Break the Rules

What would happen if you broke the rules today? Your own or those of your company?

What rule or tradition irks you most, holds you back, stifles your inner creativity? Imagine you are not bound by it? Hmm, so what are you doing now?

You Can’t Do It All

I have just been out in my garden and, as is so often the case, it prompted a post. Hope you like it.

A few years back my garden was my pride and joy. When my children (and several other people’s kids!) had stopped using it as a playground, and the sand pit, swings, and slide became redundant, I began to reclaim it, bit by bit. For a while the lawn served double duty as a rugby pitch and my washing line prop is still a pole once used for vaulting, but once the offspring disappeared it became my own personal terrain. My pet project.

It was a labour of love (and source of huge expenditure) but the results were worth it. It was a joy to see the garden I had oft dreamed of emerge. It wasn’t Kew, and wouldn’t win any prizes, but it was mine and it gave me huge pleasure.

Letting Go

However, about two years ago we were finally granted planning permission to build a wee bungalow for my Mum on a plot of land opposite our house. This too had been a long held dream but the vagaries of Bath planning delayed it for year after year. We reapplied for a third time, having drawn up lots of different plans and permssion was granted. Suddenly (or so it seemed after the enforced delays) we were in the throes of building a house with builders, and the consequent disruption, despite having fabulous builders!

Temptation

We have lived in our family home for over 30 years and during that time I have had many a fantasy (not shared by my husband) about knocking down walls, replacing windows etc, but in the way of these things very few had become real. But now I had a team of lovely builders at my beck and call and the temptation was too much.

“How much would it be to knock down that wall? Really, that cheap if we let you do it when it’s raining and you can’t work on the house? Great, it’s a deal! Oh and we’ll now need a new floor, new…”

Many similar conversations followed and at one point I found myself ‘supervising’ the new build, a new kitchen installation in my mother’s old house, and major works in our own! And I had more training and coaching work than I could handle! Of course, my husband was a huge help but I had very clear ideas about how my Mum’s new house should be designed, and I’d been plotting the wall removal in ours for ever, so I was voluntarily at the helm. Ms ‘I can do it all’!

The Garden

And I still wanted my lovely garden. But the garden became a dumping ground for rubbish and ‘possibly useful one day’ items, like old sinks, bits of pipe, and tons of wood to be stored for our new wood burner (another addition to the Woods household!)

The trouble was I wasn’t always around to supervise where all this rubbish went and a lot of it ended up on in places it shouldn’t. My lovely garden was being destroyed. I’d come back from a day training and wail:

” But there’s a beautiful clematis on that trellis, don’t you remember? Oh no, all my white tulips are under a pile of wood! You can’t put a wood shed there it’ll block access to the pond”

In short, and in all honesty, I was a right old nag.

And one day it dawned on me.

To achieve the more pressing and immediate dream of building my Mum’s new house and gaining my lovely huge kitchen diner, I had to let the garden go. And so I did. I made a conscious decision not to worry any more about it. Not to go rushing about like a demented witch every time I came home and found something on top of something about to bloom, or right in front of the window so it looked like a world war two bomb site. And not to nag my poor husband ragged about it.

Relief

It was actually a huge relief. I hadn’t stopped loving my garden - I hadn’t given up on the dream, but I had relegated it for a wee while.

And that’s what we all need to do sometimes to survive, postpone things in order to achieve more immediate aims. It’s what sociolgists call ‘deferred gratification’.

Sometimes we have to let go of our sacred cows, our long held dreams to get where we need to be. If you feel like you can’t see the wood for the trees (in my case it was the literally the trees for the wood!), pause a while. What is the most important to be doing right now?

Are You In a Rut?

Here’s a quick exercise to determine if you are feeling stuck in the same old groove.

Think about your life in three boxes (for simplicity):

Personal (Your friends, spiritual side of life, hobbies etc)

Home (where you live and with whom you live)

Work (Where you work, whom you work with and what you do)

If you are 100% satisfied give yourself a mark of 10 for each category and add the three totals. So being 100% satisfied in all areas of your life at the same time (congratulations if that’s you!) would give you a total score of 30.  Nil points would mean you are very unhappy; you’ll probably rate yourself somewhere in between.

20 and above is pretty good going. Well done you.

Less than 20, what do you need to change? And how are you going to change it?

Looking After You

‘When we’re well we want so many things, but when we’re sick we want only one’.

It’s so true, isn’t it? Like many of you, I suspect, I glibly talk about health and happiness being important yet consciously working to maintain my health is not one of my more obvious priorities. But without it all of my other goals will need revisiting.  It should be top of my list!

So I am resolved to take better care of my physical health from this moment on. I don’t want to lose it to know the value of it!

How about you?

Boost Your Creativity in 3 Minutes!

Any time you’re feeling jaded and a bit lacklustre in your thinking, try this quick mental booster in creative thinking.

Look

Spend one minute looking at the pot of tulips opposite. Notice everything you can about that picture, the light playing on the boards behind, the various colours in the petals, the shades of the leaves, the type of fencing in the background. Really play close attention to the picture.

As you observe the details of the picture,  just be conscious of how you are breathing. Don’t do anything to your breathing, just notice it while looking at the gorgeous spring tulips.

Invent

Now for one minute invent a story to go behind the picture. Who put them there? Where are they? where did they come from? Amsterdam? By air? By sea? Home grown? Who picked them? Who planted them? Who took the photo?

Allow your imagination to wander where it will for one full minute.

Doodle

And for your final minute doodle your own bunch of tulips or any flower you care to imagine!

Three minutes to refresh your thinking!

Do let me know what techniques and tips you use to refresh your thinking!

Three Things for Friday!

No, I haven’t invented a new tongue twister (try saying it out loud!), just a quick exercise to maximise your learning from this week and help you realise how fabulous you are!

As you read this, follow the instructions.

Take a pen (or several coloured pens to boost your creativity) and without too much thinking write down:

1) Something new I learned this week.
(Examples- how to use a new IT programme, a piece of family history, how not to get cross when complaining…)

2) Someone new I met this week.
(Could be a new postie, a colleague on the phone, all sorts!)

3) Something I did really well this week.
(Don’t hide your light under any bushels! Did you help someone? Did you finish a tricky report? Did you cope well with a set back? Did you get some new business? Did you cheer up a friend?)

Now look down your list, give yourself an imaginary pat on the back and go off and enjoy you week end!