When you listen to what people are saying about Christmas, is it excitement and anticipation that you hear, or dread and worry?

Have a listen to others and yourself as well!

The hard times that many are going through at the moment with redundancies or uncertainties have added to some peoples and families stress. It is easy to blame circumstances and others for how we feel, but actually we have choices, and Christmas is a time when we can practice using tools and techniques to change the way we think and therefore the results that we get.

If we do this and keep practicing, the effect on the rest of our life is enormous:- We are able to set goals, understand ourselves and others and take actions. Have a read of my “Top 10 Tips to have a Happy Family Christmas” and take some action. I will be writing about these tips in more detail in coming blogs. Dr Bridget

Have you ever asked yourself that question?

Have you ever looked for someone and found a big gap?

I was thinking recently about the lowest points in my life, when my family seemed chaotic and when I spent a lot of time wondering how to get out of the mess I was in. I was struggling to hold down (a strange expression) a full time GP job with all the challenges that that brought and behaving a bit like a headless chicken! And who did I talk to?

NO-ONE!

I think I felt ashamed, but also felt that I didn’t know what the response would be.

Would the person I chose be:

• Cross with me for letting it happen?
• Someone who felt sorry for me rather than empathy with me?
• Someone who also feels ashamed and you end up dealing with their shame?
• Someone who is disappointed in you?
• Someone who wants to ignore it all just to make you feel better?
• Someone who tells you their experience/story and doesn’t listen to yours?

OR

• Someone that simply listens with total compassion, empathises and is honest? Someone that makes you feel totally loved and accepted and who is someone you can expose your imperfections to?

I know that I have some people in my life now that I can open up to and will make me feel totally loved and accepted

I just need to CONNECT with them!

HOW ABOUT YOU?

Take some action!

Make sure that you have people around you that you can talk to in your time of need and ask for help and support when you need it!

Dr Bridget

Do you start things and never finish them?

Do you notice others getting their head down till they’ve done what they want to achieve and wondered how they did it?

I know I’ve made some huge strides in this area recently.

When I did my Master NLP training, I broke a board with my hand but it took a while to do as I wasn’t really fully committed!

I had worked out what makes my day perfect and have tried my best to do it, but I wasn’t really committed

Those of you  who know me will say- “You say that there’s no such thing as failure, only learning”

And I’ve recently learned!

I went to a Jairek Robbins day in London called “How to get results fast”

I broke an arrow with my throat against a wall and did it straight away. (Haven’t got a picture I’m afraid).

How committed is that!!!

Because it felt so good to know I can achieve what I want, I am now fully committed to several things:

• I am committed to doing my absolute best for my clients, in particular those who are struggling with their work life balance !!
• I am committed to doing my perfect day every day!!
• I’m committed to being me and the best I can be!!

What will you commit to today?

Choose one thing to commit to , just do it and then notice how good that feels!!

Then carry on and keep committing to what is really important to you!

Post a comment on what you are committed to and how it is going for you!

Catch  up with you soon

Dr Bridget

I have recently met and interviewed an inspiring coach called Jacqui Malpass and asked her how journaling has helped her both personally and in her career. We explore the challenges and the benefits of journaling and it certainly has inspired me to do more. 

Listen to the Journalling that I did with her by Journalling.

I have also given you 5 top tips and thoughts that will get you going and allow you to raise awareness of anything that  is going on for you right now.

1. A journal is a safe place to release your thoughts and emotions.

Journalling helps you to release pent-up thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Bottling things up is not helpful and keeping your thoughts and feelings inside is a recipe for disaster. Writing about them in your journal can help you release them and move forward.

2. A journal makes you stop and take a good look at yourself.

If you have an negative approach to life, which can feed into low mood and anxiety, you will be able to spot it in very little time. Reflecting on previous journal entries, you’ll begin to notice familiar threads of doubt, mistrust, and hopelessness. When you spot and clarify these negative thought processes, you can then begin to work on changing them.

3. A journal gives you private space to “be”.

Sometimes you just need a place where you can throw your thoughts and feelings without saying them. Also a journal doesn’t necessarily have to be filled with your written thoughts. You can use your journal to express yourself with paints, drawings, collages, and mind maps. There are several good books which can give you ideas, but the best way is to jsut do what feel right for you.

4. A journal shows your progress (or lack of).

One good thing about a journal is that it is a record of things that you have done every day. When you are consistent, you will be able to reflect back later on your condition and see how you’ve improved. Likewise, you can pick up on areas that still need some work (negative attitude, dashed hopes, low spirits, for example).

