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How to Spring back into Action

Added on January 19, 2018

Today was the first day I noticed something I hadn’t noticed for a long time. It was morning, not particularly early, the children had gone off to school and I was heading off for an interview (not a job one I hasten to add!) as I was about to get into my car, I noticed it; I heard the birds sing for the first time, it really took me aback as I realised that despite the cold, wet, weather, nature is slowly waking up from it’s Winter slumber.

I find that life is a lot like our seasons, maybe we have a new idea, a new relationship, a new job, something that begins, and it’s like Spring, it’s exciting, new, fresh and soon after Summer follows, when it’s in full bloom, this period may last days, weeks, months, even years! It’s heady, energetic, and yes, there may be the odd black cloud or rain but on the whole it’s super enjoyable. After this period, it may slow down, into a more Autumn phase, we may yearn for those wonderful Summer days knowing that as it continues to die down we head towards the inevitable Winter time, where we experience no growth at all, the memories have faded and we wonder whether we will experience a new growth of Spring, let alone Summer, ever again.

However, there is a beauty in nature, as there is in life, after all we are part of nature so why should we be excluded from it? So often, unexpectedly, something new and fresh appears, seducing us into starting the cycle again and the Spring of life appears. Of course it doesn’t just apply to the big stuff in our lives, like relationships, jobs, or other goals; it’s equally applicable to smaller aspects, even down to our motivation, commitment and determination, it’s common to find that this ebbs and flows, or like nature, has its seasons.

It is particularly pertinent at this time of year, because of course, some weeks ago many of us made resolutions that we would do something differently, whether it be lose weight, give up smoking, take steps to find that job – or whatever it may have been; but like many, after the initial freshness and enthusiasm, life has happened and the action and commitment may well have waned or fizzled out completely. Once again we can see the pattern of nature emerging.

It is so easy at this point to throw the towel in, to write it off as another unaccomplished goal, to postpone it until another year or simply never try again. We easily get caught up in that thinking that tells us that it will never work, it never does, this always happens, I’m sure you recognise it, that negative voice that pulls us back to where we were before we made the decision to do something different. But what if this year we didn’t engage with that voice, after all it really doesn’t know what we’re capable of or what the future holds. What if we recognised that it was simply part of the cycle of life and that any lack of motivation or commitment or ‘life happening’ had no particular significance to our ability to achieve our goal, other than that is just what happens, like Autumn follows Winter. And what if, right now we recognised that it was inevitable that Spring follows Winter and made that decision that just like Spring, this indeed was a new start and we tried again – maybe this year would be different, and maybe this year we’ll move further towards that goal.

with love

Andrea x

p.s. Join my Free Seize Your Life community on Facebook for weekly Live Videos, blogs and other snippets of wisdom here.

How to banish the January Blues! [Blue Monday]

Added on January 15, 2018

I’m wondering whether you are feeling like me right now? Christmas seems like it was months ago and New Year (with all it’s resolutions) a distant memory. This weekend the decorations were packed away for another year leaving behind a bareness that didn’t seem to be there before they arrived. Perhaps it’s leaving you wondering what is January all about?

January is a peculiar month, on the one hand I celebrate that Winter is over, we have passed the Winter solstice and I can start to convince myself that the days are getting longer, I notice the bright, sunny days and my faith that Summer is returning is restored! There is so much to look forward to in the year ahead, it truly is a new start!

However, there is the alternate reality, that I am being bombarded with at every turn, of it still being extremely cold, the nights are still fairly long and the sun, whilst is present at times, is often still missing! Christmas has vanished into the past along with all the good intentions of the New Year. It seems that January should feel like limbo month, maybe even a dip in our year, when the excitement is over but the next bout of excitement has yet to begin (if it ever does!).

Apparently I am not the only person who has ever felt like this, Dr Cliff Arnall, in 2005, concluded that the third Monday in January was the ‘Bluest’ Monday of all! His formula for arriving at this included low motivation levels, failed New Year resolutions, the end of Christmas and associated credit card bills arriving on the doormat, all culminating on the third Monday of January when depression reached its peak. You may think what a depressing thing to come up with, but actually he has since been quoted as saying that his intention was never meant to contribute to the negative stigma associated with the day, in fact, it was quite the opposite.

