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IN THE QUEST FOR NEW LIFE STRATEGIES, IS PATIENCE A VIRTUE?

Offering patience as a possible option in fashioning new life strategies can meet with short shrift – and that’s putting it mildly. Patience is often regarded as ‘off the pace’: a waste of time when we should be out there ‘making things happen’. Patience is seen by many as too ‘wait and see’, or being passive, docile and even weak.

 

REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION?

Most of us know of individuals who on deciding to make a new life change just do so: quitting smoking, training for their first marathon, losing 40lbs… they seem capable of a 180 degree with unshakable determination. We can respect and applaud such discipline & force of will but revolution is not for everyone. AND we certainly must not make comparisons and use those as a stick with which to beat ourselves. For many people evolution is a better fit: a more measured planned approach can get us to where we want to be.

 

BABY STEPS

It’s all bout forward momentum. Have you ever put a toddler down and turned away, only for a matter of seconds, and then turned back only to have to begin trying to track them down? Well, there’s nothing wrong with baby steps! So the sort of patience I refer to has nothing to do with ‘wait and see’ but is all about planned persistence at your pace. It does not signify lack of proactivity – quite the contrary, it’s all about devising an action plan combined with perpetual and most important of all – relentless forward momentum:

  • you do not lose sight of the target
  • you will not be knocked off course
  • and you’re not stopping for….anything!

 

MEETING THE CHALLENGE ON YOUR TERMS

By setting your own pace, you can manage your own evolution by taking measured and positive steps every single day, for example:

  • going for a walk
  • not tackling a pile of mail but one piece at a time
  • making a point of smiling at shop assistants and bank workers
  • avoiding emotional vocabulary
  • periodic ‘turn ‘em off time’ – TV, tablets, smart phones etc (tough one!)

To achieve goals it’s not a prerequisite to take giant leaps, or to turn lives upside down (however, if that’s the pace you want to set that’s fine). Change can be gradual: it evolves, and as such is grows into a natural fit and this time it will take!

The practice of thinking in new ways and doing new things often enough can alter lives a piece at a time. Quick fixes and short term enthusiasm so often leads to short lived benefits, disappointment & regression. Evolution can be the key to real change in thinking and in behaviour and replicates how we took on bad habits – we’ve just reverse the flow. So positive changes can ‘take’ and become our new good habits. What took decades to condition our lives cannot necessarily be turned around in weeks, but real beginning can be made – in bite size pieces….buon appetito!

Alan Keyse is a fully qualified Business and Life Coach who now applies his 30 years of experience as a sales executive to coaching Emotional Intelligence to business leaders, executives, managers and their staff. Alan specialises in stress reduction; conflict avoidance; & employee engagement. 

 

 

NEED MORE OPTIONS? SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE


In modern life we prize having multiple options and choices, but one of the greatest limitations to achieving these are our own thoughts and perceptions. Therefore, an ability to challenge and shift our own perspectives, and therefore our perceptions, is a huge asset – especially if we occupy a leadership role.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Anais Nin, Author 1903-1977

 OUR PERCEPTIONS HELP US TO SURVIVE

We continually ask questions of our environment, our safety and of ourselves, as they are essential in making the string of judgements and moulding the beliefs required to function and survive effectively. This is what kept us alive in the wild, and it is what we have to do constantly in order to make daily and life decisions. In this subliminal minute by minute flow of ‘what do I do next?’ the decisions we take and the choices we make are conditioned by the questions we pose.

 

WHEN PERCEPTIONS CAN BE DETRIMENTAL

The nature of the questions we ask of our lives or our world will condition the answers we receive. These answers, in turn, can reinforce beliefs we already hold. But what if a particular belief is negative and erroneous, for example ‘I can’t’, ‘I’m useless’, ‘I’m good for nothing’, ‘no one likes me’.  What if our perspectives and perceptions lead us to judgements and beliefs that can be to the detriment of ourselves or of those around us?

 

PERSPECTIVE CAN CHALLENGE PERCEPTION

If our thinking takes us up a blind alley, particularly at work, a useful and sometimes challenging exercise, is to abandon our line of enquiry and follow instead a thread someone else puts forward – usually a friend or a colleague. This may feel uncomfortable simply because we are removed from our normal channels of thought. We may be compelled to move in a direction that would not be our automatic choice given our own upbringing and conditioning – that direction may even be counterintuitive.

 

THE BENEFIT OF THE ALTERNATIVE ROUTE

The benefit is that we are really challenging our own thinking. In fact, the more uncomfortable this process becomes the greater the rewards can be. This is particularly true when meeting an obstacle in a project at work or in our lives in general. Simply put, if a chosen line of thought proves stubborn then take a run at it from a different direction to that you would intuitively select. This can serve a purpose if only to confirm that we were on the right line already: discounting an alternative route – properly explored – can really shake up progress.

 

If we care to look, the perspective of questions others may pose of us can often be far more illuminating in areas we may not even have thought to explore.  There is always a way out of a maze: approaching a problem or challenge from an altered perspective creates options and choices and can get a stalled situation on the move once again. While true and lasting change may not come easily, the journey can be exhilarating and liberating once the shackles of our own modes and conventions have been tested robustly.

 

Alan Keyse is a fully qualified Business and Life Coach who now applies his 30 years of experience as a sales executive to coaching Emotional Intelligence to business leaders, executives, managers and their staff. Alan specialises in stress reduction; conflict avoidance; & employee engagement. 

iceberg floating

Emotional Intelligence

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE is regarded by successful business leaders as an essential skill to compliment IQ and is defined as:

“The capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships”

The five domains improved by enhanced Emotional Intelligence are:

SELF AWARENESS
Improved connections to our emotions & their effects on us physically, our thinking & our behaviour. A greater understanding of our emotional strengths and limitations.

SELF MANAGEMENT
To better control our behaviour and reactions. We also become more flexible in challenging circumstances

SELF MOTIVATION
Strengthens our ability to get inspired, motivated, up-beat, and ensure we stay there consistently

SOCIAL AWARENESS
Understanding the emotions, wants and needs of others. Being better attuned to body language and moods, be it in individual or a group dynamic.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
Developing relationships & communications. More empathetic & effective management – picking up early warnings signs of potential conflicts.

85% of financial success is due to skills of personality, communication, negotiation
Carnegie Institute of Technology