Grace Marshall's Blog, page 11

12 questions to start the new year

How are you feeling about the year ahead? Are you ready and raring to go, with some big, hairy, scare-the-pants-off-you goals? Or are you still getting your bearings and wondering what day it is?

If it’s the latter, don’t worry about playing catch up. Just start now.

In truth, every time we stand at the threshold of something new – a new year, a new term, a new season – it gives us the opportunity to pause and reflect, to make a decision, reset our direction, reconfirm commitments and declare what matters to us.

Here are some of my favourite questions to set the tone.

Take your pick – let your eye settle on one or two questions that jump out at you, and take them away with you to ponder on.

1. What do you want to create this year?

2. What do you want to explore?

3. What do you want to make space for?

4. How do you want to grow?

5. What are you most looking forward to?

6. What are you least looking forward to?

7. What do you want to work on?

8. What do you want more of?

9. What do you want less of?

10. What seeds do you want to sow?

11. What fruit do you want to enjoy?

12. How do you want to show up this year?

Of course, every day is a threshold, an opportunity to start anew, so feel free to revisit these questions during the year – and let me know how you get on.

Do you have a favourite question you ask yourself at the beginning of the year? Speak your mind and share your thoughts in the comments below.

5 questions to wrap up the year

Often end of the year reflections become either a sweeping statement (it was a horrible year, let’s get it over and done with) or a giant to-do list exercise where you tick off everything you’ve done and carry over everything else into next year’s resolutions.

The truth is, it’s not just about what you’ve done. It’s also about who you’ve been, where you’ve been, what you’ve learned, and crucially what you’re taking with you into the next year.

So here are five questions I’ve found really useful for wrapping up the year:

1. What were your highlights?

What achievements will you give yourself credit for? What successes will you celebrate? What experiences did you particularly enjoy?

2. How did you show up?

What strengths did you lean on? What characteristics did you discover or develop? What attitudes did you choose? Who did you need to be to do what you did? Who are you becoming?

3. What did you overcome?

What did you struggle with? What tough times have you seen through? What battles have you been fighting? How we live in the hard times matter.

4. What will you leave behind? 

It’s amazing how much stuff we can carry with us, simply because we forgot to put it down. What do you need to release, to let go of and put to rest in this year?

5. What will you take with you?

What lessons are you taking with you? What foundations have you laid for the year ahead? What stumbling blocks will you use as your building blocks? What will you take away from this year to fuel and equip you for the journey ahead?

 

Happy reflecting! Feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line to share your thoughts – I’d love to know where these questions take you.

5 ways to create rest

Well I’m a week into my 10 days of rest experiment and while it’s not been plain sailing it has been working. Not in a dramatically obvious way – I haven’t been suddenly bouncing out of bed feeling on top of the world (yet). But I have been less tired, waking up has been a little easier, and when a friend was telling me how exhausted she felt, I realised that actually, I don’t feel exhausted at all. 

Funny isn’t it, how one late night can be felt straight away, but feeling rested is something that creeps up on you.

I’m making progress in true baby steps style, one tiny little improvement at a time. So tiny that if I didn’t pay attention, I could easily give up and tell myself that it’s not working.

And I’ve learned that rest doesn’t just come from doing nothing. In fact, it has much more to do with what’s going on inside my head than what I’m physically doing.

If you could do with creating some rest this week, here are five things that have worked for me:

1. Make a decision

It’s funny how much lingering decisions can zap your energy. Whether you’re coming up to the end of the day or the end of the year, if you’re still mulling over decisions, the chances are your brain will keep on working on it. Sometimes that’s a good thing – some of my best creative ideas have been birthed that way – but other times, it’s just plain annoying. Those are the times when perhaps I’ve been deliberating for too long. When I just need to make a decision and move on.

Do you have any of those decisions lingering round at the end of this year?

2. Park stuff

What is it about the end of the year that has everyone suddenly scrambling to get everything done? Yes it is satisfying to leave the year with that ‘done and dusted’ feeling and create space for a fresh start for the new year, but it can be just as cathartic to lighten the load – decide what can wait, park a few things, and identify where you can ‘let it go’ altogether.

