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can’t get no satisfaction? make the change

February 20, 2014
inb-coach, b-mail, b-Pilates, b-train
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How are you doing today? Good day was it? Had fun? Spent time with great people? Got to do some rewarding work? Oh dear! I’m so sorry to hear it wasn’t all that you had hoped for – maybe tomorrow will be better…….

OK you know me. I can’t leave it at that. I want to help you make a change to give you satisfaction each and every day.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the definition of satisfaction as:

NOUN

1. Fulfilment of one’s wishes, expectations, or needs, or the pleasure derived from this:

“I looked round with satisfaction”

“Managing Directors seeking greater job satisfaction”

Let’s take the first part – having your wishes, expectations or needs met. Are you clear on what yours are? No? Try these questions to uncover them (for your life, career or any area of dissatisfaction):

  • If cash, time and help were unlimited, what would you want to do/to be/to have? (delete as appropriate)
  • What would you expect to give or share?
  • What would you expect in return?
  • How would doing or being this make you feel?
  • Who do you want involved?

Now, analyse your reality:

  • How does today match your identified wishes, expectations and needs?
  • How does today mismatch your identified wishes, expectations and needs?

This should provide you with what you should stick with – where you are getting some satisfaction – and what needs to change – where you’re not getting any satisfaction.

You’ve now got 2 choices.

Do nothing

Accept your lot. Live with it. Put up with the itch. Breathe through your frustrations. Wipe away those tears. Settle for a life less than ideal. Suck it up.

You know my opinion on this one. I’ve worked with clients, who on the brink of taking action, back out, hold back and decide they’ll just wait awhile and see if things improve. Sadly, I’ve yet to hear of this playing out to the extent that a client’s wishes, expectations and needs are fully met. Yeah maybe it gets a bit less sore for a short time, but then that nagging feeling is back…..only this time it’s worse.

I knew I wanted to run my own business way back in the last millennium. At that time, I knew it would involve working with people who shared my values and beliefs as well as my passion for enabling others to live a better life. I thought that was going to be a centre, a place where you could train, be counselled, massaged, talk, meet, socialise and more.

Then my relationship fell apart. I had to move out. I needed my job to pay my bills – how could I possibly go it alone and set-up a business? I took a new path. I worked my a** off to get a promotion and pay rise. I dropped a day at work and could still cover the bills, as well as studying part-time to teach Pilates. Then I switched jobs to a better paid firm and squirrelled away my cash to create a safety net savings account.

My vision changed track – I no longer want to run a centre. It’s too far from the action for me I now realise. I enjoy and thrive in the heart of it, right there in it with you. b-elastic was born and I’m loving it!

Go on – stretch your life!

Take that list you made earlier and work out your path to satisfaction – each building block, each skill, each piece of knowledge, each helping hand, each ££ or $$ – that will get you to a fully satisfied way of being and doing. Your path could include:

  • doing something different
  • stopping something
  • spending less time with someone or a group
  • devoting more time to someone or a group
  • trying a new route, like I did.

Then get moving. Take the first step and you’ll build momentum to complete it, begin the next and the next and the next.

Hmmm, not feeling ready to start tomorrow? Don’t go it alone – take a friend. Ask someone who has your best interests at heart to hold you accountable, to check in with you, to join you to drown out the sorrows and celebrate your successes! Or contact a role model who has walked the same or a similar path to yours and can mentor you. Or why not ask a coach?

You want to work with me? Fab! You can check out my coaching packages or drop me a line.

Can’t afford my rates right now? My birthday competition closes at 12 noon on Thursday 20th February. ENTER NOW for the chance to win one of 3 coaching packages worth £900+ or drop me a line as I’m looking to start a few group coaching programmes around common issues – career change, life goals, fitness goals and the like – these will be a more cost effective way to work with me.

This week, let us know in the comments how you are getting more satisfaction in your day. Big or small – share away as you’ll inspire someone else to take their first step too.

