Awareness

Expanding our field of awareness means we have more choice points. Awareness is not just self awareness but a broader insight and appreciation of what is at play It creates an open perspective.

On Not Thinking Negatively

Project Self

Many people are feeling various low and negative moods at the moment. We can’t do much about how we feel in response to difficult circumstances but we can be aware of how our thinking may be affecting us. The brain has a negativity bias. As Rick Hanson describes it, teflon for good news, velcro for bad news. This is because our system is wired to look for and hook into any perceived risk and threat. Our brains tend to scan for bad news, overly focus on it, overly react to it, over remember it, and become sensitised to it over…

On Attending To What Needs Attention

Project Self

Attention is potentially the greatest instrument we have to transform the quality of our life. I have been asked a good question as a prompt a few times: what percentage of you is actually here right now? What percentage of you is giving this article your attention? What would it be like to decide to give it your full attention? How might your experience change? What might you notice or become aware of, once you decide to be fully present; not just to this piece of writing, but to yourself in reading it? What comes up (thoughts, resistance, excuses, feelings,…

On Self Compassion

Project Self

What’s the most significant relationship in your life? It’s the relationship you have with yourself. We have a continuous and inescapable relationship with our self. And it’s the most fundamental relationship in our adult life. But our relationship with our self can flux and suffer. It needs appreciation, attention and investment like any other. The self is our personal experience of our aliveness in the world. Our relationship with how we experience our living of life, our beingness. Our ‘simple self’ is our essential capacity to enjoy being our self as is. This is our inherent value and worth, contribution…

On Feeling Grounded

Project Self

What does it mean to be Grounded? The traditional definition of someone being grounded is that they are well-balanced and sensible. The implication is that they remain level-headed despite a context or circumstances which could carry them away, such as great wealth or success which may go to their head, or that they don’t flap in a crisis. They keep a sense of proportion, remain in touch with reality and with themselves and see things in perspective. Grounded people ‘keep their feet on the ground’ and so are down to earth. In more spiritual terms or in self-development language the…

On Wanting Recognition

Project Self

See me, feel me, touch me, heal me. Listening to you I get the music. Gazing at you I get the heat. Following you I climb the mountain. I get excitement at your feet! Right behind you I see the millions. On you I see the glory. From you I get opinions. From you I get the story. Roger Daltrey Imagine if these words were said about you? You’d probably get a positive sense of yourself, of being seen by another, of being felt by another. Of your impact being appreciated. We all need someone to ‘get’ us. One of…

On Resilience and Emotional Drain

Project Self

What does it mean to be resilient? Resilience is commonly described as being able to withstand and bounce back from negative experiences. Resilience is not the capacity to not feel, like a teflon skinned human; unaffected. It’s not the capacity to carry on regardless in the face of adversity. It’s not endurance. It’s the capacity to experience; sometimes extreme emotional difficulties, and recover; with the emphasis on recover. To bow but not break. To stay calm even in the bow. To adapt and not hit out, or in. For me, resilience is that our value and attitude towards our self…

On Doing Nothing

Project Self

Mind the gap is a familiar warning. Mine to you would be make the gap. Find the gap. The interval; the interlude; the break; the empty space. Create space; find time; in between… Ensure that there is a space between arrival and departure, between one thing and the next, between one zone and another. Be aware of those moments, those transitions and transactions. Find those un-named, ill-defined places without purpose. Relish their vacuum and step into them. They are opportunities for respite, reflection and rest. For being without mission or requirement or determination. Don’t avoid them or rush to…

On Questioning

Project Self

Coaching is fundamentally based on the skill of asking questions. The power of coaching lies in being able to ask the right kind of question at the right time. This can clarify, trigger, challenge or reveal; but results in a fundamental shift in mindset or position for the client. Curiosity, exploration, reflection and enquiry creates insight and discovery. The question itself can be quite simple, but its power lies in pertinence. Someone asking us a question prompts us to question our self and to hear our answer out loud, which we may already know at a deeper level, but may…

On Knowing What to Do

Project Self

We can become divorced from our own physical feelings, from the relationship between mind and body. We get stuck in trying to find the right answer in our rational mind. We think the better answer is to figure something out by solving it as a problem with the ‘correct’ solution, coming from a place of considered analysis. What does it feel like when the answer is ‘Yes’. And when the answer is ‘No’. We need to enable ourselves to understand and read our ‘emotional barometer’, to help us trust ourselves, to give us a measure. Our instinctive response to a situation…

On Being Ok Where You Are

Project Self

“We are at where we are at”. This was often said by one of my life coaching course trainers and has stayed with me. The starting point of coaching is to accept where we are. And if we don’t really want to be there, to accept that too. Too often we create stress wishing things were not the way they were or wishing things were different, often berating ourselves and our capacity to do something about it in the process. This is a positive place to start; where we are. Before acceptance comes awareness. Coaching is often at its most…

Awareness

On Not Thinking Negatively

On Attending To What Needs Attention

On Self Compassion

On Feeling Grounded

On Wanting Recognition

On Resilience and Emotional Drain

On Doing Nothing

On Questioning

On Knowing What to Do

On Being Ok Where You Are

Get in touch

Newsletter