As a friend posted on Facebook this week, “Here’s to only getting some of it done ;)”

3. Let someone else be in charge

If you tend to be the one making things happen all the time, I’ve found that doing something where you’re not in charge can be incredibly restful!

Yesterday was a busy day. We went for a festive run, sang carols, ate mince pies, drank mulled fruit juice, won a Christmas quiz(!) and watched a lovely retelling of the nativity story. The best thing was, I wasn’t in charge of any of it. I just showed up, joined in and enjoyed the ride.

What can you let others make happen, and just show up and enjoy, instead of doing it all yourself?

4. Wake up!

After my daughter’s cough kept us both awake until 1.15am one night, I found myself in zombie mode the next day. The temptation was to do as little a possible, to conserve energy, but I discovered that when we made the effort to wake up properly, when I put on some music and had a little dance with my daughter over lunch, it lifted me out of the tired fog and helped me to feel better, and well, more rested!

Sometimes doing something uplifting can be more restful than doing nothing. Instead of limiting the energy you spend, what can you do to give you energy?

5. Commit to getting enough rest (but don’t obsess over it!)

Setting a deadline of 11pm has definitely helped, but there have been some nights when I been so rushed to meet that deadline, it’s affected the quality of my sleep and I felt far from rested – even when I did get the hours in!

So over the past couple of nights I’ve been getting to bed for 11pm but also allowing myself to take my time, to read for half an hour, or write, brainstorm or brain dump if I felt like it. I kept the light low and avoided using screens, and found that I slept much better.

The next step of course is to bring that ‘winding down’ time forward so I get both quantity and quality, but as I said at the beginning: Baby steps – one tiny improvement at a time.

Over to you. Which of these ways of creating rest will you try this week? What would you add to this list? Whatever you decide to do, I wish you a happy and restful Christmas!

10 Days of Rest

Are you ready for Christmas yet?

This is probably the most common question I get at this time of the year. From friends, family, and complete strangers.

What does that even mean? Ready for what? Ready for all those presents you’ve painstakingly picked, bought and wrapped to be stripped in two minutes flat? Ready to gorge yourself silly on the best homemade stuffing to rival all stuffings, and then spend the afternoon in a food coma? Ready to celebrate? Ready to enjoy? Ready to collapse? Or all of the above?

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but I do sometimes wonder if it brings out the crazy do-it-all perfectionist in us.

Someone in one of my recent workshops summed this up perfectly, when we were talking about , and I suggested renaming Project Christmas to Enjoy Christmas, to remind us of what we actually want the outcome to be.

“There’s so much pressure to do everything… and it all has to be done to perfection, but if your outcome is to enjoy Christmas, then you only do the things that contribute towards you actually enjoying Christmas, and take everything else off the list.”

It’s the little things…

For example, my son surprised us this year by asking if we could get the old artificial Christmas tree out of the loft, instead of buying a real one.

His reason: “I really love putting it up, and it reminds me of the sweet smell of Christmas!”

“What, plastic?” I asked.

“Yes!”

Kids. You couldn’t make it up!

Of course I’d much rather the sweet smell of Christmas my kids remember to be pine, cinnamon and freshly baked cookies, rather than plastic. But actually, if it means one less trip and queuing in the cold, one less thing to buy – and instead, watching my two babies put the tree up pretty much by themselves and having a whale of a time, who am I to argue?

What would “Enjoy Christmas” look like to you? Here’s I think the real question:

How do you want to feel this Christmas?

Maybe your ideal Christmas is full of bright lights and crazy fun at all the big events. Or maybe it’s warm and cosy with lots of cuddles.

For me, the one thing I really want to feel this Christmas is rested.

For as many years as I can remember, I’ve sported the Rudolph look with a pack of Kleenex at Christmas after running round like a mad thing and coming screeching to a halt in the early hours of Christmas morning. I get to Christmas ready to drop, and I do enjoy the day, but it goes far too quickly and I spend the week after recovering.

