If (there’s a clue) you find yourself oft repeating “If only…” you’ve found your two words. Two simple words that are holding you back.

If only I were cleverer…

If only I had a better boss…

If only my manager was female…

If only I lived somewhere else…

If only I had more money…

If only I was thin…

If only I could get a seat on the board…

Stop Wishing, Start Planning

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride” This phrase dates back to the 16th Century, we humans have been doing this for sometime! Basically it says stop wasting time merely thinking about stuff and go and do something!

Which is my message today. Every time we get stuck into the ‘what ifs of life we are giving away our personal power. You are extraordinary. You have amazing potential; tap into it. Take back control of your personal power. Decide what you want in life. Critically evaluate it. If your dream seems impossible at the moment, start with a smaller one, one that starts you off on your path. Get help, retrain, sign up for an evening class, start saving, get support, professional and personal. Do whatever you need to do to start making your what ifs a reality!

If this has struck a chord, take a look at When Did You Last Put a Toe in the Water?

Photo Credit: Naveen Saxena

Children

Much of our storyline will have been set in childhood. When I was working professionally with children life story work was a significant element in helping them come to terms with what had happened to them. Children are very good at creating a story to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Unfortunately, children who have had sorrow in their lives tend to make up a story where they are at fault in some way, in some way responsible for what had happened to them.

Adults and Stories

And what have I learned from experience and study is that we never really lose our childhood stories about ourselves. And those stories continue to have an impact on us and our experience of life. Which is fine if you were fortunate enough to have a good back story; if you had significant adults in your life who praised you and helped you develop a good sense of self.  If you didn’t have that experience it’s possible that you are still playing a character from your story that is stifling your potential.

I Want to Tell You a Story…

In a safe way, I lightly touch on this topic in my RenewYou course. I ask the women to think about labels they and others hold of them. And then I ask them to think about the labels they’d like to change. And then we think about making that change!

Your story isn’t finished. You are the author and it’s within you to write a new paragraph, bring in new characters, try a new location, focus on a new direction! So now you’re in charge of your story, what will you ‘write’?

And one thing I particularly like is the way it has fused old and new. It’s had a brand new modern extension (tastefully not affecting the front elevation – from the front it looks as it ever was) which has enhanced it greatly. Of course, lots of people were anti the change but it’s been well done; it adds to the grandeur of the building, bringing it alive in the 21st century and of relevance to today. And of course, it’s useful! That’s a result in my book. Beauty and usefulness.

What’s Beautiful and Useful in Your Life?

Holding onto the past is not all bad. In fact, it can be positively life enhancing. If we hold onto the good and beautiful. Sometimes though we can get a bit stuck into holding onto all that is not so great about our pasts and allow it to define us.  For example, if you had a difficult schooling you may well allow that to influence all your attitudes towards learning and reject new ideas; new ideas which might add to the beauty and usefulness of your life.

Or a relationship which didn’t work may colour all future relationships you have because of  suspicion and cynicism. Or past mistakes in your current relationships may be an ever present malign influence if you can’t let them go.

Review Your Past

Take time out to think about the aspects of your past which enhance you, which ‘feel‘ right. That’s what you want to keep.  It makes you beautiful. However, some aspects may need to go into cold storage, and some will need to be jettisoned to make room for something new, to allow you to add something modern and beautiful and useful to you!

Here’s a quick personal development exercise to try! It’ll help you shape a beautiful and useful future!

Do you ever get in your car, drive, and arrive at your destination (usually somewhere you go regularly like work) and not remember much about how you got there?

You’ve arrived and it’s taken you the same amount of time that it usually does but you were unaware of the journey. It passed in a haze. Maybe you were thinking about the day ahead, or the day just gone. Maybe you were fantasising about a dream life post huge lottery win!

We all do it and it can be a bit scary. What have we missed on the way?

Change Your Life

The reason we drive to work and have no memory of it is that our brains have developed that pathway; it’s a groove we easily slide into. So much so that if our holiday route begins with our work route we may find ourselves halfway to work before we realise. We’ve gone into auto pilot. We need that facility or we’d go mad (imagine having to remind yourself how to do every single thing you know. You’d go bonkers!) but if we live too much in the groove we miss out on so much of the possibilities of our lives.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be like that. Whatever age you are it’s never too late to start to live consciously, to make the most of your life. It’s only too late if you never start!

