Is work working for you?

Your work has a huge impact on your quality of life and personal happiness.  Answering the 14 questions below will help you reflect your work and where you are in your career journey, and what to do next.

Please rate each statement according to your level of agreement (1 = never agree, 5 = always agree)

1. The work I do reflects my most important values.

2. I really look forward to Monday mornings.

3. I have lots of upward mobility in my current role.

4. My job is helping me to develop the skills I need for career growth.

5. I’d be delighted to be working in the same role and company in 5 years time.

6. I never complain about my work to other people.

7. I can balance work success with achieving significant personal goals.

8. My job lets me use my personal strengths.

9. My career is exciting and energizing.

10. I am recognized and rewarded for the work that I do.

11. I love the culture that I work in and it allows me to thrive.

12. I have a clear vision for career success and am actively working to achieve my goals.

13. I have the right career support (mentors, advisors, network) in place to allow me to thrive.

14. I feel like my work makes a significant difference to the world.

How is well is work working for you?

Now add up your ratings for each question.  If you scored:

0 – 35: This probably isn’t news to you, but your work just isn’t working. Don’t despair.  Now is a good time to revitalize your career journey.  A good place to start is to go back to basics and do some career planning.  It’s hard to be successful without having a clear definition of success.

If you’re feeling stuck in a rut, look for support to help get you out.  Remember, every great career journey starts with a single step.  Take a look at this article on Finding Work that Matters to get started.

35 – 55: Your work is ticking some boxes and there are other areas that need a tune-up. You may be able to address some of the challenges by shaking up your current role, or making a change in your current organization.  However, it may take a more radical career shift to address some issues.

Take a look at where you are not scoring well and create a plan of attack to revitalize these areas.  Our guide to Thriving at Work in the 21st Century is a great place to start.

55 – 70: Congratulations, your work is providing you with a lot of satisfaction and success. Take a look at the questions where you scored less well and think about how to polish the halo.  Here are some ideas for setting a clear vision and goals to keep your career journey moving forward.

Please share this with your friends and network, and if you’d like to stay up to stay up to date on the latest thinking about thriving at work, click here to join our mailing list.

Photo credit: Arenamontanus (Flickr Creative Commons)

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Be Happy!

Why today? Life’s too short to wait for tomorrow.

Why 25 ways? That was how many I could think of.

How? – pick any idea from the list and do it today.  Feel happier.  If you feel bold, pick more than one!

1. Take care of yourself – savour your shower, shave (if appropriate), moisturise, deoderize, wear that perfume or cologne (don’t overdo it unless you want space on the Tube).  Take care of yourself – because you’re worth it.

2. Dress the part – spruce yourself up and choose an outfit that makes you look and feel great.  When you look your best, you’ll feel your best.

3. Choose your head for the day – which head will you choose?  The happy one, the grumpy one, the angry one, the peaceful one?  Your choice will determine your day.

4. Smile – smile and the whole world smiles back – grimace and you’ll end up stepping in dog poo.

5. Take 10 minutes to do nothing – go on, it feels great – just space out and enjoy yourself.

6. Do one thing from your sh!t list – you know those little things that are driving you nuts – do just one of them.  Feel the weight come off.

7. Commit a random act of kindness – whether someone needs help or not

8. Give yourself a break – at some point today you’ll probably start giving yourself a hard time.  Stop and apologize.

9. Slow down – try being the tortoise for a change.  Try walking half a pace slower, stopping to smell the flowers, looking more closely at the world around you.

10. Turn off email and your mobile for an hour – the world might collapse into a fiery ball… or nothing will happen.  Let them wait.

11. Organise some “spontaneous planned fun” – treat yourself or somebody you know to dinner, a massage, a walk in the park, some quality time.

12. Call someone you haven’t spoken to for a while – preferably someone you like

13. Buy treats for your office / team / colleagues – you have to live with them every day so bribe them to be nice with cake.

14. Stick your favourite up-tempo tune on the stereo at high volume – dance around the living room like a nutter (note to emos – feel free to sway instead)

15. Spend a little time outside – sit in the park at lunchtime, have a picnic, take a walk

16. Stretch yourself – try something new, take on that scary dream you’ve been meaning to start, face up to a fear

17. Make time for someone special – let them know how much you care

18. Take a TV sabbatical – it will forgive you and still be there for you tomorrow (this one goes for video games and the internet too)

19. Daydream – if you’re so inclined, let your mind wander for a while and enjoy it.

20. Set a new goal – it’s exciting to start something new – use 43 things to tell the world about it.

21. Plan a vacation – what kind of break are you craving and where would you like to go?  Make it happen.

22. Exercise – we have endorphins for a reason, so appreciate them

23. Get creative - Draw / Paint / Sculpt / Write / Photograph / Dance / Express yourself

24. Count your blessings – take a minute to be grateful for your life

25. Come up with your own plan – this is the best rule of all.  What is the thing you’d most like to do today?

It’s not too much to ask and you owe it to yourself.  Have a great day.

