What does the beginning of Spring and the Second Business Quarter have in common?

Well, it's a good time to celebrate your achievements as well as the blossoms and the warmer weather, it's also good to clean up after your first quarter sprint as well as your spring clean after a long winter.

Not only that, it's a good time to review your work flow and processes, as well as a good time to start building your physical and mental health with a seasonal cleanse.

You might even want to set some new fresh goals as well as sprucing up your living environment and wardrobe.

It's a time of new beginnings, and also a good time for a short holiday to recharge your batteries and your thinking before your sprint through to Christmas and the holiday season.

This is what Spring is about for business.

This is only the beginning. Get to know clarity. Email me, Mike Kennedy...

Maybe you are creating your own stress!

I'm reading a book about transforming stress using heart breathing techniques - "Transforming Stress" Doc Childre & Deborah Rozman Ph.D

They are talking at the moment about how we often can take on more than we need to because of our own expectations of ourselves and also what we think that others expect of us.

We expect ourselves to "do it all" and when we don't live up to our expectations, we feel dissatisfied with ourselves.

Since reading this, I keep noticing myself around household chores, saying to Rose, "Don't worry - I'll do it"

It happens so many times I'm feeling concerned about this. I keep loading myself up with extra tasks that get in the way of the important things in my life. And yet I don't seem to be able to just stop doing this stuff!

There's two sources of stress here - the stress of putting unreal expectations on myself and the stress of not completing the important things at the expense of getting caught up with the little things.

The book offers a "Heart Breathing Exercise" that relaxes you and tunes you into your "Heart" which is labeled as the source of emotional intelligence.

Sounds great and yet another way of getting ourselves back into focus, into clarity.

Email Mike...

Ten Things I have Learnt about Surviving the Cold:

It's taken 12 years for this Australian boy to finally admit that he has to take care of himself in this cold New Zealand environment. And it's been a run of debilitating colds that have humbled me.

I'd like to share some of the things I have learnt that works to keep yourself well in a cold environment.

1. Wear thick dry socks - keep your feet warm
2. If you sit at a desk, make sure you are resting your feet on a carpet, preferably rubber backed
3. make sure you have enough warm clothes on - even indoors!
4. Make sure you have great underwear! Thermals help you layer your clothes to suit the temperature
5. try and warm the room up that you are working in.
6. Dry cold is totally different to Wet cold - wet cold clings to you and goes right into your bones - Dry cold is bracing, but you can warm yourself quickly from this state. Be really, really careful on Wet cold days!
7. A scarf helps you to keep your neck warm - the Chinese believe that the neck is susceptible to letting in chills to your system and they protect that part of their body in cold conditions
8. A hat stops heat loss from the top of your body - wear one on cold days - even inside if it's really cold!
9. Soups with ginger and garlic, drinks with ginger & honey really warm you and help you boost your water consumption - essential when you have so many bugs to flush through your system - push the fluids!
10. cuddling is really good for the heart and soul- especially when it's with someone you love - warm beds warm your body and your soul - blankets wrapped around you in cold places offer great comfort....and protection

I hope you find something in this list that helps you be strong and resilient during this winter!

Email Mike...

Sometimes the only block to your effective communication is yourself!

How much permission do you give yourself to communicate?

How much space does your "Self Limiting Thoughts" allow you, in order for you to communicate fully?

If you have wallpaper, in the background, self limiting thoughts about yourself like: "I can't have what I want" "I don't deserve anything" or even "I'm always in the wrong", you will find that your ability to communicate will always be compromised by these self limiting thoughts.

- What to do?

Raise your awareness! Identify clearly your self limiting thoughts. Create analogies or verbal pictures of the things that stop you in your life.

Stand aside and observe yourself. If you describe your situation, you are automatically outside of your situation looking in on it. Realise this and you realise at that moment of self observation, that you are free from the limitations you have put on yourself.

Before you communicate, identify your self limiting thought and then set an agenda for your communication - base this on your desired outcome - then communicate with awareness of:

• The influence your self limiting thought usually has on you
• The outcome you really, really want to achieve.

Awareness of your limitations allows you to leap higher, run faster, achieve greater and last longer than you ever thought possible!

Go for it!!!!!!

