When I look back on my life and childhood I realize that the times I treasured were those spent by the fireside with my parents or siblings, playing board games or reading books together.  It wasn’t grand holidays or treats to theme parks (I don’t think there were any!).  We only had one holiday abroad but wonderful holidays in the garden and an annual trip to the Broads.    Food was simple, as were clothes, but we were happy.

Today people have high aspirations and can believe that it is the expensive gadgets, homes or holidays that will make them and their family happy.  Perhaps you might find more fun on your doorstep?  What is it that you enjoy doing that helps you relax and feel able to face the world?

It takes planning to make time for relaxation, otherwise life becomes a continuous stream of things you ‘have to’ do rather than things you ‘enjoy’ doing.  I am aware from my clients and friends how difficult people find it to sit quietly, to read, to go for a walk or listen to music without the interruption of a mobile phone or BlackBerry to disturb the peace.  Technology has become a ‘fidget’ and it is easy to find yourself fiddling with your smartphone every few minutes, or tuning in to a call, text or email in the middle of a conversation instead of being fully engaged with those with whom you are spending time.  I find that many people are half-in half-out of situations, their body in one place but their mind in several different places.  You can find a greater quality of experience when your mind and body are in the same place.

We travel this fine line where we strive to protect the precious aspects of our life within the onslaught of demands from outside and endless ‘doom and gloom’ broadcasts from the media about the economy.  But if you don’t take time to relax and refresh you will find it harder to manage the ups and downs of life with equilibrium.  The delayed or cancelled train, the irritating buzz of your neighbour’s Ipod on the tube, colleagues who don’t do what they say they are going to do, or noisily crunch onion crisps at the desk next door, the boss who never says thankyou or well done will all become more stressful and difficult to manage.  Your body needs quiet times to re-balance and stay healthy, your mind to find peace.

Identify what it takes for you to relax and refresh yourself and put it in the diary.  Plan your evenings so that you do one or two things that you really enjoy rather than just collapsing in front of the TV.  Plan your weekends so that you play a game, paint a picture, go for a bike ride, take some exercise and do those things that energise you and those you love.  Don’t allow the weekend to be endless chores so that you find on Sunday night that all you have done is go to Tesco or Ikea!  Make time for downtime a priority.  What will you do this week to refresh yourself?  You can see some more tips here http://www.positiveworks.com/newsoffers/stresstips.htm .

Dan Ariely has written a fascinating book Predictably Irrational which demonstrates how people will take stock from a company’s stationery cupboard but would not remove physical bank notes.  They don’t consider the first to be stealing but they do consider the second to be theft.  My point is that each of us needs to consider carefully how we spend each penny and, indeed, whether it is ours to spend.  There is always a consequence and rash spending or waste can bring down a country or bring down a company.

The Tax Department and the Ministry of Defence, among others, have apparently lost considerable sums of taxpayer’s money through incompetence or through badly thought-out procurement contracts which have landed the country with millions of pounds worth of uncollected tax and contracts for helicopters that won’t fly in cloud.  I am also aware that there have been profitable contracts for management consultants within the NHS and other government departments.  Were this their own business, their own money, would they have paid out these sums with such alacrity or would they have considered more carefully whether they have the knowledge and expertise to do the work internally?
When Jamie Dimond came in to JP Morgan, the investment bank, he introduced the concept of fortress accounting – ensuring that every penny spent was well considered.  The story is that he went up the street outside their New York headquarters tapping on the windows of all the taxis and chauffeur-driven cars waiting outside, asking them for whom they were waiting and then checking whether each journey was essential to business need.  As with taxpayer’s money, people in large organisations can lose touch with expenditure when it is not coming out of their own pocket and need to be reminded that combined spending by many individuals can bring an organisation down.  Just as over-spending or waste in the public-sector can result in massive deficits.
It is self-defeating to try to label one sector the angels and the other the devils.  What can be helpful to make the UK economy grow is for each of us to consider the daily small choices we make with expenditure so that other people’s money is not wasted.  At the same time as money needs to flow to make an economy prosper, if we do have the budget then we can enjoy spending what is ours to spend!

