It’s all about mind-set. You have to get into the right frame of mind to be accept first that change is possible and secondly that you are capable to do what it is you need to do.

One of the most important tools to use is visualisation: that is paining a picture in your mind’s eye of  life as you would like it to be.  You will make the picture in your mind very clear with bright colours and with the sounds there too.

In that picture you can not only see yourself  living the life you want but also see  the way you  are different from the way you are today.  When you visit your future self in your visualisation you  notice how you behave, how you are dressed, how you relate to others,  what you say and what you do.  Then you can bring that information back to your present self and choose some aspect of it that you can bring into your life today.

How can you do this?  Start by sitting in a comfortable seat in a quiet place, closing your eyes and breathing slowly.   As you do think about each part of your body from feet to head and as you concentrate on each part breathe out any tension you have there and breathe in relaxation. When your whole body is feeling very relaxed  picture yourself floating down a wide staircase  and with each step you go down say the words ‘down’ in your head. When you reach the bottom of the stairs imagine arriving at a place you love which includes the way you would like your life to be. There you can observe the features as suggested and then when you are ready take yourself back up the staircase ‘up’ for each step and come back to the present. Open your eyes and stretch and take a notebook to write about what you found out about yourself and your desired life. Discover more ways to  a new you here.

When you get your mindset right and become really clear about what you want and how life will be when you have achieved  you can truly become a new you!

A life coach is similar but different from a counsellor or therapist. You will be encouraged to look forward  and discover ways to  set and achieve the goals you want for your life. Many life coaches work with their clients on the telephone rather than face to face and charge  fees for their services.

The sort of things you could work on with a life coach to reduce the effects of stress:

1. Get your life more balanced: don’t spend most of your days working, life outside  is as important. Start to say ‘no’ when asked to do extra  work especially if it is outside  your normal working hours
2. Be more organised: tidy your work space; tidy your cupboards at home and notice how much less stressed you feel when you know where to find things.
3. Clear clutter: don’t hoard stuff just in case you might need it someday. Throw stuff away if you haven’t needed it for several years or if it’s broken or out of date.
4. Get help: when you feel you have too much to do ask someone or pay for help lighten your load.
5. Delegate: some things could be done regularly by someone else as a favour or for payment. Explain clearly what you want and how you want it done and leave them to get on with it and you to get on with something else.
6. Stop doing what doesn’t have to be done: Step back and ask yourself why you are doing some things. Maybe there is no longer any reason they have just become habits and need to be stopped.
7. Look after your body: when you eat healthy fresh food without additives or sugar and keep to low fat then you will feel much less stressed. Not only food but stop abusing your body with tobacco or alcohol and keep it flexible with regular exercise.
8. Look after your  mind by keeping up to date, reading as a way to relax and learning new things  and doing puzzles to keep your brain active. You will notice how this reduces your stress too.
9. Look after your spirit by being in nature each day; watching the sunrise or the stars; or connecting with your spirituality with formal or informal religion.
10. Keep in touch with friends and family: love them or hate them, they say blood is thicker than water and  keeping in touch in some way can be helpful to lower your stress. You have to find the amount of contact right for you because for some families this has the opposite effect. You may prefer to keep in touch with good friends instead!

If you want to find out if coaching could help you to do some or all of the above then CONTACT ME

Would you like less  stress, more confidence, be motivated to stop procrastinating and get things done, someone to bounce ideas onto who has no agenda except encouraging you to find the ways to change your life for the better?

If you are want to wave a magic wand but aren’t quite sure what words to use except for abracadabra…contact me and find out how to make a difference to your life!

You see the most important thing to do if you want to change your life is to do something different. It doesn’t seem to matter what you do, just doing something different seems to change your energy and then you will find making the changes you need to take become so much easier to do.

What could you start with? Strange though it may seem even eating something different for breakfast, or having breakfast if you don’t usually eat any can start the process. It doesn’t take a huge  change in your behaviour to result in a massive change in your ability to achieve great things.

So can having your hair cut in a different style or wearing a different colour or style of clothes from your normal style.

Try it and notice what happens. You see when you do something different not only does your perception of life change but so too does how you appear to  other people. So then they take more notice of you and are more likely to respond to other things you may do or talk about.

You could change the way you greet people or the route you take to work or the shops you go to. Anything that is out of your normal routine will have the effect of shifting something about you and your influence on other people. All of a sudden you will appear to be more confident and more self assured and they will sit up and take more notice of you then they did before. Then it will be up to you to state clearly what it is you want or what you are no longer prepared to put up with and what you want to happen instead of the current situation.

So don’t keep on living a life you no longer want. Instead make up your mind to take action and change your life for the better. If you do you may well find you can make huge changes which you have previously dismissed as being too difficult for you to achieve.