The difficulty is that as soon as it is suggested that we label a day as bad it’s so much easier to find things about the time to support that label, it’s like we put on ‘Blue Monday’ glasses that filter out all the good stuff so that all we see is the gloom and doom. I know this first hand as my father passed away in January 2005 and it was suggested to me that this time of year would be ‘bad’ for me and that I would struggle. For a number of years that followed, this happened and I would find myself dreading January, I could find nothing that I liked about it, it was filled with darkness and gloom. That was until I realised that January had simply become a trigger for remembering my Father the ‘badness’ that I had been told would happen every January was merely a suggestion and I could actually choose what I remembered about him, and therefore I could choose what I noticed about this time of year too. In essence I had changed my glasses, I didn’t have to follow the pattern that had been suggested to me that this was a ‘bad time’ of year for me, I was the creator of my own experience.

So this year as we approach Blue Monday, I invite you to change your glasses (or clean them) and see the day for what it is, simply another day that you can create whatever experience you want to create and go into the year ahead filled with excitement, curiosity and wonder about what it will bring.

with love

Andrea xx

p.s. Join my Free Seize Your Life community on Facebook for weekly Live Videos, blogs and other snippets of wisdom here.

How to have an Exceptional New Year!

Added on December 29, 2017

I always think that this is a very special time of year, after the chaos that is Christmas, especially in my house, followed by January sales in the days that follow, and then there is this beautiful space, a bit of a breather before we say goodbye to the old year and welcome in a new one.

So as I sit here, part of me can hardly believe that we are nearly in 2018, last week I had a video chat with my oldest friend and reminisced about when we met at college (which is the age that her eldest nearly is now!) some 30 odd years ago, but in many ways feels like only yesterday. It’s true to say that as you get older, time appears to go much quicker than when we were children, when Christmas seemed like forever to wait for and when it was over, you felt so disappointed that you had to wait an eternity for it to appear again! Now the years skip by, however it’s only when we look back we realised how far we have come.

When I’ve reflected on this year, I can honestly say, what a year it has been and in some ways last year seems a very long time ago! It certainly has been a year which has been full of incredible highs, but also some low & challenging points too. I know that I am not alone in this, and in may way this is what creates our rich tapestry that we call life.

You may therefore think that it will be with some degree of hesitancy that we can look to 2018 and make our New Year Resolutions or set our goals. What is the point, you may say, it may not happen, after all, it didn’t last year, we may as well set ourselves up for disappointment! However, whilst I used to view it in this way, now I relish the fact that the future is completely unknown and wonder at what excitement it may bring! I know that our lives can change in a heartbeat and with that brings certainty, certainty that I’m not the driver but a mere passenger in my life journey, the destination of which is completely unknown.

Of course I still dream where I might be going and in many ways it is these dreams and goals that help fuel the journey. On the one hand, there are the steps I take, that I may not have taken, had I not created that dream; but also the opportunities that I see and then take because I am open to the fact that they may appear. Some steps may work out just how I imagined, some may not, but there is always a feeling of momentum, even a step that feels backward, often works out merely as a change of direction or a valuable lesson that I needed to learn, the overall effect being one of moving forward.

However, whilst I may dream about my future or reminisce about my past, I know that all I really have is the view out of the window at this present moment in time. Now I can choose to look inwards, if you like, towards the inside of the carriage and worry, stress or try to control either where I have been or where my journey is taking me to or I can look out at the window and enjoy the view, enjoy this moment in time, and in this moment I know I’m absolutely ok and I’m sure, if you think about it too, you know that you are too.

So here’s to 2018 and here’s to dreaming about our journey and being excited about where it will take us.

with love

Andrea xx

p.s. Join my Free Seize Your Life community on Facebook for weekly Live Videos, blogs and other snippets of wisdom here.