The birds in my garden don’t listen to the news

can’t know of Assad’s brutality

or of families struggling in poverty

their exuberance counters John Humphrey’s bombast

the midges floating in spring scent disregard Ahmadinejad

or Israel’s threat of nuclear holocaust

the buds burst forth despite the Greek debt

the leaves hiphop to the wind’s gentle tune

drowning out the Dawkins’ rant

with the oblivious chatter of resurgence.

March 2011 – enjoy these spring days!

We may talk in a spectrum of stereotypical thinking, which may now be outdated.  However, when one asks young or old professionals what their grandmothers told them you often find that those stereotypical beliefs and messages live on in today’s behaviour.  Equally most people in relationships, whether work or personal, do often comment that they respond differently to their colleagues of the opposite gender.  Not always, but often.

What does this mean?  It is an asset not a problem.   We are more likely to solve the world’s challenges with an equal distribution of male-female experience and creativity than with only 50% of the population making decisions, as is now generally the case.  Surely all governments, organisations and teams (whether family team or business team) can benefit from the diversity of approach and response that is gained from mixed viewpoints.  See also http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/comment/comment/women-in-boardrooms-make-for-better-businesses-7543254.html.  A woman has a different experience of life because she has a physically different body and also because of how others respond to her, just as does a man.  This results in diverse perspectives, ideas and solutions to problems.  The brain and emotional responses are also stimulated and shaped by differing hormones.  Testosterone causes different behaviours to oestrogen.

So let’s take action to move towards a world where men and women share power at the top of business and at the top of government.  Surely this has the potential to result in a more balanced view to shape the crucial decisions taken on our behalf.

Many of my clients have very sedentary jobs working within large organisations.  Despite my own and other people’s efforts to encourage managers to support daily exercise and help their staff to take frequent breaks there is still a depressing amount of sedentary presenteeism occurring in the workplace.  Perhaps noone has fully understood how sitting in a chair kills us?

One or two of my more enlightened client organisations encourage their staff to take breaks every hour, set up rota systems whereby people can move away from their desks to walk around or go to the gym, exhort staff to stop for a proper lunch rather than munching sandwiches over their laptop.  Not only is this kind of practice better for health – and especially long-term health – but it is also better for creative thinking and clarity of thought around decision-making.  Most people gain their best ideas away from their desk so why be chained to the least creative area of your life for the major part of the day?

What could you do today to ensure you get a good 60-90 minutes of walking?  It is proven to reduce your likelihood of diabetes and long-term health problems so it must be worth it.  As they say – YOU must be worth it!

My mother was patient with me, reassuring me.  She took me by my hand through the house to demonstrate that we were not under attack and that there was no-one in the house other than our family.  This was sensible as when one is anxious it is easy to create imaginary scenes that fuel the anxiety – in my case the sounds in my head attached themselves to images of our home being under attack.  None of this was actually happening so watch where your imagination takes you!

There were two actions my mother helped me to take that are still useful to my clients today – 1. checking reality and staying in the present.  Anxiety usually results from our creating imaginary scenarios in our head of all the things that could go wrong.  These scenes may never happen so one is only making oneself anxious as a result of an over-active imagination.

2. focusing on something other than the sounds in my ears such as putting on some music, or repeating another sound, or repeating a mantra or positive phrase.

Both of these are basically helping you to stay in the present and focus on the positive through controlling the focus of your mind and senses.  I hope these tips may help any of you reading this who experience these problems.

Later I was grateful that I had had this experience as it has helped me to understand my clients when they describe these symptoms to me.  I have then been able to support them to look more realistically at their challenges and find ways to meet their personal needs even within times of great difficulty.  Small things can make a difference.  Getting control of calm breathing to prevent hyperventilation is important as is stopping anxiety-inducing thoughts.  But as you can see from this You-tube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3SLGt8smTw your body knows you are upset even before you do so do take the time to stop and quietly look at the challenges you are facing and work out strategies that will help you manage them.  Planning how you will take care of yourself in the midst of problems enables you to keep your head even if others all around you are losing theirs!