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Are you a Life, Career or Design it yourself Changer?

February 13, 2014
inb-coach, b-mail, b-Pilates, b-train
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Since launching my birthday competition last week, I’ve had a question from a b-mailer:

“I know I want a change in my life. Can you tell me more about Life Changers, Career Changers and Design it yourself Changers?”

Thank you for sending your question in! Let me take them in turn:

Life Changers are those of you looking to transform your attitude or mindset, shift your work/life balance, step up your confidence or self-belief. They might also be intrigued by their values, beliefs and their interactions with others. Life Changer clients have included mums returning to their workplaces to find their peers have moved on, people who have experienced a significant life episode (e.g. illness, bereavement or accident) and those who find themselves lacking energy and motivation as their lives are missing a sense of purpose. Within this type of coaching, I use various reflection techniques, assessment tools and psychometrics where appropriate.

Career Changers usually split into two distinct groups. Firstly, those who know which career path they are following and seeking to take the next step – perhaps a promotion or lateral move within their existing employer or alternatively, moving to a new employer, region or industry. The second group are people wanting to explore potential new career paths, more fulfilling roles or employers or ways of working such as freelancing or entrepreneurism. I’ve worked with these clients to uncover their signature talents and strengths, marry work with their values and ethics as well as building brand statements and marketing collateral (CVs, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, social media profiles, etc.)

Design it yourself Changers are focussed on very specific changes, so it’s super tricky to give you a “definitive” answer. Here’s two examples to give you a flavour:

  • Eric wanted to improve his business presentations to get more sales. However he recognised that at the front of those panelled conference rooms, he often lacked passion and animation in his delivery. This resulted in bored faces and Eric’s confidence being knocked. Together, we developed his verbal skills, his audience interactions AND ditched his soundtrack that professionals don’t share their emotions (aka in his mind, passion!). How? Coaching sessions, homework inquires and some unusual rehearsals and new learning (think Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park and improv exercises).
  • Fiona was struggling to shift some old baggage from her childhood. A throwaway comment from a maths teacher was impacting Fiona’s adult life – in her head, she continued to hear “You’re not worth the effort”. She’d sidestepped projects, fallen out of love and struggled to share her opinion or thoughts. Having identified this script, we worked to re-evaluate its validity, the teacher’s importance and Fiona’s application of it in all circumstances. With my support, Fiona built a set of more supportive, helpful scripts allowing her to ask for new responsibilities at work, join an evening class and tell the waiter her starter wasn’t alright without blushing.

I hope those descriptions help you select which type of Changer programme you’d like to enter my competition to win. If you’ve got more questions, do give me a shout via Facebook or the get in touch page.

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it’s the little things

January 30, 2014
inb-coach, b-mail
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When embarking on changing a part of your life, it can feel like you’ve got a huge mountain to climb, through hail and shine. You don’t see ladybirds on the leaves, feel the sunshine on your face or know the fun you’ll have picnicking halfway up…….yet. But these little things add up to the big panorama at the top.

Let’s look more closely at the little things that can make the big difference in your change.

Career Changers might want to shift their role into a new firm or geography – that’s one giant leap for mankind. The little steps could be building a new LinkedIn summary, reading up on a new technology or approach in their field and starting to follow a mover or shaker in their desired firm or location.

Health Changers looking to create their summer body in the winter months can’t drop the muffin top or build tone in the blink of an eye. Nope, small changes to their diets (dropping the sweets for carrots or switching puddings for fruit) and fitting in small workouts to their schedule all add up to greater body confidence and health when the sun (finally!) comes out.

Life Changers might be looking for more balance in their lives. Identifying what are their important and valuable people or things to do can help find the small additions or deletions from their schedule and creating the life they want to live.

Not sure where to start on your little things? Try these to kick start your big difference!