Penny for your thoughts

How did you make today a happier day?  Please leave a comment or pass this along to your friends.

If these suggestions helped to make your day, please sign up to get regular updates from Less Ordinary Living:

Photo credit : Lel4nd (Flickr Creative Commons)

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Career Secret 7: Stay in Control (and avoid George)

Up in the Air won a host of Oscars for its potrayal of corporate life in the 21^st Century.  George Clooney plays a corporate highway man, jetting around the US with the mission of “downsizing” companies.

The “downsized” employees react with shock, horror and helplessness.

In the 21^st Century world of work, there is no such thing as a job for life.  Assuming that having a job gives you security is a dangerous thing to do.  It can lead to complacency and shutting off great opportunities.

The truth is you always have many choices about how to make a living. You could take full-time employment in various sectors (corporate, government, non-profit, academia),  contract, free-lance, be an entrepreneur, volunteer, sit on a board, and sell homemade handicrafts at fairs.

To avoid George Clooney arriving at your office and giving you that speech, it pays to make sure you stay in control of your career and keep making choices.

You can stay in control:

By regularly taking time to set and check in with your career vision and goals, you can have a plan that looks beyond your current work.

By keeping up your skills and developing new transferable ones – you will open more options for the future.

Through professional networking  and building out your contacts  - you can lay the foundations for the next steps of the career journey.

In the 21^st Century nothing is certain, except that you always have a choice.

Secret 8: Set your career vision

What's your career vision?

There was a recent story about a man who bought a boat in London and wanted to sail it back to his home in the South West of England.  He didn’t have a map or any navigation system.  He assumed that if he set off and kept the land to his right, he’d get there eventually.  He ended up sailing three times around the Isle of Sheepey in the River Thames before running out of fuel and giving up.

He had no vision, no plan, no map and no compass.  He didn’t think ahead.

Without a career vision and a clear plan, our careers can end up going round and round in circles.

Setting a vision is about creating the long term direction for your 21^st Century Career.  A vision is like your guiding star in the sky – it tell us the general direction we need to head in over time.  It also helps you make important short term choices.

Career visions should be big, juicy, motivating and challenging.  They should stretch you and light a fire in you every time you think about them.

Some examples of career visions might be:

• To become known as one of the world’s best project managers, work with top organisations to help them successfully complete projects and also lecture and write about the subject
• To become a chief technology officer helping innovative companies to develop technology that can create a sustainable future for the planet
• To lead a non-profit that campaigns for the equality of employment rights for everyone and changes the face of the modern workforce
• To build a company that bakes the tastiest cupcakes in the world and delights its customers with the coolest branding in the marketplace
• To have a successful and lucrative career in finance that allows my to be financially independent by 40

Creating a career vision requires thought and time.  You’ll need to ask yourself some serious questions about what work means to you and what you want to get out of it.

You’ll need to look into the future and visualise how you’d like your life to look in 10 or 20 years time – how will you use your time and talent.

As you develop answers, they’ll need to feel authentic and in tune with your values.

Most importantly, the vision has to be something that is exciting.  It will need to get you out of bed on a cold Monday morning at 5am, get you through the late night with the boss breathing down your neck, get you through the month with no sales.

Secret 9: Write your career story every day

Write your career story

In the 21^st Century, you write your career story every day.  You are a walking resume.

Every action you take and every choice you make at work adds to your professional experience and skills. Future career success is determined by what you do every day.

This point is reinforced by Reid Hoffman, CEO of Linkedin:

“I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not. . . . Average job length is two to four years. That makes you a small business. . . . You are the entrepreneur of your own small business. How do you get to your next gig? How do you do your career progression? All these things now fall on the individual shoulders.”

This new career paradigm requires more flexibility, the ability to change course quickly and take new opportunities as they arise.

To do this there are two key elements:

1)   Develop transferable skills

Transferable skills are the skills that are needed to be successful in almost any work. They include turning up on time, communicating effectively, learning to influence others, writing persuasively, delegating, managing others, creating a vision for a project and many others.

Being able to demostrate these skills is the key to jumping into the next exciting role in a career journey.

Being able to execute these skills will allow you to be successful in that role.

You can deliberately plan to develop these skills and this will help you to write your work story.

2)   Write your work story

Our work story is the combination of all our career experiences. We summarize these and create a narrative that tells the world who we are – often through a CV and in an interview.

