As you know I love two things in life – IDEAS and PEOPLE. When I get to work on both these things at the same time, I am in divine happiness, giddy like a child, happy as a bee in honey. I really feel like I’m living life on purpose.

Are you hungry for more?

I’m currently working with over a dozen highly ambitious hungry for life individuals on a monthly basis to help them be better in their professional lives through 121 professional coaching. In just three sessions, the results have been phenomenal. Seeing how the benefits are seeping into their personal lives as well as their professional lives is hugely rewarding to observe.

Could you get more by working with a professional coach?

It’s well known that most sports injuries are caused by the “stuff” going on in athletes’ heads and not due to their physical abilities, which makes total sense to me. A crash of confidence, a waver of self-belief, a doubting comment, the hangover from yesterdays confrontation, the giddy distraction of good news even. Once you know where you want to be, both head and heart need to be aligned. The sporting world knows this and that’s why pyschological coaches have been employed for many years to work alongside the physical coaches. Ultimately it’s about understanding ourselves better so that we can train our minds and bodies to perform in the most helpful way for us.

Many people are yet to appreciate and experience the benefits of having a personal or professional coach (and are quite frankly missing out!). I have several coaches that I use for different areas of my life.   My coaches help me to stay on course with my dreams and ambitions, challenge me to stretch beyond what I thought I was capable of and give me the opportunity to reflect, develop my self awareness and move forward in what ever way I need in order to stay happy and on track (or off track if that’s needed more)!

Take one step and get at least 10% more

Are you hungry for life and want to see what more you could achieve with both head and heart aligned? Then why not try coaching for yourself. Just three sessions can make all the difference.  Call 07786 250175 to get 10% more from you now!

What if I don’t know where to start?

One of the challenges I see time and time again with coaching clients is a feeling that they don’t know what they want or where to start.  The wheel of life is a great tool for starting that thinking (it’s an oldy but a goody) and can take from only ten minutes to complete.

Wheel of life

The great thing about this exercise is that it allows you to take a helicopter view of the key elements in your life and observe how you feel about each of them and which areas may need some more attention from you.

Take a look at the circular diagram below. 

1. Take some time to reflect on the areas of your life, which are most important to you for example, work, your relationship, family, fun time, adventures, money, security…. Put each of these on the outside of the circle next to one of the lines coming out from the centre.

2.  Rate your current satisfaction on a scale of 1-10 for each of those elements you just identified.

3. Join the dots up to make a (kind of) wheel and notice what you notice.  Which areas are performing well and which could do with some extra focus? Which areas surprise you?

4. You may also want to think about what score you would like it to be. On some elements, maybe an 8/10 would be spot on for right now but you’re currently at a 4/10.

5. Choose one or two areas you’d like to rate better and brainstorm what you think could be done to help you get there.  What can you START doing and what can you STOP doing?

And now you have something to work on with your professional coach.

What I love about the Wheel exercise, it that you can tailor it to any area of your life, for example your professional life. Simply note all the elements which are important to you about your working life for example, progression, achievement, varieties, wellbeing, work-life balance. And repeat the exercise.

I hope you find this helpful, I’d love to know how it helps you move forward.

Are your leaders and line managers inspiring the right kind of impact in your business to bring about real business growth?

Superhero Leadership

Let’s face it, all business success is about people. Ask any industry leader what one thing matters most to the success of their growing organization and I bet your bottom dollar, it always comes down to its people and their leaders. Why?  Because inspirational leadership can deliver inspiring customer experiences which basically equals profit for you. Read more →

Following on the firework theme from my last blog, here are my top tips for making sure your teams are designed to WOW your customers and clients and leave them talking about your business for months and years to come.  If you didn’t read the last blog, I’d suggest having a read first, click here.  Read more →

Great success in life and leadership starts with being “YOU”

Caption

Authenticity is a hot topic at the moment (not just in management development but also in life).  But what does it really mean and how do you make sure you’re being authentic?

Well the dictionary definition suggests that authentic means

not false or copied; genuine; real

So often in life, work and relationships our vulnerability is the first thing we long to protect, fearing shame or lack of acceptance for who we are.  Instead, we present the side of ourselves that we think people want us to see.  In Brene Browns latest book, Daring Greatly (which is a fantastic read by the way), she talks about the need to connect with your vulnerability to be truly authentic and successful in life.   She discusses how the most successful people turn up to work/life/play with their heart on their sleeve, with honesty and an open heart, willing to share in their experiences, prepared to admit where they learnt from a mistake, to have those difficult (uncomfortable) conversations that help you move forward and to love without conditions (for those wanting to be a great parent).

