However your week has been, good, bad or average, you are at the end of it. Woo Hoo!

In the spirit of appreciative inquiry (click the link to read more on this topic), take a few moments to review what has gone well for you this week.  Even in the worst of times something will have worked well for you. Make a quick list of those moments.

If you can, identify what actually caused those things to work well. Maybe you were particularly intuitive, or took the initiative? Maybe you had done some preparation or maybe you acted spontaneously? Perhaps you tried a very small change in your routine or stuck with your tried and tested methods? Or talked to someone new, or listened to advice?

Whatever it was, make a note of it and take all the good from this week into the next, and leave the less than wonderful stuff in the past!

Happy week end!

Photo Credit: Mohammed Karim

‘You always win raffles’ she says.

Clearly I don’t or I’d have a house chock full of orphan cuddly toys and last year’s chocolates! But I do buy tickets at charity events and my friend was with me when I won a few times in a row. In her head I am lucky so she doesn’t notice the myriad times I don’t win a thing!

You Can Be Lucky Too!

Luck is a state of mind. Decide to be lucky and amazingly you will be!

Let me share an example with you. I had a pretty hard week last week for lots of reasons I won’t mention; most outwith my control. At the end of the week I was lucky enough (!) to get a trip down to Cornwall to visit friends which was a blessed relief and lovely (I even paddled in the sea!)

On the way home my darling husband’s car exhaust decided to make a bid for freedom and dropped off! How unlucky! I’d had a tiring week and just after a relaxing week end I get this and have to wait hours for recovery….sigh.

Well, no actually. Instead, I thought how lucky that we had such good friends who said come to us at a moment’s notice. How lucky that they live in such a brilliant part of the country. How lucky that we had the hottest October week end in years.

And most of all…

How lucky that we had stopped for a drink and a snack just before the exhaust disgraced itself and I had just been to the loo!There were no bushes for miles….

How lucky are you?

Have a look at Can You Make Yourself Lucky for a less tongue in cheek account!

PS Have you noticed what a strange word ‘lucky’ is. Try saying it out loud a few times! Quietly, or you’ll sound like Kylie Minogue! No bad thing actually!

Photo Credit: Dave Simmonds

Confidence

It’s such a nebulous thing but fortunately there are things we can do to boost our confidence when the confidence wobble strikes.

Here are 3 of my favourite tips for becoming more confident:

1) Take a deep breath.

Not too deep – don’t hyperventilate! If you can, plant your feet firmly on the floor, hold your torso as straight as you can (stay comfortable), breathe out as much air from your lungs as is comfortable and now breathe in. Feel the breath flowing through your body. Try that a couple of times and then just breathe normally.

When we begin to feel lacking in confidence we tend to want to make ourselves small, hunch up and try not to be seen. That has the effect of further decreasing our confidence. (Read An Easy Confidence Boost for the science!) Looking more confident and allowing your body to breathe properly actually helps you to be more confident! Try it now.

2) Tame Your Inner Sabateur

We’ve all got one. That little voice just waiting for our defences to drop before it kicks in. On my Renewyou course I call this the internal mail that you really need to delete before reading it. Recognise the subject heading and do not open!

Take a few moments to listen to your inner dialogue when lacking in confidence. It may be something like “You can’t do that“, “What are you thinking? You’ll look ridiculous“, “Better to say nothing and not take a risk“, “Don’t get above yourself“, “You didn’t get the job last time, don’t put yourself through that again“.

You can really boost your confidence by harnessing that inner saboteur and converting it to your side. The negative message is very powerful in sapping confidence but the good news is that a positive message can be very powerful in boosting your confidence! Turn the negative into a positive. For more information on how to do this take a look at Tips on Positive Thinking but in essence talk kindly to yourself and be your own best friend.

3. Get Back in Your Zone of Confidence

Take yourself back in your mind’s eye to a time when it did come together. It may have been at school, in a previous job, or maybe just yesterday! Often we have confidence in certain areas of our lives and not in others. So we’ll happily undertake a half marathon but are fearful of public speaking. Or vice versa…

Focus on your confident area and remember there once was a time when you couldn’t do that either. (Read First You Wobble, not least because  it has a lovely picture which will make smile!). We get confident by having a go at something. If you can think yourself in the frame of mind when you are good at doing something, it’ll boost your confidence for that first time feeling. (Hope I’m making sense here!!). Take a few moments out to see yourself being good at something and shift your focus from failure to success!

If you have any tips to share on how to boost confidence, please do use the comments section below. I love to hear from you! And if you’ve enjoyed this post you might like to get them sent straight to your in box – simply fill in your email in the RSS box, top right of this page!