Our work story tells the reader or listener about the trajectory of our career – it explains why all our experiences to date make us the right employee, consultant, freelancer for the job.  The story demonstrates our key skills through a series of successful experiences using those skills.

Remembering that you are writing your career story every day can help to make good choices that expand our skill base, create another great example of success and develop the stream of our career narrative.

Secret 10: Collect People

“No man is an Island”  John Donne

Who are you connected to?

If you’re planning to become a holy person, live in a cave and commune with god, you can skip this secret.

For those of us who measure success on this temporal plane, everything we do relies on other people for success. People hire us, work for us, work with us, buy from us, sell to us, inspire us, collaborate with us,  recommend us, connect us.

More than 50% of all new jobs come through networking and informal connections rather than direct advertising.

Most 21^st Century entrepreneurs use affiliate marketing and collaborations to build businesses that transcend their size as one man operations.

Getting a project done can become much easier if we can call on the right people to help think it through and make things happen.

Even more important is that our networks have networks too. If you have a network of 100 people, who each have networks of 100 people, you are connected to 10,000 people.  That is a lot of people to help you succeed in your career journey.

Collecting the right people is a key to career success.

For this reason, we should become people collectors and develop a network of great people.  So what makes a good network?

A good network needs a wide variety of different people who can fill different roles.  In my case, I think about people who are supporters (they energize me), inspirers (they help me create new ideas), advocates (people who actively champion me), connectors (those who have great networks and are prepared to share), mentors (wise folks who have trodden my path and can guide me).

The key in filling out your network is to fill it with people you like and have a natural affinity and connection with.  If you’ve ever tried to build a relationship with someone you don’t get on with, you’ll know that this seldom seems to work.

I think of a personal network a bit like an archery board.  As the level of intimacy and frequency of connection with a person decreases, you tend to have more of those people in your network.  You may only have 1 or 2 people in your absolute trusted inner circle who you speak with almost every day.  Yet you may have a broad network of hundreds of great people who you are Linked In to, and maybe connect only every couple of years.

In the 21^st Century we can use technology to keep track of our networks. We can use social networks (and Linked In is great).  We have the tools to connect with and meet anyone across the globe – we can email, IM, Skype, video conference and telephone.

The only limit to building a 21^st Century network is your imagination in what is possible.  So get collecting and reap the benefits.

Photo credit: Kennymatic, Vestman, Ali Brohl

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21st Century Office?

The world of work has changed beyond all recognition in the 21^st Century – learn how to survive and thrive in the new world of work – click here to subscribe and get  every instalment delivered to your inbox.

1. You get out of work what you put in to work

I have a friend, let’s call him Stan.  Stan had been at the same employer for 12 years, in the marketing team.  Whenever I met Stan, this is what I’d hear:

“Those b@st@rds don’t appreciate me, they work me so hard and I sweat blood for them.  Every year, they give me a terrible performance review, no bonus and a rubbish payrise.  They pass me over for promotion.  It makes me sick, I just don’t care any more.”

Stan was notorious in his office for his legendary procrastination skills.  He spent all day complaining to anyone who didn’t manage to avoid him.

His nickname was Levi, because he was always out the door at 5.01.

Stan had told me many times that he didn’t care and wasn’t prepared to work his fingers to the bone for no gratitude in return.  He had given up.

When the financial crisis of 2008 hit, Stan’s employer let him go.

Stan was mystified, angry, indignant and talked about suing.  Of course he didn’t.

No-one else at his office was surprised.  They saw it coming a mile off.

Stan walked straight into Secret Number 1 – you get out of work what you put in to work.

He was barely in the office and when he was he did nothing productive.  He distracted other team members with his negative attitude. In return, Stan got poor performance reviews.  In fact he’d been on three performance plans over his career.

He was passed over for promotion because he gave out the signals that he couldn’t care less.

However you make a living, your career will have ups and downs. There will be times when you are flat out and giving everything and calmer fallow periods.  Learning to make this choice consciously and being aware that you will get back what you put is key to managing this flow.

Please, don’t be a Stan.

2. You have to take ownership of your career

Suited and booted

Picture me as a tender 21 year-old dressed in my three-piece pinstripe suit with natty pink shirt back in the mid-1990s.

I’m striding into my shiny corporate office for the first day of world domination.

I’d arrived – from now on my benevolent employers would shower me with money, support, training and appreciation.

All I had to do was show up and collect the daily kudos.

I deluded myself that it was in my firm’s interest to take care of me, promote me and sky-rocket my career for me.  I barely put in any effort for the first year.

When it came to review time, I showed up expecting a pat on the head, a bone for being a good boy and a dazzling review.

My bubble popped.  It seemed that I was somewhere below half-way down my peer group and my managers were questioning my attitude.

