Posts Tagged ‘Planning’
Since this is such a personal experience I thought I could share with you how I managed to break the barrier of my comfort zone today.
As a woman who takes regular exercise, I begin to feel restless if I have missed a few days. This is simply because my body is used to being dragged out onto the street and pushed for anything from 30 minutes to 1 hour.
Having been on holidays in March for 3 weeks, I was travelling light and knew there would not be much opportunity to find appropriate times and places in order to exercise. I had my husband to consider also, and as we would be travelling for 3 weeks, it would be unfair to have to focus on running in a safe place for over an hour. I made the Executive decision to take 3 weeks off running, knowing that it would be replaced with healthy daily hiking (or tramping as it is known in New Zealand) and a healthy diet. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, it’s that time of year again. And yes, it can be very stressful.
- Have you left your card sending until the last minute?
- Have you left your Santa buying until the last minute?
- Have you left your Christmas Shopping until the last minute?
- Have you left buying the tree until the last minute?
- Have you left everything until the last minute?
If you answer YES to any of the above questions, then read on to learn a few tips on managing your stress better this year.
“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday” ~ Don Marquis
Now, for a fact – we can only experience the present moment. YES, we can really only actually experience every moment once. Everything else is imagined, whether past or future.
So if you are stressing about past Christmases, or any past event, then you are relying on memory to provide the stress factors. Those stress factors can limit us in our everyday tasks. If you are stressing about the coming Christmas, or any future event, then you are just imagining it and creating your own stress factors. Based on what? Future event stress is normally based on previous events, so we are back in the past, which is imaginary, remember?
So how do we DO procrastination? How do we manage to NOT do the important things? How do we let stress effect our wishes and goals?
Here we go, a little exercise for you:
- Get into the role of Christmas shopping, decorating the house, planning the dinner, handling the in-Laws
- See yourself in that role, doing those things
- Now imagine the PERFECT day shopping, decorating or planning
- What happens in that day? What do you see, what do you hear? What do you notice? What do you smell? What are you feeling? (really, really get into the feeling of it, remember this is your PERFECT day)
- What exactly happens in that day? And when?
- Now simply, imagine how you can grasp as much of that as possible. What can you tap into, what can you access?
That’s it! The rest doesn’t matter, because it’s negative, and we want positive don’t we?
Do this exercise a few times and feel the difference about the situation now. How does it feel different? Keep those feelings in mind and remind yourself of your perfect day when it’s time to do that thing!
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task” ~ William James
*If you would like to learn more about tackling procrastination and the benefits of coaching, please contact Elaine through the Contact Page or by telephone at +353 (0)86 1955660. Be the CHANGE you want to be in 2012!*
As a small business owner, you ARE your business. If you have ever seen any of the worldwide “Dragon’s Den” type programmes on the TV, you will observe that the dragons invest in the person behind the business as much as the concept itself.
It is important for that business owner, to constantly watch trends, be familiar with their market, and adapt to the changes that invariably happen. We also need to keep an eagle eye on what the competition is up to, and notice what they are changing, and are those changes in line with consumer changes, or are they trying to influence the consumer / client.
This is where business owners can get “bogged down”. Constantly watching out for the enemy, copying their strategies, playing cat and mouse to try and gain ground.
Let’s say our business has been successful in the past, and now, inevitably things are tough. We batten down the hatches, cut costs, cut prices, downsize, and cut budgets. You are probably familiar with any one of these strategies.
But why do we do this? Because the strategists recommend it? Because your competition is doing it? Because of the proven facts from the past? Because historically, it works?
Think about this: where do we get the notion that repetition is the best tactic? What influences us to think that what worked before will work today, for our business?
Now think about this… is this the same type of recession as before? Will the next boom (there WILL be a next boom) be the same as the previous one? I would imagine NO, and NO!
So, why then, are we doing the same things now that we did before? Read the rest of this entry »
Planning an event can be tremendously stressful for some. I have had clients stress over Christamas to the point where complete sabotage and failure are guaranteed. So how can we plan for an event and ensure that we don’t miss anything important?
We can write a list – what to do, what to buy, when to do it. This list can be in the form of chronological importance or priority importance. So let’s back track a bit and assume you are already struggling with ideas and the basic plan, not to mind the where, when, why and how-to?
Very often, someone wants to plan a surprise or event for a friend or loved-one. This can prove an almost debilitating exercise for many; so what I want to to is look at ONE possibility that can help your life to be easier, less stressful and ultimately organised. This will ensure that you enjoy the event as much as the person or people you are organising it for.