There is a project under way at the moment to capture and record acts of kindness on the London tube.   I thought this was a great idea and was immediately able to add a few stories of my own which I shall share with you in the hope of warming your hearts somewhat in the midst of some chilly and wintry weather here in the UK.

Recently I was running a day workshop in the City.  I had to take some handouts and materials and so my briefcase was loaded with laptop, stress balls, hi fi and speakers for the sound system.  By the time I was on my way home I was tired and had needed to stand all the way back on the District Line so by the time I got to Gloucester Road the steps up to the exit looked like hard work.  As if sensing my fatigue a young man immediately approached me and asked if he could carry my case for me: I accepted with gratitude.

Sharing my stories and the London Underground project, two of my colleagues were prompted to recall some similar memories of their
own.  One had been on a train one night when a young girl had difficulty in getting her credit card accepted by the ticket collector’s machine.  She asked to use another card or for him to try again but he was unyielding and warned her that she would face a fine.  The young girl was upset and my colleague offered to loan her the fare of £9.50 and gave the girl her home address, not really expecting to hear from her again.  Four days later a large bunch of flowers was delivered to her door with a thankful note from the girl’s mother.  In the same mail a cheque arrived from the girl refunding the sum.  The random act of kindness had been valued and appreciated, even though my colleague had no
expectation that it would be.

My other colleague, Rob,  was sitting next to an old man, somewhat of a tramp, who was drinking quantities of beer from a large backpack.  Most of the other travellers avoided his glance but Rob noticed that the old man was having difficulty opening one of his cans of beer (this was before Boris Johnson banned alcohol on the tube) and offered his handy Swiss penknife with which to help the man open the can.  The old man was delighted and relished his drink.  As he left the train he delved into his copious bag and lifted out a large block of chocolate and gave it to Rob in thanks.

One of the smaller companies I work with has the use of a board room of a larger company which they use for meetings from time to
time.  When they asked whether they should pay for this benefit the company said ‘No, just be sure that when your own company is large and profitable you do the same kind of thing for some other small business start-up.’  I thought this was brilliant and can inspire us all to think of how we might be able to help someone who is starting up a business.  Certainly I experienced great kindness and encouragement from several people when I founded Positiveworks in 1993.

On a train to Bath a few years ago a young man sat opposite me.  He was a ‘hoodie’ and had a slightly threatening energy.   I spent the first part of the journey feeling a little nervous.  However, first impressions can certainly be wrong because when I spilt my coffee a little later he was the passenger who immediately sprang up and offered to help me clear it up, running to the loo to get some paper and help me with the mopping up.  There was no need for him to have done so: it was a random act of kindness.

These small acts are what makes life worthwhile and keeps a society functioning with a spirit of community and cooperation.  Such acts are occurring in thousands of different places all over the world as I write so let’s remember this as we go into the New Year.

I am sure you can add many stories yourself of random acts of kindness that either you have done for others or others have done for you.  Don’t ignore them, notice and give them your energy and attention because this is what makes all our lives easier and more enjoyable.   It comes from the heart but starts with the focus of the mind…

Wishing you all well and a very happy 2012.

Helen and all at Positiveworks

some more nice stories and comments have come in since I posted this:

“My story is that I often travel to London and get a travel card which I then don’t need to continue my train journey home to Hampshire.  I decided to give it away to someone in the queue at the ticket machine.   The first Mother and daughter were suspicious and didn’t take it, so I offered it to the next lady who was very grateful.   These positive energies go around and spread out in this way – just like when someone lets you inot the traffic queue  – you will probably then let someone else in  etc.”

“very uplifting after all the horrors on the news!”

“This has cheered me up after a dreadful meeting with one of our exec who is really negative!”

“How very uplifting and  inspiring!   One should indeed focus much more on the better side of human nature and remembering small random acts of kindness are a very good way of being reminded of this.”

