What happens to our bodies when we are approaching burnout? How often do you stop to assess what your body is trying to tell you? Last week, I started musing here about Covid burnout, a nasty re-incarnation of a malaise that has been around since the Victorians. Before I became a life coach, I worked…
Moving from authority to influence
Last week I was musing here about the importance of letting go control. How often are we are seeking to control the behaviour and responses of those around us? But in so doing, we are misplacing our responsibility. We can only take responsibility for ourselves and our own choices, not those of others. This is…
Summer calls for a wee breather…
The last few weeks have seen me musing here about some basic and essential human values.…respect, kindness, patience and honesty. And as I consider those values, I choose to apply them to myself and tell you that over the coming few weeks, I am taking a wee breather from regular musings here. Thinking about this…
Growing happier takes time
We live in a world of soundbites and an emphasis on quick fixes – Instagram pithy phrases, Twitter’s 280 characters, the internet full of instant this and 3-easy-steps-to that. But is this really the nature of how we live and grow happier? I have recently been musing here on some keys to happier living, based…
Exercise makes you happier.
How have your exercise habits changed during lockdown? And do you know that exercise makes you happier? A thornier question, perhaps: If you do know that exercise makes you happier – it is well documented – what are you doing about it? Perhaps you are one of the nearly one million people who downloaded the…
What home learning have you modeled?
This week marks, in Scotland at least, the end of the school term. And what an extraordinary, challenging, unnatural and demanding term it has been. Who would have ever have thought as we started 2020 that we would have had a whole term of home learning for our young people, with school buildings closed for…
The power of breathing: square breathing as a tool.
How much of your mental energy is spent at present thinking or worrying about the future? How well is that serving you? And what does this have to do with breathing? As this strange, dark and unsettling DC world continues, there is much potential for anxiety about how long lockdown will last. Fears are being…
DC world observations: Acceptance
As we continue living in this strange and surreal DC world, life BC – any kind of normality – seems a distant memory. What strikes me this week is the importance of acceptance. This is the current situation we find ourselves in, and railing against it costs energy and contentment. We have already considered in…
Your root fear: what are you avoiding?
One of the questions I encourage others to ask of themselves most often as a Life Coach is “WHY am I doing what I am doing?“. With procrastination, asking this question allows us to uncover the root fear. We go through life, often as breakneck speed, moving from one task to another, switching roles and…
Procrastination: a sneaky productivity thief
What would you say is your biggest productivity thief? Let me put it another way. You have a deadline or an important piece of work to write. But suddenly your full-to-bursting in-box seems terribly attractive, and you just have to research that lead on YouTube. All that dust behind your desk simply MUST be cleaned…