Shift Your Butt Day!
I love my job and one of the perks is that I get to know some amazing women and occasionally get given some great books to read. Professor Karen Pine combined the two; we did a fab interview together (click here to read it), and ever since she has sent me her books. I have reviewed a couple of them*, and others I often use when working directly with women.
I was reminded of the ‘Shift Your Butt’ exercise yesterday when running an in house seminar. I laughingly suggested that participants could try sitting somewhere else in the room after the break. Of course, they didn’t want to and resolutely stayed put. People rarely do. We get comfortable with our situation very quickly and even if we don’t much like the view, at least we know it!
Which is fine sometimes but resolutely staying put doesn’t lead to a life of growth, development and discovery. And more fun!
So, for one day only, why don’t you try the ‘Shift Your Butt’ Exercise?
Today, don’t sit anywhere you would normally sit. Whether it’s at the dining table, at work, watching TV or in a meeting, see the world from a different place.
Go on, give it a go! See what happens and do let me know.
*One of Karen’s books is reviewed here - Sheconomics . You can read my book policy here but briefly if I don’t think books are helpful to you I don’t talk about them. I have a shelf full of books which didn’t make my grade.
Photo Credit: Juliane Riedl
How to Profit From Your Mistakes
We all mistakes. We have to or we’d never learn anything at all! My Father’s best bit of advice to me (as I crawled home from a disastrous love affair and having dropped out from my first stab at University) was:
“Well, you’ve made a mistake, everyone has to make their own mistakes. The trick is not to make the same one twice”
It’s good advice and I’ve quoted him often when coaching. Mistakes in life are inevitable but it’s what we do with the knowledge gained from making those mistakes that’s important.
So here’s a few tips to help make your mistakes profitable experiences for you:
1) Don’t give yourself too hard a time. Identify what it is you actually did wrong, and don’t rubbish everything about yourself. For example, don’t tell yourself how stupid you are, but that the thing you did wrong was stupid. It’s quite a subtle, but powerful, distinction and will help you distance yourself enough to really look at how you behaved in a way that’s helpful to you.
2) Try to put the mistake into perspective. You could use phrases to yourself like “Well, at least I didn’t blow up the house, I only left the iron on”. Or, “Will this be important in five years time?” Reframe the situation.
3) Be honest and admit the mistake, first to yourself and then with others. Once you admit something is wrong you can set about putting it right and also begin to learn from it. If you stay in denial there’s a strong likelihood you’ll keep repeating the same mistake, and that profits no one!
What’s the best piece of advice you have ever been given?