  • Get up 5 minutes early to wake-up your body: For the first minute, draw your arms backwards in large circle to open your chest and improve your breathing capacity. For the second minute from standing, slow bend forward towards your toes and slow come back up to standing, repeat. For the third minute, again from standing tall, rotate at your waist to look over your left shoulder, then round to look over your right, repeat. Next minute, standing with your legs about 0.5m apart, side bend over to the left, back to standing and over to the right. These three moves mobilise your spine. Finish with one minute of jumping jacks to get your heart going. Now, hit the shower!
  • Practice a spot of mindfulness: sit or lie comfortably. Close your eyes and focus on your toes, moving up your legs, hips, torso, fingertips, arms, shoulders, neck and face. Repeat, noticing how heavy or light they feel. Try to soften and relax your muscles as you go.
  • Have a mini-declutter: Work your way through your desk drawers, your wardrobe, your bag, the bathroom cabinet and so on. Not used or worn something in ages? Bin it, eBay it or give it away to a friend or charity shop. Clean out the fluff and move on.
  • Drink more water: instead of reaching for a coffee or a fizzy drink, take a glass of water or better still carry a reusable bottle for “on the move” rehydration.
  • Script your new response to “hello, who are you?”: I like Alexandra Franzen’s fill in the blanks script on saying who you are and what you do or stand for.
  • Save your loose change: check your purse or wallet for 20ps, 10p, 5p, 2s and 1s. Collect them in a jar, tin or box until full and then it’s treat time! Use your savings to buy extra popcorn at the cinema or subscribe to your favourite magazine. (I do this as our holiday mojito fund – it makes them taste so goooooood!)

What little things can you do to move you towards the bigger change you want? In the next week, pick one little thing and stick with it. Let us know what difference it makes to your stretch in the comments.

Really stuck? Get in touch and I’ll do my best to help you find your next little thing.

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make more of your time – 7 ways to get things done

January 23, 2014
inb-coach, b-mail, b-Pilates
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One of the challenges I often hear is how to get everything done in the day. Wouldn’t it be great if there was one juicy thing you could do to make it all fit? Sadly, I don’t have one to offer you in this b-mail. Instead, I’ve got 7 ways to get more done in your week.

1. Manage your priorities

Know the story of the rocks, pebbles, gravel and water in a jar? (quick video here) Recognise your biggest priorities (rocks) and schedule them into your day or week, followed by the next most important (pebbles), next most (gravel) and finally the least important (water).

Are you clear on your priorities and do you stick to them? Or do you flex around others’ priorities? Do you skip the gym to meet a work deadline or go to bed late to fit in baking a cake for tomorrow’s outing? Flexing makes you a great person to be around, but you’ll end up with a jar full of water and no pebbles, rocks or gravel in it!

2.  Create your combo deal

Some things go well together – strawberries and cream, gin and tonic and more. Where does this apply in your life?

I encourage my physical rehab clients to double up on daily tasks and exercises, like doing their stretches or strength exercises whilst the kettle boils, the shower heats up or the adverts are on. I also combine time with my partner and getting out of the city – we ride our tandem past the lavender farm, up to a hilly lookout with a café and stop off for a chat over coffee (and cake 🙂 ).

3. Value your “me time”

Whether that’s a night out with friends or reading a good book – to be the best you possible, you need to recharge your batteries. It’s easy to skip these re-energising times to do other things. Try time-boxing them (set and diarise a specific time slot). I’d also encourage a spot of focussed breathing or meditation into your day to refresh your mind.

4. Eat your frogs first

Mark Twain once said:

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse

will happen to you the rest of the day.”

If you have something unpleasant, boring or complex to do, get it out the way first. Bookkeeping is my frog – if I don’t tackle it first, I find my motivation drops, I’m easily distracted and it seems to haunt my every move. Identify your frogs and gobble them up first. Yum. (Read Brian Tracy’s book / blog  or get the Eat that Frog app to learn more about this one.)