It slowly dawned on me that I and only I really cared at all about what happened in my career.  It was my responsibility to set the direction, ask for the good projects, demand the training I needed, find the right mentor, look for ways to use my strengths and skills.

If I didn’t do it, these things simply wouldn’t happen.

You have to take ownership of your career – no-one is going to hand success and career satisfaction to you on a plate.

3. Everyone should learn how to make money independently

This lesson hit home to me the day I got my first cheque from a client after starting Less Ordinary Living.

Ten years of sucking at the corporate teat had brainwashed me into believing that the only way I could possibly make money was through steady employment.

Without a job I felt as vulnerable as a baby seal wandering through an Eskimo village.  When I quit my job, I really did see myself “living in a van by the river” as Pam Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation eloquently puts it.

It took a week or two to start finding clients and in that period, I was close to running back to the corporate edifice and begging forgiveness.  The prodigal son, on a rapid return visit.

Yet when the work started to come and I took that first cheque to the bank, something amazing happened.  I felt liberated.

I actually managed to make some cash, under my own steam, without anyone else’s benevolence.

This feeling is not to be underestimated.   It symbolises that you have the ability to fend for yourself.  I almost felt primal – like a prehistoric man bringing back the first woolly mammoth to the cave.

I’d recommend that everyone tries making some money independently.  Figure out something you are good and passionate about and find a way to make a little bit of money from it.

Sell a service (doing someone’s garden, being a handy man, helping someone write their CV, wallpapering, painting, anything really) or something you’ve made (at a local fair, on ebay, through a website you made).

Once you’ve done this, you’ll realise that having a job is not the only way – even if you never choose to freelance or be an entrepreneur, you’ll know more about how to make ends meet in the worse case scenario.

You’ll take away some of the doomsday fear of redundancy and see that you have more choices than you might appreciate for making a living in the 21^st Century.

A great way to do this would be the start a small business for $100 in 28 days program from Chris Guillebeau

Please leave a comment and share your thoughts on these secrets and what you’ve learned about the 21st Century workplace.

Photo credit: jhderojas , Laverrue

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Don’t be a chicken – subscribe to Less Ordinary Living to get fresh inspiration delivered to you twice a week.

How did I become the man in the chicken suit?

Chicken

It all started eighteen months ago.  My client Terri was struggling to find the motivation to study for a particularly dry module in her upcoming HR exams.

We’d explored some of the more conventional motivational techniques – understanding how the exams fitted into the big picture for her career, getting someone to hold her accountable, setting rewards for success.

No dice.  This stuff was truly dull.

Suddenly a flash of inspiration – a little wager. Another client had purchased a chicken suit as part of her campaign to lead a less ordinary life (don’t ask!).

The deal was set – if Terri studied for and passed her exam successfully, I would walk down a busy shopping street in broad daylight… in a chicken suit.

Miraculously, Terri’s attitude to study transformed. Suddenly she was whizzing through the modules like a superhero on a mission.

Exam day came and the inevitable result.  Passed with flying colours.  Terri even got a lapel badge to proudly tell the world she is a qualified HR practitioner!

Fast forward to April 2010

The venue: the bustling Santana Row bar scene, San Jose, California.

The time: Friday evening at Happy Hour.

A 6 foot five chicken emerges sheepishly from a side alley.

A group of men in suits stop drinking their beers mid sip to stare.

A passing couple do a double take.

A security guard looks a little nervous and considers reaching for his radio.

The world starts to warm up to the idea of a giant chicken in their midst.

Chicken in action

Suddenly people start approaching.  “Could I have a photo? – My dad would love it” asks a passer by.

Children are waving and smiling, coming up to say hello.

In the frozen yoghurt place, everyone loves the chicken.  The guy behind the counter has never seen anything like it.  The chicken has made his day – “this one’s on the house”!

Deep down I wasn’t looking forward to wearing the chicken suit.  In the end I could hardly take it off.  I loved every minute of being a chicken.

Lessons learned from being a chicken

What do I take away from dressing up in a giant chicken suit?

• Sometimes finding motivation requires something a little beyond the ordinary.
• Doing something different is fun and inspiring.
• Wearing a chicken suit showed me that there is no need to be afraid.  I normally loathe being the centre of attention, yet with the suit it was great.  Now I can imagine wearing a chicken suit to stir myself on to greater things.
• I have a renewed respect for anyone who has ever been a mascot – giant yellow chicken suits are hot and cumbersome!

Over to you

• What do you do to be a little bit extraordinary?
• How do you motivate yourself when the going gets tough?
• Have you ever dressed up in public and what happened?