Facing Up to Your Worst Case Scenario!

Okay.

There's a threat ahead.

You are frozen with fear. You don't want to face what's coming.

What's the best thing for you to do right now?

........you could write a list.

What kind of list would be a good place to start?

A list of the Worst Case Scenarios - put 'em down on paper - get them out of yourself - especially the stuff you are really scared about! The outcomes that fill you with shame and loathing for yourself - get them down!

Getting them down on paper, turns them into a paper tiger!

Fear of something unknown is really scarey and hard to manage.

Get to know what it is you are scared of, the fear reduces, it becomes more managable.

......maybe not straight away, but in time, the more familiar you become with what your threat is, the more resourceful you become in dealing with it.

Write down your greatest fears.

The Importance of Rest.

After just having a week of being laid low by the flu, which had happened just after a week of good health that was preceded by a heavy cold.....I have come to appreciate the wisdom of "a week off every 90 days" as expounded by my business coach fraternity.

As my colleagues swan off with their families to their holiday retreats, I was stuck at home with a cold, due no doubt to lack of rest, recuperation, refreshment and relaxation.

Rest - it keeps you sharp, ahead of your game and....fresh!

Being Sharp!

Personal Sharpness - seeing things clearly, being able to cut to the important stuff.

Being able to quickly focus, make clever distinctions and then make intelligent decisions which then allows you to plan and implement precise economical actions.

It’s about being quick witted, intelligent, astute, clever, incisive and on the ball!

Being onto it - ahead of your game, outside of the drama, able to work through things logically and in line with your values.

We all need to improve our sharpness every day in some way.

What supports our sharpness?

Our health is paramount, our fitness has a huge impact, letting our intellectual nourishment slip has dire consequences, as does letting slip our body's nourishment.

Our relationships need to be conducted and experienced at a high level, our business affairs always need to be impeccable. Our spirit need to be at peace, our work needs to be full of meaning and our heart needs to be full of love.

Sounds like a lot?

It is.

Does it all need to be neatly packaged, box's ticked and everything packed away?

I don't think so.

It's always a work in progress, a balance that needs to be struck, with new skills to be learnt, forever finding more stuff to clean up and more efficient ways of doing things.

You can have this be daunting or you can step up to it every day with a song in your heart. For the true reward of maintaining sharpness lies in the practice of doing truly extraordinary work, having rich relationships and living a life that you love.

Little Miss Naughty.

All she really wants to do is play and have fun.

It's not that she is malevolent, she doesn't know that what she is doing is destructive. All she is doing, as far as she is concerned, is playing.

When she is operating below your radar, she eats when she wants, drinks when she wants, slacks off when she wants and pursues self destructive pleasures.

She's your naughty little girl (or boy) and she is out of control when she's left to her devices.

Why should you watch what you eat and when you do eat, why should it be healthy? So what if you are drinking too much and are falling all over the place - she's just having fun!

She's your naughty little girl and she wants your attention if you want her to behave the way you want her to. She wants recognition, she wants you to play with her, she wants you to spend some time with her.

Want to get some control back in your life? - Talk with her - ask her how she is, what she wants and just get her into dialogue. Spend some time with her, do some things she wants to do when you want to do it.

The good news about this, if you do spend the time with her, eventually she will blend back into your self, with new habits and a lot happier.

A naughty little girl can do a lot of damage if she feels neglected!

It's Important for You to Know What a Pyrrhic Victory is.

A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with devastating cost to the victor. The phrase is an allusion to King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War.

After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysiss:
The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward.

On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.

In both of Pyrrhus's victories, the Romans lost more men than Pyrrhus did. However, the Romans had a much larger supply of men from which to draw soldiers, so their losses did less damage to their war effort than Pyrrhus's losses did to his.

The report is often quoted as "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone, or "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."

While it is most closely associated with a military battle, the term is used by analogy in fields such as business, politics, law, literature, and sport to describe any similar struggle which is ruinous for the victor.

What Pyrrhic victories are looming in your life?

What are the things that motivate you to spend your time and resources to win such hollow victories?

Are you engaging in any such campaigns in your life right now or in your future?

Have you calculated the cost and evaluated whether it's worth it all?