And even though November was my crazy busy month, truthfully I’ve had more late nights and less sleep in December. Why? Because I’ve paid less attention to rest, because I didn’t need to. I had far less travelling in the diary, no silly early starts, and no workshops or speaking engagements where I had to be on form. But plenty of other projects to keep me busy. So my bed time has crept over to the other side of midnight again.

December was supposed to be my quieter month, but instead it’s been my tired, grumpy and under the weather month so far.

Enough. With ten days to go till Christmas, I’ve decided to do what feels like the craziest challenge:

10 Days of Rest. From now until Christmas.

Yes, it’s the busiest time of the year. I have plenty of work to finish off before the kids break up from school. Hubby’s got university deadlines. And we’re still building flat pack furniture for our 5 year old’s bedroom after our trip to Ikea this weekend.

Yes, it’s usually the time when we don’t have time for rest. But a sobering thought my midwife friend told me the other day made me think that’s precisely why we need it: statistically there are more stillbirths at Christmas, probably because in the busyness it’s harder to notice changes in baby’s movements.

To answer the question at the start of this post, no I’m not ready for Christmas, but I will be. I will be ready, and I will be rested.

So here’s what I’m going to do. For the next ten days I’m going to aim to do one thing during the day that gives me rest. It might be a 10 minute screen-free break, a power nap, or my favourite indulgence: reading a book. And the biggie – I’m going to be in bed before 11pm.

I know that may not sound early to some, but considering my average bed time in December has been closer to 1am, every step in the right direction is progress!

But I need your help. I need your support, your encouragement, your ideas and most of all I need you to hold me accountable. I’d like to ask you to do two things:

1. Share with me your favourite ideas for creating rest – either for during the day, or for getting a good night’s sleep.

2. Watch me. No, not literally as I sleep – that would just be weird. Follow my progress on Facebook or Twitter and hold me accountable. Comment or like to let me know you’re watching – because I know then I have to follow through!

And if you you could do with getting to Christmas feeling rested, and fancy joining me on this crazy challenge, post your updates too on my Facebook page or tag me on Twitter and we can challenge and encourage each other

Are you up for the challenge?

It will never work (because it doesn’t sometimes)

Do you find yourself saying that? Or do you hear that around you? Are you shaped by this thinking?

I get this sometimes when I run workshops. Out of a discussion comes a great idea that gets everyone excited.

Maybe we can do something about this after all! Oh I like that idea! Yeah, I’m up for that! 

Then one person says: it will never work. We’ve done it before. So-and-so didn’t take notice. This-and-that happened anyway. 

It will never work.

Do you say that to yourself? Does someone else say it to you?

Sometimes knowing what doesn’t work feels safer than wondering what might. We can take comfort in that certainty, rather than pinning our hopes on something that may or may not work.

Hope can feel risky

We risk being disappointed. We risk being wrong. Sometimes it feels safer to speak the last word and control the outcome, instead of leaving it to hope:

When I was off on my travels a few weekends ago, my husband decided to take the kids to a pottery museum, which turned out to be closed. Somehow they ended up at Stafford’s historic windmill, which also looked closed.

“I don’t think we can go in” said my son. He’d read the signs – or lack of – and concluded that it wasn’t open to the public. “Let’s knock on the door” said my daughter.

So they knocked. The door opened. It turns out it wasn’t open to the public. My son was right. It was now the office and studio for Stafford Radio. But because they knocked, the person who opened the door gave them a little tour of the place anyway. They got to see inside the windmill and a radio show in action. They were both right.

Do you shut your ideas down before they’ve even begun?

Maybe it’s not worked once. Or maybe it started working then didn’t. So you stopped.

“It will never work” is another form of perfectionism. Perfect is the enemy of done. Something will go wrong, so best not to try at all.

The truth is, it doesn’t always work. But that’s not the point. It’s not a question of if it will work, but when.

Here’s a better question to ask:

When would it work?

The very skeptical might start with when hell freezes over.

So let’s play with that. When would that be?

When people actually give a damn!

When might people give a damn?

When they stop being arseholes… when they start caring 

When might they care?

Hmm… when it makes their lives easier?

How could this make their lives easier?

