06 Jan

A New Year – a new page… or could that be a new book?

The aspirations leading up to a new year, a new beginning, thoughts about how we would like to change our life for the better give us great insight into what our ideal self would look like. This is both exciting and daunting at the same time…there is so much to be gained by making statements about how we want to improve our lives. The problem is the gap in the middle; the space between where we are now and where we want to be… it’s like looking over a pond to the other side and all that is in between is water. What happens if we put stepping-stones in the water? The first stepping-stone is in a place that we can easily and comfortably jump to on our way across the pond? How does that change our perception of what is possible?

So I am suggesting that we can break our year-page into a book with each page dealing with a smaller amount of time… how would that feel?

Overall goals for the year are great (getting to the other side of the pond), but the planning, the breaking it down into strategies and actions needs to be done over a shorter timeframe, for each stepping-stone.

There is a new trend in business planning called the 90-day year (initiated by Todd Herman), which advocates not annual planning, but 3 monthly planning. I think there is something here to be learnt for our own personal planning. One year is a long time, a lot happens, things change. It feels much more flexible and free to look at a smaller timeframe. We can assess what is working and what is not and change things around. For those of us with school aged children the gaps between school holidays can be a useful segmentation. If you are anything like me you struggle to get things done for yourself (or your business/work/study) when you have the children at home for the holidays, so why not plan for the gaps and allow yourself the reward of letting go of some expectations while they are at home?

So what is on the first page of your 2017 book? What do you what to achieve by the time you have the kids home for school holidays at Easter?

There is no right way to plan, no ultimate way to get our heads around how to move forward. Something what works for others may not work for us. Give yourself permission to do it your way. If you work better by not writing things down and just doing what comes to you in any given day, week, month – then go with that. Experimentation is the key – if it isn’t working try something new, but if it is working, don’t compare yourself to the people around you who have a different way of doing things. You may not have a page, a book or spreadsheet. Do what works for you, and if you are struggling – be open to explore what others find useful.

I am off to work on my planning, good luck with yours!

xx Tina

 

18 Dec

Time Management: Part 3

Resources and further information…

screenshot-2016-11-24-17-42-56

 

Last post I shared my time management tips for busy mums. The umbrella tip was to seek internal and external support… here I will endeavour to give you a bit more explanation and some resources.


S
TRUCTURE – Seek structure that works for you and be cons
tantly open to new ways of doing things.

You are doing this already by talking to others about what works for them, getting new ideas and trying new ways of working.

SUPPORT – You are not alone – work as a family team

It is easy to forget how capable our children are becoming. We are so used to doing everything for them as babies and toddlers and we take a certain pride in ‘doing’ things for our children. It is also often much easier and faster to do things ourselves, especially in the beginning however we need to remember that it is our job to equip our children for life without us and so getting them to contribute to making our home a nice place for all of us to live is important.

This list of Age Appropriate Chores for Children may help.

PRIORITISE – Self-care is not selfish

As mums we tend to look after everyone else first. Lets look at why we shouldn’t …

Self care in not selfish

PLAN & DREAM – Work out your medium & long-term goals

This will alleviate some of the anxiety around what the future holds for you and help you to say no to things that aren’t in-line with what you are trying to achieve. To help with the planning and dreaming we offer you our ‘Happiness Evaluation Worksheet’ for free when signing up for our mailing list. This ‘snapshot’ helps you to take a step back and get an overview of you life. It is a great place to start. It can be tricky to work out the best way to move forward. If you would like some further help we offer both individual coaching and group programmes to help you get the life that you want.

OBSERVE – Notice how doing things makes you feel

Notice how saying yes to things make you feel e.g. say yes when you want to say no. Think of a time when you have said yes to something they really wanted to say no to. How did it make you feel? If things make you feel good – gratitude, joy, love – keep offering to do them. If they make you feel bad – resentment, guilt, frustration – work out a way to say no next time… To become the observer of your own life is a very powerful way to explore who you want to ‘be’. This article explains it beautifully…

Essential life skill – self observe

REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS – It doesn’t always need to be perfect!

