Could Mondays Change Your Life?
Here’s a quick exercise to help you make this week really count!
It’s Monday, most people are back from holiday, schools are back, the traffic is flowing fast and furiously again and soon the shops will be full of seasonal delights! Time passes pretty fast, doesn’t it?
So make this week count. Don’t let it pass you by in a haze of things you always do. Don’t live the next seven days without thought. Take about 30 minutes out of your schedule now to think about something you can do each day of this coming week which will either enhance the quality of your life, or the life of someone else. They don’t need to be big things, nothing dramatic, but they do need to be things you have given some thought to.
Actions Speak louder Than Thoughts!
For example, you may decide to send a delightful card to cheer someone who is unwell? Or you may decide to find out just what is your position re a sabbatical from work? Or you may buy a bunch of flowers for someone who helped you last week? Sign up for a class which will give you an edge in your field? Work out how much you really need to live on? Plan in some time to discuss your future with your partner? Actually read that self help book? Give it a little thought and jot the seven actions down – writing helps reinforce intention.
And in amongst the seven, there may be one small thing you do which may set you off on a brand new, exciting path. Maybe, just maybe, this week will be a significant date for you when you didn’t just do what you’ve always done….and changed your life!
Do share any thoughts with us!
Three Words About You!
How’s your self esteem these days?
Try this quick personal development exercise:
Who are you? Describe yourself in a paragraph. Pick three words from that paragraph that stand out.
What do those three words say about your self esteem? Are they positive? Neutral? Or derogatory?
What would you like your three words to be?
Change – How to Survive Tip 7
All change means a loss of some sort. Yet often we are exhorted by those implementing the change to embrace it, get on with it, stop resisting! Resistance is seen as negative and disloyal.
Yet a certain amount of natural resistance is entirely natural, possibly inevitable. None of us reacts the same way to change and if we’ve had a lot of personal change, this may just be a step too far.
So my advice is, recognise what loss the change means to you and honour and acknowledge it. If it’s loss of colleagues, make sure you have a proper farewell. Ditto with a change of environment. This may be a communal activity like an office party or it may be something private, like a simple ritual of your own.
Whatever you choose to do, mark the change from one state to another in some way. It helps!
What sorts of things do you do to mark changes in your life?
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Change – How to Survive Tip 6
Are you a Magical Thinker?
Actually, you probably are; we all do it to an extent! But we tend to do it most when change is on the cards, a change or period of uncertainty over which we have no control.
What is Magical Thinking?
I first learned of the term magical thinking when working with young children undergoing trauma in their lives. At one stage, it was received wisdom that children shouldn’t be told what was happening if it was considered bad or negative.
This proved to be singularly unhelpful to children and their chances in later life, as they then resorted to magical thinking. They filled the gaps in their knowledge with stories of their own.
And invariably these stories (magical thinking) made the children themselves somehow responsible for what was happening. In the absence of information sensitively and appropriately given they imagined the worse and even made themselves culpable.
Adults Use Magic Too…
When I went on to work with adults experiencing change and periods of uncertainty I realised that we all do it. In the absence of concrete, trustworthy information we make sense of the bits we do have by stringing together a story, usually with ourselves being worse off in some way. (see tip 5) And these stories can get passed around an organisation and come to be accepted as a universal truth.
If there is a gap in your knowledge of any impending change, beware of your magical thinking tendencies and try and get some straightforward information. Check out your sources! There’s no point in worrying unnecessarily!
For details of my next change seminar please click here. And if you have some examples of magical thinking in your organisation, please do share with us!
Change – How to Survive Tip 5
When you hear a change outside of your control is on the cards, what are your automatic thoughts? Do you think:
“Oh great, this’ll be good for me!”
or
“Oh no, this will be terrible!”
Most of us tend towards the second response precisely because we have no control. But take a few moments now to think back over actual changes outside of your control, and what the outcomes for you were.
Was it all bad or have you benefited from unplanned changes in the past? Please do share.
Details about my change seminars are available by clicking here!
Learning Through Change – Do You?
How many times have you said to yourself at work:
“I’ve seen it all before; it didn’t work then and it won’t work now”
If I had a pound coin for every time I’ve heard that when running change seminars I’d have very heavy pockets!
Yet before dismissing such utterances as cynicism from died in the wool change resistors it is worth taking stock. Evaluating the successes and the unsuccessful is a crucial element in managing the change process, yet it it astounding how often this bit gets left out.
When Change Doesn’t Work
In large corporations a failed change strategy often results in the lead person ‘leaving’ with others then politically distancing themselves from the process. Very few senior executives seem prepared to look in depth at the processes as learning for next time.
In my experience of working within several large organisations, the most successful are those that can take into account the people who actually deliver the job on the ground and involve and engage them from day one. The top down approach simply doesn’t cut it any more.
A recent government report prepared by David McCloud and Nita Clarke put it this way:
‘We believe that if employee engagement and the principles that lie behind it were more widely understood, if good practice was more widely shared, if the potential that resides in the country’s workforce was more fully unleashed, we could see a step change in workplace performance and in employee well-being, for the considerable benefit of UK plc.
Engagement, going to the heart of the workplace relationship between employee and employer, can be a key to unlocking productivity and to transforming the working lives of many people for whom Monday morning is an especially low point of the week’.
Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement. July 2009
So the old ’seen it all before’ cynic may teach us something after all! Step one in any change process is get your people on board!
And the same principle applies to personal change. Who are the key people you need to support you in any changes you want to make? Are they with you, supporting you? Or are they secretly trying to sabotage you as they are fearful of the consequences? Always check first!
If you’d like to find out more about my seminars for managing your staff through change and uncertainty click here!
