Happy 2010

So the new year and new decade are upon us. Most people I know have taken down their decorations, found places to put the christmas presents, set themselves a resolution and have gone back to work, life continues.

Whether it was a reaction to the year end, decade end or merely a coincidence a significant proportion of my friends made life changing decisions recently and that, along with the time awarded over the christmas break, has found me giving my life a once over.

When we reflect back on times in our lives we will always find both highs and lows and on a personal level 2009 had many of both. As a coach I strongly recommend focussing your energies on the highs and personally I strive to do this as much as possible. This keeps our minds focussed on the positive which in turns keeps our mood bouyant and our outlook good. This is the same principle as being too blessed to be stressed.

So I want to take with me from 2009 memories of:

• Our family holiday to France where we stayed in a treehouse
• Climbing to the top of a small, welsh mountain with the kids
• learning to ski and hula hoop
• A friend’s wedding
• Having laser treatment on my eyes
• My youngest son starting and enjoying school
• Singstar nights
• Watching my children perform in their school productions
• Pre Christmas dinner with a good group of old friends

To name just a few

But what of the lows from the year? Lows tend to leave behind negative emotions – sadness, fear, anger, guilt… which can impact on our future lives (intentionally or not).  It is important to be able to look back at the lows in our lives and to recognise what emotions we have been left with. Then I strongly recommend asking what we can learn from these events which will enable us to release those negative emotions. Like spring cleaning your cupboards. Time Line Therapy is a great tool for helping with this especially when strong emotions are involved.

So to go with my wonderful memories from the past year I have some learnings about supporting my family and prioritising my time which I hope will make 2010 even more fun.

Finding the strength

Chatting with a friend this week I had the priviledge of reminding him of a wonderful technique which he had told me about a couple of years ago. A brilliantly effective way of lifting ones mood and improving ones outlook. This technique I use personally and regularly when coaching clients with Infin8life. It is the technique of being grateful! Otherwise known as too blessed to be stressed

Sometimes things are tough (hopefully only sometimes). We get stressed, we get tired, we get upset, we get grumpy. Sometimes we can do something about the cause of the difficulty but often it seems outside of our control and when it is outside of our control then all we can really do is change how we feel.

Being grateful really helps! It is physiologically impossible to feel stressed and happy at the same time, so when we are stressed if we can force ourselves to feel happy then the stress feelings have to go away!  Being grateful focuses our attention on things that are good in our lives, things that we feel happy about. So even if you start through gritted teeth do start to say / write / sing / shout / paint / draw / dance about all the good things that you are grateful for in your life and do you know what? You will start to feel happier!

Some people keep a happy book where they write down 5 things each day that they are grateful for. They can look at this book whenever they want to feel even more cheerier, some people use the technique when they feel they need it.

So what are you grateful for today? Here are 5 things from me:

I am grateful that I have a lovely, loving family

I am grateful that I have had a relaxing morning

I am grateful that I have a class to teach hula hooping to tonight (cos its loads of fun)

I am grateful that it is dry and bright today

I am grateful that I found  some very cheap but proper ink for my printer saving me money!

Breaking the mould

As a child I was told repeatedly that I was clumsy and uncordinated. In fact I still have 5 years of high school reports that repeatedly state this very fact, under the subject of PE.

My mum [kindly] would tell me not to worry too much, that she also had 2 left feet (ignoring the fact that she could infact skip, juggle and do some impressive tricks with a yoyo).

And so I grew into a young woman who believed she was ungainly, clumsy and uncordinated. I grew into a young woman who did her best to avoid any activity that required one to be even remotely coordinated.

Then one day my friends convinced me to go to a step aerobics class, it was new and all the rage. I was worried, I was VERY worried and in my view I bundled my way through, turning the wrong way, stepping in the wrong direction and constantly finding myself on the wrong side of the step. Just what you would expect from someone uncoordinated like me! It was fun though and so I went back. After a few weeks I was getting the hang of it and then my friends said they didn’t want to go anymore!  They said “it was all right for someone like me with good coordination but they just couldn’t get it right!”  I was somewhat taken aback and so began a shift in my self perception.