Here is a wonderful article by Ann Smith with some excellent tips around perfectionism and motherhood.

The perils of perfectionism in motherhood

TRUST – Trust yourself! You are doing an awesome job.

I give you hear one of my favorite Ted Talks.

For parents, happiness is a very high bar – Jennifer Senior

This will hopefully help you to see that we are living in a time of great parental challenge. The fact that you are still reading at the end of my post shows that you are an engaged, caring parent!  Keep up the great work, and trust that you are doing an awesome job!

So, the last word on time management comes from one of my favourite books – “time never changes, the stuff of life never ends, you will never do everything you think you need, want or should do… So you have to decide… What do you want to accomplish in this life? …What is important to you right now? …Start with time for what’s most important…”

Yours in parenting

Tina

24 Nov

Time Management: Part 2

Mum juggling everythingKey time management tip for busy mums

I had the honour of working with some wonderful mums over the past 2 weeks who were brave enough to add one more thing to their to-do- list and come along to my free workshops.

These workshops were designed to delve into what time management is for each of us.  Everyone’s situation is unique, but there are some common threads that run though all our lives can hold the key to dealing with time management.  In preparing for this workshop I reflected on my work with mums over the past 4 years and pieced together these threads to identify what we all, as mums tend to struggle with.

What I have discovered is that as mums we…

  • Try to CONTROL the UNPREDICTABLE
  • Are on duty 24/7 – it is RELENTLESS, we don’t often get a break
  • Place enormous EXPECTATIONS on ourselves
  • Never feel like we are doing ENOUGH because there is always more to do
  • Often don’t see our SELFCARE as a priority
  • Are EXHAUSTED from all the decisions – big and small
  • Feel GUILTY that whatever we are doing it is not the right thing
  • If we are not making MONEY we don’t feel like we should spend money on ourselves

In line with these threads and in wanting to bring you an acronym to help you remember my tips (I still recall the order of the planets and the colours of the rainbow thanks to my school learnt acronyms!) I offer the following tips…

STRUCTURE – Seek structure that works for you

SUPPORT – You are not alone – work as a family team

   PRIORITISE – Self-care is not selfish

   PLAN & DREAM – Work out your medium & long-term goals

   OBSERVE – Notice how doing things makes you feel

   REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS – It doesn’t always need to be perfect!

   TRUST – Trust yourself! You are doing an awesome job

So my key time management tip for busy mums is to seek internal and external support.

screenshot-2016-11-24-17-42-56

1) Seek internal support by looking inwardly as summarised above, doing our own internal work, which is totally within our control.

2) Seek external support, as shown in my diagram above. To seek external support from those around us who support us not only in our day-to-day endeavors, but also help us to understand what is going on within us.

The truth is that time is finite, we can’t make any more of it. So it is what we choose to do with our time that is important

I realise that these tips are not just about time management, but also about life in general. Remove time from the equation and it boils down to what is important to us and ultimately who we want to be…

I feel that this post is inadequate in that I have not provided the stories and reasoning behind the ‘tips’ as I did in my presentation. I am endeavouring to work out how to record my free workshop presentation which would allow you a deeper experience… so stay tuned as I get that to work… (I am feeling a little technologically challenged right now… but I keep telling myself doesn’t need to be perfect!)

Yours in support

Tina

03 Nov

Time Management: Part 1

Mum juggling everythingWhy is time management particularly tricky for parents?

Our free workshop this month is all about Time Management Tips for Busy Mums. We are running two workshops in Warwickshire and would love to see you there if you get the chance.  Register here.  As the lead up to Christmas has begun we all find ourselves in an even more time poor state than usual during this busy time of year!

