Find calm wherever you are (picture courtesy of www.tvftdo.com)

Recently a client described her work and office as ’chaos’.  The stress she felt from this showed and was affecting many aspects of her life and work.  Our conversation got me thinking, what exactly is chaos?   Chaos, it’s a great word, very descriptive, a curious connection of letters and could be tricky to pronounce.  In reality when we notice chaos, it’s usually unpleasant, unsettling and uncomfortable.  I decided to do some research on the meaning and background of this short busy word.  I found these definitions on the web at http://www.thefreedictionary.com:

Chaos
1. A condition or place of great disorder or confusion.
2. A disorderly mass; a jumble: The desk was a chaos of papers and unopened letters.
3. The disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space supposed in some cosmogonic views to have existed before the ordered universe.
4. Mathematics A dynamical system that has a sensitive dependence on its initial conditions.
5. Obsolete An abyss; a chasm.

What is your kind of chaos?  Do you create chaos in your world?  Would you rather have something else?  I believe we can control chaos by how we react to it.  We can choose our responses to anything in our lives, it just may take some practice.  Here’s some tips to deal with everyday chaos and still get calm:

1.  Create some space to think, go for a walk, take a breather, stop and think.

2.  Assess the situation, make a list of everything causing the chaos.

3.  Lose the unimportant and focus on the important.

4.  Make a plan, add some achievable deadlines.

 So turn your chaos into calm, get in control of your thoughts and reactions.  Find your peace.

‘What is the BEST thing that happened to you today?’  Try asking that thought-provoking question to your partner when he walks in tonight.  Or how about asking your kids the same question when they get home from school.  Or how about asking your friends, your colleagues, your neighbours, try it on anyone and everyone.  Then notice the difference to the answers you get.

This simple question is a great way to get anyone focused on the good stuff that is happening in their lives.  Too often we focus on the bad, the negative events, thoughts or feelings.  This embeds the negativity and can create a downward spiral of bad thoughts. 

Let’s change this negativity, lets get positively positive!   And let me know how you get on!!

As someone who, as a child, used to write bigger to make it look like I’d written more.  I’ve never been much of a writer.  I wonder if I’ve ever really fully discovered my writing  and creativity potential.   Right now, I feel like I’ve learnt more in the past two years than I’d done in the previous twenty.  So what next.  What else can I do?   Who knows.  I’ve loving what I’m doing and I eagerly anticipating my next move.  If you need encouragement about what or where your true potential lies get inspired with this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the book Eat Pray Love.

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Do you have dreams or ideas in business?    Maybe you’d like to start your own business.
If you already have a business you’ll know that by focus and determination you’ll get the rewards you deserve.  The Coaching Zone can help you zone into your business and turn your dreams into reality.

Our ‘Zone into Business’ package will help you to:

• Set achievable goals and targets.
• Devise effective marketing plans to build your business
• Work with employees to track performance and strategies.

‘All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them”.
Walt Disney

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It’s been a strange start to 2010, don’t you think?  New Year’s Day was a beautiful sunny day, inspiring new thoughts, perfect for setting goals and making New Years resolutions.  Then it snowed and then it snowed some more.  Did you fall into the ‘oh well no need to start my resolutions till the snow’s gone club’?  If you did you’re not alone.  I spoke to someone last week who had put on 7lbs ‘because of the snow’.   It’s time to forgive yourself, get started and move on.

What does 2010 hold for you? More importantly, what do you want it to hold for you?  This year as you write down your goals, ask youself what’s stopped you from achieving this goal before?   An easy way to check is to reread your goals or resolutions, read them out load.  I wonder if when you reread your goal you hear yourself adding an imaginary ’but’ to the end of the sentence.  If you do, that could be because you’re limiting youself.   We stop ourselves from doing what we want to do with all kinds of reasons.  “I’m too tall”, “I’m too old”, “I’m too busy”,  the list goes on.  So revisit your goals and have a look at your “buts”.  Ask yourself if these “buts” are true or just false reasons.   Once you understand yourself more you’ll get better results.  Let me know how it goes.

What would you tell your 16 year old self.  What important snippets of experience would have help if the you of now could send a message to the you of then?  What would you change?  What would you do instead?  Or would you even have listened?

For my recent birthday, I was given a copy of a wonderful new book called ‘Dear Me – A letter to my sixteen-year-old self’ it’s edited by Joseph Galliano, with a forward written by Sir Elton John.  It’s a compilation of letters written by famous people, such as Paul O’Grady, Emma Thompson, Jonathan Ross, Yoko Ono, Will Young, Stephen Fry and many more.  Each letter, all with a different approach,  contain wonderful advice that we probably all wish we could take nowThis book has made me smile, made me laugh, made me cry and best of all made me think.