Can you avoid these campaigns or change you focus to some endeavor that will feed, fulfill and benefit you rather than drain you?

Winning a Pyrrhic victory is the booby prize!

Yogi Martin - Slowing Down Your Perception of Time!

I seem to be attracting amazing people to me lately!

Out of the blue, Yogi and Suzie dropped by and over coffee, shared about their latest adventures.

Yogi is a master accordionist who pulled out the amazing Roland digital piano accordion and gave us an incredible demonstration of his and his instrument's range and ability.

Not only that, he shared his techniques to show people how to slow down time. We explored this amazing ability in our post on chess master, Josh Waitzkin, writer of the book "The Art of Learning".

In my discussions and reflections since posting that article, we do this in the coaching process. In the coaching session, we slow down our perceptions by focusing for clarity in different areas of our clients situations.

Yogi has some amazing one minute techniques up his sleeve to help you do this.

If you want to know more about this amazing technique, go to his blog.

You also might want to hear Josh Waitzkin talk about this again as well. Listen carefully to his description of his martial arts competition fight where he slows down time.

Giving Feedback Without Destroying Confidence!

Giving Feedback.




Not many people know how to do that well.







Receiving Feedback.....



.....Sometimes makes you decide to never try the task ever again!



Maybe we need a technique to help us to give feedback that will make a positive difference to whoever receives it?


Imagine: If you could give feedback, that doesn't demotivate, that communicates what could be improved, and that the person hearing the feedback....actually does something about it - wouldn't that be great?






You could Try:

1. Put yourself in the space of wanting the best for the person, to help them improve their performance without offending or demotivating them.


2. Ask them if you could have a chat with them about something you just noticed when you were watching them perform their task.


3. Tell them what you saw them do - don't make them wrong - just tell them how they did it.


4. Ask them if you could give them a point for improvement.


5. If they say yes, describe the improved behaviour patten to them.


6. Explain to them how this would improve their performance - state the benefit of this improvement to them. Focus on the improvement, not on whatever they are doing wrong.


7. If possible, ask them to perform the task again slowly, using the recommended improved behaviour pattern.


8. Ask them how it felt doing this.


9. Ask them to try it again.


10. Ask them how it felt doing this. Help them improve their performance.


11. Encourage them and thank them for allowing you to give them feedback

Keep Practicing this - Good Luck!

You know how they train fleas - don't you?

If you don't, it's really simple.

In their natural habitat, fleas are passionate about jumping free and spontaneously!

They are a creature who leaps fearlessly wherever they please - they love it!

To train a flea, you simply get a number of glass jars of varying heights.

You place the flea in the jar, and immediately they take one of their wonderful jumps and OUCH! They hit their head on the top of the jar.

Dazed by this, they take another leap and OUCH! Again they hit their head.

After doing this for how ever long it takes, the flea adjusts itself to it's circumstances and measures it's leap to fall short of the top of the jar. In fact, if you have a long, tall, narrow jar, they will leap straight up in the air to avoid banging into the sides.

Get them used to this and when you take the jar away, the flea will continuously leap to the same height in the same way, over and over and over and over and over again.

The flea is now trained.

But wait! Look at the flea jumping - there's no passion, no joy, no spontaneity....no freedom.

.....The flea is now trained.

The Bucket List.....Say what you need to say!

The list of things to do ...before you kick the bucket.

So how about acknowledgement?

When you kick the bucket is about the only time a lot of people in this world ever get acknowledged - people stand around and talk about who they were - what qualities they had, what they had achieved and what they had given to others.

But it's too late then!

- You missed the opportunity to acknowledge them! .......You might have even missed the opportunity of being acknowledged!

The good news about this?

People who acknowledge others, usually get acknowledged by others.

I get mad about this - most people think that if they acknowledged someone, they would be giving them a "swollen head" - and that's their reason for withholding acknowledgement.

They don't even know that an acknowledgement is not a compliment.

An acknowledgement is not stuck in the box with the walls of Good/Bad, Right/Wrong, or Better Than/Less Than.

It's simply what is so!

An acknowledgement is: "You have blond hair"

A compliment is: "You have the most beautiful blond hair I have ever seen!"

A compliment has a hook - it's a thinly concealed manipulation.

