Inspirational, fascinating and funny I totally recommend investing 20 minutes of your life watching this video.

Brene Brown on Wholeheartedness

Some people and organisations are naturally inspirational and it’s hard to pinpoint why.  Until now…

Today I came across this TED video by Simon Sinek which talks about how businesses can communicate in a way that inspires action from their customers.   Sinek says that when businesses communicate they focus on what they offer and how they offer it but rarely share WHY they offer it.  This WHY is about their purpose and what they believe.  When businesses start talking about what they believe and why they exist they connect with people who share that belief and will tell others about it.  This is something that Seth Godin refers to as finding your ‘tribe’.

In Sinek’s words… ‘people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’   The WHY appeals to our limbic brains which is the part of our brain that drives behaviour.  The limbic brain doesn’t use language, and is where our ‘gut instinct’ comes from.  Watch the video – it’s great and applies way beyond the world of business.  Simon’s book is being added to my Xmas wishlist as of today

Simon Sinek on How Great Leaders Inspire

We’ve been busy tweeting and doing blog posts a lot this past month and it feels like I spend a lot of time sat at my computer rather than out in the world meeting people.  I suspect anyone reading our twitter feed feels a bit bombarded too.  What we really want to do is put a smile on your face each day and remind you have amazing you already are, even without all those things you’d like to have such as more time, romance or money.

So I’m thinking of creating a daily email that people sign up to so each day they get a little bit of Space To Be wisdom and encouragement that they can read when the time is right for them.

Any feedback on whether that would appeal to you?  We’re trying to come up with a name – all suggestions welcome.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

If the answer is none then why are you so unimportant to yourself that you’ve not made any appointments with yourself?  That really struck home to me as I enter a really busy time, and so I am making daily appointments with myself to recharge and rest and reconnect.  Thanks Steve.

Waiting to go Tiger fishing on the mighty Zambezi River on a terribly hot day, James merely fainted whilst sitting on a stool, falling backward onto hard sand.

The result of this seemingly innocuous occurrence was catastrophic. The impact of the fall severely bruised his spinal cord and broke his C4 and C5 vertebrae, leaving James with voluntary movement only from his shoulders up.

Due to the remoteness and inaccessibility of the location, it was 30 hours before James reached fully qualified medical care. This delay worsened his condition by causing fluid to collect in his lungs, leading to respiratory complications.

The Puffin Magic Foundation was established soon after James’ return to Australia in 2008. Its aim is to harness the personal efforts and financial contributions of the various groups of people who have expressed a desire to provide support to James in a way which will maximize the amount of support that can ultimately be delivered to James.

James’ friends have made some remarkable efforts to raise funds to support his recovery and fund research into spinal injuries.  James is making great progress and there are some great videos about him and the cause on the website.  It seems to me that James and his friends and family are an inspiration and I’m delighted to be going to the event tomorrow to support them and also to see James in person.

The first part of the day was spent looking at what money means to us.  Is it simply for exchanging goods and services or do we add more meaning to it?  It turns out that to many of us money symbolises security, happiness, status, love and in the words of one participant ‘cheerful families with bouncing labradors’.  When we add of all that meaning to money it becomes something incredibly precious that we want to gain and can’t bear to lose, creating many of our problems around money.   As a business owner it can be hard to justify charging for your services when you’re equating it in your head to taking away a bit of someone’s happiness and security.

Michael had us stop referring to ‘money’ and ‘pounds’ and instead refer to ‘paint’ and ‘gallons of paint’ so that we could discuss money without adding meaning.  It’s nice to have paint to paint your room beautifully but it isn’t essential to your wellbeing or sense of self.  It was interesting for me to note how different it felt when talking about charging x gallons of paint for my coaching services rather than pounds.  It felt freer and I certainly made better decisions about it without all the emotional baggage attached.

Michael outlined the 3 ways of making money…

1.  Exchanging chickens – identify the goods or services that you would love to offer that will make a positive difference in the lives of others and exchange them for cash.

2. Low hanging fruit - go to people you already know have an interest in what you provide and design a wonderful offer just for them, coming from a place of being okay whether they said yes or no

3. Planting seeds – work out who you would like to serve, think of the most fun/powerful/useful thing you could do for them and start some conversations with them about it.  Really listen to what they need.

Later on we did an exercise on making money where we had 2 hours to create some money.  I was pretty terrified at the thought of doing that but chose to take a fun approach to it and find ways to make money that I enjoyed and felt natural.  I know a lot about using social media to build a business so I created an offer of spending 3 hours with me learning how to use social media to drive sales and offered it for a bargain price of £50.  I put it on my Facebook page and texted a few friends that run small businesses and got two takers.

