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How To Trip Yourself Up – The Easy Way

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Values are one of my soapbox topics. Why? Simply because they create and preserve reputation, happiness and fulfilment, that’s all. Nothing major. Many people don’t know what their values are. I was tickled to read about the City’s letter to the Financial Times, signed by the big cheeses. Often companies have agreed their values and then behave the opposite. What are values? Values are the things that are important e.g. trust, integrity, learning, innovation etc and different people define the same value in different ways, making managing image like herding cats.

The purpose of the City’s letter? To distance themselves from past naughties by clubbing together to promote the image of integrity about the financial world and improve its brand. Integrity is one of my top values and to me means ‘do what you say you will do’. Imagine my surprise when I read this article on the same day my business banker had failed, for the third time in 6 months, to return my phone call, despite their proud declaration ‘we will return your call within 3 hours’ promise. Join up the dots.

Living the brand is more important than defining it. Underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way round. If your company has values stuck on the wall, or on your web site, make sure you are ‘walking the talk’, as otherwise it’s like tripping yourself up with an electric barbed wire and falling into a sea of starving piranhas. Not nice.  The younger generation are very values conscious and being lovers of instant social media, will tweet your misdemeanour around the world faster than you can say ‘corporate social responsibility policy’. As I have been with my bank since I was 16, and am now 45, no need to explain that we will be getting divorced! Time to log onto Twitter…………

Do you want to divorce your job, or perhaps your career? Download our free report “Pain free career change” – click on this link: http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk/

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  • Human capital
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  • Career strategies 

Are You A Mind Reader?

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One of the things that humans are fantastic at is mind reading and creating meaning from something without an iota of evidence to back it up. Sound familiar? Let me share some examples.  You call someone and they don’t return your call, so you think that they are busy or don’t care. You don’t get chosen for a project so you assume that you’re not good enough.

We do this stuff all the time and make life really horrible for ourselves because it means that we feed our brains with lots of rubbish, which fuels our active imaginations to create even more rubbish. Mind reading and making up rubbish is commonplace. The consequence is that we have less time to work towards our goals, to be and relax and have fun, and we have a cloud over our heads that inhibits our enjoyment and full engagement in life.  Since our brains have no ‘off switch’, we need to notice when we do this and try a different approach. So what’s the answer?

Well it’s three things; 1) self-awareness so you know what your main ‘buttons’ are, 2) noticing when you are mind reading and creating rubbish and 3) clarifying what the facts are.   Ask yourself this question: “In what situations am I most likely to ‘mind read?’

Have you downloaded your FREE Energise report ‘Pain free career change yet?’  Don’t miss out! http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk/

Are You Addicted to Busyness?

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What is it with our society that it is so good to be busy? “Are you busy?” is almost as popular a question in our country as “What do you do?” To reply, “no I’m not” or “I am busy doing nothing” or “I have been luxuriating in daydreaming activities ” sounds like a faux pas.

Yet research consistently shows that we need time to think and that insights, clarity and creativity pop in when we allow ourselves that time.  So far, I refuse to have e mails/Internet on the move because I believe that it would gazump my thinking/reading time.  I get all the benefits to fans of this service, but I think I would live in a state or permanent stress and fiddling with the device! If that makes me a fossil with technology, then so be it.

What’s your view? Do you get enough time to think? Do you consciously plan thinking time in your diary and go to a different place to do this? RSVP I have been creating an e course about career change over the last few weeks and I have spent about 9 days holed away, e mail free. Without this, it would have taken a great deal longer.

Are you in the right career for you? Download the FREE report “Pain free career change” to find out. http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk

Inner Tug Of War?

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Do you ever find that an inner part of you just won’t budge? It’s like it’s dug its heels in and refuses to do what it is ‘supposed to do’ or you want it to, however much you cajole or reason with it. Procrastination is often the consequence of resistance, but the root cause is not always clear at first and then it rises to the surface and it all makes sense. 