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The wheel of life is a pie-chart: a circle divided into eight segments each of which represents a different component of your life. In order to have a balanced and fulfilled life it is widely suggested that you address each of these segments and define how fulfilled each of them is for you. You give each  a score out of ten and then especially for the low scoring segments ask yourself how you could bring the score up.

How are the segments defined? This can vary from person to person. However commonly the segments would be labeled: friends and family, career, money, self care, community, spirituality, relationship, fun and recreation.

Decide how you score for each of these where a score of ten means fulfilled and is marked on the circumference of the pie to zero when you are not fulfilled at all in that area of your life in the centre of the pie chart.

When you see your scores ask yourself what has to happen for your score for those less than ten to increase by one point. While you have some parts of your life in which you feel unfulfilled there results a wheel which will give you a bumpy ride through life. Ideally you would have a balanced and fulfilled life when you feel fulfilled in each of these areas of life.

Consider on of the areas of your life which feels unfulfilled and for which you have a low score. Now decide 8 segments in relation to that part of your life. This means you can draw another pie chart just based on that area and in doing this you will be able to find out easily how to increase the score for that part of your life..

For example if you thought your family segment was very low you might think of the following example as part of the friends and family part of your life: communication, visiting,  shared history, common interests,  disagreements, reciprocity, financial issues, dependency.   Thinking of each of these in relation to your friends and family and marking their score in relation to how fulfilled you feel in that part of your friends and family may indicate  how to improve your connection with friends and family.

Coaching helps to get your wheel of life run more smoothly. Contact me about coaching.

The obvious choice is to turn to partner, friends or family. But they are too often involved in their own life issues and tend either to pull yourself together and do what they think is best for you, or shrug their shoulders and dismiss your concerns because they don’t really sympathise with you.

So what could you so instead?

You could push your concerns away and carry on as before. This might be find in the short term but the feeling of wanting something different will return from time to time until you finally make the decision to do something about your life.

You could follow the suggestions of your friend and end up doing something which you don’t really feel comfortable doing at all. This  won’t solve your problem because you will be doing something which is not congruent with your own needs and may also be against your morals too.

You could do something drastic without really considering the consequences.  This could be good for you because sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that when you do so you’ll be able to find your feet again. However it’s usually a good idea to think through the pros and cons of the action you decide to take.

You could bury your frustration in alcohol or junk food. This may give you the false illusion of being helpful but it won’t solve anything, just make you numb for a short while, won’t make the problem go away and lead to other health and life problems for you too

You could seek  help from a therapist. If you want to explore your past and find the reasons about why and how you got into the situation you find yourself in now , then this can be useful.  But understanding your past may not enable you to move forward into a brighter future

You could seek help from a life coach. If you want to accept where you are today and now want to move towards a better and different life then a coach will enable you to do this while he or she sits beside you for part of your journey and helps you to face challenges and do what you truly want to do.

Book a free ABC session and find out how coaching can help you.

1.Be absolutely clear what you want to achieve during the coming year.

2. Break down  your main goal into smaller steps  which will be the way you can check your progress towards your goal.

3..Make a plan. This is the map which will guide you towards achieving what you want. The plan will list the steps and the dates by when you want to have completed them.

4. Do something, however small towards your goal each day. Small steps build into progress when you do something regularly.

5. As you complete each step, tick it off on your plan. Be creative: you could stick a star on your calendar as you move forward and achieve.

6. Keep focused on the goal and follow your routine of a small step each day so that it becomes an automatic habit.

7. Find other people to support and encourage you. It’s easier to make progress towards  your goal if you have some non-judgmental support a supportive member of your family, from a coach or mentor, or a friend. Tell them what will help you so they can let you have the support you need.

8. Be creative and explore different ways to achieve what you want rather than give up. Sometimes you can find new ways to reach your goal.

9. Don’t neglect yourself eat healthy foods, take regular exercise and have enough sleep.

10. Celebrate 2010 as your best year yet as you reach your goals.

If you want some support from coaching to achieve in 2010 contact me and  find out what coaching can offer you

1. Be even more precise about what you want to achieve. You have already made your goal more detailed than something such as ‘I want to be happier.’ You now say for example ‘I don’t want to feel low every day.’ Trouble with this goal is that it’s based on what you don’t want rather than on what you do want. Make it positive. Make it specific.
2. Set yourself a realistic time scale. If you’ve failed to set a deadline for your goal achievement you are more likely to fail to achieve it. Set a very precise date so that it becomes like a deadline at work and you can experience the necessary pressure to get yourself taking the actions you need to every day in order to achieve what you want.
3. Make a plan, write it down, look at it every day and follow it until you achieve what you want.  It’s too easy to be distracted when you are lacking in the discipline of following a routine. As you complete each step, tick it off on your plan. Be creative with coloured pens and make a pleasing visual display of your progress.

Follow these three strategies for goal achievement and you will succeed mush more quickly than you would without them.

Coaching can be the push you need to get those things done.