Monthly Archives: September 2017

5 Steps to value your time

Coaching, Purpose, , , ,

“Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time.”

M Scott Peck

  1. Track your time – create a spreadsheet in half hour blocks for each day of the week. Record when you are sleeping and all your other activities. Initially this may seem like you are “time wasting” but you will be surprised at what actually does take up your time. Include things such as time taken to travel to various places, shopping, showering, eating, etc.
  2. Prioritise – make a list of what is important. Sleep should be up there as a significant block of time as is time to spend with your nearest and dearest ones. Make sure you identify the difference between your regular “to do list” and projects you are undertaking. Set some deadlines for the completion of the tasks. You might also want to identify which activities are “fun” to do and those that are not. Reward yourself by doing the less fun ones first and the enjoyable ones later.
  3. Schedule or timetable everything else. Be flexible – you may want to create several schedules so that you get some variety each week. If you need to be on social media for your business, or answer emails then set aside some time to do that. There are numerous scheduling tools that can be used to automatically post to various platforms, but do make some of your posts spontaneous! For instance, I have a set time once a week to write blog posts (like this one). In that time I will write on a number of topics and save to a document to use later when I have scheduled in clients or have set time aside to prepare for upcoming workshops.
  4. Stop procrastinating – be honest with yourself. What excuses or reasons are you coming up with to justify your inaction? Do you value yours and other people’s time? Have you allowed enough time to get to your appointments?
  5. Focus – or learn the art of mindfulness. Multi tasking is so last century….. when your attention is divided, your energy is scattered. If you are following your schedule then you will complete tasks in what seems like no time at all. If your attention span is short, then schedule the tasks into small but incremental steps… the foundation of successful goal setting!

Dream Stealers

Coaching, dreaming, Insights, ,

“All our dreams can come true,

if we have the courage to pursue them.”

Walt Disney

There are 3 things that will take up your time and steal from your dreams. One is unavoidable and the other two will creep in and take up time that you could be taking action to move from a dream to reality.

They are:

  • Sleep
  • TV
  • Procrastination

It’s worthwhile to have an honest audit about the time you spend on each of these.

Sleep is necessary for our well being and studies show that poor sleep habits or interrupted sleep has a significant impact on our effectiveness. Too little sleep can be as unhelpful as too much.

TV or other electronic diversions such as social media can consume valuable time and time is the most valuable resource we can access. I grew up with a side plate that my grandmother gave me that had the words “Time and tide wait for no man”. It meant little to me as a child, but as the years have flown by, the meaning has become more relevant. Whilst we are unable to make more time regardless of our means and we can never get time back, we can manipulate it through self hypnosis. Reading other people’s posts on social media can be seen as wasting this valuable resource, so it makes sense to schedule limited time to access the various platforms or watching TV alongside scheduling time to work on your dream.

Procrastination or the art of shuffling papers or doing “busy stuff” is perhaps the most insidious time/dream stealer.

Ask yourself the following questions:

How much actual work am I doing to achieve my dream?

What changes do you need to make to create goals to achieve your dreams?

What steps do you need to take?

How will life be different for you after making these changes?

What will this allow you to do?

Thankyou for taking some of your valuable time to read this reflection!

 

August Retreat

Retreat, , , ,

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about the retreat.

Still there…. the grass is growing and the wattles are out and I can see the capeweed coming out of its winter hibernation. The positive side of that is the bees will love the swathes of yellow and will feast on the pollen.

A few more trees have been planted around the labyrinth.

I’ve been nurturing some pomegranate saplings in the city garden for a couple of years and as they needed thinning out, thought that they would add to the charm of the larger labyrinth. In addition to the mini olive grove, I now have a space where I can contemplate and cast my mind back to a couple of Ancient Greek myths.

Obviously, the olives are associated with the Oracle of Delphi and it was said that the first temple was constructed out of olive branches. Then there is the story of the labyrinth with the Minotaur at the centre. With the addition of the pomegranates, I’ve added a reference to Persophene…

I’m going to leave you to conduct your own searches either online or in perhaps long forgotten books to read up on these myths and legends.

