Planning – Your New Wings

25 Oct

The Yin & Yang of Procrastination – Why procrastination is not always bad…

Many years ago during my coach training I remember a critical moment when I realised that procrastination isn’t simply a negative thing… it can be positive too.

One of my learning leaders made a comment that has stuck with me ever since. It put a positive spin on procrastination, which I had previously thought of as an entirely negative ting. He said…

‘procrastination is just your subconscious telling you that you haven’t got enough information yet to make the decision…’

This simple comment changed my life. I realised in that moment that I wasn’t lazy or dim in my procrastination (which had been my underling belief until then)… I was simply being true to myself. I didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle in place, so I wouldn’t decide to move.

It is often hard to know the ‘right’ thing to do, but as I have experimented with this in the ensuing years I have begun to really trust my instincts and listen to my intuition a great deal more. I find that when I am ‘striving’ to make the ‘right’ decision it can be very difficult, but when I trust, relax, be patient, mindful and let my subconscious deal with it I can stop procrastinating and move forward. The pieces can fall into place… they may not yet, and that is fine too.

What do you need to let go of to move forward?

Maybe nothing, maybe the only thing you need to do is not judge yourself for not being ready yet.

Let the pieces fall into place when they are ready…

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

24 Nov

Time Management: Part 2

Key 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.

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

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?

I 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