An acknowledgment has no aim to influence you other than to give you credit for who you are, what you have done, what qualities you are showing, what you look like - etc, etc...

So stop being stingy with your acknowledgments - let everyone you know, know that you notice them, that you can see them and appreciate them, by giving them an acknowledgment.

How do you acknowledge someone?

You can start by saying: "I acknowledge you for..." and when you say this, your eyes need to be on them and nowhere else, for that is where you will find what to acknowledge them for. Focus on them and acknowledge them.

Give them the acknowledgement gift that might even be the only acknowledgment they may have had for a long, long time.

Practice this daily and you will soon be saying what you need to say.

Celebration as a Success Tool!

Celebration.
Something that creates a completion, joy,a
SHARING of our achievement and a
Psychological State of Reward.

Most of us forget to celebrate
Achievement, Breakthroughs and Completions

Therefore we miss out on the UNTAPPED GOLDMINE
That celebration releases from within us.

Firstly when we celebrate, we create a positive and powerful feeling of recognised achievement.

This very pleasurable experience forms an image of yourself as someone indeed who has succeeded, accomplished, overcame all obstacles and who is someone to be contended with.

Do this and you set a precendent, you create and reinforce an Emotional Anchor that will give you a positive state of expectation of success for your next projects.

Not only that,
when you set your self a goal,
work out how you are going to CELEBRATE it
and you will find the anticipation will
unconsciously drive you towards your goal.

Anthony Robbins
Likes you to think very clearly about the Pleasurable End Result and at the same time to think very clearly about the DREADED CONSEQUENCES of staying the same and not doing any thing – he calls that
the Stick and THE CARROT.

Whatever you do, a celebration is a reward that is at the same time, a tool you can use to stimulate you to move forward towards your goal

...Why not start using it that way?

The Man in the Mirror

There’s someone in your mirror, who lives there every day.

You use him to trim and set your face and your hair,

You never really look to see how he's feeling...

But he really knows you well, even though you don’t care to look and see.

You will be working with him today.

Go up to him without your usual tasks,

Catch him unawares and say "hullo!"

Look him in the eye and see what he feels.

Tell him you want to get to know him better,

Tell him you want to be his friend.

Look to see his reaction, maintain eye contact to the end.

Don't let the fear and mistrust you see stop you,

Keep telling him you want to be his friend until you can see,

The belief and trust in his eye.

Then tell him what your goal is, until you can see,

The belief and trust in his eye.

Then tell him you love him, until you can see,

The belief and trust in his eye.

Then tell him that you will never leave him, never ignore him,

Ever again, until you can see,

The belief and trust in his eye.

You can tell him anything you want to achieve,

Anything you want to be, until you can see,

The belief and trust in his eye.

Then indeed, you will have made a friend,

A friend of the man in the mirror.

When its time to go, make sure you do it with care,

Let him know gently that you need to go, that you will be back,

Sometime soon…… to talk with the man in the mirror.

Changing your strategy to be resourceful

Image.

It is the Face we give the world, it is the Identity we create and our
Strategy of Survival we use to Protect Ourselves with.
It is our Persona, our Mask, the way we Control life.
It is not who we are, although we often forget that.

So, if you are strongly identifying with your Image, you are
probably labouring under a False Assumption,
an assumption that underlies all of your thinking,
that Influences your “logic” and Creates your Reality.

For example, if your strategy involves you seeing yourself as being “Nice”, then you might want to consider that all manner of Atrocities against individuals and humanity have also been committed by people,
convinced of their own innate “Nice-ness” .....just like you.

And if around you, people are feeling Hurt, Disrespected and like there is a Dagger in their back, you might want to check, that even if the knife belonged to someone else, the finger prints on it, could belong to you…..

You know; you were there, you were the one who was talking to them at the time, you may even have some legitimate unexpressed grievance……

This may be true, and, if it is - you would want to know about it…..wouldn’t you?

And what if they were your prints? And what if you have been unconsciously doing this stuff, without even knowing? What can you do about it?

You can take responsibility for your actions, take charge
of your unconscious motivations.
You can choose a more resourceful way of dealing with your feelings.
You could look to creating a fantastic future, and let go of the past….
It’s like waking up, taking charge and moving forward……It’s all up to you.