From time to time we have visitors staying and it is great to be able to share with them the serenity of the place. Accommodation is still very basic and rustic and for the most part BYO. It’s not camping, and certainly not glamping…. at least not yet…. but the ambiance around the campfire each evening certainly adds to the experience. We’ve hosted some candlelit, sit down, share dinners in the shed which have been a great success. The chairs are courtesy of the hard rubbish collection in the city and with a couple of trestle tables…… what more could you want?

Each visitor experience is different.

For the last few years I’ve hosted the BMW MCC for a “Back to Basics” weekend. We supply the wood and water and those who are interested turn up with tents, swags, caravans and campers of all types and dimensions.

The Ambassador Suite (an ancient, original 1970’s caravan) is often pressed into service. We’ve even moved the old potting shed nearby and put in another composting toilet and euphemistically called it the “en suite”.  This actually provides more options such as designating male and female toilets as well as alleviating the need to build a “drop toilet” or put in a septic system (which would use up our precious water). More on that in a later post…

This year we hosted the BMW Club a little earlier than in previous years as the local township had listed a Wildflower Walk for that weekend.  We had most of the wildflowers they were talking about on the property appear last year and I was a little concerned this year when I couldn’t find any sign of them appearing in the weeks prior to the event. Not to worry……. We had 16 people attend and looking for wildflowers was low on the list…. socializing and experiencing the outdoors was on their minds. We all forgot to wander out to the observatory and look at the stars later that evening as the bush TV (fire) captured everyone’s attention.

It was reasonably mild overnight ….no ice in the hand washing basin…. and breakfast was around the fire again…. jaffles, cups of hot tea and then trips down to the dam for the youngsters to catch some yabbies (and return to see another day) and a walk around the retreat to look for wildflowers and to chat. Most managed a walk around the labyrinths and although I’m not trained as a labyrinth facilitator, it was interesting to hear from each person who did the walk how they felt about the experience.

Most departed just before lunchtime as the clouds looked quite threatening and it was reassuring to find those who came by motorbike all made it home safely. One of the guests made a great video about his trip up there and back which I have been given permission to share.

Save

Achieving Your Goals

A Balanced Life, balance, business, Goal Setting, ,

What sort of goal do you have in mind?

A great big one that seems a little audacious?

A smaller goal that will serve as a stepping stone to greater things not yet envisaged?

Achieving your goals, be they big, small or somewhere in between all have something in common. They are all about movement….action…… moving from one place (it may be from “Stuck”) to another place and if you are not sure about the way there it is easy to get lost or sidetracked.

How would you like to have a map of sorts? Sounds good to me!

Firstly, to achieve your goal you must be specific and the goal must resonate with you. For instance, I was given an example of how to be specific a few years back and it doesn’t really resonate with me.  I was told that “you don’t go into a bookshop and say you want to buy a book… you have to know the title.” Why didn’t that work for me? I love to go into bookshops and peruse the shelves. My goal is to find a book that will interest me. My bookshelves are already full of titles that have been suggested to me and remain for the most, largely unread… because they haven’t resonated with me.  The right book will literally jump off the shelf into my hands!

Back to being specific…. It’s about answering the following questions:

WHEN do you want to achieve your goal?  Set the date that you want to reach your goal.

WHAT exactly do you want? This one is really important especially for weight loss clients. How many kilograms?  What do you want to change? What do you need to add or subtract to your life to achieve this?

WHERE … state the location of your goal. If you are looking to change jobs or purchase a new house, where do you want to be located? If it’s about weight reduction … it is exercising at home or taking a gym membership?

HOW will you achieve your goal? What steps do you have put in place for you to make it happen?

WHO is on your team to help you achieve your goal?

and lastly WHY is this goal important to you? What are the benefits to YOU (no one else) by achieving this goal?

If this is a very large goal, break it down into smaller, more achievable steps and apply consistent action. What can you do daily, weekly, monthly to focus your attention on a productive outcome?

Review regularly and create a Plan B if you feel that any of your original steps are not working satisfactorily. With focus and a success mindset, you can expect to see positive outcomes as a result of your planning.