These summer weeks see me taking a pause from my regular blog musings. And to offer you the chance to reflect and catch up. I have been writing a blog for many years. On my website, there is a lot of inspiring content available that I would love you to visit and enjoy. I have…
Catching up with myself over summer
Hello to you, my lovely reader. As ever, with the advent of the summer months, I am taking a small pause from blogging. Today, it is hot and sunny in Glasgow, and everyone who can be outside, is. I realise that things may be very different tomorrow, but for now, my sense is that no…
Learning to take my own medicine.
How good are you at taking your own medicine? One of the curious quirks of being a life coach is how often I reflect back on client sessions and see lessons for myself that I need to pay attention to. Similarly, my blog musings generally are inspired by my current thinking or reading on some…
What is mine to do?
How well do you know your own needs? And how easy do you find it to communicate them with your Nearest-and-Dearest? More on that here. What is yours to do and what is for the other person? This is about being able to say, calmly, clearly and kindly: This is who I am, this is…
How do you communicate your emotional needs?
How well defined or communicated are your own emotional needs in your closest relationships? Oo-ohhh – can open, worms everywhere…(to quote a flamboyant old friend!). These past few musings have seen us exploring the world of boundaries: what they are and why we need them, understanding our own limits, and what gets in the way…
Knowing your limits
What do you know of your limits – emotional, physical, mental and spiritual? What is the necessary amount of space you need to function at your best and not collapse into a gibbering stressed heap or explode into a crazy raging person? How are you protecting that space with good boundaries? We learn much from…
How to say ‘no’ well
How easy do you find it to say no? And do you know how to say no well? Why is it so hard? (There are practical tips at the bottom of the post.) These are thorny questions indeed. We have been musing recently here on boundaries. The importance of knowing what it is that we…
Do you suffer from ‘hardening of the oughteries’?
Now there is a phrase that made me stop and do a mental double-take: ‘hardening of the oughteries‘. I first heard the term when it was used by a client in relation to herself. We are familiar with what happens in our blood vessels when they fur up from a poor diet, and we end…
When you say ‘yes’, what are you saying ‘no’ to?
What is the cost of saying yes, both tangible and intangible? In our voyage through the tricky waters of boundaries, saying yes to requests from others or to situations that arise when we actually would prefer to say no, is possibly one of the most difficult boundaries to maintain. If I say ‘yes’ to this,…
Boundaries are walls round what?
What is your understanding of boundaries, and how well established are your own boundaries? This is the start of a new mini series on boundaries. We hear chat of boundaries all the time in our modern lives, but what are they and how do we create them? And what are some of the issues around…