Your Changing Direction

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
(Thomas Edison, who patented 1093 ideas – including his invention of the light bulb)

Have you ever had the occasion when your attention is drawn to something and all of a sudden it’s everywhere?

Perhaps you’re looking to buy a particular type of car and all of a sudden there seems to be an influx of that model on the roads. Maybe either yourself or close friend/ family member becomes pregnant and you are suddenly aware of an increase in the number of pregnant ladies that you see.

It’s highly unlikely that in reality there has been an influx, it’s just that you happen to be more aware so notice them even more. (Unless you’ve suddenly moved next door to that type of car show room or a maternity unit!)

Play with the following: take 30 seconds to look and notice everything that is behind you that is the colour brown. When you’ve had 30 seconds turn back to facing forwards and read the next paragraph.

Done that? So without looking, how many things can you name that are behind you that are the colour blue?

If you haven’t already turn round and have a look to see what you missed when you were purposefully looking for brown things.

The blue things were still there it’s just that most people don’t notice them in as much detail.

So what are you noticing about your life at the moment? Are you noticing lots of opportunities, or do you notice things to complain about or get exasperated by?

Just because you are noticing certain things in your life, it does not mean that there are not others there that you could choose to notice either instead or as well.

For example, what do you do if your train is delayed or a flight cancelled? Complain to anyone and everyone who will listen, sigh and do nothing or something else?

J K Rowling, who at the time was a single Mum on benefits, is suppose to have used a 4 hour train delay to put pen to paper for the first time about a boy attending a school for wizards. Several years further on and the 6th Harry Potter film is just opening around the world with much fan interest.

Upon hearing that his flight had been cancelled in 1984, Richard Branson chartered a jet and invited the other stranded passengers to fly for free. Several of those fellow passengers became investors in what was to become the airline Virgin Atlantic.

In those examples J K Rowling and Richard Branson may have been in two very different situations, with different resources available to them, but they both choose to use the situation as an opportunity to do something different.

I happened to catch a bit of a movie on one of the TV movie channels this week that was based upon the real life story of an award winning and nationally recognised teacher Brad Cohern. Diagnosed with Tourette syndrome at the age of 6, the tics and noises were often misunderstood as he was growing up and yet he turned this into an asset. He uses what he has learnt with his condition and his experiences to make a difference with what he does now.  Brad says that Tourette syndrome made him the teacher he never had.

This week I invite you to notice what you are focusing upon.

Remember you don’t have to do anything different, just notice and then make a choice of what you then want to do.

How would you live your life if you knew that there was a possibility that something you did today would lead to all sorts of opportunities in the future? Would you approach something apparently mundane with more enthusiasm or renewed interest?

Have a play and find out the difference it makes for you.

Have a week full of opportunities

Love

Jen

PS I’ve spent the month of July particularly looking for fun new ways to add value and service to what I offer. If you have something you’d like me to get involved with by all means get in touch and we can have a chat about how it can work.

“Sometimes it takes an expert to point out the obvious.”
(Scott Allen)

About a year ago I was at an event where those there were asked to do a relatively simply piece of mental arithmetic – we were then asked to explain the process that we had gone through to come up with our answer. Most of the group were shocked to find the number of different ways that people had come up with the same answer.

Even the most straight forward questions adding 2 numbers together had more than one way that people worked it out. Some worked it out one column at a time. Others rounded the original numbers up/down to make it an easier sum and amending the answer depending upon how much was gained/lost by the rounding. Different methods all producing the same answer.

Much of my work is about tailoring different techniques, methods and questions to the person with whom I am working. After all, everyone is unique so it makes sense to me that to be most effective my work should be tailored to suite each individual. It’s about getting the solutions that work for that person – the actual method is secondary.

This week I want to spend some time on the subject of what works for you, firstly with an example of a particular scenario and then you can play with something that’s specific for you. It’s prompted by a recent question asking for tips about interview nerves – or to be precise what they could do about them. The writer had read lots of different people all recommending breathing and nothing else.

Having recently recorded an MP3 called “dealing with interview nerves” I can assure you there are other things that you can do other then just breathing that will make a difference.

Any technique or knowledge is only useful if you use it and sometimes it is your awareness to put that into action that plays an important part. Generally the more you increase your awareness the earlier you can put into practice the technique.