Martha Beck in ‘Finding your North Star’ has a slightly different spin on authenticity (but still as insightful).  She suggests that for most of us we’re more likely to be governed by our  ‘social self’, that part of us which thinks we ‘should, could, ought to’ because someone told us it was the right way to be.  We’re looking to connect as human beings, so often we’re found asking, ‘what would make this person impressed with me’. Martha suggests we actually ditch our social self (yep complete freedom from it) and tap into our ‘essential self’.  Our essential self she suggests is the part of us that instinctively knows what’s right and true you.  Not what anyone else has told us is right, but what feels right for you, right now.  And that, she argues, is where true authenticity allows great friendships, real business relationships, and brilliant life choices to happen.

So how do we find out who we really are and make sure that when we turn up in life we’re being the real us, the genuine us?  In addition to Martha and Brene, I’ve also been watching Oprah’s Master Class programme. In a recent episode she asked a number of successful well-known people to share their insights about “Being You, knowing who you are and being great at it”.

I’d like to share with you the key insights I took away, but I’d whole-heartedly encourage you to find the episode and watch it. It was very moving.

1. Know where you are from

What did your childhood teach you and what skills did you gain from it?  JayZee talked about his cherished upbringing in Brooklyn saying he learnt key life skills about survival and determination from both positive and negative experiences in his neighbourhood.  It’s what you learn from those experiences that make you a better person, not what you hide from.

2. Learn from failure

As Morgan Freeman says, ‘your biggest obligation to yourself is not to quit”.  The best laid plans often come unstuck or life throws an American football when we were hoping for a rugby one.

Stay focused on what you’re passionate about. Jayzee launched a second album based on his social self and it bombed.  In his third album he went back to what he loved and created another success.  Don’t be tempted to play in the playground of a sport you don’t like. You’ll never be any good at it because you’re heart won’t be fully committed. If you do try something different, learn from it, what did/didn’t you like and why?

In the same way keep your self-belief. Bon Jovi discussed the number of knock backs he got before he actually achieved the start of his dream to be a rock star.  “Mistakes are only training tools” learn from them and have generosity for your self and for others.

3. Tap into your providence/serendipity/grace

“Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence”.  Whatever your beliefs about serendipity/fate (choose your own term here), there is something massively powerful about learning to tap into your intuition. If you come away from a meeting/date/pitch and something doesn’t “feel” right, that’s your intuition giving you a signal about aligning to your life purpose and goals.  Learn to listen to it. Martha Beck calls that deep intuition the ‘way-finders’ way (her book ‘Finding Your Way in a Wild New World is very helpful for developing those skills as is any decent book on Mindfulness).

4. Letting go is sometimes the best thing you can do

“Love liberates” Maya Angelou.  What a wonderful woman.  Maya discussed how her own mother was a rubbish parent with little children and babies but an amazing one with young adults.  Her Mother gave her the freedom to go out into the world and find her own path, to live wherever she decided to live and do whatever she wanted to do, knowing that her mothers home would always be there for her to return to when she needed. She encouraged her to be free and find her own way.  She let go of her in order to liberate her.

We all have roles that we play with others in relationships and keeping check on our own ego and desires at the sake of someone else achieving their dreams is a very important lesson to hold on to.  Next time you’re having a 121 with someone in your team/family/relationship ask yourself, ‘is this for my benefit or theirs?’.

5. Dream BIG

Enough said?

6. Make it a better world

Be that person that other people refer to as “lovely, s/he’s absolutely inspirational, I love spending time with her/him, s/he’s so generous and open minded, I can’t wait to see him/her again”.  Not the person people roll their eyes or screw up their nose.  Find something you love and give it back, whatever that maybe, whether it’s listening to someone’s stories, soothing an achy back, inspiring the future of tomorrow at a football team, baking some cupcakes for a neighbour, singing at a karaoke.  Whatever matters to you, will matter to someone else.

So my final note on authenticity and being YOU comes courtesy of Oprah,

‘Wake up curious and determined’  Oprah

Why detoxing your head this summer may be the best detox you’ve ever done!

It’s that time of year again already. Summer is finally here and I for one am very excited.

The sun is starting to come out to play (albeit intermittent here in the UK), the pollen counts are rising, flip flops are being dug out of the shoe cupboard, shorts dusted down from winter storage and bathing suits beckon as we start to gear up to the holiday season.

It’s usually at this time of year that we’re bombarded by the latest diet fads and slimming aids, promising to shed those pounds, nip your waist even deliver a six pack.  As it nears the time for donning bikini’s or swimming shorts, that familiar feeling starts to niggle away inside our heads asking questions like, ‘how many pies did I comfort eat over winter?’, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all six selection boxes at Christmas?’.  We feel down to our waist, yep just ever so slightly hanging over the trousers I wore comfortably last year.  Suddenly our brains notice every bronzed promoted slim body on TV kindly promoting the holiday companies.  Then we get the familiar and commonly experienced physiological reaction to the thoughts we’re entertaining.  We start to feel hot, and sweat at the mere thought of putting more of our flesh on display, our tummies turn over, nausea stirs as we panic about how big our muffin tops or moobs have become under the comfort of winters knitwear.