Time Management will be the topic of my next 3 blog posts. In each one we will look at different aspects of time management and the last one will include a free worksheet. If this post looks familiar that might be because you saw a condensed version of it in the latest Warwickshire Families Magazine…

There are no easy answers or quick fixes when it comes to time management. For most of us being a parent often means operating while overwhelmed. Our time management is particularly complex with lots of variables! So what makes it particularly tricky for us? Everyone’s situation is unique but here are a few thoughts…

  1. Unpredictability – The needs of the family are constantly changing. Different phases require different strategies. Humans are programmed to look for patterns so it’s a problem when there is often no pattern, or just as one begins to emerge – something changes! Try to relax into the chaos, know that you are doing the best that you can and that everyone else is dealing with this too! 
  1. Contaminated time– sometimes also called fragmented time. This is mental pollution that comes from having to deal with so many things at once, (for example – while writing this article I am also cooking dinner, baking a birthday cake, monitoring homework and writing the shopping list) and making it difficult to focus on one thing and feel like you are doing it well or even finishing it! Accept that occasionally it is important to isolate yourself, take time to recharge and allow yourself the luxury of focusing on one thing until it is done.
  1. Expectations – We all have expectations of what we should be able to achieve. Our expectations combined with what we believe others think we should achieve can create stress and anxiety. Look closely at where should is showing up in your life and ask yourself why you think you should.
  1. Proactive vs. Reactive – We hardly ever get a chance to take a step back and determine what we want and consciously aim for it – instead we are reacting to each crisis as it comes along. Setting aside time to plan (monthly, weekly or daily – your choice) can help with this.

Hang in there. You are doing a better job than you think. Only about 10% of our thoughts are conscious, so no wonder we feel like we are often on autopilot, because we are! Parents are constantly juggling priorities, making decisions big and small. Add things like a bit of sleep deprivation, a house move or a sick loved one to the list and it is no wonder we often feel overwhelmed.

Yours in overwhelm!

Tina

 

28 Oct

Why I choose to work with mums

When I began coaching I hesitated for years to specialise and say I was a particular type of coach. The nature of coaching is that it is of benefit to everyone (if they are open to it). I am also fundamentally opposed to any type of discrimination. I felt guilty about excluding anyone from accessing coaching and so I remained a general ‘life coach’ to feel like I was being inclusive.

img_5375As time has gone on I now see the advantage in specialising. It helps my clients feel comfortable that coaching is for them. So when I speak to mums on my website, in my advertising, in my blogs, that is not to say I won’t coach other people! Just ask me, I am happy to coach anyone, from any background. In fact I would love to expand out to developing programmes for dads and perhaps teenagers too sometime in the future. But I do feel a deep connection with mums (being one) and the job that we do. Not that dads don’t do it too, but everyone’s situation is unique and I feel that if I serve mums exclusively in my group coaching that mums will feel more comfortable to join in and to see that coaching really is for them – as a parent, as a woman and as a worthwhile human being – not just as an executive in a company.

With ease and joy

Tina

26 Sep

My Autumn harvest soup

Feeding my family…

Feeding my soul…

My Autumn harvest soup…

It is Autumn in the UK and yesterday I was exploring what I need to do with my garden in this new phase. In contemplating this I found myself drawn to deeply connect with nurturing my family and celebrating what we have managed to grow over the summer months. I reflected on how, in our modern life, we have come to be so removed from the process of growing what we eat. My grandparents on their dairy farm were almost totally self sufficient, and we today as a family are not.

I have a garden as a hobby. I love to be connected to the earth and the pulse of life. It slows me down, it helps to keep me sane…but at best what I grow is a supplement for what we buy in to eat. I realised I wanted to see what it was like to eat only what we have grown and thus created our Autumn harvest soup…

Collecting items and preparing our soup was a hugely grounding and humbling experience. It was a meditation that brought a deep appreciation for and gratitude towards those earlier generations who were deeply rooted in the earth and spend a large proportion of their lives simply putting food on the table.