“Just wanted to say that I thought your message was brilliant.  My husband  works  as a British Transport Police constable and he has many, many tales of true kindness and even bravery from random members of the  public.  You are right, it is too easy to focus on the negative and sad things in this world, I remember years ago my RE teacher telling me that the sun is shining every day, it is just that sometimes the clouds get in the way, so we can’t always see it.”

A few years later I set up Positiveworks, hoping that I had it in me to run a consultancy to support others in achieving their work and life goals. As you know, Positiveworks is still going strong 17 years later.  I remember thinking that it would be fun to travel with this work but did nothing specifically to seek work abroad.  I was reading The Famished Road by Ben Okri at the time and it stirred my imagination about Nigeria.  A month later I was called up by two Nigerian consultants inviting me to run some workshops in Lagos.  It was an amazing  experience.  After that I found myself travelling all over the world with my work – from Hong Kong to Australia, from Switzerland to Hungary, then all along the Middle East and on to Lebanon, Kuwait, Dubai, Bahrain, Egypt.  I used to pinch myself, wondering how this had come about.  I had done no specific marketing but somehow these clients had come towards me from one direction and another and there I was standing up running training and coaching sessions to wonderful and fascinatingly diverse groups of people in different parts of the world.  Once again I found myself in a situation even better than I had ever imagined it could be.

More recently my partner and co-author David Beales and I decided to visualise our future life together.  We took paper and coloured pens and drew a picture of a house and garden incorporating all the features we felt would create a happy home for us.  We imagined a place from which we could work, and where our children, grandchildren and friends could easily visit us.  Here I am today sitting in this beautiful thatched cottage looking out at our flower-filled garden.  My cats think they have landed in paradise after Fulham!  And so do I.  Once again, it is even better than I could ever have imagined it could be.

It wasn’t all plain sailing, of course.  Life is full of swings and roundabouts and hard work, so I am not trying to pretend there is a Polyanna world out there.  But I share these stories because I have become convinced from my own experiences and those of friends and clients that we create our own future and that sometimes this can be better than we can possibly imagine it could be.

I am sure that you will have had similar experiences.  Why not think about them and share them with family, friends, children, colleagues?  And then as those of you in the UK and Europe take off for your summer holidays perhaps you would like to cast an imaginative eye over your future now and begin to think of specific things you might like to bring into your life.  How you feel on the inside on a daily basis is always more important than what happens on the outside so include the qualities of life that boost your happiness, whether these are adventurous or peaceful.  Relax and trust your creativity to help you imagine the inside-outside experiences that you want to bring into your life.    And once you have identified these goals open your mind to the possibility that life may just throw you something EVEN better than you could imagine!

Have a happy August,

Helen

Being back within the family reminds us of the messages we received growing up: some encouraging, some critical and some no doubt frustrating!  So returning to the hearth, or having family to stay, can remind us of how our identity has been shaped and gives us the opportunity to question whether this identity is still relevant today.    What might it feel like if you were able to remove those old perceptions and labels and start again?   For a moment to imagine you have no history, no name, no role, status, or reputation within your family.  What might that feel like?  For me this felt both frightening and yet also liberating.

We all have a responsibility for our impact on others.  How might you help your family to recognise who you are today rather than seeing you as the person you were last year, or ten years ago?   What do you need to express differently?  How might you approach members of your family with new eyes and see beyond the image you may have constructed years ago, especially if that has been negative?  It’s easy to imagine that people don’t change but everyone evolves, and sometimes it’s even for the better!

If you find other people irritating over the festive period consider what their pressures and intentions might be.  See beyond the behaviours.   There’s no book of life and how to live it.  We all muddle along and try to find our way.  Sometimes this results in developing unhelpful defensive behaviours.   But we can choose not hook in to old patterns or give other people the power to upset our day.  We can choose compassion. 

How might you set old relationships up on a new and more constructive footing that reflects the present rather than the past?   What would this look like?  How would you be acting differently so as to reflect the person you are now, the person you wish others to see and acknowledge? 

In that spirit of enquiry I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a new year that brings you and those you love happiness in 2011.