These days I understand that even though some physical activities may not be intuitive for me I can certainly do them with a little practice. That on the whole I am well coordinated. This year I have really tested this theory by learning to hula hoop an activity requires a high level of coordination to do well.

We are told many things about ourselves as children. People repeat ‘facts’ about us over and over and we are conditioned to accept these repetitions as the truth and we live up to these statements, we become ‘labelled’. Sadly many  of our labels limit us.

When coaching with Infin8life I find it is important to help clients overcome their labels in order for them to move on and become happier in their lives. There are many approaches that help but one very simple and very effective technique is positive affirmations. This technique involves the client repeating positive statements about themselves until they come to accept those messages as true. This is supported with visualisation work which has the dual benefit of preparing clients for whatever lies ahead of them, reducing stress and increasing motivation.

BTW I have been labeled “bossy” since a young age too. I  like this label and am happy to stick with it

Waking in the night and other habits

On Facebook today I got a newsfeed that a friend had become a fan of “Waking in the night and then realising that you still have hours left to sleep” I smiled when I read this remembering how, once upon a time I really was a fan of exactly that!

There was a time when I drove my poor husband to distraction by waking up between 3.10am and 3.25am every night. I would wake up, I would sit up, I would peer at the clock before lying back down and happily going back to sleep. Worse than that though, I was very short sighted and couldnt see the clock easily but would not settle until I knew the time, so after a while my husband started to wake up to tell me the time, settling me more quickly and disturbing him less. And then one grumpy, tired morning he exploded! This really was happening every night and he had had enough! He wanted to know  why I did it. I explained that I liked to know what time it was because I liked to know I still had plenty of time left to sleep. An answer which he did not appreciate. Because I loved my husband and could see that this waking in the night really had become a bad habit I decided to stop doing it.

Throughout our lives we pick up habits, some good, some bad, many of which we are totally unaware of.  When coaching at Infin8life an integral part of the coaching process involves helping clients  identify those habits which hinder them and using NLP and coaching, replace them with habits that benefit them and help them move forwards in their lives.

If you have a habit that you don’t want anymore consider talking to a Life Coach or NLP practitioner because they know how to help.

Food (but not necessarily) glorious food

At the weekend I went to see the film Julie and Julia with my mum and can say that it is the ultimate sunday afternoon mother and daughter film.
The film is about the lives of 2 women Julie Childs a famous American tv chef and Julia, a lady who set herself the challenge of cooking every one of Julia Childs recipes, from her book The Art of French Cookery, within a year, whilst keeping a blog about her efforts.

Unfortunately I am not a great or talented cook but I do like food and I do enjoy cooking and the same is probably true of the 2 women depicted in this film and so watching this film has really inspired me to get my cook books out, to watch cooking programs and to tempt my children with food beyond bolognaise.

If only it was as simple as reading a recipe, buying the right ingredients and getting the timings right though. In my family there are people who are intolerant to certain foods, in particular chocolate and dairy products. This means that any recipe needs vetting to see what we can substitute and whether it will work (the rice pudding I made yesterday definately didn’t).

Do you have a food intolerance or allergy? and if so how good are you at avoiding it? For some people the reaction to the food is so horrible that they wouldn’t dream of touching whatever it is but for others they miss that particular food so much its worth suffering from time to time.

When I was doing my NLP practitioner training we practised a technique simply called Like to Dislike. This technique does what it says – the practitioner teaches the client, quickly and relatively easily to dislike a food that they previously liked. To test the power of the technique I decided to be turned off chocolate (something I liked ALOT) and have subsequently not eaten and more importantly, Ive not wanted to eat chocolate for 3 1/2 years!

This technique is most helpful for people who are struggling to say no to a food that they are intolerant to, a food that they keep eating even though it inevitably hurts them!

1 in 5 young people unemployed!

The news today is that July saw unemployment in general reach a 14 year high (2.47m) and unemployment for young people (aged 16 to 24) be at its highest level since the ONS (Office for National Statistics) started keeping records in 1992.  Right now 20% of young people are unemployed.