How to have a glorious Autumn

Added on November 14, 2017

There is no denying it, Autumn is well and truly upon us, the nights are drawing in and there is a distinct chill in the morning air!

For us, bonfire night marks the start of Autumn, so many memories of wrapping up warm, hugging a hot chocolate whilst watching the fireworks and later writing your name in sparklers! It’s a time of year that I now look forward to, although there were many years that I dreaded it. I hated the waking up in the dark, the bad weather, the lack of sunlight, I felt tired, fed up and couldn’t wait until Spring. In many ways I wished away 4 months of my life every year – that’s a third of the year! Over ten years that’s nearly 3 years of my life I simply wanted over and done with as quickly as possible!

But now I really look forward to it, as soon as Bonfire night is over I’m champing at the bit to light the fire, hot chocolate becomes a staple hot drink, furry blankets a must have and did I mention that Friday night becomes our Christmas movie night?

Often when I speak I show a picture of an Autumn scene and I split the room into two, I ask one half to describe it positively and the other negatively. Unsurprisingly the positive description is the journey we would like to be on and the negative one the one we would sooner avoid! The point being that it is the same picture but we have simply changed our focus, chosen to focus on that which is either positive or negative. We can do that with any aspect of our lives, choose to focus on the positive in the picture or choose to focus on the negative, you may not believe me, but there is a beautiful balance to life that there is always positive and negative in every moment that we experience.

But it doesn’t stop there, our brains are amazing things, but they have to process an inordinate amount of information, it has been suggested that this runs to 400 billion bits of information per second, but we are only aware of about 2000 of these bits because we filter out the bits we don’t think are important via Retina Articular System (RAS). So how do we decide what is important? Well that decides on what you tell yourself is important! It becomes a negative spiral, if you tell yourself that this time of year is miserable, your RAS will filter out anything that doesn’t back that up, so you then see miserable stuff, which then reinforces your belief that it is miserable so you then see more of it!

This was a revelation to me, it made me realise that Autumn and Winter don’t have to be miserable and all I had to do was change my focus, because when I focused on positive experiences my brain would then see more of them (because RAS works both ways!) I began to actively seek out that which was positive because then I knew that I would see more of it. I’d look forward to the parts of Autumn and Winter that I enjoyed, because I knew that I would see more things that I enjoyed and the stuff that wasn’t so good would just pale into insignificance.

This way I’m not wishing my life away, not wasting a third of my life waiting for it to pass. Well they do say life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain!

with love

Andrea x

p.s. Join my Free Seize Your Life community on Facebook for weekly Live Videos, blogs and other snippets of wisdom here.

How to avoid something about nothing!

Added on November 14, 2017

It’s absolutely awful when you think you’ve fallen out with someone isn’t it? Or we think that we’ve upset them in some way. Especially when you’re not entirely sure what you have done!

So for example, a friend doesn’t phone you when we are expecting them to, a partner seems quiet, someone seemingly ignores you, a client doesn’t get back to you, a colleague looks funny at you, a customer sends you a curt email or cancels an appointment…..

The list is endless and we are left trying to work out whether we’ve done something wrong, upset someone, said the wrong things or not done something! What does their behaviour mean?

It would be so much better if it was obvious to us what the other person is thinking, but so often it’s what is unsaid that we are left interpreting, either the silence, or a look, maybe just a feeling that we get that leaves us thinking ‘I know I’ve done something wrong or I’ve upset them in someway’. We’re then often left having to be careful what we say around them, watching how we behave to prevent making it worse or maybe we just don’t know what to do – it’s like walking on eggshells.!

How would it be if we simply didn’t try to work it all out? How would it be if we didn’t allow our minds to go racing off trying to work out whether we’ve upset them, why we’ve upset them or what we have to do about it? What would happen then?

Let’s look at it the other way, how often have you tried to interpret it and got it wrong? Been told that it wasn’t like that at all? That they weren’t upset all along?

Or how often have you thought this means they don’t like me, someone’s said something to them, I’ve done something wrong – or however you’ve interpreted it… and then avoided them?