More Inspiration

Evelyn Lim on how to get creative and map your mind

Jeffrey Tan at Art of Great Things on Being who you want to become

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Imagine being surrounded by 36,000 superheroes….

On Sunday I had the honour of running the London Marathon.  I was humbled by the whole day.  Everywhere I looked I saw ordinary people doing quite extraordinary things.

Another everyday superhero...

Each and every runner had spent the bitter winter months fitting a gruelling training programme around their busy lives.

These heroes had been pounding the pavement at every hour of  the day and night – building up, preparing for the challenge ahead. Logging those miles and hours, tending those blisters and chafed nipples, stretching those aching limbs one more time.

Every hero  had their own motivation to be there.  The vast majority were raising money for charity – fighting disease, helping vulnerable children, getting clean water to Africa, finding a cure for cancer.

Reading their shirts told a story – “In memory of Lily”, “Running for Mum”, “Doing it for Derrick”.  They felt compelled to make a difference for others, to bring a little light in the darkness, to remember those less fortunate.  Proper heroes.

Some of these everyday heroes had taken it one step further.  The pantomime camel manned by two people, the human caterpillar of 34 people tied together, the two men carrying a small boat, the heroes dragging a brick wall on a sledge.

Everywhere I looked was an endless stream of costumes (countless superheroes, Rocky, endless Elvises, some serious cross-dressing).

This was going above and showing superhuman support for something they believed in.

The spirit of the day was unbelievable.  Huge crowds lined the streets from start to finish.  They offered support to each and every runner.

They banged drums, played music, offered their hands, gave out sweets, drinks, fruit.  They cheered endlessly “Come on Steve”, “Keep going Batman, you can do it”, “Nice work, Jean”. Without this support, I’m sure quite a few runners would never have made it to the end.

For one day, communities came together.  Strangers joined for a common purpose.  The atmosphere was electric and dripping positivity.  In their own way, every supporter is a hero too.  They played their unique part in a day that made a serious difference.

So how did my race go?

I loved each and every of the 30,000 strides.

Still smiling at 18 miles

I was running for the NSPCC (a charity aiming to stamp out cruelty to children).  I got amazing support from friends and family and have so far managed to raise over £2,000.  I want to publically thank each and every donor for their extraordinary generosity.

I got fantastic support all along the course from the amazing crowds, and particularly from my support crew (thanks Em, Celene and Andy).

I felt well prepared and stuck to my game plan, finishing in 4 hours 40 minutes and 10 seconds. At the end, I felt elated, overwhelmed and a little wobbly.  It was such a buzz to be surrounded by so many Everyday Superheroes.

Being an Everyday Superhero

Reflecting on this experience it made me realize that we all have the potential to be everyday superheroes.

Every day, people go out of their way to help others. They volunteer, spend time with someone lonely, help out with the shopping,  give up their seat on the bus. These acts make a huge difference and make the world a better place for all of us.

We’re surrounded by these wonderful people.  Just walking down the street, you’re in the presence of someone with super powers.

You too have the power at your fingertips – every time you put someone else first you’re an everyday superhero.  You have the power to make the world a little better every day.

Over to you

• What do you do to be an Everyday Superhero?
• Who do you admire who puts others first?
• What will be your next Everyday Superhero act?

Other resources

Arvind Devalia on how to change the world in less than 27 miles

Amit Sodha on how anyone can run the marathon

Photo credit: Julian Mason (Flickr Creative Commons), Celene

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Good habits

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Are you ready to shake off your bad habits for good?

The final part of the mental spring clean is all about habits.  Bad habits can cost us a huge amount of happiness, time, self-esteem and money.  Good habits can make our life joyful, peaceful and successful.

Habits are our subconscious behaviour patterns that we act out, often without thinking.

Habits develop as a way for us to deal with the immense complexity of everyday living. They are mental shortcuts that we adopt to make our life simpler.

For example, almost everyone develops a habit of locking their house on the way out. We perform this complex task several times on most days without even thinking.  I’ve had a few OCD moments where I thought I’d left the front door open, yet on returning it was locked.  That habit is pretty much ingrained.

To end the Spring Clean with a bang, I’m challenging myself and you too.

You’ll stop one of your bad habits, or create a new virtuous one.

I’d love to get 100 of us to experiment and make a lasting life change, so please do leave a comment and take part.

The first step is to understand our habits:

• Think about the bad habits you have.  Which one has the most serious impact on your life?  How much is this habit costing you?
• Now, think about what habits you’d like to bring into your life.  Which new habit would have the biggest impact on your happiness and success?
• Now pick one of these habits, either bad or good, and set a goal to remove it from your life, or create it over the next month.

I’ve selected wasting time surfing the internet as my bad habit and I want to stamp it out for good.