I was a young person at the time of the last recession and I clearly remember how frustrated I felt at the time when every job (even for office junior positions paying circa £4k) were asking for 2 years minimum experience. I also remember how desperate we became just to get a job, our expectations falling from dreams of fast-track managemet training programs to a job on a production line, anything that paid! Many of the people I know (me included) went to and stayed at university for as long as possible because we simply couldn’t find work. We took generic courses in subjects that we hoped might lead to something in the future, with no real consideration for what our futures would be and whether we would actually want to work in the field we were studying.

So with the benefit of experience and hindsight what can I say to the 1 in 5 young people, who like me (and most all of my friends 18 years ago) find there are no jobs out there?

Think about what you enjoy doing, socially, creatively, academically. Make a list of the skills that you have – perhaps you are a good listener, maybe very organised, or excellent at keeping going and getting things finished. And look at the roles that incorporate elements of what you enjoy and the skills that you have. Instead of panicking (like we did) focus, use the internet, books, talk to people – thoroughly investigate to find the type of role that would be perfect for you and when you have done that find out what steps you need to take to get from where you are to where you want to be. Maybe you do need to go to college or university, maybe you need to work your way up through the ranks (but at least you’ll know which ranks) or maybe you need to start saving and find an investor / partner who wants to go into business with you. Whatever it is make yourself a plan because you have been given a golden opportunity to really think things through and that paves the way for you to have a successful life, one where you are happy, successful and satisfied.

At Infin8life I often work with people who are not happy, do not feel successful and are not satisfied. Setting SMART goals and planning their achievement turns people’s lives around and it’s always a pleasure to see people finally realising the dreams they have been repressing for so long. If you are currently young and unemployed now is an excellent time for you to set your goals and make sure your dreams come true.

Were you Born Scared?

A recent article (not about climate change) in the New Scientist has caught the attenion of the press, being reported yesterday on the BBC and today being picked up by that glorious newspaper The Daily Mail telling us that women have an inborn fear of spiders!

Dr Rakison of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh reached this conclusion after showing pictures of a spider alongside a smiling face and a flower alongside a fearful face to 10 boys and 10 girls aged 11 months old. The girls spent longer looking at the picture of the smiling face with the spider than the flower picture and the boys looked at both pictures for the same amount of time. From this he has concluded that the girls spent longer looking at the happy face with the spider because they were confused by it. A conclusion which I think is very tenuous, and there must surely be many other possible reasons including that the girls may have liked the picture with the happy face more!

Looking into this story further I found a report by Isabelle Kauffman where she tells us that “with a different group of babies, Rakison first showed a spider with a happy face, and a flower with a fearful face. Now the girls too looked at both images for the same length of time – implying that they did not have an inborn fear of spiders” and that the actual conclusion of the research is therefore “that girls are more inclined than boys to learn to fear dangerous animals”. A conclusion that still looks questionable to me when one considers that there are no dangerous spiders native to the UK.

When coaching people with phobias one can usually pinpoint the beginning of the fear with a specific, stressful event and with women being 4 times more likely than men to be scared of spiders and little girls enjoying modelling the behaviour of their mum’s it is no surprise when coaching to find the first event often being when a child has seen their mum scream at the sight of a spider, run away and then return with a rolled up newspaper to beat that penny sized creature to submission.

This is the time of year when we see alot of spiders, they seem to invade our houses at the start of September, filling every corner our ceilings with cobwebs and running out across the floor in the evening when we are watching telly. For the 4% of people in the uk with spider phobias then this is truly horrible because unlike other phobias they are impossible to avoid or prepare for, infact the sudden shock of a spider running out from under the sofa fuels the phobia, possibly making it stronger.

If you are one of these people then please find comfort in the knowledge that you were not infact born that way and that it is a behaviour you have learnt and you can learn to behave differently. When treating clients for phobias at Infin8lifeI have a lot of success using NLP and hypnotherapy, other treatments include cognitive behavioural therapy, EFT and exposure therapy.

Personally I quite like spiders but having been afraid of frogs, slugs, snails, worms, horses, cows, deer and sheep I understand just how a phobia affects you,  and how strange it feels when your phobia has gone, how you look for that feeling of terror and find only indifference followed by an intense, private pride!