Photo Credit: Beth McDonald

Accustomed as I am to seeking the positives in everything (!) I replied that she wasn’t mean but being an eco warrior! In slippers…

Be Positive
There then followed about 20 minutes of a daft exchange of ideas. Another follower chipped in and we decided ironing was definitely a no no, creases were the symbol of eco warriors, and we could make a fortune and have an alternative source of energy by bottling hot flush! Thousands of middle aged women plugging into the national grid and saving the world! I think we’re onto something….

Can you see it?

Well, maybe not, but there is a serious point here. When faced with a dilemma, a problem we can’t see a solution to, the ‘sitting down and working it out systematically‘ approach can work, but if you really want to tap into your creative unconscious go mad!

A burst of silliness can work wonders in helping you seek solutions. It’s hard to have silly thoughts on your own so go grab a mate and have some serious fun! Tap into that inner child and if anyone looks askance tell them you’re busy being a creative problem solver! Good luck!

And if you’d like another tip on creativity, take a look at Boost Your Creativity in 3 Minutes.

P.S. If you’re looking for a burst of inspiration and would like to join some like minded women for a day, take a peek at RenewYou. I have just 3 places left!

Photo Credit: Lejla

Traditionally notices in waiting rooms read something like:

Last month we had 39 missed appointments which cost the surgery over £800 and wasted valuable time which could have been used by others. Please let us know if you are unable to attend.

These notices had no discernible effect on getting people to do what they wanted. However, when they changed their notices to something like:

Last month 90% of patients kept their appointment with us. Thank you so much!

they found that the number of missed appointments fell by 30%! Positive messages reinforcing that keeping an appointment is just normal had a very positive effect!

They also used two other methods which worked. In a non patronising way they got patients to repeat back the date of their appointment, i.e. say it out loud, and also to write it down themselves. Again this meant significantly fewer people missed appointments; they changed their behaviour.

Positive Thinking

I am not surprised at all. We know that telling someone of our intentions helps reinforce them in our minds, and that writing something down helps us do it. Which is why on my courses I encourage women to share their goals and then to write them down.

A Positive Change Exercise

Try it for yourself.

1) Write down what you’d like to achieve in the next four weeks: be realistic about how much is feasible.

2) Share your aims with a friend, talk about how you’re going to do it and add in the details.

3) Pay serious attention to the messages you give yourself. Your ‘spam’. Are these of the ‘we lost masses of money because you couldn’t be bothered to keep your appointment’ variety, or are they the encouraging ‘ way hey, brilliant you! The surgery is working well because of your efforts and consideration for others’ ? Think about it. What Way hey message would positively reinforce your good intentions?

4) Imagine yourself, in your mind’s eye, having accomplished all you want to do. Just take a few moments each day to visualise yourself being hugely successful at making those positive changes. Feeling good? Hang on to that feeling!

If you’ve enjoyed this post you might also like Three Questions for Helpful Thinking. What’s your best tip for achieving your goals?

I wrote about this remarkable woman in a piece on change, how people adapt and survive. Alice, a Jew, had survived the concentration camps but more than that had established a remarkable career as a concert pianist and shown no trace of bitterness at all. No hate. “Everything is a present“.

There have been many interviews with her and a best selling book; you can see a BBC one here. If you have time, I recommend that you take a look for she is truly inspirational. If I am feeling a bit fed up about something inconsequential, I only have to think of her to find my mood changing. Her philosophy on life is truly humbling and wonderful.

Meaning of Life

Alice has her own take on spirituality or religion and she describes it thus:

• the love of a mother for her child
• the beauty and wonder of nature
• music.

We can’t all be mothers or musicians, but we can all appreciate the beauty of nature. Whether you are in the city or the countryside, take a look around you and wonder at nature. Lift your spirits and let an amazing woman inspire you today!

Alice’s biography, A Garden of Eden, is in all good libraries, bookshops and via Amazon

One of the consequences of the economic recession is less movement in the job markets. People are staying put for fear of  ‘last in, first out syndrome’. And of course, there are fewer jobs out there and more competition for those that are around.

So how do you keep your motivation going? How do you drag yourself out of bed every morning to do a job that you hate? It’s not easy and if you are in this position you have my sympathies. It’s horrid.

Self Pity

But don’t go too far down the self pity route! At least you do have a job and aren’t reliant on benefits. You’re still in the world of work. So my first tip is:

MANAGE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT WORK

If you’ve ever done any of my training, read my articles or my book, (When Work isn’t Working) you’ll know that I firmly believe we need to take control of our feelings, and that we CAN take control of our feelings even when it feels like pretty much everything else is outside of our control!

If you start each day giving yourself a really negative message, your day is only going to get worse. You are what you think. If you think devalued and worthless thoughts about your work it comes across and you feel worse. Whatever else is happening, your thoughts are your own (‘they‘ can’t make you feel anything-honestly!). Decide now to give yourself a positive message every morning that will help you through this period of your life, not one that will bring you down. (Check this out for some confidence boosting tips)

Your Action Points

• Identify your automatic negative thoughts about your work.