We’ll use a powerful 5 step model for change. I’ll use my challenge as the example:

Step 1: Contemplation. We have to understand the benefits of making the change, and deal with any negatives.

Some of the key questions to answer at this stage are:

• What is your motivation for wanting to change / create this habit?
• What are some of the benefits of changing?
• What may be holding you back from changing?

In my case, I will free up an hour or two a day for the things I really want to do, be more productive and feel happier.  I’m held by from change by pure inbred habit.

Step 2: Preparation. This is where we make our plan for successfully introducing the new habit.  Good preparation is vital to success and some of the key things to do include:

• Find someone to hold us accountable. I will happily hold you accountable – please just ask.
• Research as much as you can about the habit you want to change – I’ve spent time researching time management techniques and how to beat an internet habit.
• Create a clear plan for change and design a process for monitoring and rewarding progress. I will reward myself every day that I’m successful by using the time I’ve freed up to read for 20 minutes.
• Design contingency plans for “falling off the wagon” and prepare yourself for this happening.

These first two steps may take a few days to a week to complete properly.

Step 3: Taking action. This is where the rubber hits the road. Ingraining a new habit can take several months to achieve and will almost inevitably involve ups and downs along the path.

This step will need you to reward your success and forgive yourself for slip-ups.  Be kind and fair to yourself.

Step 4: Maintenance. Once you’ve taken action successfully, you’ll start to see the fruits of your labour.

The key to maintenance is to find ways to avoid being tempted to relapse.  I might try turning off my wireless network during the mornings to take away any temptation to surf.

Step 5: Relapse. Old habits die hard.  Relapse is a normal and inevitable part of changing a habit. The key to moving through a relapse is to understand the reason for falling down, and to work out the best way to avoid a repeat.

Remembering that almost everyone who has successfully made a change has been through this process can be helpful in forgiving yourself. Once you’ve understood the relapse, it is best to go back to the preparation phase and “get back on the horse”.

Over to you

We all have bad habits we’d like to kick or good ones we have been meaning to introduce.  Please play along at home and pick one to take on over the next month.

Please leave me a comment and let me know what habit you are working on and what difference it will make to your life.

That concludes the Mental Spring Clean!  We’ve looked at Changing the Story we tell the world, the Games we play and how to win them, Beating the Gremlins in our head and changing habits.  I hope you’ve dusted down your attic and found some old gems.

Next up on Less Ordinary Living: Why Work Matters.

Photo credit: Kevindooley on Flickr Creative Commons

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“You’re not good enough”

Gremlin!

“You should keep quiet”

“What a stupid thing to say, you idiot”

“You can’t do that”

That voice in our head has a spectacular talent for running us down.

Our gremlins cast judgment (usually negative) on the past, influence what we do (or don’t do) in the present, and poor cold water over future plans. The have a huge impact on the quality of life we lead.

Dealing with our gremlins is a vital part of any Mental Spring Cleaning.

A friend of mine was telling me about their inability to ask for a promotion at work.

She felt she was totally outperforming their peers, had great feedback from her line manager and had surpassed every goal she had set.  Yet when it came to pulling the trigger and asking, a voice in her head kicked in saying “who are you to ask for a promotion – you don’t deserve it”.

My friend described feeling paralyzed by the strength of this thought and found an excuse to run away without broaching the subject.  Afterwards, she was furious with herself for “bottling it”.

We tried to figure out how this gremlin came about in the first place. Gremlins almost always come from childhood experiences where we create defence mechanisms to protect ourselves.

My friend recalled asking a teacher in primary school for permission to join the school choir and being told “No – you haven’t worked hard enough on your singing”.  Even now she recalled the sick feeling in her stomach that day.

Her gremlin formed to protect her from that feeling, and since then she has always struggled to ask others, particularly in authority for what she wants. On reflection, she recalled many times when she held back from asking for something and told herself “you don’t deserve this”.

Creating these protection mechanisms takes a lot of hard work. We use a lot of mental bandwidth once the emergency red light comes on and a gremlin kicks in.  My friend felt exhausted for the rest of the day – probably because she had used her adrenaline rush for flight rather than fight.

Many of our gremlins are no longer useful to us in adult life. My friend’s gremlin worked well when she was a little girl, but now it was a serious pain in her backside, holding her back from being successful.