See where this could go?

“It doesn’t work” gives you nothing. It’s a statement to stop all discussion. Asking a question gets you thinking – of solutions, possibilities, work arounds and who knows, you might even surprise yourself.

And yes, it may never work perfectly, but asking “when would it work?” or even “when does it work?” means you can find what works and do more of that.

Give it a go. Next time you hear “it will never work” go ahead and ask:

When would it work?

3 Survival tips for crazy season

Are you in crazy season right now? Or about to go into one?

There are definitely seasons where life speeds up.

I’m in one of those right now. Never mind Christmas. November has been full on crazy busy with workshops. I’ve been working in London, Darlington, Tamworth, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Norwich, Milton Keynes, Derby and Stafford so far, and this week I’m back in Tamworth and then off to Budapest!

It’s definitely crazy good. Considering that business is much quieter in December, I’m thoroughly grateful that November is paying for December too, but that also means that I’m effectively doing two months’ work in one.

So, how do you run fast and keep going in crazy times like this? How do you make sure you can sustain the pace – if just for a season?

Here are three things that have helped me in the past three weeks:

1. Make space

When the diary is packed full of commitments, pauses are few and far between. Which is why we need to create pauses and protect them.

The 20 minutes you have in between two meetings. The half an hour at the beginning or end of the day. The one day you have at your desk when you’re not travelling. It’s easy to let these pauses fill up with emails, phone calls, meetings and ‘stuff’ you need to catch up on.

But in crazy season, the one thing only you can give yourself is a break. A walk, a proper lunch, a power nap, meditation or pick me up. A pause for you to unwind and refuel.

Knowing that I’d be arriving home late on a Thursday night from Edinburgh, after three consecutive days of workshops, then trekking over to Norwich on Sunday, I blocked out Friday and made it my day off. There was plenty that needed doing, but I needed the rest more. I took it easy, met a friend for coffee, went to the opticians, walked to school to pick the kids up, and took my time. It was like decompression time.

2. Make fun (especially with the things you dread)

Honestly, when I realised it was going to take me more hours and more changes to get to Norwich than to Edinburgh, my language was not pretty! I spent ages looking for alternatives, from flights to driving (would it be any faster to drive the 3.5 hours back at rush hour, and would it be wise or safe after delivering a 6 hour workshop?) to even considering if I could pass the job onto someone else. In the end I made peace with the train journey and decided I just had to make the best of it.

As my wise and wonderful friend Jenny posted on Facebook the other day: “Things turn out best for people who make the best out of the way things turn out.”

So instead of dreading or resenting it, I decided to borrow the DVD recording of a conference I’d missed last month, to watch on the train. As it turned out, it was a rather pleasant way to spend a few hours – and as a bonus, the earphones totally blocked out the crying child elsewhere in the carriage.

3. Make Magic

Travelling for 5 hours on a Sunday also meant that I had less of the weekend to spend with my family, so we decided to make the most of it by having lazy morning cuddles followed by a pancake brunch in town before I had to catch my train.

It was wonderful. What we lacked in quantity of time, we definitely made up for in quality. Intent on enjoying the moment, we probably made it more magical than some entire weekends we’ve had together.

Over to you. 

If you have a crazy season coming up how are you going to make the most of it, to ensure you not only survive it but enjoy the ride too? Make space, make fun, make magic. Go on, give it a try.

One note of warning. This post is about how to make the most of crazy season, not “how to get away with every season being crazy”. We do need longer periods of proper rest as well as the pauses. And I’m a big believer that quantity family time is equally as important as quality time. As I said to a friend this week, you can sprint, but you can’t sprint a marathon.

What’s your hidden strength?

What would come to mind if I asked you about your weaknesses?

The stuff you struggle with and stumble at. The things you think you ought to be better at, or resigned yourself to being rubbish at. 

The words you’d choose to complete the sentence “I’m too _____” or “I’m not very _____”.

Now I want to ask you, what’s the hidden strength in that weakness?

You see, every weakness hides a strength.  

My friend Marianne once said “Our weaknesses are just our strengths in the wrong environment.”

