Unleashing Potential - Personal development through online coaching and training courses
Short and sweet this week but, if you are serious about self-knowledge and personal development, one that could keep you working all week!
Work-Life balance is a current hot-topic on a lot of forums and in a lot of organisations, but what does it mean? The work bit may be self-expalanatory but life? How do you know if you’ve got that right?
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Have you ever paused to consider how much your personal growth can be really stymied by guilt and forgiveness issues(or often a lack of forgiveness, to be more accurate)? Why? Because they suggest to us that beauty does not lie within us, but in others. It urges us to listen to voices outside of our own and in many cases, to give away our personal power to the owners of those voices. Going further, it even suggests that other people know more about us than we do! [Read more...]
I believe that the ability to manage stress is one of the key factors in the consistent delivery of high quality performance. As an example, in 1998 I was fortunate enough to play field hockey for England Veterans in the Field Hockey World Cup.
It was the first time that I’d ever played at that level and I found something very interesting – there were players who trained very well but froze when playing a match. There were others who were only average in training but excelled under the pressure of competition. The difference was their ability to manage their stress.
So, to help anyone that needs it, here are three techniques I’ve found very useful:
1. Meditate – try to set aside at least 10 minutes a day to meditate in whatever way works well for you; if you have difficulties quietening your mind, My e-book on meditation techniques will be available by the end of the year and will be free to ecademy members.
1a. A bonus tip – smile while you meditate; you will create a conditioned response, or anchor, that means that when uder pressure, if you smile, you will be able to access the calmness you exprience when meditating.
2. Take 4 or 5 deep, whole body breaths – a great way of relieving stress for several reasons. Firstly it gets a lot of oxygen into the body, which clears the brain. Secondly, we hold a lot of stress in our diaphragms – ever noticed how your breath can become very faltering when you are stressed? So taking a full breath stretches the diaphragm and releases stress.
3. Develop a personal effectiveness plan that encompasses meeting the needs of mind, body and spirit. It’s all to easy, especially as I’m self-employed, for me to focus only on work and forget the needs of body and spirit. (The divisions between the three areas of mind, body and spirit are arbitrary, they make it easy to map out issues. In reality,I believe that they are all interconnected, part of the whole being.) What do you do to experience beauty, to take time out, to go for a walk in the countryside? Those are just examples that work for me – what words for you?
What techniques do you use for short term stress relief and to elevate your coping threshold?
On the workshops I run, whenever the conversation turns to meditation, some will nod wisely and if asked will tell the others how they’ve benefited from meditating. Inevitably, there will be a group of people looking frustrated. If they are asked, they will tell the same story – they’d love to meditate, they understand the benefits of meditating, but they can’t keep their minds still and focused for long enough.
If this is true for you, don’t panic! I’ve been there, I know what it’s like, hearing everyone else say how great meditation is, even seeing the changes in some of them. And how much I admired the Zen masters who could meditate for hours without being distracted.
It took me a while to realise that the Zen masters had not only spent years in dedicated practice, but that when they staretd they too had the chattering monkey mind to deal with. That is why as trainees, they were set philosophical chllenges, or koans to mull over during meditation. It kept their conscious minds occupied!
Having understood about the purpose of koans made me think: how can these be updated? What techniques exist that modern westerners can use in the way koans were? So I did the reserach, had great fun practising the various techniques and I’m now putting the finishing touches to an e-book on meditation techniques for those who find it hard to meditate. It will be available soon and will be free to the first 20 subscribers, so keep a look out for announcements!
Find out your life's purpose;
Establish your definition of success;
Set goals and timescales for all areas of your life;
Balance the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions of your life;
Create financial security;
Develop plans to help you to achieve those goals;
Help you to manage stress effectively;
Learn to communicate effectively and to influence and persuade others;
Build and maintain great relationships;
Maximise your health and energy levels;
Enjoy life and have fun!
If you can't find what you're looking for, contact me by e-mail and I'll see what I can do!