pointed out that I needed to develop my action-skills. (Incidentally, the test results guide you in how to use your strengths, and improve your ‘weaker’ areas).

So in the case of the Embrace Relaxation Classes, I needed to take the action steps towards starting this project – researching a venue, booking the hall, telling people about it, preparing the content and so on.

Once I had booked my venue and had the dates in the diary, I got down to the nitty gritty of planning what would we would be doing in the sessions. Knowing that I was now committed, I just had to say to myself ‘I’m ready… enough’.

I enjoyed this book, not least because I used to be quite sceptical about meditation myself, and have also found a way to make it work for me.

How To Get Started on Any Project

1. Make a start.

2. Dedicate 20 mins a day to your project – and stick to it. You will start to make progress in no time (and I found that when I set myself 20 minutes, I usually got stuck in for longer).

3. Decide what you want to achieve and by when. As well as an overall goal, think about what each step will be – these will form your short-term goals.

4. Think to yourself ‘How will I know when I’m there?’ Ensure that you know what the end goal or (in NLP-speak) solution-state will look like.

4. Create a vision board of what you want to achieve and/or write your goals up somewhere where you will see them every day.

5. Make a start! 

 And of course keep going.

What I learnt from this experience was that sometimes, success can be relatively easy, and that for me, once I committed, it helped me get started. I also practised trusting that I was ‘ready enough’…

 

I’d love to hear your experiences with putting projects off, procrastinating and wishing you could start – and what has helped you to get started. 

 

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Today is a watershed day for me. It is exactly 20 years to the day that I lost my Dad. Until now, I had known him for more years than I had not known him, but today that changed. 

It made me realise even more acutely than usual, that our time here is limited and so we should spend it the way we want to and not the way we ought to, should do or must do. 

Caroline from Life is Limitless shared the song ‘Ten Things’ (Paul Baribeau) on her blog recently, and the lyrics made a huge impact on me – specifically the chorus line which goes: 

“and right now all you have is time time time yeah,
but someday that time will run out.
That’s the only thing you can be absolutely certain about.”

It makes me realise that I need to make time for those things which bring me joy but I ‘don’t have time for’. My life is not going to get less busy any time soon (and if it did, I would just find new things to do anyway), so that means I need to eke out those extra little bits of time here and there for my many interests!

The Currency of Time

 We talk about ‘spending’ time, ‘saving’ time, ‘giving’ time, taking time over things. It seems to me that nowadays time, (along with money) is one of our most precious commodities. For me there are never enough hours in the day, I always want to do the things I enjoy for longer and feel as though I have only just got started…!

Pushed for Time

• Do you ever find yourself wanting to do things you love, but are unable to find the time for? 
• Do you have your weekends, holidays and time-off booked up months in advance? 
• Do you ever feel like you are running on a treadmill and are unable to stop?

I have felt some of these things at times, and one thing is for sure, there is a finite amount of time in a day. Despite the size of my workload or pre-agreed committments, I can’t create time where there isn’t any. So I need to rearrange/reconsider/recalculate/juggle/come up with some new ideas. So with that in mind, here are my

Top Ten Tips for Spending your Time (More) Wisely

1. Decide what you have to do – Work to pay the bills, eat, feed family, sleep… e.t.c.

2. Decide what you would love to do (if you had the time).

3. Decide what can go, be done by some other means, done by someone else (delegate or employ someone to do it)?

4. Find out where you are wasting time – (internet browsing, watching bad t.v…) Claw back time from those places.

5. Find empty blocks of time and find ways to utilise those e.g. Carry a book/tablet with you for trains, tubes, waiting rooms, use your diary/Outlook /calendar to plan and check off regularly.

6. Giving time – When you decide to give your time to others, give it freely and feel good about it, otherwise don’t do it.

7. Taking others’ time – respect other people’s time. They are choosing to give it to you, so be on time and be mindful of how much of it you are taking. Think about what you can give back.

 8. Stop and notice what is around you. Appreciate the place and time that you are in. Each moment is unique and won’t be the same again!

9. Make the most of your time. Rather than dwelling in negativity, learn from your mistakes. If there are no mistakes and it is all just feedback, what can you do differently?

10. Time is elastic – sometimes it drags and sometimes it rushes by. Manipulate time to feel like it’s going slower by packing more short tasks or activities into a day – but being mindful of what you are doing and doing things you enjoy. Get rid of the things you don’t enjoy (see numbers 3 & 4) and start living the life you want.

Our time here is limited! What are you going to do with yours?

If you would like to explore how to make the most of your time further, contact me to arrange your free consulation call now!