Yesterday I had a client who was showing resistance to taking action for most of the coaching session; their verbal energy was high and strong and then the reason for the resistance popped out five minutes before the end of the session.  The task she was supposed to do just didn’t sit comfortably with who she was – it was a provocative action when they are conservative by nature. They knew they needed to do something, it just wasn’t that. Once we had got to the bottom of what was going on – and a bit of my job is like being a detective and putting the pieces together, they worked out what was comfortable and moved quickly and enthusiastically into action, A good question to ask yourself if you find yourself in this situation is: “What’s the resistance about?”

Once I come up with a creative way for you to explain inaction at work caused by resistance to your boss, I’ll let you know! Are you resisting the change you know you need to make? This is common and I have seen resistance to change over time cause illness, depression and even fatigue syndrome, so it’s best tackled.

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Rachel Brushfield Linked in profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/energiseliberateyourtalent

Lap Dancing Funds Education

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Research by Leeds University has shown that one in four lap dancers have a university degree and 76.4% said they were happy with their work and not exploited. Nearly a third used the work to fund education – they get paid £232 a shift.

Pros of the job were cited as flexibility, keeping fit and getting paid straight away. Downsides of the job were uncertainty about how much they would earn, keeping the work secret and rude or abusive customers. Source = People Management magazine 16 September 2010 

So there you go – no need to feel guilty – you are funding the education of tomorrow’s management. just make sure you are polite and respectful, or they’ll be trouble.  I have never had lap dancing as someone’s desired career change, but never say never.

If you are at a career crossroads, download our free report “Pain free career change”  http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk/

Is Your Work Like A Carpet?

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Work can be wall to wall, can’t it? If you find yourself staring out of the window, it is more likely to be because your neck is stiff from sitting at the computer for a long time than you chose to daydream for half an hour.

I had a wall-to-wall day yesterday, I was flat out from early until late and I am not talking sleeping. I barely had a chance to catch my breath and there was no space or time to think.  I am very good at protecting time and as someone who thinks the best place to store a Blackberry is under the wheels of a just-about-to-reverse car, it was a bit of a shock for me to experience the full alert permanent fight or flight feeling.

This is how most people’s days are – wall to wall meetings and no time to do the work. When I need to create something, I go away from my normal environment, switch off phone, e mail, twitter etc and focus 100%. Even prison feels quite appealing for this very reason! I have just given birth to a 250 page career change e course and am in the recovery room. Gas, air and forceps were needed and a caesarean section without the hard labour was quite an appealing prospect. It was a natural birth in the end, and if you’d like a peek at what the baby might look like, download this FREE report:

 http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk

Want To Keep That Holiday Feeling?

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Where did August go?! Welcome to September – kids are back to school and you are back to work and my blog had a 2 week holiday too, so is refreshed with new words. How can you keep that holiday feeling?

My lovely cat Thelma has been staring at an ant on the kitchen floor for the last 15 minutes, absolutely enrapt in the moment. “So what” I hear you cry, what’s so interesting about THAT INANE DETAIL to blog about it, for goodness sake, don’t you know how BUSY I AM going through all my e mails?! 

Well, Thelma isn’t living in the past or worrying about the yet to be revealed future, which she can’t change, she’s just enjoying being in the moment. Being in the moment is where happiness happens. When I stop being busy and focus on the here and now, it is a simply wonderful place. Time slows down, I feel carefree and it’s rather blissful. It’s easy in principle and very hard in practice because we have so much to do and it’s very easy not to.

Ok, so how do you do it? Kids and animals are great at it, so copying them helps. Stopping and becoming more aware of what your senses are noticing helps, instead of being on rush autopilot command control. Want to read more? Eckhart Tolle “Practicing the power of now“  is a great book.

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Do You Indulge In Wishful Thinking?

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Do you indulge in wishful thinking? Do you stick your head in the sand and pretend that everything is going to magically get better? Whether it’s a dead end job, blocked progression at work, feeling stuck in a career you hate with financial responsibilities like a millstone around your neck or a relationship on the road to hell rather than heaven, it’s easy to pretend and avoid confronting it.

The trouble is that wishful thinking is just that – la la land or some might say delusional!  Luckily humans have fantastically imaginative minds and convince ourselves of all sorts of things which aren’t true. It’s easier to stay where we are and pretend, because people are creatures of habit, and then we don’t have to face up to the prospect of change and upheaval and we can stay where we are, in our cosy if boring padded cell comfort zones.