It’s where something we’re really good at gets misused, overused, or simply used in a place where it isn’t appreciated.

Like Marianne’s own love for change and seeking new solutions. It got her into trouble in her old job where she was being paid to follow the status quo, ask no questions and just get the job done, but now her fresh insights and incisive questions are exactly what her Free Range Humans love and value about her and pay her for.

As Einstein said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

I was bowled over recently by my 9 year old’s teacher at parents evening. There are really only three things I want to know as a parent at parents evening: How’s my child doing? Is he in an environment where he can thrive? What can I do to help?

The teacher could have said: “Yes he’s doing fine, well above what’s expected. The only thing he needs to work on is his pace, as he can be a bit slow. This is what you can practice with him at home…”

But instead, he described our son as a thoughtful boy who cares about getting things right, a methodical learner who is hungry to learn and does best when he takes it step by step, a deep thinker you won’t hear from for a while but when he does contribute to a group discussion he’s worth listening to, and a powerful writer whose words are something his teacher looks forward to reading.

Now that’s a teacher who knows my boy. And because of that, his classroom is an environment I know he’ll thrive in. If he had only focused on the weakness, we would have known one tiny little fact about who he’s not, and missed everything about who he is.

When we focus on our weakness, all we notice is who we are not.

Where can we really go from there?

Our weaknesses stem from our strengths. They are our strengths overused: when drive becomes stubbornness, when directness becomes rude, when compassion becomes people pleasing, when an ability to make stuff happen becomes control freakery, when attention to detail becomes perfectionism, when thoughtful becomes slow, when fast becomes impatience, when improvisation becomes unreliability, when imagination becomes easily distracted, when possibility becomes indecisiveness…

Our gut instinct is to suppress those weaknesses by changing who we are.

But when we focus on our strengths – especially the strength that lies at the heart of that weakness, we can start to channel our strength in the direction where it will grow healthily instead of spiral out of control. We can harness it in an environment where it will thrive and be valued. We can refine it into something that is brilliant and beautiful rather than destructive.

More than that, our strengths are who we are. When we ignore our strengths, we hide who we really are. We see only a glimpse of who we could be, just a shadow of our strengths, overused or misdirected.

When we nurture our strengths, we honour who we are, we learn how to handle ourselves, we grow to become the best of who we can be and we thrive. Boy do we thrive.

So here’s my challenge to you this week. Redefine your weakness. Find the strength that’s hidden within. Speak it out and declare it as a good thing.

For example, instead of “I’m easily distracted by shiny new ideas” I’m going to start telling myself “I have my best ideas at the most unexpected times, so I will make sure I’m always ready to capture them.”

Once you know your strengths you can start to ask yourself:

Where are my strengths most appreciated?
What environment do I thrive best in? (and what life-support do I need to put in place when I’m not in that environment?)
What can I do today to start nurturing my strengths?

I’ll leave you with this – a lovely poem I discovered on Hands Free Mama, which I think captures the value of our strengths rather beautifully.

Don’t Change, Extraordinary One

They say he’s too quiet.

They say she’s too inquisitive.

They say he’s too energetic.

They say she’s too sensitive.

They say he’s too absent-minded.

They say these things thinking it will help,

But it doesn’t really.

It only causes worry and the pressure to conform.

The truth is, changing would be a tragedy.

Because when they say “too quiet,”

I see introspection.

Don’t change, thoughtful one.

You’re gonna bring quiet wisdom to the chaos.

Because when they say ”too inquisitive,”

I see problem solving.

Don’t change, little thinker.

You’re gonna bring answers to the toughest questions.

Because when they say “too energetic,”

I see vitality.

Don’t change, lively one.

You’re gonna bring love and laughter to desperate times.

Because when they say “too sensitive,”

I see heart.

Don’t change, deep feeler.

You’re gonna bring compassion to hurting souls.

Because when they say “too absent-minded,”

I see creativity.

Don’t change, artistic dreamer.

You’re gonna bring color to lifeless spaces.

They might say change is needed.

But I ask that they look a little deeper and observe a little longer.