5. A journal helps you get a handle on your mental wellbeing.

Another great thing about journaling your way through challenging times is that you can literally track your mental status by reading back through your entries. After writing for some time, you can go back through your journal and track all your ups and downs. This will help you to predict your mental lows, so that you can be better prepared in how to handle them. Wait at least 2-3 months before you try to do this, though.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Please send me any comments or thoughts about how you have found journalling.

Jacqui runs courses on writing and journalling and is due to start running courses in Spain as well as the  UK in the near future. Her web site is jacquimalpass.com so if this has inspired you, get in touch with her.

Thank you Jacqui for your encouragement!

Bridget

How do you carry on when you’re totally exhausted and are finding it difficult to get up one more time in the night, phone one more patient or play with your kids?

Whatever it is that you want to do and are too exhausted to do – read on!

I was given a book by Renee’ Brown by my coach. It was called the Gifts of Imperfection and it has inspired me to share one of her tips with you!

You “DIG” DEEP

So when you are in this situation where you are overwhelmed and exhausted:-

D DELIBERATE YOUR THOUGHTS AND BEHAVIOURS. This can be through meditation, mindfulness or simply by making a decision that this is going to be how it is – Called setting your intention
I BECOME INSPIRED TO MAKE NEW AND DIFFERENT CHOICES -You’ve always got choices – the trick is to take a step back and get them clear in your mind
G GET GOING -Take action on your choice. It always gets better then!

So- I’ve done that today!

I’d been up since 5am to go to a meeting, then had a 2 hour coaching session with a client, 50 miles away. and then we were due to go to London for a course I was doing. When we tried to start the motor home, it was completely DEAD! So I realised I had to DIG DEEP and that “keeping calm and carrying on” was probably not quite enough. My preference at the time was to have a prolonged scream!!

So I decided to do something useful, looked at my choices, got the book out and thought – “I should tell others about this”

So here it is!! Hope its useful to you. I’m off to sleep now so catch you up soon!

HAPPY DIGGING

Bridget

The programme also talked about the benefits of “Catch it, Check it and Change it”

The way that you see yourself, the world and other people can affect your thoughts and feelings, and can, if one isn’t careful, lead to mental health problems.

An example of this could be:

A teacher once told me off in front of the rest of the class. My instant thought was that “he didn’t like me and wanted the others in the class to laugh at me”. The more helpful response would have been- “maybe I should have done my homework- he’s only trying to help me to reach my full potential”

Which response would keep me awake at night?

So

 “Catch it”  Spot when you may be having negative thoughts by asking yourself how you feel. Anxiety  is a good marker for these thoughts!

“Check it” Stop and check the reality of what you are thinking. Do you have evidence to back it up?How would other people respond to the same situation?

“Change it” Put some more realistic thoughts into your mind and ask yourself are they more likely to be true? Watch how your feelings change!

Actions (because acting on new knowledge is good)

Keep a diary where you note down the time and day of your thoughts, what happened, your emotions, your automatic thoughts and what would have been  more rationale. If you practice this on a regular basis, you will see the patterns and change them before they become a problem!

Enjoy spotting those thoughts!

Bridget

How resilient are you?

I have a rescue dog who is very calm, until she meets other dogs. The other day, we went out for a walk and she had a fight with another big dog. My instant thought was- she’ll have to go back to the kennels, I’m never going to be able to take her out for walks and why did I get her in the 1st place!! I felt depressed and under the control of her behaviour. The thought that I had that was more helpful was to find a trainer to socialise her more and make walking a joy?? Since then, she has behaved and we expect to enjoy our walks.

Similar things used to happen in practice meetings in the surgery (not the fights) and I used to have a gin before going. I expected things to go wrong and blamed other people! But then I took control of my thoughts and therefore my behaviours and put on a smile. The meetings were much more pleasant as a result and I only had a gin after the meeting!!

I have become much more resilient since my NLP coaching training and help others to become more resilient and take control of their lives

Any change will cause a certain amount of turbulence and this will test our personal resilience. Two of the most important items that relate to personal resilience  are 1) a positive attitude and 2) the ability to make a difference and to take control of events.

In this blog, I have given you a questionnaire about whether you are at Cause or Effect in other words- where is your locus of control? You may already know what the answer is and this will help you to clarify it and take action if you think it is necessary.

