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Are You A Bit Of A Dragon?

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No I am not talking the gatekeeper to management. Do you have the characteristics of an entrepreneur? Research by Adrian Furnham, Professor of psychology at University College London shows some interesting things about dragons. They are not motivated by money, but more by success, high quality, helping others and creating something of lasting value.

They are good at dealing with failure and picking themselves up. They take the long term rather than short term view, are self-confident, have expertise, are proactive and create their own luck and opportunities. They question the status quo, keep an eye on efficiency and monitor and evaluate success.  They are committed to others and show integrity and reliability, take calculated risks and are comfortable with uncertainty.

Sounds like a good attitude to have and way to be, and better than mediocrity and complacency, plus good people to shake up some companies. Are you an entrepreneur?  Could you be? Download our free 30 page ‘Pain free career change’ report and see if the grass could be greener. Click on this link:

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

Human Being or Human Doing?

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POEM – BLUE YONDER

As you race through life with no time to see,

Don’t take leave of your senses.

Take time to pause, make time to contemplate.

Just being.

Your awareness a gift,

Your senses, tools.

Appreciate all that is nature, and life.

Look up, observe

Nature’s seasonal fashions;

Rust and gold hues, a sea of light……..

The sky is a mirror of the sea –

Artist’s canvas, vignette of blue.

Clouds like waves breaking,

Shimmering feather shoals teasing the light.

Planes like boats motoring the sky,

Surf streams in their wake.

Jumbo jets cruising, majestic great whites

Of the deep Blue Yonder.

Wake up or you’ll miss

An unmissable moment.

A one off in time

Never to be repeated.

Look up

Wake up

Just be

Rachel Brushfield – Inspired by a beautiful blue sky, a practical philosophy course and the bliss from being present.

Tip – a great book about being present is Eckhart Tolle’s ‘Practicing the power of now.’

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Practising-Power-Now-Eckhart-Tolle/dp/0340822538

Articles from Energise include; being present, managing yourself, busyness addiction, overcoming overwhelm and managing procrastination.

Trust Goes Down The Toilet

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Research by The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) exploring the quality of life in the UK shows that only 15% of employees would describe the management style in their organisation as trusting and 9% think it is suspicious.

Only 46% said they had trust and confidence in their senior managers.  For employees to feel engaged and go the extra mile, they need to feel trusted, not with someone standing over their shoulder watching their every move.

It is a challenge – companies need to be careful and keep a close eye on things and they have become more risk averse post credit crunch, but micromanaging turns off employees so they feel less motivated and work less.

What do you think is the right balance between control and trust?  

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http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1102862873131&p=oi

  • Human capital
  • Smart living and working
  • Self promotion
  • Career strategies 

Having A Bad Day?

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I had “one of those days” this week. If I was a building, I would have been cordoned off and a large ‘Danger’ sign erected. My biorhythms won’t so much clashing as driving into each other at top speed. The alarm clock didn’t go off as I had unwittingly set it to p.m. instead of a.m.; make-up applied to my damp hot face in a rush slid off south to Australia. The Sat Nav refused to work, and went into a never ending loop of ”City/Postal code, City/Postal code?” Then even it got confused, so we kept each other company in rush hour and got lost together.  Sat Nav woman sounded like she was on speed as she exclaimed “As soon as possible, make a U-turn!” I ignored her, as I was on a motorway at the time so would have been arrested, making the day even worse

It didn’t get better either by the end, as having paid my parking ticket, I left it in the machine, couldn’t remember which car park of 4 rainbow colours I had left my car in, so was staggering around laden with work bags. In my rushed arrival, I had forgotten to look for visual landmarks to give my poor sense of direction something to get its teeth into. On days like this you feel like exclaiming: “Be nice to me I am having a bad day!” If only there was a fourth emergency service to rescue you – I could have done with being whisked off by Superman and carried back home at super-speed above the rush hour car park.

No wonder companies introduced ‘duvet days’ so you can erase bad days from the calendar and stay all snugly in bed until ‘tomorrow’s another day’ arrives. A few years back, ASDA introduced the idea of wearing a hat in open plan offices for when you wanted to get your head down, focus and not be interrupted. I think a second hat is a great idea for when bad days start after you arrive at work, so you can get your head down on the desk and sleep WITH the duvet to prevent any other further mishaps or carnage.  Do you have any anecdotes from your bad days? Do share them and make mine.  I’ll do a 1 hour coaching gift voucher prize for the best worst day.

If every day feels like a bad day, you may well be in the wrong career. Download our free report as the first step forward. 

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

Wishing you a GOOD day!

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/

Are you receiving the Energise monthly bulletins via e mail? Don’t miss out on free insights, tips and inspiring case studies. Click on this link to opt in.

http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1102862873131&p=oi

  • Human capital
  • Smart living and working
  • Self promotion
  • 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.

Have you looked at our Linkedin profile? We created it having researched best practice. Click on the link below to view.

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