From where I stand, these individuals are just as they should be …

On their path to bring the world exactly what it needs to thrive.

Don’t change, extraordinary one.

You’re gonna light this place up.

© Rachel Macy Stafford 2014

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, and what it inspires you to do. Do feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment below. 

Are you the default person?

An article caught my eye this week. The first line asked “Are you the default parent?”, followed by “If you have to think about it, you’re not. You’d know. Trust me.” It gave a humorous and somewhat bleak account of all the things you scope, think about and are responsible for if you are the default parent.

There were definitely parts I nodded furiously and laughed out loud at, but I also realised there are times when I’m not the default parent.

Like first thing in the morning for example. If my daughter wakes up before I do (which she often does) Daddy is her go-to person. Because he’s the morning person, and is often awake or ready to wake when she comes in, and she’s learned that he’s far more likely to respond to her requests for breakfast or to fix the TV, than mummy’s slow and groggy “in a minute” “not now” and “go back to bed”s.

Equally, I am not the parent who multitasks in the shower. I blatantly ignore my kids and they’ve learned that they won’t get a sensible response out of mummy until she’s out of the shower.

Kids will go to the person they’re most likely to get a favourable response from. Daddy is the default hot chocolate maker and sweets dispenser. Daddy is the one who does the funny voices with bedtime stories.

But I am the default spider catcher, the default clothes drawer sorter, the default “make me feel better” parent and definitely the person responsible for figuring out what’s for tea.

What are you the default go-to person for – at work or at home? Here are some common examples:

The default oracle The one who knows everything and everyone. The one people come to before they ask Google, Wiki, the Intranet or the person who’s actually responsible for answering that question.

The default fixer The natural problem solver who’s the first port of call when the stuff hits the fan. The one who gets asked “could you take a look at this” even when it’s completely outside their area.

The default organiser The one who takes the drinks order when you all rock up at a cafe, and has probably phoned ahead, booked the table in the corner and checked if there’s soya milk for the dairy intolerant person. The one everyone else turns to and asks “What’s the plan?”

The default decision maker The one who gets copied in on emails with “What do you think?” and invited to meetings “because we value your opinion”.

The default emergency hero The one who you can always get hold of at the last minute, who you can rely upon to jump into action at the drop of the hat.

The default counsellor The first person people turn to when they need a shoulder to cry on or a sounding board to rant at. The one who knows about all the make ups and break ups in the office, the hospital visits and whose kids are teething.

The default perfecter One person I worked with recently said that her perfectionism became so well known within her team, that someone she delegated to actually delivered the piece of work to her with the words: “it’s not quite there yet but I know you’ll check it through and make it right.”

We choose our defaults, however much it feels the other way. Sometimes deliberately, because actually we quite like being that person (I’m really not that scared of spiders, and I do enjoy cooking). Sometime because we made a decision once upon a time, when it made perfect sense, and haven’t questioned it since. And others, well we just kind of fell into the habit.

It’s good to revisit our defaults from time to time, and to ask how well they’re working for us. For example, now that I’m the one bringing home the bacon, should I be the default one to cook it too? The truth is, I enjoy cooking, so unless I physically can’t be there to do it, I tend to assume the responsibility. But if I’m starting to resent that, I need to be the one to change it.

How do you stop being the default person – if you choose to?

1. Make yourself less available

People will always default to the quickest or easiest route, so making it harder to find it from you can make all the other options much more attractive.

Delay responding, be less accommodating, say no from time to time. Point them in the right direction even if it takes just as much time as giving them the answer or doing it for them. Give them an incentive to go find the answer by a different means.

2. Hand over the responsibility

I have a horrible habit of being indecisive, and sometimes I’m guilty of asking others for their opinion, just to check, and essentially to make my decision for me.

Chief Ninja Graham has pulled me up on this before and asked “why did you need to check with me?” Other times he’s turned around and told me “you decide, I trust you.” Yes, in the same amount of time he could have made the decision for me, but this way he’s training me to let go of using him as my crutch and get used to making my own decisions.