Change and Grow

So how to change your life? Well, for one thing you could investigate new routes to work and vary it now and again. You’ll notice so much more and quite possibly drive better too! And open up a new pathway in your brain!

And you can investigate new routes in your life too. The more you give yourself new challenges, stray from automatic pilot, the more life opens up its possibilities to you and the more rich your experience of life can be. Sometimes that means having a destination or a goal, sometimes that means maybe taking a risk and following your instincts.  The point is that whatever you are doing you are fully experiencing your life and not cruising through your precious life on auto pilot.

So, what could you change today to make your life great?

P.S Ten Tips for a Brain Work Out will help kick start your thinking!

Photo Credit- Niels Jansen

Find yourself a 30 minute slot (Yes, you can change your life in half an hour!). Take yourself away from everything electrical, no screens, lap tops, or phones, etc although do play music if you want as that can help the creative juices flow.

Taking a blank sheet or three of paper and a handful of coloured pens, answer this question ‘What would change my life for the better?’

You need to keep your answers short as you only have half an hour from now to get it all down! Put down everything that comes to you, mad, bad, good and seemingly unachievable.

At first it will be difficult and you’ll struggle but once you have released your inner creativity, after about 10-15 minutes, the ideas will flow thick and fast. Think about people you admire, careers you would like, places you’d like to be, people you’d like to be with, consider everything about your life.

Stop after 30 minutes. Go and get a drink, you’ve earned it. Once you’ve had a wee break, visit your list again. How many ideas did you generate? Don’t look at it and think ‘too much to ever do’, but instead look at it and think ‘My life is full of possibilities! I am amazing!’ Because you are! You are fabulous!

Two rules – it can be anything except large sums of money, and it has to improve the quality of your life without taking away from anyone else.

What do you wish for?

Do you really need a genie to make it happen? If you applied your energy, commitment and time to achieving this, could it be possible?

What would YOU wish for?

If you’re thinking ” yes it is, I can’t be a ballet dancer now I’m past 45″, well, maybe you can’t be a professional dancer, but you can still dance or still enjoy dance! There are three women over 60 in the current series of Strictly Come Dancing and two of them are excellent! Women are confounding all the hackneyed stereotypes about older women.

I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be an older woman in western society, (unless, allegedly, if you work for the BBC where femageism seems rife)

A Few Facts on Ageing

• A woman who is 65 today can expect to live, on average, to 85.

• A man who is 65 today can expect to live, on average, to 82

• With every decade our life expectancy increases by 2 years.

• By 2025 half the UK population will be over 50 and there will be fewer people under 18.

• Currently, there are more people in the UK over 60 than there are children.

We chronically advantaged women are in the ascendancy!

I have a photo of me, aged 6 months, sitting on my grandmother’s knee. I recently realised with a shock, that at the time that photo was taken my grandmother was exactly the same age as me. Yet what a huge difference in our experience of life, even down to how we look. She is wearing a traditional ‘old woman’s’ garb. I wear clothes borrowed from my daughter or given to me by her friends! (Don’t panic, I’m well covered up!)

Still Planning Ahead

At 55 I don’t feel like my life is nearly over; I feel it’s still opening up to me. I am having more fun professionally than I ever have in my life before and learning so many new things. And the more you learn new things, the better the brain adapts. Forget all that rubbish about brain fade, the evidence contradicts it. It really is all in your head!

When I’m coaching women, of whatever age, so often the limits and barriers they see are in their heads, not always in their reality. Thinking that you can’t do something generally means that you can’t. Instead try thinking that you can, which generally means that you can! You may just have to approach getting there by a slightly different route.

Here’s an exercise to try to boost your confidence:

Individually, imagine you are being interviewed by one of the Sunday supplements under a heading, ‘Lessons I have learned in my adult life’. Get as many things down as you can, silly or daft, serious, sad and funny.

