Thinkers Anonymous

"I think, therefore I am."  (Descartes)  Really?  Is that all we are?

Someone I know, who shall remain nameless, spends a lot of time in their head.  They work things out, plan, organise, re-organise when suddenly something changes, rush, rush, rush....hmm...I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

And that's the point, really.  Thinking takes up so much of our energy that it leaves us without enough energy for actually doing, or, dare I say it?  Just being.

I hear myself hurrying my children constantly: "hurry up and get your homework done", "hurry up and get ready", "come on, we're going to be late"  Nag, nag, nag.  No wonder all they hear is "blah, blah, blah".

So what's all the hurrying got to do with thinking?  We do all the hurrying because we're always thinking about the next thing; getting things done; being on time, being perfect and, often, pleasing others. So much thinking is worry-driven - anticipating what's coming up in the future; trying to make sure nothing goes wrong.

What if something did go wrong - would it be the end of the world?  What if you were late - is something terrible going to happen? Perhaps it might, but probably it won't. How do you know what's going to happen in the future?  We haven't got there yet, so you have no control over it anyway.

Things are changing all around us, the world is becoming a very different place and it seems that we have very little control over how it's all going to turn out.  It might be time to change how we've been in the past and open our minds to a new way of being.

Imagine not worrying about what might happen in some future which only exists in your imagination anyway.  Focus on putting all your energy, instead, into what is happening right now, here, in the present.  The present is the only thing that's real.  Eckhart Tolle suggests that most of our thinking is pointless because it's either based in the past - which has gone - or is anticipating the future - which isn't here yet.  He says that the mind is a very useful tool only as long as we remember that that is all it is and we don't become addicted to thinking.

If we don't think so much, we can shift our attention to feeling, doing and just being; connecting with our world and everything in it with our body, mind and spirit, and having so much more energy now, in the present, to do whatever we want or need to do.  Just like children do, which is why I'm going to stop telling mine to hurry up.

Today

I enjoyed taking my children to school this morning.  I told them I would give them a lift instead of making them walk in the rain, before it was even light, and they were so pleased.  I don't do it everyday; they appreciate it more that way!  Giving them an easier start to the day reminded me of what my top priority is at the moment, and that is to look after them in the best way I can.  It took almost an hour out of my working time, but the most important thing was to act on what my feelings were telling me was the most important thing to do in that moment.

Coaching often seems to be about goals and working towards something in the future.  It's really good to know what your direction is, but if the focus is always ahead of us, we can miss enjoying the present.

Jamie Smart, an NLP guru, talks a lot about the thinking trap of "I'll be happy when...".  We can get caught thinking that "if only I could just get x done..I'll feel better", or "when I've got more time....everything will be ok", but that moment might not come.  Life is always throwing more at us.

Jamie also points out that when we say we want to get the next piece of work done, or we want to have the money to buy the next new gadget, what we are really saying is that we want the feeling that brings us.  We want the feeling of relief, or peace or excitement - whatever that desired feeling might be.

If we focus on getting the feeling we want, we don't necessarily have to wait to get it.  We can become more aware of what we have in the present moment and realise that we have the ability to tune into the things available right now to create feelings of peace, relief, excitement - whatever it is we thought we had to wait for.

Give it a try - enjoy today and all the wealth of feelings it is offering you.

Be here now

'The past is a memory, the future is a dream, the present is all we have' - The Buddha.

I like this quote; it reminds me to be present in the here and now and be fully involved in what's going on around me. 

However....as a coach, of course, I will say that we can make our desired future become reality by treating each day as a new start: free yourself today from something which is not useful to you anymore; act as if you are already living the life you want.  By doing so, you will move it closer to you and automatically start taking steps towards it, without having to make lots of effort.

Acting 'as if' you already have the life you want and are already the person you want to be can often show us that either we are already there, or that we are much closer than we thought we were.  Have fun!

Towards or Away From: Inside Out

How do you know where you're really trying to get to?  I was working with someone a while ago who was insistent that she wanted a new job.  I had a gut feeling that there was something which didn't quite add up about this goal, because she seemed to like quite a lot about the job she had, but because coaching is about the client's agenda, we started to work on the goal she said she wanted.

As we worked through everything she would need to get a new job - developing all the confidence she needed, the self-belief and effective communication - it became clear that the thing which had brought her to coaching wasn't really wanting to work towards the next stage of her career, but to move away from something she didn't want.  Her workplace was full of conflict and she hated it.  It didn't allow her to be the person she wanted to be.  As she became more confident and clear about what she really wanted, through her coaching, her behaviour in her workplace started to change.

After 3 or 4 sessions she came along and said, 'I don't want to leave anymore. At the moment, it's right to be where I am.  I'm not quite sure what's happened, but suddenly everything's different'.  She had changed how she was in her work situation and she felt differently.  On the outside it might have looked as if she hadn't done anything, but on the inside she had moved away from the thing she had disliked.  The changes she had made to the way she thinks had affected how she acts at work.  This had made an impact on what happened around her, and she had also become able to distance herself from other people's issues.  She had learnt some new ways of looking at things which prevented her from walking away from what was the right job for her at the present time.  When the time is right she will move on, because she knows her direction, but at the moment she's where she wants to be.

Coaching is about movement and development, but it's important to know where you're starting from, what you're moving away from, to make sure that you get the timing and the goal right, so you move towards the thing you're really looking for.

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.