6 Steps to bust that gremlin!

If you have a voice in your head that is holding you back, this is a powerful technique to move on. I used it with my friend and it has helped countless coaching clients:

1. Identify the gremlin you face (how does it manifest and what does it say to you) and give it a name
2. Understand the gremlin’s purpose and history. Think back through your past to the first time the gremlin appeared.  What was its’ purpose back then (usually protecting you in some way).
3. Acknowledge the gremlin and thank it for helping out.  Let the gremlin know that it is no longer needed for this purpose.  Tell yourself that you can handle things from now on.
4. Identify your new approach – how would you like to act differently in the next situation where the gremlin might arise (e.g. for my friend she would like to confidently ask for what she wants)
5. Ask the gremlin to help out – the gremlin can provide a lot of energy to the new approach.  Ask the gremlin to help you act differently next time.
6. Set a goal – identify the first time that this energy can help you out and what outcome you’d like.  In my friend’s case she set the goal to go back to her boss and this time she asked for and got promoted.

Over to you

Answer the following questions:

• What gremlins do you have?
• When do they appear for you?
• How do they hold you back?
• Which gremlin would you like to change the most?

Try the gremlin buster and set yourself a goal.  Leave a comment on what you are hoping to change and email me if you’d like support in this Spring Cleaning activity.

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Photo Credit – Inti (Flickr Creative Commons)

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Change your story, Change you life

Part 2 of Spring Clean your mind – subscribe now and get a 6-step process for a clearer mind and better living delivered to your inbox

What stories do you tell the world about yourself?  If you changed it how would your life change?

What is a story and how can it make a difference?  Here is a life-story in 87 words:

“I was born in the north of England in the 1970s during a time of economic turmoil.  I never really felt comfortable or confident as a child, and I was bullied by the other kids in my neighbourhood.  At school, I did reasonably well, somewhere in the middle.  I stumbled my way into an ok university, again with average results.  When I graduated, through sheer desperation, I took a job with an accounting firm – certainly not what I was passionate about, but frankly about what I deserved.”

• How do you respond to this story?
• What sort of person do you think this is?
• How do you think they feel?
• How would you respond to this person if you met them?
• What lasting impression would you have about them?

In less than 60 seconds, this story has set the foundation for how you relate to someone, and we all know that first impressions are hard to change.

This, of course, is my story. Or more importantly, one version of my story.

Everything in this story really did happen to me.  If someone asked me to “tell me about yourself” I could choose to tell this story.

Two truths about storytelling

Two things that happen when we tell stories:

1) We choose which “facts” to include in the story.

The building blocks of stories are experiences and memories, which we often think of as “facts”. When we tell the world our story, we have literally billions of these building blocks to choose from.  In my story I count somewhere in the region of 16 that I selected to let you know about me.

You may think that your story is your story – yet you choose the building blocks in every story you tell yourself or anyone else

2) We add our own editorial.

We choose how to present these “facts”.  We pick the tone and the editorial direction.

Clearly in my story, I’ve chosen to tell a hard luck story.  At every turn I am playing my little violin.

“I was born in a time of economic turmoil” – really?  I was 1 year old at the time and my parents both had jobs.  Yet I chose to add this little zinger in.  I’m trying to make you feel sorry for me.

“I never felt comfortable or confident.”  Find me anyone who can’t say something similar about parts of their childhood.

“About what I deserved” – now I’m busy making judgements about myself.  I’m telling you that I’m not self-confident, that I feel pretty worthless and inviting you to feel the same way.

In storytelling, the narrator chooses whether to create a hero, anti-hero or villain.  We have the choice on HOW to tell the story.

Our life is little more than the sum of all our experiences.  When we tell others about who we are, we tell them our story. We weave together some selective memories from the past, and bind them together with our interpretation of those “facts”.

Choice is good

The important thing is that we always have a choice when we tell any story.  We can pick the building blocks and we have a choice over the narrative glue we use to stick them together.

Once we become aware of what stories we tell and what impact that has on us and the world, we can start to tell stories that we love and stop telling stories that drag us down.

Here is my story again in 87 words:

“I grew up in a happy home and went to a school that I loved.  I thrived and was able to study history at a great university, after travelling the world in my gap year.  I met and married my soul mate along the way.  I’ve been blessed to be able to travel and live in different cultures.  It took me a while to find what I love to do, however now I’ve found my vocation and am thriving by helping others live life to the full.”

Ask yourself the same questions about this person that you did about the first story.

When we change our story, we really can change our world.  We also change how the world around us responds.

Even writing the first story, I could feel myself getting drained of energy.  I literally slumped in my chair, and felt overcome by worry.

Writing the second story, I felt my energy growing.  I felt great about myself, clear and confident.

In my mental spring clean, I’m going to look at the stories I tell the world.  For each story, I’ll ask:

1) Choosing Facts

• What facts did I choose to share?
• Why did I choose these facts?
• What other facts could I have chosen?

2) Narrative / editorial

• What kind of story am I try to tell?
• What is this story telling the outside world about me?
• What is this story telling me about me?