And then we hit the detox/diet.

We flush our bodies with the lemony zesty energy that only summer promises, to rid us of our diet toxins and kick start the diet. We make sure only virtuous salad leaves, wholegrains and pure water filtered by angels passes our lips.  We up our exercise, taking to the outdoors, challenging our physical abilities.  And for some of us who stay committed to the program, we shed those pounds, don those flip flops and shimmy around in our bathing suits with glee.  However, for many of us, the reality is more like a hamster wheel, we lose interest, get bored, feel distracted, start again, fail, get bored, start another one, commit slightly more, see results, celebrate, shout hallelujah, hit the binge in celebration, start again…. And on it goes.

What if…… the secret to success was in detoxing your mind and not your body?  (or rather detoxing your mind so you body doesn’t have to work so hard?).

Imagine, if there were a one off 30 minute session that promises to detox your mind (painlessly and effortlessly) which would cleanse you of all unhelpful thoughts standing in the way of you and your most amazing version of you?

Well I’m here to tell you that there is such a 30 minute therapy which promises just this.  Soon it’s going to be all you hear about. It won’t be detoxing your body you see in the adverts, it will be detoxing your mind.

Going back to the dieting analogy, most diets fail for people because their heads (and their thoughts) get in the way of success.  We don’t fail because the diet doesn’t work.  Scientists know diets will work, they’ve been researched by chemistry and biology experts to understand the biological responses of X=Y. The reason I believe most diets don’t tend to work is due to something much more hard wired in the brain; our beliefs, our values, our view of ourselves.  And all this is shaped by our experience of the world.

Lets look at another example of mind toxins.  Another common thing that happens in the Summer is weddings.  I love a good wedding.  How many times though do you hear stories of fathers, best men, bridesmaids, friends etc sweating for months ahead of the wedding….. the DREADED PUBLIC SPEECH.  Fear of public speaking is a very common fear for most of us.  Our brains leap ahead to a fantasised outcome of failure, looking to the worst case in order to prepare us but in actual fact, all that does is create the physical response which goes with fear or dread (as you’ve experienced it in your life).  Pink warm rush of blood to the face, sweaty palms, a voice box making its way out of the top of your head, feet that appear to be levitating above the ground, possibly even passing out in some extreme cases.  Your body thinks its working to protect you, activating the flight or fight mechanism but in actual fact, that programming isn’t working in this situation to help you, it’s actually getting in the way.

So what is this magic mind detox I talk of and how does it work?

Havening (or ADT therapy – Amygdala Depotentiation Technique) has been ten years in the making and developed by Dr Ron Ruden M.D (a medical doctor and neuroscientist).  The approach works simply to uncouple the ‘unhelpful’ physical response attached to a thought.  For example, taking away the feeling of fear when thinking about presenting to others, removing the overwhelming concept of failure with this years diet.

The individual is coached to think about the ‘event’ or ‘belief’ which is creating a physical reaction and to go into that physical response (knowing that you’re only asked to go there for a second and completely supported throughout).  The best decoupling works if the participant can get the feeling near a 10 out of 10 (10 being the worst possible it could be).  The individual then follows a series of activities from the comfort of their chair, that the therapist demonstrates including touch, counting, speaking even humming in some variations.  The bodies receptors or neurons are thus activated in a way that interrupts or un-conditions the physical response.  The therapy itself takes only 30 minutes (sometimes less) and can be done on Skype or face to face.  It really is the most simply method I have come across for this kind of work.

Most people receiving the Havening technique, report a peculiar sense of not being able to ‘find’ that unhelpful physical response after the session has taken place.  It’s like magic!  Afterwards, they’re able to think about ‘their belief/event’, but without all the negative feelings they previously experienced.  Much more helpful I think you would agree.

So next time you’re thinking about your summer body detox, remember to consider your mind detox too. In fact, why not just detox your mind now of anything you deem to be unhelpful or standing in the way of you achieving your dreams whether they be public speaking or bikini wearing.

Please note that mind detoxing does not negate the need to eat healthily, and exercise your mind and body to achieve full wellbeing.

To find out more about Havening or talk through whether it could work for you, call me on 07786 250175 or email jennifer@simplyjp.com .  The 30 minute sessions cost £75.  Only one session is required. I have not yet heard of anyone for whom it wasn’t successful, but I do offer a free follow up to anyone who feels they need it.

For more traumatic experiences, I recommend a half-day session where Havening is one of several tools used to re-order the brains perception of those events which in turn provides the individual with control, peace, serenity and other more helpful feelings regarding those experiences.  A half-day session costs £200 and again comes with free follow up sessions if required.