Superwoman and the tyranny of the oven

I hate my oven.  Does anyone else?  It's never clean and it taunts me as I walk past it.  It says 'hey, loser, your life is out of control.  You haven't cleaned me since you moved in here (true) and you have failed as superwoman'.

I'm good at challenging unhelpful thoughts and I can change my feelings about things fairly easily, but this oven is getting the better of me at the moment.  Even though I've got loads of work to do and another exam to study for, I just had to try cleaning it just now, but no!  It's impossible!  No product works, and no amount of frantic scrubbing will move the congealed evidence of  last week's extra cheesy pizza, or last night's over full lasagne dish.

You may be wondering, 'do I care about this woman's oven?' and I'm thinking, 'why, why, why do I care about something that no-one can see anyway?', but the thing is, it represents something that I've never quite come to terms with.  That I'm not superwoman.  Why does that bother me?  Isn't it society that tells me I should have a brilliant career, amazing children, fantastic husband and beautiful home?  (The children and husband are doing fine.)  Isn't that all a bit shallow, though, and shouldn't I be able to decide for myself what matters?

Yes, definitely, but it's not as easy as that.  The pressure on women to have everything, do everything and be everything is enormous still, despite people talking about how we can now choose which path to take and we will be valued either way (oh yeah?).  If you're a career woman who doesn't focus on family and home, you can still be criticised for being 'unfeminine' - get your Cath Kidston pinny back on! - but if you give priority to your family, there is still a real risk of not being taken seriously in the workplace -'still working around the school run, love?'. 

So what do we do?  We carry on trying to do a bit of everything...and I will carry on hating my oven until society really, non-judgementally, lets women make true choices about work and family.  In the meantime, though, I'll also try to do my bit to help women make real choices about their lives and to feel confident about living according to what's really important to them.  Deal with that, oven!

Goals and Goethe

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as who you become by achieving your goals. - Goethe

More funding for talking therapies

I heard on the radio this morning that there's going to be more money for talking therapies for common and complex mental health problems, especially targetting children, whose current mental health services are patchy at best.

Well, that's great, if it really adds up to extra money for these services and not giving with one hand and taking with another.

One of the issues services will need to overcome is the public perception of talking therapies.  It still surprises me when I realise that many people would rather take a tablet than address their difficulties through talking.  I suppose we all like a quick fix, if that's really possible, but it has been known for ages that treatment for mild depression, for example, is best if it's a combination of short-term medication and a talking therapy.

CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) seems to be the thing that at the moment health services believe is the cure for everything, and there certainly seems to be evidence that it helps with a lot of mental health issues.  It's not right for everything or everyone, though, and there is also evidence that many other types of therapy are just as helpful for some things and some people.

Coaching is a relatively new profession, and is also very helpful for addressing non-clinical issues which affect people's mental health and well-being.  NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) is becoming more and more established as an effective way of addressing some key health problems, such as phobias and trauma related stress, but also well-being issues such as confidence, good self-esteem and self belief, which have a major impact on our psychological health and ability to function at our best.  We just need even more research to demonstrate the effectiveness of these forms of helping so that they can be made more easily available to people, so that the public can make informed choices about what form of 'talking therapy' they want to try.

What's available and how much is available are important things to think about, but the other sticking point is how much will people be willing to use these services?

Talking about your problems is not something that many people find easy and counselling, even life coaching, and many forms of psychological therapy can have a rather 'touchy, feely' image which some people (dare I say men in particular?) are not comfortable with.

We really need to overcome this, because these forms of helping really do work and people get huge benefits from using these approaches, mainly because it gives them the power to make themselves well again and take back the control in their lives.

It's good that children in schools are encouraged to develop their emotional intelligence much more these days, and hopefully that might lead to future generations who are not so afraid of talking about their feelings. 

We do need more psychological services, of all different kinds, but we also need to think very carefully about how we present them to people, and persuade them to make use of these very valuable resources.

Now

Life changes constantly. Growth is optional. Make the changes in your life, rather than letting them make you.

Know which direction you’re going in, even if not the exact path. Live purposefully and be in the moment.

The past is a memory, the future is a dream. The present is all we have. (Adapted from the Buddha.)

Focus all your energy, commitment, enthusiasm and joy in the pleasure of being here now.

Einstein in 2011

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning."
Albert Einstein

On becoming more than you already are

I'm learning more about the person-centred approach to counselling at the moment.  It's based broadly on Carl Rogers idea that our 'actualising tendency', despite any opposition, will ensure that people continue to grow towards their true potential throughout life. 

There can be things that trip us up along the way, however, and make us doubt our own judgement.  Sometimes we can end up trusting the views of others more than our own. Rogers believed in the resilience of the actualising tendency, though, and he felt that the desire of human beings to become more than we currently are is never extinguished, whatever happens to us.

Whatever a person's circumstances, there is a way of becoming the best that you can be - that might be in terms of compassion, kindness, having a balanced and rounded life which is a good role model for your family - all sorts of things.  Whatever situation we find ourselves in, we can always do something to feel that we are becoming more than we already are.

Hope you enjoy thinking about that one.  Any comments gratefully received.

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got

I can't remember who this piece of wisdom is usually attributed to, but it's bandied around in the coaching world a great deal.  It's very true, and many of us spend a lot of time wondering why we're getting the same results even though we're working as hard as we can.  Is it because we keep on thinking in the same old ways, which means we end up doing the same old things without realising it?

For example, I'm trying at the moment to find a new avenue for using my coaching and NLP skills, but somehow I always end up looking at the same job adverts - none of which meet my needs.  Why is this?  I've realised it's because I'm using old ways of thinking, which have lead me down the same paths to the same actions I have used in the past, rather than approach this new challenge from a completely different angle.

If we have a limited amount of time we are often reluctant to do something extra to make a situation different.  I think it isn't really necessary to just keep taking on more and more in order to make a change.  You can create a big change by thinking about only one small thing in a different way.  Once you start to think about something differently, you usually start to feel differently too.  The change I've made is by looking again at an area of work which, on the surface, appeared a bit mundane and unstimulating. Then I thought creatively about how I could use my coaching and NLP skills within it and actually make it into something which would be fulfilling and provide a new challenge.  I'm really excited now about how far I could develop this area of work.

So I suppose a change to the title of this blog might be 'if you think what you've always thought, you'll get what you've always got'.  Any comments or further ideas?