3) Alternatives / changing the story

• What do I really want to tell the world?
• What other stories could I tell that would serve me better?

If you are taking part in spring-cleaning your mind, ask yourself the same questions.

Good stories to look at include

• How you introduce yourself at a work or networking function
• What stories you tell at a job interview
• What stories you are telling on your resume
• What stories you share with your friends
• What stories you tell your family, what stories you tell your other half and if applicable children.

I know I’ve found some stories I love and others that need junking.

Try changing your story and see how your life changes.

Next time – we’ll look at the stories we tell ourselves.

Picture credit : Victoria Peckham (From Flickr Creative Commons)

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Big fun!

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Children – our future and our past.  We’ve all been a child, and many of us will also raise one.

As an adult, it’s easy to assume that this grown up, rational state we inhabit now is superior.  Yet, spend any time with children and you remember that kids have a lot to teach us.

1. Have more fun

Spend any time hanging out with a 2 year old and you’ll realist that they like to have fun.

It’s joyful to paint all over the kitchen table, roll around laughing at the funny cow in a can noise thing, climb through a play tunnel for hours, hide behind the door and play peek-a-boo.  In fact it’s a laugh riot.

Somewhere in the Laws of Adult, most of these games become verboten. We have to suppress our emotions, act stiff and try to protect our dignity.  Sure we can laugh at other people, preferably behind their backs.  However, good old fashioned innocent fun and play is banned.

I’ve spent a lot more time playing recently – just throwing out dumb word association games, dancing around singing into a hairbrush, a spot of tickling here and there.  Try it out for yourself – fight back against the fun ban!

2. You are allowed to daydream

Grown ups rarely daydream. The adult world considers them to be naively hilarious and a sign of weakness.  Here is what often happens when an adult shares their burning dream:

Person A: I’ve always dreamt of being a polar explorer and I think I’m going to go after it

Person B: Snigger.  Good luck with that – send my love to the polar bears.  See you back in the cube farm next week.

Dreaming is seen as childish and foolish.  Wasting time going after doing what you really want when you could be getting on with your serious, boring adult life.

Children love to dream.  They use their imagination and create amazing possibilities.

Dreaming is a healthy way of stretching ourselves.  It gives us a roadmap for making the life we want.  Reconnect to what makes you excited.

3. The world is infinitely fascinating

I was probably the world’s most annoying child.  I fired out questions like a machine gun to anyone in range.  “What’s that called?”, “How does that work?”, “Why did that person say that?”, “Where are my Christmas presents hidden?” etc.   Children stare in wild-eyed wonder at the world and want to know all about it.

As adults we are told that we should be very clever and already understand everything. There is a stigma about asking too many questions – we might show our weakness, reveal some ignorance, people might think less of us.  Horrors.

As we stop asking questions and getting stuck on the hamster wheel of life, the world around us can lose its sparkle and appear mundane.  We take the amazing people and things around us for granted.

See what happens when you start to be more interested in the world around you and engage with it.

4. You can express your emotions

When a child is upset, you know about it.  No wait, you KNOW about it. Same when they are happy, joyful, bored, angry, afraid.  Bottling up emotions is simply not an option.  When a child feels something, they tell the world.

The adult world teaches us that suppressing our emotions is important.  We shouldn’t inflict our feelings on others. Better to keep them locked up and spend time brooding over them.  Or suppress our natural joy over something in case we make a fool of ourselves.  Frankly a lot of the time, this leads to unnecessary suffering when simply expressing ourselves would be the better option.

Learning to express our emotions effectively is important.  I’ve really worked on understanding my feelings and being able to put them into words and actions.  Letting them out into the world as they arise has taken a huge amount of weight off me and I feel lighter for it.

5. You should live in the moment

Children are born with very little conception of time.  When you’re young, your only concern is what is happening right now at this very moment.  The past is quickly forgotten, and the future is of no importance.

When children play, they are absolutely absorbed in the game.  Just watch for a minute or two  – eyes wide open, face alert and active, attention unwavering on what is unfolding.  Kids are mini Zen-masters.

We are taught to analyze everything, to pore over the past for what we did wrong, and to constantly be setting out a better future for ourselves.  How often do you really live in the moment as an adult?  Try it and see how different the world looks.

Release your inner child

I know that I learn a huge amount when I let my inner child out to play.and try these things  It keeps me open to learning, joy, curiosity, authenticity.  I get back into living in the moment.

Over to you

How do you connect to you inner child?  What do you learn from doing so?  If you have children, what have they taught you?  What would happen if you spent the day living like a child?

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Further reading

Patty at Why Not Start Now on how to play more

Arvind Devalia on why we should laugh more

Photo credit : Ernst Moeksis on Flickr

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