As always, if you like what you have read, use the buttons to share it with others, or leave me a comment or question below 🙂

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Yesterday I had a chance encounter with someone who has been going through a hard time. She quickly jumped from one bad event to another, describing little snapshots of vivid emotion. In the space of five minutes, my mood went from buoyant, to one where I felt I wanted to help, to one where I felt low myself. I offered an empathetic ear, and tried to offer some support through my listening and acknowledging of her problems. I got the feeling she just needed to offload, and that I was a safe person for her to do that with. When I offered ‘I guess you just need to focus of the good bits,’ she replied ‘there are no good bits.’ Then I said ‘then focus on the least bad bits.’

Whatever filters we are seeing the world through, our experience is subjective. My advice to my colleague may have seemed glib to her, but in that moment where it was a busy work situation, it was the only lifeline I could offer. I am confident that she will work through her problems and some will correct themselves with time on their own, but in that moment, my advice was simple.

When things are going awry, focus on the good bits. 

This is something which is now second nature to me, and even when I’ve had a ‘bad day’ (in whatever sense) there are inevitably elements of good, or in the worst case, less bad. I now naturally remember those. But how do I do this? In NLP terms, playing around with the submodalities helps. For example, when I think about the day I’ve had, I imagine the ‘good bits’ in colour, with movement and dialogue, and the ‘bad bits’ I imagine as small, static black and white pictures. I also try to drain the emotion out of the ‘bad’ scenario and heighten the good feelings in the other (- this is an oversimplification, but it’s the best way I can describe it at present). Another NLP technique which is useful here is reframing. When you hear that someone has had a car accident, you might think ‘Oh what terrible luck to have had an accident,’. Or… you could reframe it as ‘Wow! He was lucky to have not got hurt,’ or ‘…not got hurt even more badly…’

These are both very useful ways to flip a situation in your head, and to change the way you think about a problem or situation. Deal with the problem in your own time, but for now, just focus on the good bits to get you through the day.

As always, I love to hear your thoughts. Leave me a comment below, or on Facebook or via Twitter 🙂

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Procrastination is the thief of time – Edward Young

Overcoming procrastination is one of the topics I get asked about most frequently. Many people have told me that they want to reduce the amount of time they procrastinate and put off things they want/need to do until later. In my experience, procrastinating does not feel good, nor is it productive. So here I am going to share some of the tips I have picked up along the way from various courses, books and from my own battles with time.

1. Change your mind-set

Time is a commodity like money or food. We talk about ‘spending time ‘ and ‘wasting time’ – Think to yourself… what am I currently doing? Am I choosing to spend my time on something I enjoy or something I need to do to make my life run more smoothly? Or am I ‘wasting time’? (It is only a waste if you think it is a waste!) Which would I rather be doing? 

2. Imagine the completed task – Starting with the end in mind

Instead of beating yourself up about not doing whatever it is you want/need to do, think… what will I gain once I have done it? Imagine the scenario as if you have already completed the task (or steps in the task). Ask yourself – What will I see, how will I feel, what will I hear? If your brain is focussing on the end product/scenario, it makes it feel much more achievable and it will know more clearly what it is aiming for.

3. Make a List!

Now make a list of the things you want to do…

4. Scrutinise

Step 5 is prioritising – but often that is easier said than done – so scrutinising comes first. It can be helpful to think about why you have been procrastinating over something – is it so big that it is overwhelming? Maybe you don’t know where to start or how to do something, or maybe you don’t really want to do something and it is being imposed on you? Ask yourself ‘What’s stopping me from achieving this?’ Are there things on my list I don’t actually need to do? Could I get someone else to do it, or could I actually do it later?

4. Prioritise

Go back to your list and edit it. Now circle the top three most pressing tasks – if they are all pressing, which has the greatest time pressure or is going to give you the most benefit? (N.B. Sometimes I try to do the one I like most first; but in fact, it might have limited benefit!) Now pick the task which will yield the highest amount of satisfaction yield when it’s done.

5. Get started

Now just go ahead and make a start! This is often the hardest part. I find giving myself a chunk of time, like 15 minutes to get started on something really helps me at this stage.

 6. Allocate time slots

If you can’t do it all in one go, devote time over the next day(s)/week(s) when you will do that task, and just that task. Sometimes I have a mini research project to which I devote 15 minutes a day. I try to do that research first thing in the morning before I start my working day. It gives me a huge boost of satisfaction to know I am working at it, one bite at a time. You can’t eat an apple all in one go!

This might seem like a long process, but over time some of these steps have become more automatic for me. So much so, that I had to really think about what I do to share it with you!

As ever, if you like what you have read or have anything to share, please leave me a comment 🙂 

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