Even worse – you’ve avoided them and then the other person has interpreted that in a similar way to you and then avoided you and you’ve thought ‘see I knew it!’ ‘I knew I’d upset them!’ And you ignore them even more which then they respond to by ignoring you more and so it goes on and on and before you know it neither of you are speaking, avoiding each other and neither of you know why!!!

And all because you’ve tried to work out what the other person was thinking or feeling, attached a meaning to somebody’s actions or inaction! You’ve filled in the gaps and given it a meaning that you have no idea whether it is true or not but based on that meaning you’ve changed your behaviour and the choices you make!

So the next time someone doesn’t behave in the way you expect and you find yourself worrying about what that means, remind yourself that it means nothing until they tell you it does. Anything else you’re just making up!

This way nothing changes in the relationship, everything stays the same, and more importantly you don’t have to walk on eggshells!

with love

Andrea x

p.s. Join my Free Seize Your Life community on Facebook for weekly Live Videos, blogs and other snippets of wisdom here.

How to regain your confidence EASILY!

Added on November 14, 2017

I did something last Friday that I absolutely love! I gave a talk on Friday to a group of therapists and shared with them how to live more of an Exceptional life, I suppose I’m a bit of a closet entertainer! However I was approached afterwards by someone who wanted to seek my advice about how to be more confident in front of groups of people because they got very nervous, which is something that I help people with from time to time.

It made me ponder about what is nervousness? How do we know that we are nervous? Well usually we get that anxious feeling in pit of our stomach, maybe it churns a bit just to let us know that it is there, we may feel sick or simply want to cancel and run away! We may be worrying about what might happen, will we remember what we have to say? Will people enjoy it? What if you get it wrong?

I’ve always been quite lucky in that I’ve felt comfortable being in front of audiences, but I remember when I was first recovering from my burn out, my memory didn’t seem to be as good as it had been and for the first time I got incredibly nervous talking to groups of people, now this wasn’t like groups of 30 or 40, even talking socially in groups of 3 or 4 would set my nerves off and I would start to worry about what would happen if I forgot what it was I wanted to say, because it had happened before and it could just happen again.

This is really the crux of the issue, we learn by experience, remember when you were little your mum would say to you don’t touch the oven it’s hot, and she may have said to you a hundred times, but it wasn’t until you touched it that you learnt! Well that lesson got recorded, if you like, in your brain so that next time you went near an oven you knew not to touch it! The difficulty is, is that we do this with all of our experiences not just ones where we really will get hurt, and this is a fault in the design if you like. Now whilst I’d had lots of very good experiences of speaking, at that time, I’d had a couple of bad ones, and these were the ones that my brain remembered. So in it’s view, to keep me safe, it would flag them up and remind me what happened, so I wouldn’t put myself in that position again or I’d know to be extra cautious. Our memories are made up of lots of different elements, we may have a picture, we may have noises or talking or we may have a feeling – now I got a lot of feeling and I also remembered visually all the times where I had messed up before in glorious technicolour!

One way of approaching this is by reducing the intensity of the previous memory, so that when you refer back to it, it doesn’t seem that overpowering (this is especially useful if it is a phobia). But it is also equally as powerful to remember that it is simply just a memory, it’s not happening now and it’s not a premonition as to what will happen, it’s really just made up of our thinking. Often it can be hard to ignore the feeling that goes with it, but that is just there as a result of the thinking, it’s an indicator if you like, as to what thinking is going on and no more than that, we are, after all completely safe (it’s not as if audiences have clubs and stones to throw at you!). I remember the first time that I remembered this, I was about to give a talk at my first conference and my head was full of all the times I had forgotten what to say! I remembered that the memories couldn’t tell me anything about what was going to happen and that I was ok, my head almost instantly quietened and I felt much calmer, that previous feeling of nervousness had dissipated and my confidence returned, more importantly, none of my worst fears were realised and the organisers have invited me to return many times since!

with love

Andrea x

p.s. Join my Free Seize Your Life community on Facebook for weekly Live Videos, blogs and other snippets of wisdom here.