5. Go off-line

You all know I love my tech and gadgets, but from time to time, I have to admit that I do get more done if I turn off the wifi and phone. True, checking my social media feeds or my emails is necessary to running my business (and my social life too at times!). It is false to think that I “must” do it the instant that “ping” goes off.

Switch off notifications or sounds, download a distraction tool or find a signal deadzone.

6. Rack up some cheats

Ever watched Jamie’s 15-minute meals? Follow his lead and keep your cupboards or freezer stocked with your quick, healthy meal essentials. Create a basic shopping list on your online supermarket to quickly order the basics in one click.

You can also do this with work or exercise tasks. Create reusable templates (fill in the blanks ones work well) to help with repeated tasks and mix in online mini workouts to meet your fitness goals (check out HIIT Daily or Pilates On Demand).

Alternatively, split bigger tasks up into little short ones to spread across the week. Need to prepare your guest room for Friday night? Either spend a crazy hour on Friday running around before greeting your guests or split it into 10-15 minute tasks. (e.g. Monday: launder the bed linen, Tuesday: dust, Wednesday: hoover, Thursday: make the bed and put out towels, Friday: add fresh flowers and relax.)

7. Say no nicely

By saying “yes”, we’re often served a big portion of “feel good” – a positive affirmation of how wonderful we are – with a side serving of time hijack – the time we lose to do what we really want or need to do. Combine your “no” with “thank you”, explain the consequences or personal challenge of the request or invite and whenever possible offer an alternative (new time or date, different event or approach). This one definitely takes practice, but do perist. It’s golden.

Right that’s the lot. My final thought: All that said, sometimes we need to be able to breathe and accept that day has gotten away from us. The unexpected twists and turns some days take can bring you new learning, new opportunities and a heap of fun!

7 ways to get more done and 7 days to try them before the next b-mail is out. Shout out your success with them in the comments or tell us how you get more done than the average Joe.

If nothing is working and you are in overwhelm, needing help to identify your priorities, frogs or best you – drop me a line and I’d be delighted to help as these are common coaching issues, which I’ve helped clients to resolve.

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create new ideas with ease

January 16, 2014
inb-coach, b-mail, b-train
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Last week, I introduced my concept of smart repetitions – repeats that give you better results and not insanity. Part of the concept was recognising when to change how you perform those repeats. Is that the hard part of being smart? I’m not sure it is.

Knowing that enough is enough might be possible to recognise without too much strife. You practice, you focus, you keep trying and the results don’t change. What next? You might need to review, tweak and try again. But what if you need a spark, a flash, an “a-ha” of a brand new way to get you achieving? Now I can feel the pain creeping in.

There are two important steps to create new ideas and if you want to minimise the pain, do them in this order:

  1. Create new ideas
  2. Evaluate all those ideas

Not

  1. Create one idea
  2. Evaluate it
  3. Create another
  4. Evaluate it

Ermmm no smart repeat there! The reason I say that is by switching back and forth, you can get disheartened and put off by the black hat of critiquing then switching back to blue sky creativity. Keep your energy and pace high by sticking to creation where everything is valid, then evaluation where you can bin off duff ideas.

I want to focus on how to create new ideas in this b-mail, so here’s a couple of my favourite ways to go wild creating new ideas:

Mind-mapping

I love these – if you ever pop by my desk, you’ll find these as to-do lists, course structures, lesson plans AND for loosening up my thinking on next steps. On one page, you get the big overview stuff and the nitty gritty details. Never done one before? Learn how straight from the master, Tony Buzan here.

My top tips are be specific with the term in the centre as your stimuli, use the biggest paper you can find with lots of colours and don’t get hung up on spacing or line size and heck, if you need to draw a big ol’ arrow from one idea to another, do it. (ooowww I can hear purist mind-mappers groaning; it’s what works for me – I want the ideas not a perfect process).

One branch might be word association, one might be for the obvious solutions, one might be limitless cash options, one free options, one for time unrestricted or restricted and so on….you’ll get stacks of ideas start popping out in no time.