So what would I tell my 16 year old self.  I’d tell myself to enjoy time with my parents, they aren’t around for ever.  I’d tell myself never to go on a diet, they are a bad habit to rely on. (An Aunt told me this when I was 13 and I was miffed she even mentioned it!).  I’d tell myself to be more positive and more confident in the choices I made.  And to have fun and be happy!

What would you write in a letter to your sixteen-year-old self?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

PS This book makes a perfect Christmas present.

Many of us rush through life cramming as much in as possible and not taking time to notice what is going on around us.  Then suddenly something happens and we sit up and take notice.  A couple of weeks ago I found this movie clip, which I think says it all.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

That’s present as in’ now’, not present as in ‘Christmas’ of course.  After spending a couple of hours shopping in Kingston the other day, it seems what’s on every shop’s mind is where you’re going to spend your hard-earned cash on Christmas presents.  Does is seem to you that Christmas gets earlier and earlier every year?  What about enjoying these lovely warm autumn days, noticing the wonderful range of shades the trees are displaying, or the blue skies, the clouds, the list goes on.  Instead we are being forced to focus on an event in two months time.  This brings me perfectly to a book that I’ve just finished reading, it’s called ‘Present Moment Awareness’ by Shannon Duncan.  You can buy a copy from my website.  It’s a modest book with a big message, very simply written and I love its simple message about living life right now, being present, being aware of your thoughts, your feelings and your life.  It contains some effective short exercises to help you notice how you react and how you direct your focus at any given moment.  I think this book could change your life.

This book ties in beautifully with the recent ‘The True You - Discovery Workshop’ that my colleague Cim Bartlett and I have run,  our next eagerly awaited date has just been launched and it’s on Friday 4th December.  You can find more on my website.

Let me ask you this question, ‘If you’re not you’re feelings, who are you?’.  Have a think and let me know your answer in the comment section below.

My last piece of advice, why not put this book on your Christmas list!

I’ve just recieved an email from a client who has come to realise she has bad habits.  There are things that she does regularly every day that bother her, I smiled as I read her email as I realised she’s not alone.  I could recognise a few habits of mine I’d like to change.  There are also habits I’m glad to keep, we need habits or routine to get us through every day.  Get up, get washed, get dressed.  They’re all good habits, they keep us busy and it’s just part of daily life.  They serve us.  It’s the bad habits that need to change.  The ones that don’t serve us.   These could be to exercise regularly, to eat healthily, to make decisions quickly, the list goes on.

Habits are also a useful way to remember and do the things we learn, the new skills we acquire. the more we do them, the more they become part of us.  Think about something that was once completely alien to you and is now part of daily life, for example, driving a car, riding a bike, using a mobile phone.  All of these things once learned became habits, things we could repeat easily and effortlessly. 

Having this ability to repeat habits means that we tend to keep habits that we don’t want, for example; smoking, procrastination, staying in bed too late, over-eating.  The good news here is just as we can learn to do things we can un-learn by doing something else.  We can learn a new good habit to replace and old bad habit.  All we have to do is get started.  So why not write a list of three bad habits you could change today and write down what you’re going to do instead.  Then start behaving ‘as if’ these new habits were already part of daily life.  Keep going with it and soon your new habits will become part of a new you.

As we grow up we create beliefs about ourselves and others around us.  Our beliefs are created by things we’ve heard from role models, family, friends, teachers and things we tell ourselves, our self-talk.  The scoop is these beliefs don’t have to be true.   There is an old saying that goes “Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re probably right.”   If a salesman goes out making sales calls believing he’ll never make a sale; then guess what, he’ll never make a sale.  The same can be said about a golfer, if a golfer goes out onto the course believing they’ll never break 100 or never break 95 then chances are they’ll never do it.  If you think you’ll never hit your driver over 250 yards then you probably won’t.  We all limit what we believe we can do.  It would be much more useful to believe we can as by doing this we probably will.  This was demonstrated clearly when Roger Bannister broke the record for the 4 minute mile because as soon it was believable it became easier and achievable.

So practice putting believing you can hole it.  Practice chipping by believing you can get it close or even in the hole.  Practice bunker shots by believing you will get the out of the bunker.  Believe you can break 90, believe you can win a medal.  Notice what happens when you start believing.