After that I could relax, knowing I’d created some money so I just got to know some of the other people in the room by asking them about themselves.  It turned out that one of them wanted to lose weight so when I mentioned that Hey Gorgeous had helped one woman lose 5 stone he asked if he could buy it.  Another wanted to be stress-free so I told him about Ultimate Unwind.  And so I had 2 sales just by listening and by sharing what I had to offer.  Super-simple I know but that’s not what I normally do.  I don’t like the idea of ’selling’ so I rarely mention Space To Be products in social situations but now I realise I’m just making an offer of something that can make a huge difference and it’s more selfish not to offer it.

I was pleased with my £105 and more pleased with what I’d learnt.  Others offered massages, called potential clients and took sandwich orders and between us we created £34,000 in two hours!  Great stuff.

If you’d like to shift your relationship with money and make it fun to make money (whether you own a business or not) I highly recommend Money Made Fun by Michael Neill which I bought and find really useful.

I’ve recently come across a great campaign about body image called Body Gossip.  They are launching a beauty revolution by collecting real people’s stories about their real bodies.  They believe (and so do I) that realistic beauty needs celebrating and they’ve got a bunch of celebs involved.

You can check out their website (and maybe even contribute if you fancy it) here or view their videos.

I’d love to hear what you think of the campaign and videos.

1.  Think of a situation in your life that is worrying you and taking up a lot of your physical or emotional energy

2.  What is the reality you’ve created around that?  What beliefs do you have about that situation?

3.  What new reality could you create that is better than the current reality and believable at some level?  (this is where it is helpful to have others making suggestions)

For example if you’ve been single for a long time and have had some bad dating experiences your current reality might be ‘dating is scary and leads to tears’.  But a new reality might be ‘dating is a way to work out what I do and don’t want from a relationship’ or ‘dating is a way to meet new friends’.

The next step is to start living as if this is your new reality.  You’ll come across some situations that make you doubt it but collect evidence to support your new reality, celebrate what’s working and write it down.  After 10 days review what you’ve written and see how real your new reality has started to feel.  Once you see that it is possible to create a new reality you will work harder to put it into practice and will have totally changed a situation that you previously felt stuck with.

Professor Rao recommends only working on creating one new reality at a time, taking up to 8 weeks to really embed each one and alternating between professional and personal realities.  In a year you could have created 4-10 new realities and changed your life!

When we did this exercise I created a new reality around a professional goal and am looking forward to seeing that change over the next 10 days.  I’m going to see what some of my individual coaching clients think of it too.  I’d love to hear any feedback you have on this exercise if you try it – please comment below.

Professor Rao is a very smiley man and is clearly adored by the alumini of his course, some of whom attended the event yesterday.  He says that if you are not feeling radiantly alive every day then you’re wasting your life – strong and inspiring words so I was keen to hear what he had to say.  I fancy feeling radiantly alive every day.

His approach borrows from many great thinkers and spiritual leaders but adds simplicity and structure so that the messages get through to his business audience.  Here are some of the key points he made yesterday…

1. Mental Chatter – we are all running a constant internal monologue in our head that is dictating our life.  For example if your mental chatter about a person or situation is negative you are highly likely to have a negative experience of that person or situation.
2. Mental models – we all have models in our head for how the world works – from relationships to the world of work.  Most of us don’t realise that we have them and therefore don’t notice when we are running unhelpful models.  Once we have a model we seek evidence to support it.  Anytime you feel stuck in an unpleasant situation that persists one or more of the mental models you are running isn’t serving you well.
3. Me-centred universe – we tend to reduce everything that is happening around us to ‘what’s the impact on me?’.  This leads to unhappiness and we need to figure out a way to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

Professor Rao  says we have spent our entire life learning to be unhappy by believing ‘I have to get something, so I can do something, so  can be something’.  For example ‘I have to get a promotion, so I have have more money, so  can feel secure’.  But if getting something will make you happy then losing it is going to make you unhappy, so you are setting yourself up for suffering.

He says that changing this constant striving can hugely impact your happiness levels and suggests that we accept that our lives are perfect right now if only we could stop resisting what is happening to us.  This reminds me of a mantra someone suggested to me which was ‘resist nothing’ which I find really helpful as it stops me trying to control or fight the world and lets me relax and just be for a while.

All in all it was an interesting talk and I’m curious to find out more by reading his books and checking out his website.

If you find this interesting I really recommend reading any book on mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh such as the one below

If you have any thoughts on what Professor Rao has to say or have read his books or experienced his course I’d love you to comment please.

People who give, Carla, are given to.

People who care, are cared for.

And people who love… age slower, run faster, jump higher, eat healthier, tend to live in cottages, are as happy with friends as they are alone, climb more trees, skip when they could walk, kiss when they could talk, take the odd Friday off, experience faster manifestations, and are really popular with animals.

Love, baby -

The Universe

So this is written with lots of love from me