• Notice how often you speak to yourself about work in an unhelpful way

• Notice how this makes you feel. Does it make you feel better or worse (I’m not talking about sharing a moan with a pal, that can be therapeutic!)

• How can you change your negative internal mail into something that will help you through this period of your life?

• Try replacing all negative thoughts with positive ones for one week. What difference has this made to your week?

This is the first in a series of tips to help you through difficult times; if you have found it helpful you might like to receive my newsletter -just sign up in the blue box opposite the picture. And please do share this with others and add your own tips and hints! It’s great to get your comments!

Are you allowing your past to hold you back, using it as a shield to play safe?

It’s Never Too Late!

I firmly believe it’s never too late to try and create the life you want. Just start now – whatever the circumstances of your past.  People have survived horrendous life events (Read about this amazing holocaust survivor here) and in spite of that, (or maybe because of that), gone onto do amazing things with their lives!

Always aim high. If you give yourself low expectations you’ll probably not be disappointed. But set yourself high and worthwhile aims and you may discover more about yourself than you ever imagined possible!

If you find your past coming back to haunt you, if you hear that nagging voice in your head telling you you can’t do it, take a look at this longer article. Try out the exercise contained within it,  and aim to put the past where it belongs- behind you! Eyes front and upwards!

If you’d like some support with creating your new life there are masses of articles on this site, and you can also sign up for a regular injection of enthusiasm via my newsletter! Or check out my coaching here.

Good News

But the good news is that happiness and good humour is contagious too! There are some things that no economic crisis can take away from you, like your innate talents, resources, family and friends. Take a few moments to reflect on those each day.

Three Cheerfulness Tips

1) Stay calm and carry on! By which I mean don’t let yourself get dragged into a cycle of moaning and complaint to no purpose. Go on the complaint diet. Even one tiny moan a day uses up masses of cheerfulness calories so go for a smile instead. When someone starts up a litany of complaints, tell them you are following the complaint diet and will have to decline! Hopefully that will make them smile!

2) Share more! Start talking to neighbours, colleagues, friends about what you have which you can share. Like a power washer perhaps or books? Maybe you have a glut of vegetables you could offer? Once you start opening up in this way it’s amazing what you discover. Sharing a car to go shopping can lead onto sharing the buy one get one free offers which tempt you into buying too much, for example. But it also brings you a closer appreciation of your local community.

3) In times of economic downturn it can feel like you are in competition with everyone else for fewer resources, particularly in work situations. To counter this, think about joining a group and nourish your community spirit together. It might be a coffee club at work, a sewing group, a reading group at your local library, or an allotment club. Find one that interests you or start one of your own!

Try at least one of the above and see if it impacts on your happiness levels. Making yourself more happy is a very altruistic thing to do. Research in the US has revealed that happiness really is highly contagious. The findings show that when you become happy, any friend of yours who lives within a mile becomes 25% more happier too! And a friend of that friend is likely to be 10% happier, and a friend of that friend’s friend (still with me?) will be 5% happier!

It’s a positive civic duty to be a happy soul! I wish you much happiness today!

And please do share your own happiness tips!

‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’

Susan acknowledges the fears that we all have, fear of failure, fear of success, and so on. She takes you through what she describes as three levels of fear. Not with the idea of eliminating the risks of life, rather facing your fear full on and training your thoughts to work for you rather than against.

Here’s an extract from the book:

“Taking responsibility means not blaming yourself.
I know that sounds contradictory, but it is not. Anything that takes away your power or your pleasure makes you a victim. Don’t make yourself a victim of yourself!
For some, this more difficult than not blaming others. Once you’ve become aware that you have created so much of your unhappiness, you have a tendency to punish yourself and put yourself down. “There I am messing up my life again. I’m hopeless. When will I ever learn?”
This, again, is not taking responsibility for your experience of life. It is important to understand that you have always done the best you possibly could, given the person you were at any particular time. Now that you are learning a new way of thinking, you can begin to perceive things differently and possibly change many of your actions. There is absolutely no need to be upset with your past, present or future behavior. It is all simply part of the learning process-the process of moving yourself from pain to power.”

The book contains stories and lots of exercises you can try yourself. There is a particular exercise illustrating the power of our thoughts over our body which I use on my Renewyou course which never fails to amaze people, and is really powerful. It is a classic book and each time I pick it up I am reminded of something helpful, for me and for my coaching clients.

If you haven’t got a copy I recommend it to you. And if you have one tucked away somewhere, dig it out and read it again. It’s available from all major booksellers and libraries, or on line from Amazon