Because we are now over the indulgence of Christmas, and have embarked on a journey of resolutions and lying low for January, we do need some indulgence to get some spark back. Read the rest of this entry »
Happy New Year all,
Seefin Coaching is not yet officially back to work, but we have the pleasure of being published in De-Stress magazine again.
Catherine Connors of Stress Solutions 4 Life publishes this great resource for stress-busting and other great topics. It’s a pleasure to be included. Check Page 4 for my article:
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Enjoy the read, and Best Wishes from Seefin Coaching for 2011!!
This month we are running with a great series of TOP 10 tips for your business survival for the traditional break, and on into the New Year.
TIP NO 9:
S ~ SILENCE
OK, so you are still running around like mad, trying to get everything done. So you promised yourself. So what! There is not a chance on this universe that if you keep going 90 miles an hour, you can suddenly stop at 5pm on Christmas Eve (unless you are the road runner of course). And by 5pm on Dec 24th, it’s too late anyhow, you have missed the buzz and joy around the place.
So it really is now, time to wind down, wind up those chores, push all unnecessary tasks out until 2011, send off your Happy Christmas email and make a conscious decision to stop working.
it’s up to yourself, but unless your business is traffic reporting or weather reporting, you really have no business to keep the vigil on Social Media over the holidays, checking emails.
The time should be spent doing different things for your business, like thinking about potential blogposts, thinking about your business for 2011, making notes.
Someone said recently, a solution to a problem came to them while they were vacuuming (OK, not very quiet, but it worked), he was quite surprised how a mundane job could inspire such creativity.
It did simply because he stopped focusing on the problem, ever experienced that? Then make it a habit, allow yourself time away from your business to work ON your business. It will thank you for it!
Be kind to yourself and your business, and come back tomorrow for our FINAL Step of CHRISTMAS TIPS for your Business (and of course I have it prepared already, because by then, I will be on holidays).
This month we are running with a great series of TOP 10 tips for your business survival for the traditional break, and on into the New Year.
TIP NO 8:
A ~ ACTION
Or lack thereof!
There are 4 sleeps to Christmas. How much have you left to do? Enough to take 10 working days? Are things feeling a little pressured right now? OK, then it’s time for the Seefin Stripper!
Take out a piece of paper.
Either as a Mind-Map or a Matrix, we are going to reduce and prioritise our tasks (TO-DO List).
Mind Map: Put your business name in the middle of the page: Read the rest of this entry »
This month we are running with a great series of TOP 10 tips for your business survival for the traditional break, and on into the New Year.
TIP NO 6:
T ~ TEDICATION
Ok, so it’s not really a word, but it comes from dedication, with a TED spin-off. We get our inspiration from many sources: books, DVDs, TED Videos, colleagues, celebrities, our customers. However, most importantly is that we inspire ourselves. Without self-inspiration, everything else is just influence. And if you strip away everyone and everything, would you feel comfortable enough in your own skin, running your business?
In light of this amazing discovery Read the rest of this entry »
This month we are running with a great series of TOP 10 tips for your business survival for the traditional break, and on into the New Year.
TIP NO 2:
H ~ HOLIDAY
Make sure you factor in some R&R into the holiday period. Some Business owners will use the “holiday” period as a perfect procrastination and distraction excuse to delve into tasks that were not meant for December, or that have been put on the long finger and have suddenly become urgent. Be aware of Read the rest of this entry »
“No, it has to be three weeks” I compromised with my husband as he expressed his wishes to drive across Europe to Germany, then down to southern France and back to Ireland, covering 4500km in 2 weeks. To my horror, he was actually calling this a holiday!
So we settled on 3 weeks and one day, including the ferry trips. The Germany part was attending a birthday party, but the Southern France part was for more obvious reasons – sun, sights and food (ok, maybe the wine too).
I was so looking forward to warming up my bones after a disastrous winter here in Ireland. Our garden was still reeling from the adverse weather conditions earlier in the year. We packed our bathing suits, sunscreen, blankets for sunbathing, and summer clothes. Getting off the Oscar Wilde in Roscoff and feeling the warm sunshine on our faces, we were just about ready for a good break, a good rest, great food, and plenty of sight-seeing.
Our first week involved a lot of driving. In fact, the majority of the overall journey was done in the first 2 days. Arriving into the Alsace area of France from Germany, we were ready for the famous “Massif Central”, an area well known for Read the rest of this entry »