The way that many writers suggest that you use any technique using breath is that it is used once you are already feeling nervous. Which relies on your awareness that you are feeling that and to remember to use that technique.

With practice people generally get quicker at being aware and remembering to alter their breathing. The thing I’ve noticed is that the easier and more natural that someone finds a technique the more likely they are to use it.

I will say at this point, that I highly recommend that you keep breathing – it has a pretty undesirable effect if you stop I have certainly included a technique that does involve breathing (plus some other cool stuff) on my Dealing with interview nerves MP3.

The most common piece of advice to combat interview nerves may be to breath but that doesn’t mean to say that it’s the only thing that works. Just like with a simple maths question there is more than one way to get to the answer.

When I sat down to create Dealing with Interview Nerves I wanted to offer something that tackled the major causes of interview nerves. I also wanted to produce something that offered a number of different ways of doing that. I knew that would increase the chances of the listener actually using them in real life without me being there to remind them.

It’s not that you have to practice every single technique over and over again – though the more that you do the easier and more natural it will become for you to implement it. I just believe in making it easy and using the things that work to which you are most naturally drawn. My aim, as with all of my work, is to provide the key to the solution that works for you.

So often people loose track of what they want to achieve by focusing upon the process or by giving up their own wisdom and intuition of what will work for them by looking for the “right” way to do something, rather than the one that works for you. They are so busy focusing on that “right” way that they miss other methods of getting the same results.

I did it myself the other day. I was writing a description of a training proposal I was creating for someone and couldn’t work out why I was having such problems getting it down onto paper. I soon realised that I was trying to follow a method of an “expert” I had recently heard talk and not following my own best judgement. While this “expert”s method worked for them their style just didn’t lend itself to this project. As soon as I stopped trying to do it the “right” way and adapted it to fit both my style and the people the training is for, it became much easier.

You may have noticed that each week I invite you to play with an idea, question or a technique and I deliberately use that language. It is there for it to be a catalyst for you, to facilitate what you want to achieve or change. If that means tweaking a part of it so that it is even stronger or works even better for you then I’m more than happy with that – the important part is that it works for you.

So this week I again invite you to play to find the thing that will work for you. Some parts may seem odd and that’s OK. I suggest that you play with each question and see what answers you get. It’s entirely up to you what context you pick to play with. Maybe it’s something new. Perhaps its something where you suspect you may have been getting caught up in doing something the “right” way rather then the way that works for you to get you to where you want to go.

You may want to use a pen and paper to make this easier to play with:

1. What do you want?
It’s your call but I suspect that this will be much more fun if you pick something you actually really want, not something you (or anyone else) thinks you “should” want.

Before we find the things that work for you, lets check out some of the different choices.

2. List as many ways that you can imagine to get what you want.
Remember you haven’t got to do any of them; we’re just looking at choices no matter how impractical.

3. If you haven’t already, now imagine the following coming to add their ideas to your list (make sure you add everything down that they suggest, even if its something that you immediately think isn’t for you.)
Your best friend
A family member
A role model
A multi-millionaire
An expert in getting what you want
Someone who is incredibly confident
Someone who is very happy to ask anybody and everybody for help
Someone with all the resources in the world available to them
Someone who is fearless
Someone with magic powers

4. Read back through your list and circle the things that appeal to you. Remember you are the expert on you. The best technique in the world is only useful if you actually use it and you’re probably far more likely to use something that you enjoy. (The added bonus is that it is also likely to feel much more natural quicker.)

5. What action could you take from this list? How could you do that?

6. What, if any, action will you do – Remember you are the expert on you, you are the one who will be taking the action.

Have a week full of the things that work for you

Love

Jen

PS If you want different tips, techniques and questions to help you find the way that works for you to deal with interview nerves click HERE.

If you prefer to listen to this weeks “Lessons of gratutude from my cat” message click HERE and then press play.

If you prefer to listen to “Take Control Over What You Feel” message click HERE and then press play.

“When you are grateful fear disappears and abundance appears”
(Anthony Robbins)

I share my home with a more mature cat, who happily lives in her own little world. The vet says that apart from her eyesight gradually failing there is nothing physically wrong with her but she does seem constantly pleasantly surprised by things.