But hang on a minute, if our imaginations are so effective convincing ourselves that everything’s just fine, just think what we could create that’s better if we were to focus on what we want and take action? I had one coaching client who was going to resign she was so fed up, and the next time we met, she had negotiated flexi time working with her boss and was beaming like a Cheshire cat.  Good change can happen fast if you set your mind to it.

Some of my clients have been stuck for over ten years before they get in touch. That’s a long time to feel fed up and put your fulfilment on hold, isn’t it? One of my favourite exercises is getting clients to imagine going to the end of their lives and look back. Try it – what would you like to have achieved and what would you like people to be saying about you?

For some thoughts on career change, click on this link:

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs042/1102862873131/archive/1103151195385.html

What Vices Do You Have?

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My goodness, we are creatures of habit, aren’t we?! Every morning I ritualistically line up 4 glasses of water on the worktop and chuckle to myself. I picture the creation of habits of like a lawn mower cutting grass. Neural path ways in the brain take time to create and it’s easy to keep on mowing the same route until the grass doesn’t grow so much and there’s a path that you go down, always going the same way. It takes conscious effort and persistence to change a habit. I moved the location of the bin in my kitchen and was intrigued to see that it does, as the experts say, take about 28 days to establish a new habit and break an old one. Had to get a new kitchen floor as well due to wear and tear.

What habit would you like to change? I used to smoke 40 cigarettes a day and I gave up about 7 years ago. Cigarettes were like punctuation in my day and there were lots of full stops, commas and dashes.  I’d tried everything; hypnosis, collecting old butts in jam jars and keeping them on my desk in water, buying smaller packets, patches. You name it, I tried it.  Do you know how I cracked it? It was three things; 1) I kept a diary of how I felt before, during and after a cigarette which gave me insights about the triggers, 2) I thought about how to deal with the triggers and ‘fill the gap’, e.g. playing a song which gave me a ‘feel good time out break’ without the smoke and 3) I realised that smoking was stopping me from getting what I want.

At that time, I especially wanted to be more creative, and sitting on the sofa one day, with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I observed myself, I was inhaling in the gap between my thoughts. This is the space where insights emerge and creativity happens. I was stopping myself from being more creative. The light came on  – an ‘aha moment’ as we call it in coaching.  Armed with this insight, which ironically having a fag break and time to think had given me, I stubbed out the cigarette and haven’t touched one since. Don’t worry you smokers out there, I haven’t become all evangelical and anti smoking, in fact I think that non-smokers would benefit from time out 5 minutes breaks too – time to think. But that topic is one for another blog.

Sometimes smoking is a displacement activity, in other words you are doing it to avoid looking at what really needs looking at, like changing your job or career. For the FREE 30 page “Pain free career change” report, click on this link:  

http://www.careerstrategies.co.uk/

Have You Got Talent?

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Yesterday, my friend Angela said I should get rid of the ‘liberate your talent’ part of my Energise branding because it reminds people of ‘Has Britain got talent’ and the ‘X factor’. Talent is also the term used by companies for the key people they want to attract and keep, but the term has been hijacked by TV’s wannabes!   Having built up my brand over thirteen years, I don’t really want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and re-experience labour pains; one lot of stitches is quite enough thank you!

Employee ‘Talent’ or human capital is a contentious debate provoking topic because everyone has talent, but many people think they don’t or it’s immodest to think/say that they do, different companies define it in different ways and we are all biased because of our own perception. Complex! Some companies define all employees as talent and others specific ‘high performers’ or ‘business critical skills’ vital for success or skills ‘in short supply.’

In our belt tightening times, a narrower definition of talent makes sense for financial reasons, but isn’t exactly carroty to engage all employees grafting doing 2 people’s jobs. After all, isn’t a class system a little outdated in 2010, and for people to perceive they are ‘not good enough’ when they are more than likely in my experience to create that conclusion themselves? So a good question to ask perhaps – are you talent, if not how could you be, or where could you work where you feel that you are? Tip – emotional resilience and a positive attitude are two things that employers are looking for, so grit those teeth and smile!

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