Our family all enjoyed our soup dinner last night…the only ingredients not from our garden were…the salt … and the butter…

With ease and joy

Tina

08 Sep

Any task can be a meditation

I am reminded today that any task can be a meditation! It helps when you are doing something you love, for someone you love, but I find that the more practice I get the easier it is becoming.

A few years ago I attended an ‘Introduction to Meditation’ training run by a Matthew Young who set up the Melbourne Meditation Centre in 2005 http://melbournemeditationcentre.com.au. The main thing that I took away from this session which remains very vividly with me today was that meditation does not need to fit into any preordained rules… Matt helped me to see that I didn’t need to plan my day to include meditation – something I had been intending to do for years (and very seldom achieving), that I could weave it into my day in lots of little ways that would allow me to have the benefits without the feeling of yet another thing I should be doing. As mums we often just don’t have time to add another job to our list of things to do!

This week being the first week of the kids being back at school after the long summer break here in the UK I still don’t quite feel like I have my life back under control…The house is still a mess with half finished jobs, my office / spare room looks like a bomb hit it and the kitchen, well I will leave that to your imagination!

But amidst this mess the trigger for my remembering how any task can be a meditation was decorating my sons 11th Birthday cake this morning.

I have discovered 3 ways that I can weave meditation into my day…

  1. A moment of pause… For example when I arrive at school a few minutes early for pick up – I close my eyes and take whatever time I have (often only literally a minute) to focus inwardly.
  1. I am doing chores… the dishes, cooking dinner, vacuuming… I become mindful of my body and concentrate on what I am doing. I get out of my head and give it a rest from the constant chatter of what else needs doing next.
  1. Doing something I love… I have always loved making Birthday Cakes… there has always something special to me about begin able to pore love into the creative process for this special day…

Even with all the other things going on and pulls on my time as I worked this morning I recaptured that feeling of being in exactly the right place, doing exactly what I should be doing. When I feel like this I can relax, push the ‘chatter’ to the back of my mind, focus and enjoy being totally emerged in the moment!

What tasks are meditative for you?

 

30 Aug

Why do we hesitate to begin?

I start this blog now after procrastinating about it for years!  Why do we find it so difficult sometimes to begin? It has been my fear and expectations of myself that have been holding me back…

What will people think?

What if it isn’t very good?

What if I can’t think of anything to write about?

What if I offend someone?

What if someone thinks I have all the answers and they are disappointed?

What if I unknowingly hurt or upset someone?

What happens when people see that I fail, often and that I am human and make mistakes?

What happens if someone makes fun of me?

img_5471I see these fears in my clients every day, and I feel them too and it is OK. It is OK to have high expectations of ourselves, but not to the point where they paralyse us into inaction and staying small. It is OK to be afraid, but not to the point where we hide and do nothing. Baby steps, little by little we can build our courage to move forward, grow in confidence and be to the world what we want to be in our hearts.

So, here I am. Stepping up and beginning – right here, right now! Do I feel nervous that it won’t be great? Yes. Am I wondering what this projects about who I am as a person and as a coach? Yes…

What has change? Why now? What is enabling me to overcome my fear and my high expectations of myself? It is my realisation that it doesn’t get better than this. I simply will never know everything; I can’t wait for everything to be perfect – because it never will be. It is my realisation that I know enough and anything I don’t know I can find out and that if I don’t put my self out there and risk failing, then I will not be able to have the positive impact on the world that I want to have. I want to help mums who are struggling with what I was struggling with. I don’t have all the answers – but I never will. It is time to stop playing small, to put myself out in the world so I might help other mums find there second passion outside there family just as I have… something that allows them to bring more joy into their lives and helps them to embrace every moment of being a mum, every moment of being alive, with zeal and excitement, joy and love…

So I don’t promise to blog every day, every week or every month… to put that pressure on myself will inevitably cause stress. But I do promise to share with you my thought, the things I am learning and my poetry when inspired to do so. Please stay tuned if you’re interested and feel free to tune out if your not…

With ease and joy

Tina