She’ll wander past a dish of food in the same place as it has been for years and react as if this is a new addition but isn’t it wonderful.

Or she’ll wander past a box and her reaction says, “What’s that? Oh, there’s a box to curl up in, how fantastic.” Despite the fact that box has been in the same location for the last year.

Even though her eyesight isn’t what it used to be, it is as if she is constantly seeing her world with new eyes. Things that are the same as usual are apparently new to her. She seems to be exceptionally happy with the situation and her own little world and often will share this with us.

I invite you this week to take a look with new eyes at your world.

What are you grateful for? Those things that are in your life daily that maybe you take for granted.

It doesn’t matter if it is something/someone, maybe even an event, which seems large or small in significance. Who or what makes your life richer by their presence in it?

Some ideas to get you started:
The people you love and who love you
Your health
A complete accident of fate that leads to you meeting someone – for example, I’m very grateful that by chance at an event one of the few seats left in the room was next to a complete stranger I now value as a fantastic friend and colleague.
Maybe you’re grateful for the creative talents of your favourite author or artist
Perhaps it’s for someone’s exceptional skills and knowledge
Or for an invention – thank you Mr ball point for inventing something to write with that wasn’t as messy to use as a fountain pen.

On a daily basis this week make a note of things that you are grateful for and notice how different you feel.

Most people report that when they are looking for such things they are surprised at how many there are that they had missed the week before, it’s like they are seeing things with new eyes.

Have a week full of things to be grateful for,

Love

Jen

“Next in importance to having a good aim is to recognize when to pull the trigger.”
(David Letterman)

My sister works with children and when I spent some time with her this last weekend she had the remainders of a bumper pack of sweets they had used as an end of term treat. The majority of these sweets I didn’t even know they still made and had great recollections of them from my childhood.

Just one taste seemed to transport us back to a school disco, or the excitement of a birthday.

You may have noticed that specific smells can immediately have an effect on how you feel because of what you associate with them. Perhaps every time you smell a particular perfume or aftershave you grin because of who it reminds you of, or maybe it has the opposite effect.

Then off course you may have a particular piece of music – I found myself grinning the other day because of an old TV jingle was being played. There are the tunes that you feel great when you hear them because of what you associate with them. Maybe there are also songs that have the opposite effect if you connected them with an old unpleasant experience.

These associations or connections between a trigger and a feeling are often set up without any conscious deliberate thought. What I’m going to invite you to play with this week is a way to give you a deliberate way to set up a trigger so that you can use it to your benefit.

You can do this with any feeling you want though I suggest something positive that you can then use. Maybe you want to play with confidence and use it when speaking in public. Perhaps you’d like to pick relaxation and fire it off before a job interview. It’s up to you what you pick.

You’ll get most benefit from playing with this if you pick a time when you are not going to get disturbed. This will allow you to easily set up a lovely strong feeling without anything else getting in the way. Initially imagining a state of relaxation before you set up a trigger for example is much easier without 100 kids screaming, the phone ringing and the dog running around you

1. Having picked the feeling you want to have at your beck and call, vividly imagine what that feeling is like. By all means close your eyes if that is easier, and remember a time or a place where you felt that strongly – notice what you saw, the colours, people, etc, become aware of what you heard, the noises, tones etc.

As that feeling intensifies make it a full sensory experience by noticing if there are any aromas, perhaps there are tastes to savour.

2. Take as long as you like to really get a strong and powerful sense of this feeling. When you have a full sense of that strong feeling squeeze together your thumb and little finger.

3. Repeat this process several times, remembering to get a really strong feeling before squeezing your thumb and finger together. (I’m sorry, you’ll just have to feel that good feeling again )

4. Squeeze your thumb and finger together on it’s own and notice how that good feeling automatically follows. You have created a trigger, or anchor for you to fire off when ever you want to.

Have a week full of great feelings

Love

Jen

PS If want to deal with interview nerves, check out my Dealing with Interview Nerves MP3 recording for practical solutions. Visit Here for more details.

I came across a great website recently that shows the before and after versions of digitally manipulated or “touched up” photos. If you’ve ever looked at an impossibly beautiful modal in the magazine and marveled, this may provide an explanation

Click here to see for yourself.