3. Accept it takes time to learn

My husband’s a great cook, but he hasn’t been the one to make sure dinner’s on the table day in, day out for the last 12 years. So it’s going to take him time to learn, to get used to it. And he probably won’t do it the same way I did. He’ll need to figure out his own way of doing things and I need to let him. That’s my learning curve too.

4. Let it go

As well as letting go of control, I also need to let go of being the default person. There’s a part of me that likes being the default person – being wanted and in demand. If I’m honest that’s probably the hardest part to let go of – my ego.

Over to you.

What defaults do you want to change? What are you going to do about it? Drop me a line in the comments below and let me know.

Who do you want to be today?

Not when you grow up. Not in five years’ time. Today.

If we were about to start working together – in a workshop, or a 1-1 coaching session – one of the first questions I’d ask you is What do you want?

And you might start telling me about what you don’t want – the constant pressure and overwhelm, juggling competing priorities, never getting to the end of the work, feeling guilty, exhausted, out of balance.

You might talk about the brilliant things you’d love to achieve if only you had the time. All that purpose, passion and genius hemmed in by paperwork, meetings and email.

Or you might describe how much better life would be if you could just find a way to calm the chaos, get that creative brain of yours organised, stop procrastinating, get over your inner perfectionist, inner critic or inner magpie.

You’d probably ask me how. How do I stop procrastinating? How do I overcome overwhelm? How do I navigate this chaos, get myself organised, get on top of my emails, find my flow, stop getting distracted, and get everything done?

And I’ll show you how. I have so many beautiful, brilliant, tips, techniques, tools and tricks to show you, each potentially game changing and even life changing in their own way.

But none of it works if you don’t work it. Great ideas only work if you put them into action.

I can show you how, but it’s up to you to make the magic happen.

One thing that often stops us, is that our current reality seems much more real than the life we want to live.

We can have good intentions, brilliant strategy, and a great portfolio of butt-kicking Ninja moves, but when it comes down to it, the current reality that’s in your face – the boss who’s breathing down your neck, that impending deadline, the hot potato that’s just landed in your inbox demanding your immediate attention – can be far more compelling in the moment than the ideal reality we want to create.

In the moment, we decide that the ideal can wait – just for another day. Just until we’ve dealt with this crisis, and the next, or maybe the one after, but definitely soon.

So here’s one question I want to ask you.

Who do you want to be? 

Not what do you want to do – because those things can wait.

Not when you grow up, or when life slows down, or when you’ve got to the end of everything but right here, right now:

Who do you want to be today?

Or rather what version of you do you want to be?

Do you want to be busy you, fearful you, exhausted you, crazy arsed you?

Or do you want to be kind you, alive you, grateful you, brave you, ruthless you, crazy happy you?

A version of you is going to show up today – which one is it going to be?

Choose one. Then make all your decisions today based on that. Let that guide you in choosing which of your Ninja moves to use.

If you choose to be kind today, be kind in how you schedule your day, how to react to changes, how you deal with others, how you speak to yourself.

If you choose to be brave, be brave in your decisions, in your actions, in managing your resistance when fear backs you into a corner and tempts you into procrastination. Every time it counts, do the brave thing.

If you choose to be creative, be creative in the way you answer the phone, do your paperwork, the boring, the mundane, how you focus, how you get over writer’s block, how you solve problems and how you handle a crisis. Whatever comes up, be creative.

Over time, you’ll find you can choose who you want to be in all sorts of different situations, but for today, let’s start really simply.

Choose one. Who do you want to be today?

Declare it – leave a comment here, or better still, share this post on your social media of choice with who you’re choosing to be. Then go live it.

Come back tomorrow and tell me what happened – can’t wait to hear from you!

Take Your Time

As a Productivity Ninja, I have many conversations around time. 

“Not enough time, too much to do” is how most of my conversations start.

We talk about good use of time, about how to work faster, smarter, how to not get bogged down in detail, paralysed by overwhelm, waylaid by procrastination or drowning in email. In fact, my whole book is about dealing with the stuff that sucks up your time.

But sometimes people say to me “I’m focused, I’m clear, I’m fired up, I’ve got my baby steps, goals, projects and to-do list set up. I know exactly what I need to do, I’m making good use of my time and I still don’t have enough time.”