What would ……… do?

Simply insert a name, get into their heads and jot down what actions, approaches or moves they would make or are making to achieve your desired results.

I like to insert my goddaughter’s name and do it as a child, or a much respected peer or professional I admire or – and this is where the real fun starts! – by choosing a curveball of a person. When doing my branding, I did it as if I were the marketing guru at Sweaty Betty, Virgin and moo.com. For course content, I channel my inner favourite teachers from uni and college.

Why does this work? You get to step out of “being you”, with the boundaries and constraints that can sometimes bring. Instead you can immerse yourself in being Lady Gaga, Sherlock Holmes or JK Rowling and how they’d tackle your challenge.

Last one…..a true golden oldie….

Ask someone

Who’s already where you want to be? Who’s got a perspective on your goal? Who’s getting better results? Who’s invested in you achieving your goals? Friend, partner, guru, business, academic, anyone who can stretch your ideas list.

How do you get your question to them? Friends, family and personal connections aside, try these:

Email them through LinkedIn or their website’s contact page, offer a coffee in exchange for picking their brains, post a question on the website, blog or Facebook page, send them a tweet, go to an event they’ll be at, send them a postcard with your question and contact details, join online groups or masterminds, reply to their newsletter……..people are pretty “contactable” these days; don’t forget Google can often track them down too.

My advice is to be polite and be brave. Most people are happy to respond to genuine questions and to share how they got somewhere or what they did that made all the difference. You’ll find this can also ping off additional ideas in your mind.

Has that got your creative juices going? Ready to create new ideas? Hope so! Of course, these work for coming up with your initial idea too and not just the subsequent ones.

Do you use another method or technique to kick start your idea generation? Please share them in the comments, so we can all try them out! Feel free to post links to good resources, experts or inspirations too. Play along and help build the list and I’ll put together a download so you’ll have them all in one place to refer to when the need arises!

  • grace • January 21, 2014

    Hi Sarae, I think all of those are drivers – and in no particular order of importance. With google I search keywords mainly then themes ie: best practice statutory reporting and take it from there. Also use my college/course books for reference.
    This year, I want to make improvements in my ‘at play’ ideas.

  • Sarae • January 21, 2014

    Yay for playtime! 🙂

  • Suzanne Doyle • January 21, 2014

    I get out of the office and sit in a coffee shop and try and think about what I want to achieve in a day, in a week, in a year…where do I want to be and how will I get there. Also if you are in a group situation and doing lots of ideastorming with flipcharts or post it notes…keep going until you all feel that your ideas have dried up and generally you will then come up with more and it’s often those ones which are the real good ideas. The ones that are deep inside us all not the ones on the surface which are easy to think about! Just read this: 1) Write down on top of your paper a topic that you want fresh ideas for. 2) Start your timer and start writing ANYTHING that comes to your mind. Even ideas that might seem silly or stupid. If you really don’t have anything, just continue to write “I don’t know, I don’t know”. You will eventually come up with something. The idea here is to not stop and keep your creative flow going. 3) As you begin to slow down start reviewing what you have just written. Highlight interesting ideas with a highlighter. You might find that something previously written needs more explanation or provides you with a new idea. 4) When you are completely done organize the best ideas. You can use sticky notes, Microsoft Word to type out your ideas or any other method you wish. Hope that helps Suzanne

  • Sarae • January 21, 2014

    Suzanne, you just discovered a form of brain writing. You might remember the school game where someone drew a head and folded the paper down, the next person drew shoulders and folded, next person the torso and fold, then hips, legs, feet – until you got a crazy looking creature!
    If you apply this to brain writing without the fold. The first person puts down their ideas and passes to their neighbour, who adds their idea and passes to their neighbour and so on. You either build and grow an idea or move laterally to a new or related idea.
    Makes a change to all crowding the flipchart and shouting out! Try it out!

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