Welcome to my blog. I hope to inspire you to make sense of your life, by looking at common challenges, give explanations for how our minds work and why we think/behave like we do. Through-out these blog episodes, I will be sharing my experiences as a mind coach, therapist and a person myself. Some thought provoking questions will be asked so you can reflect, as well as sharing tools, techniques and exercises for you to try.
New Beginnings
Many of us have times when we are holding ourselves back and we feel like we are just not on the right path. And, we know we could be happier and more fulfilled. We can feel stuck, dissatisfied and not making the right decisions or choices. Perhaps this resonates with you? You might feel anxious, emotional and overwhelmed? This can lead to us feeling frustrated / we procrastinate and our minds have negative thoughts. This is because our minds are a powerful and complex piece of kit, and the challenge is that it doesn’t come with an instruction manual. Yet, when we are able to understand our thoughts, feelings and behaviours / then we will feel so much happier and we can make positive changes. If we can do this, it will allow us to feel more content, more fulfilled and empowered / which helps us create better relationships, make positive decisions and feel motivated.
As a qualified coach, counsellor and NLP Master Practitioner, I have studied the human mind and behaviour. For more than 20 years now, I have helped hundreds of people to make sense of their lives. So, I really wanted to share my skills and expertise and link it with my own personal and professional journey, which led me to writing my first, and subsequently my second book.
I wasn’t always this confident and I struggled with self-belief which held me back in many areas of my life. I set out to find answers for myself – trained as a counsellor to find the answer, became curious; wanted to help other people and potentially fast track their understanding.
The New Year has always been a time for looking back to the past, and more importantly, forward to the coming year. It’s a time to reflect on the changes we want (or need) to make and resolve to follow through on those changes. Quite often if they last a week into the New Year you’re probably doing well – and then you’re left with a feeling of failure, resolutions are often temporary.
Have you found yourself making any of these resolutions and feel deflated as you have given up already?
- Fit in fitness – “I have no motivation”
- Tame the bulge – “I will never lose any weight”
- Quit smoking – “I have tried before and failed”
- Enjoy Life More – “I feel so low”
- Quit or reduce drinking – “A few glasses of wine help me sleep”
- Learn or do something new – “I have no confidence to try”
- Get more organised – “I chase my tail”
Your focus
You are so often spending time focusing on what you don’t want in your life or on the excuses why it won’t happen rather than what you want to happen, which is the innate desire to be happy. Resolutions to ‘lose weight’, ‘stop procrastinating’, and ‘get a boyfriend’ are abound. But what if, after years of failed attempts at goal setting, you decide that all you want out of the new year is to be happy? What if having a flat stomach and being more productive are just by-products of happiness? What if everything falls into place precisely because you’re not setting yourself boundaries for success and measuring your joy in terms of their achievement?
This will prevent the influx of people admitting they’ve failed their resolutions just a few days or weeks in. People vow to hit the gym as soon as the festive season is over. They promise to eat healthily, to quit smoking, and to read more. Weeks in and they’ve made excuses not to go to the gym, eaten a McDonald’s after a heavy night out, and watched far too much Netflix to have time to open a book.
Different person
It’s about time we put this whole idea that a new year makes you a different person to bed. Because let’s face it, the only thing that really changes is the date. For some people, all they want to do is put the year behind them and focus on the next one.
But we seem to have this idea that going into a new year immediately eliminates all the bad that happened the year prior. It doesn’t. We make all these plans to start our ‘new’ selves, and we punish ourselves for not keeping to those plans as we fall back into the same ways of the year before.
It’s about time we stopped focusing on the calendar and we stop with the time limits altogether.
Knowing that you’re not forcing yourself to make these changes by a certain date will also give you confidence that if you have an off day, or you fall into old routine, you can pick things up and continue – rather than giving up then starting all over again next year. So let’s stop it with the ‘New year, new me’, and focus on just the ‘new me’. This phrase is all about becoming who you aspire to be – and no timescale can be put on that. Give yourself time to focus on how you want to be and feel rather the pressure on what you are going to do. The rest will follow.