If you feel like time is always running away from you, that you never seem to have enough time. If you are constantly busy, rushing round after other people, wondering when you’ll ever have some time to yourself. If you’re waiting for when you have more time…

I have three words for you.

Take Your Time.

Here’s why:

When we don’t have enough time we rush.

For some reason both my kids have managed to pick shoes that are a bit tricky to put on. While my daughter tries to wriggle her foot into her snug winter boots without losing her balance, and my son tugs and fiddles with his laces, I find myself saying “It’s ok, take your time.”

Because if they rush, it gets harder, and more frustrating, and takes longer.

When we don’t have enough time we hold back or give up.

What have you told yourself you’ll do when you have time? What would you love to do if only you had the time?

Rest, sleep, me time, read a book, write a book, take a holiday, go for a walk, upgrade the software, expand the business, take the risk, train, delegate, think, plan, prepare, go for a run, be still…

So often the things we put off are the things that would add meaning, simplicity or joy to our lives. The things that make life better, and time worthwhile.

So many people wait. They wait for the work to finish, the demands to stop, the constant busyness to slow down, so they can finally have time to do what they want to do. And yet, that time never comes. Because the work never stops. There’s always more to do.

When we don’t have enough time we faff.

When I’m frustrated, bored, uncertain or resistant towards something, I feel the pull of procrastination, to actively take my mind off it. Add to that the pressure of “I haven’t got time for this, I’ve got a million other things to do” procrastination becomes even more attractive.

“I’ll just go do that.” I tell myself. “It needs doing anyway.”

When the pressure mounts, it feels better to be doing something – anything – rather than nothing.

The problem is, procrastination easily eats up anything from an hour to a day. Yet if I just sit with it. Take my time. Resist the urge to go looking for something else to scratch the itch. What seems like forever, but in reality is probably just 20 minutes later, the momentum starts flowing, and I get it done.

When we don’t have enough time, we can miss the moments.

As the saying goes, life is not measure by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

But when we obsess over counting the seconds, we can miss the moments. Moments of profound joy and intense silliness, roaring laughter and peaceful silence, heartwarming connection and satisfying rest. Whether it’s the simple pleasures or crazy adventures. These are the moments that make life worth living.

These are the moments to take our time over.

The truth is, we have time – and we choose how we spend it.

As one workshop delegate recently put it, “If I choose to look at my work email at the weekend, and see something that upsets me, I’m the one who has chosen to let email ruin my weekend. It’s my choice, not anybody else’s.”

The uncomfortable truth is, if you never seem to have any time for yourself, your agenda and what matters to you, you’re choosing not to give any time to yourself.

We make that choice, by what we say yes and no to, what we commit to and what we fail to commit to, what we make ourselves available to, and what we pay attention to. It’s our time. To use or to give away, as we choose.

And the beauty is, when we stop seeing time as something that runs away without us, when we start taking our time, we choose how we experience that time.

We can’t change time, but we can change our experience of it. Sometimes time flies, sometimes it drags, and that’s nothing to do with the seconds, minutes and hours, but everything to do with what we choose.

So here’s what I propose. Let’s stop talking about time like there’s not enough. Like it’s some unstoppable tsunami that we’re trying wrestle into submission.

Let’s just take our time.

If you feel like life is doing you, rather than the other way round, take your time. It’s yours, to do as you choose. You are in control. You really are.

If you’ve been waiting for the perfect time, that never seems to come, I want to say to you: Take your time. It’s yours my darling. Take it. Run with it. Play with it. Live it.

If you’re dealing with new ground, ill health or challenging circumstances that mean you’re not going as fast as you’d like, it’s ok. You’re doing great. Give yourself the space. Be patient, be kind. Take your time. You’ll get there.

And if you’re taking time off, like I am this week, please do take your time. Take it, savour it, enjoy every moment. Don’t count it by seconds, measure it by moments. Enjoy every moment.

Whatever your circumstances, whatever lies before you this week, here’s my challenge, and my invitation.

Take Your Time.

 

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