Cause-effect questionnaire

Have fun

Bridget

Tips for today to avoid procrastination

1. Create specific times to do the work that is completely protected (Breakfast, lunch and tea)

2. Decide what the ingredients are for your tasks  and set them out on the table. ( In preparation for eating the frog)

3. Make sure you have all of the tools to do the task- your pens, paper, poly pockets, envelopes- whatever it is (Knife and fork)

4. Tidy your workspace so that you are focussed. Weve all been in the position of writing or doing something really important when we  see the thing weve been looking for for weeks and suddenley, we are dealing with that instead!! (Only put the hariest frog on the plate)

Be careful with this part- it is very easy to spend all day getting your space ready. Clear you desk and start. I’ve been known to go and buy some flowers, visit the stationary shop and find photos of the family to put on my desk before starting- if I ever did!

5. Decide how long the task is going to take you and start. (Size up the dimensions of the frog)

6. Work until you are finished. If the job is complex, split it into small sections and do the 1st one. Notice how good you feel and then start the next section. Don’t do anything else until you have completely finished the A1 task (I’m not going to go into how to eat the frog in sections)

Confucius wrote

“A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step”

7. Tell people what you are doing so that they don’t interrupt. (Sometimes people will feel sorry for you and interrupt you to  help you. Or they have their  own A1 tasks that you might be part of- BE FOCUSSED on what is really important for you!  (It’s your frog!)

HAVE FUN

Bridget

I didnt really know what a hairy frog looked like until I googled it. Now I think it actually looks quite tasty??

Brian Tracey’s book talks about the Law of Forced Efficiency which says that you cant eat every tadpole or frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest hairiest one and that will be enough for now!

So THERE IS NEVER GOING TO BE ENOUGH TIME TO DO EVERYTHING THAT YOU HAVE TO DO – no matter how hard we try. In the Health Service as in many other high pressure, safety conscious, target driven professions, we are working at 130% if not more of our capacity. AND THIS HAS CONSEQUENCES – for ourselves and others1

If you procrastinate and delay, then the pressure increases, we make mistakes and have to do tasks again that we should have done better the time before!

So the three questions to ask yourself are:

1. What are my highest value activities?

2. What can I  and only I do that, if done well, will make a real difference?

3. What is the most valuable use of my time, right now? So which is the hairiest frog that you can eat!

OK, so I know that we all would prefer to eat one or two tadpoles but actually this leads to more of the OVERWHELM feeling and if you eat your hairiest frog straight away , it feels sooo good.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting here and thinking what my hairiest frog is?

If I’m honest with myself, I’d like to think it was videoing myself to increase uptake of people on my web site so that they could all take advantage of my new programme that will be with you in August, but if I managed to do that (yet another technological challenge) I wouldn’t be putting the content together for it. So by the end of this morning, I will be clear about what I want to support people with and teach them about and will set aside an hour a day next week to put things down on paper. My parents are coming up next week and I know I need to do at least an hours work a day before they arrive and then I will feel good and be able to relax.

Or is this just another excuse not to video myself???

So sit down when you read this and ask yourself those three questions. The haireist frogs will be your A1s, if you’re using the system descibed a couple of blogs ago- here is the link.

1. What are my highest value activities?

2. What can I  and only I do that, if done well, will make a real difference?

3. What is the most valuable use of my time, right now? So which is the hairiest frog that you can eat!

I hope you are finding these blogs to manage your time useful? Feed back would be good. Only another couple of blogs on Grabbing Yourself an Extra Hour and then I will concentrate on some Career soul searching!

More about  Hairy Frogs- just to tempt you

The species is about 11 cm long from snout to length. The large head is broader than long, with a short rounded snout. This species is roasted and eaten in Cameroon. The Bakossi people traditionally believed that the frogs fall from the sky and, when eaten, help childless human couples become fertile. So not only will they make your day much more efficient, you might have more children and so BE MORE PRODUCTIVE. Ha  Ha

Have fun

Bridget

So, now you have a system for prioritising.

How is your confidence?

Do you BELIEVE in yourself ?

 A question for you!

 Are you worrying and not sleeping at night because you believe you can’t do something that is important to you to achieve your goal?

Its much the same sort of system:- 

~Get clarity about what is important to you

~Find out what you need to do or learn to achieve your goal

~Make a monthly, weekly and daily list and then prioritise the tasks

~Start and  keep going until you have achieved what you need to

~Do only what you must  do

~Congratulate yourself for your achievement and reward yourself by using the extra hour to relax, have fun or whatever you want to do!

TASK

~Write down everything that you have achieved since starting using the system to grab an extra hour in your day!

~Notice how much easier it has been since you have done this!

~Show your confidence and achievements to others- they will see you shining anyway and want to know how you did what you did so easily.

YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT -JUST KNOW WHAT IT IS AND START!

Bridget