For example, I have learned that even though you think your heart is broken it does mend. That if I mix drinking gin with red wine I’ll now get a hangover (although I didn’t at 18!) Or that it’s not worth getting annoyed about some work things because you’ll never change them. And job interviews are a lottery sometimes. And that I love getting older and wiser!

Once you have at least 12 things written down I’d like you now to think more specifically about the skills you have acquired during your working life. Think back to that first job when maybe you were a bit wet behind the ears. Think soft skills as well as things like qualifications. Have you become more patient, or more assertive? Again, get at least 12 down.

Look down your list. Congratulate yourself on the things you have achieved, and make a list of things you’d still like to achieve. And now plan how to achieve them! Setting goals is not just for the young.

The important thing is never to stop dreaming, never stop planning ahead. Don’t let a mere number hold you back. Stay alive and kicking in your head and grab all the opportunities which come your way!

Which older women most inspire you?

All the good things like eggs, butter, spices, flour and fruit are mixed together, steamed for three hours and then put aside to mature.

When the pudding is served on Christmas day, usually flaming with brandy, everyone oohs and ahhs and often everyone around the table has had a hand in the making of it, even if just with a stir!

Have Your Own Stir Up Sunday!

You may not be making your own pudding today, but you could be thinking about what you could do to cause a stir in a few months time…?
You could be making a wish and then assembling your own special ingredients to make it come true…?
You could spend a little time stirring up your own life so 2011 kicks off with a loud ooh and a ahh!

Research carried out by Kurt Gray, Harvard PH.D. student, seems to suggest that people who are doing something they consider to be morally good for others, receive in return a boost to their efficacy, and also feel stronger and suffer less discomfort. He believes that attempting heroic acts gives you more of what is needed to perform heroic acts!

He describes the effect as “moral transformation” on the basis that good deeds are able to transform someone from ordinary to exceptional.

The findings came from the results of two studies. In study number one, volunteers were given a $1 note with the instruction to either donate it or keep it.

Then they were requested to hold a 5lb weight up for as long as possible. The ones who gave their note to charity held the weight up for 10 seconds longer on average.

The second study involved volunteers writing one of three story choices. The choices were: one where they as a character harmed others, one where they did good, and one where they did neither. They also had to hold a weight up at the same time. Those who wrote about helping others were able to hold the weight for longer.

So now you know how super girl got her powers! Go on, be heroic today! Do something wonderful for someone!

So here we are in the dog days of summer, and in the UK at least a bank holiday week end is in the offing. Lost of people are on holiday, you get loads of ‘out of office’ replies, and no one seems to be around to do any meaningful work.

For those of us at work it can be a really dead time, or it can be a time you really make work for you! When you start on the road to achieving your dreams!

Dreams

The end  of August always feels like the end of the year for me – too long in the world of education I guess! September still feels like the start of a new term; all the excitement of new school clothes, bags, pencils, protractors (that dates me, who has those now?) and books full of blank pages to write upon!

Can you use this week to amaze yourself? To put something worthwhile on the next blank page in your book? Take the time to do something for you. To really think about what you want to achieve over the next few months?

In this relatively slack time, can you spare a moment to set yourself some goals this week, maybe one small thing to do each day that will stand you in good stead, and take you nearer where you want to be?

Unfulfilling Work

Maybe work is not fulfilling at the moment, but it pays the bills and it’s a tough economic climate so alternatives are thin on the ground. But now is a good time to take stock of what you really want to do with your life. And get prepared so that when the climate improves, as it will, you are ready to roll!

Love your job

Perhaps you love your work, whatever it is, and want to improve and progress. Where do you want to be? What opportunities might there be for you to progress? If not right now, when things improve? Can you gain some experience that will help? Do you need to sign up for an evening class? Get some mentoring? Shadow someone in the organisation? Join a networking group?

Retirement Dreams

Or maybe you have some long held dreams about what your retirement will be like? Have you done anything practical towards achieving those? Do you know what is possible? Have you shared your dreams with your ‘significant other’? Write down what it is you want and then use this week to take those first steps towards achieving it.

You Are Amazing!

Go on, amaze yourself! Make this week count. Don’t waste this time, take some control of your future now and plan to live the life you want!